Month: March 2020

The death of a U.S. prisoner in the state of Louisiana is amplifying concerns that COVID-19 could spread unchecked in America’s detention facilities that hold more than two million people nationwide. Health officials and local leaders warn the prison population is especially vulnerable to an outbreak, and that hospitals near prisons would be overwhelmed by any inmate epidemic. VOA’s Chris Simkins reports, some prisons are taking steps in hopes of lessening a looming crisis
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The death of a U.S. prisoner in the state of Louisiana is amplifying concerns that COVID-19 could spread unchecked in America’s detention facilities that hold more than two million people nationwide. Health officials and local leaders warn the prison population is especially vulnerable to an outbreak, and that hospitals near prisons would be overwhelmed by any inmate epidemic. VOA’s Chris Simkins reports, some prisons are taking steps in hopes of lessening a looming crisis.
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From the East Coast to the middle of the country, U.S. governors say the worst is yet to come as the death toll and the number of people infected with the coronavirus increase. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details.
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Huawei’s chairman warned Tuesday that more U.S. moves to increase pressure on the Chinese tech giant might trigger retaliation by Beijing that could damage its worldwide industry.  Huawei Technologies Ltd., which makes smartphones and network equipment, reported that its 2019 sales rose by double digits despite curbs imposed in May on its access to U.S. components and technology. But the chairman, Eric Xu, said 2020 will be its “most difficult year” as Huawei struggles with the sanctions and the coronavirus pandemic.  Huawei is at the center of tensions with Washington over technology and possible spying that helped to spark Trump’s tariff war with China in 2018.Xu said he couldn’t confirm news reports President Donald Trump might try to extend controls to block access to foreign-made products that contain U.S. technology. Xu said Huawei can find other sources but warned more American action might trigger Chinese retaliation against American companies.”I think the Chinese government will not just stand by and watch Huawei be slaughtered,” Xu said at a news conference. He said U.S. pressure on foreign suppliers “will be destructive to the global technology ecosystem.”  “If the Chinese government followed through with countermeasures, the impact on the global industry would be astonishing,” Xu said. “It’s not only going to be one company, Huawei, that could be destroyed.”  Huawei, China’s first global tech brand, denies U.S. accusations the company is controlled by the ruling Communist Party or facilitates Chinese spying. The company says it is owned by the 104,572 members of its 194,000-member workforce who are Chinese citizens.Chinese officials say the Trump administration is abusing national security claims to restrain a rival to U.S. tech companies.  Last year’s sales rose 19.1% over 2018 to 858.8 billion yuan ($123 billion), in line with the previous year’s 19.5% gain, the company reported. Profit increased 5.6% to 62.7 billion yuan ($9 billion), decelerating from 2018’s 25% jump.  Huawei has had to spend heavily to replace American components in its products and find new suppliers after Trump approved the sanctions on May 16, Xu said.  The controls, if fully enforced, could cut off access to most U.S. components and technology. Washington has granted extensions for some products, but Huawei says it expects the barriers to be enforced.  The company, the world’s No. 2 smartphone brand behind Samsung, said 2019 handset sales rose 15% to 240 million units.  Xu said it was impossible to forecast this year’s handset sales until the spreading coronavirus pandemic is brought under control.Huawei phones can keep using Google’s popular Android operating system, but the American company is blocked from supplying music and other popular services for future models.  Huawei is creating its own services to replace Google and says its system had 400 million active users in 170 countries by the end of 2019. That requires Huawei to persuade developers to write applications for its new system, a challenge in an industry dominated by Android and Apple’s iOS-based applications.  Huawei hopes Google applications can run on the Chinese company’s system and that its apps can be distributed on the American company’s online store, Xu said.  Huawei also is, along with Sweden’s LM Ericsson and Nokia Corp. of Finland, one of the leading developers of fifth-generation, or 5G, technology. It is meant to expand networks to support self-driving cars, medical equipment and other futuristic applications, which makes the technology more intrusive and politically sensitive.  The Trump administration is lobbying European governments and other U.S. allies to avoid Huawei equipment as they prepare to upgrade to 5G. Australia, Taiwan and some other governments have imposed curbs on use of Huawei technology, but Germany and some other nations say the company will be allowed to bid on contracts.  The company has unveiled its own processor chips and smartphone operating system, which helps to reduce its vulnerability to American export controls. The company issued its first smartphone phone last year based on Huawei chips instead of U.S. technology.  Huawei also is embroiled in legal conflicts with Washington.  Its chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou, who is Ren’s daughter, is being held in Vancouver, Canada, for possible extradition to face U.S. charges related to accusations Huawei violated trade sanctions on Iran.  Separately, U.S. prosecutors have charged Huawei with theft of trade secrets, accusations the company denies.  The company, headquartered in the southern city of Shenzhen, also has filed lawsuits in American courts challenging government attempts to block phone carriers from purchasing its equipment.   
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Don’t wear face masks to fend off the coronavirus, the World Health Organization says. “There is no specific evidence to suggest that the wearing of masks by the mass population has any potential benefit. In fact, there’s some evidence to suggest the opposite in the misuse of wearing a mask properly or fitting it properly,” WHO executive director of health emergencies Mike Ryan said Monday. The WHO says the only people who need masks are those who are already sick and those who are caring for the sick. Ryan also cited the global shortage of medical supplies and the risk frontline workers are facing every day. “The thought of them not having masks is horrific,” Ryan said. Although some medical researchers endorse face masks and say effective ones can be homemade, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says they are ineffective in filtering small particles from the air and may not help if an infected person sneezes or coughs nearby.  UN resolutions The U.N. Security Council voted remotely for the first time Monday and approved four resolutions, including one that continues a sanctions monitoring mission for North Korea and another extending the U.N. mission in Somalia.  Council members and staffers have been teleworking for almost three weeks. But some are decrying the new procedures as restrictive and cumbersome and no substitute for meetings and debates.  US death toll The U.S. coronavirus death toll reached a grim record Monday with 486 deaths reported – the biggest one-day number so far with the total number approaching 3,000. President Donald Trump says the number of tests for the virus across the country hit the 1 million mark, which he says is the most of any country. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar says U.S. labs are carrying out 100,000 tests a day, which he also says is a global record.President Donald Trump speaks during a press briefing with the coronavirus task force, at the White House, Tuesday, March 17, 2020, in Washington.The Pentagon announced Monday that a U.S. National Guardsman, Capt. Douglas Linn Hickok, died Saturday, becoming the first U.S. military member to succumb to the coronavirus.  “This is a stinging loss for our military community, and our condolences go out to his family, friends, civilian co-workers and the entire National Guard community,” Defense Secretary Mark Esper said. “The news of this loss strengthens our resolve to work ever more closely with our interagency partners to stop the spread of COVID-19,” he added. California prepares California Governor Gavin Newsom is calling on retired doctors to hang out their shingles again and is also recruiting medical and nursing students to help with an expected surge of coronavirus cases in that state, the nation’s most populous.  “California’s health care workers are the heroes of this moment, serving on the front lines in the fight against this disease. To treat the rising number of patients with COVID-19, our state needs more workers in the health care field to join the fight. If you have a background in health care, we need your help,” Newsom said Monday.  The state’s health agency is preparing stadiums and convention centers to serve as makeshift hospitals.  Pastor arrested Also Monday, a sheriff outside Tampa, Florida arrested a pastor who held services Sunday despite the governor’s orders against gatherings of more than 10 people.  “Shame on this pastor, their legal staff and the leaders of this staff for forcing us to do our job. That’s not what we wanted to do during a declared state of emergency,” Sheriff Chad Chronister said. “We are hopeful that this will be a wakeup call.” Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne said he sanitized his church before the service, calling it an “essential business” like police and firefighters. He also attacked the media for alleged “religious bigotry and hate.” 
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A man who was among the five people stabbed during a Hanukkah celebration north of New York City has died three months after the attack, according to an Orthodox Jewish organization and community liaison with a local police department. Josef Neumann, 72, died Sunday night, the Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council said in a tweet. The funeral for Neumann, a father of seven and great-grandfather, is being held Monday. No additional details were provided.  On Dec. 28, an attacker with a machete rushed into a rabbi’s home in an Orthodox Jewish community in Monsey, New York, an ambush Gov. Andrew Cuomo called an act of domestic terrorism fueled by intolerance and a “cancer” of growing hatred in America. Cuomo said in a statement on Monday that he was “deeply saddened” to learn about the death. FILE – David Neumann, center, wipes his eyes as he speaks to reporters in New City, N.Y., Jan. 2, 2020, about his father, Josef Neumann, who was stabbed in an attack on a Hanukkah celebration.”This repugnant attack shook us to our core, demonstrating that we are not immune to the hate-fueled violence that we shamefully see elsewhere in the country,” the governor said. Rabbi Yisroel Kahan, who is the community liaison for the Ramapo Police Department that serves Monsey and executive director of Oizrim Jewish Council, shared the news of Neumann’s passing on his Twitter account as well.  “We were hoping when he started to open his eyes,” Rabbi Yisroel Kahan told The Journal News on Sunday night. “We were hoping and praying he would then pull through. This is so very sad he was killed celebrating Hanukkah with friends just because he was a Jew.” Federal prosecutors said the man charged in the attack, Grafton Thomas, had handwritten journals containing anti-Semitic comments and a swastika and had researched Adolf Hitler’s hatred of Jews online. Thomas’ lawyer and relatives said he has struggled for years with mental illness; they said he was raised in a tolerant home and hadn’t previously shown any animosity toward Jewish people.Thomas was indicted on federal hate crime charges as well as state charges, including attempted murder. He has pleaded not guilty. The Hanukkah attack came amid a string of violence that has alarmed Jews in the region. 
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A few weeks ago, Debbie Cameron saw her grandsons most days, playing the piano, making after-school snacks or singing nursery rhymes with the baby in her Chandler, Arizona, home.  Then the cornavirus crisis hit and the boys were suddenly gone. Cameron is 68 and has asthma, making her one of the people most at risk of getting seriously ill or dying. Now she sees her grandchildren from behind the glass of a window or a phone screen.  “Looking at them through the window and not being able hug them, it’s just a dang killer,” she said.  For grandparents all over the world, being protected from the pandemic has meant a piercing distance from their loved ones. While children don’t seem to be getting seriously ill as often, they can be infected and spread the virus. It’s been a jolting change for many.Cameron and her husband, both retired teachers, usually watch their older grandchildren, aged 8 and 11, after school and their 7-month-old baby grandson four times a week. One of their three daughters is due to have another child in July.But as the effects of coronavirus spread, the family decided that caring for the boys was too risky. While most people who catch the disease suffer from symptoms like fever and cough and recover in a few weeks, some get severely ill with things like pneumonia. COVID-19 can be fatal, and older people who have underlying conditions like Cameron are the most vulnerable.  So instead of chasing after little boys, she’s doing puzzles, listening to old radio shows or watching the Hallmark channel, trying to fill the hours in her much-quieter house. “I just go day by day, and when the dark thoughts come in I try and do something to take them away,” she said. “I cry. Sometimes I cry.”  Still, she feels lucky she doesn’t have to leave the house to work, and that she has close family ties. Sometimes she re-reads a letter her mother wrote her father while he was deployed to the Philippines during World War II, laying out her raw emotions about how much she missed him as she cared for their first child without him. “My mother is a really strong woman, and in this one she was struggling,” she said. “If my mom did that, I can do this.”  The sudden change has been challenging for kids’ parents too, many of whom are trying to work from home and balance childcare. Cameron’s daughter Julie Bufkin is at home with her 7-month old son Calvin, working from home as a project coordinator at Arizona State University while her husband goes into the office as an analytical chemist for Intel.  She’s been taking webcam calls and answering emails while breastfeeding the baby and trying to keep him entertained, even after coming down with a fever and headache, symptoms similar to the new coronavirus. In line with the advice of public-health officials, she stayed at home to recover and wasn’t tested for the virus, since she’s young and healthy and didn’t become seriously ill. She’s now on the mend, but it only deepened her mother’s feelings of helplessness.  “Imagine if your child is sick you can’t go help them,” Cameron said. “That’s the hardest part.”But for her daughter, it further confirmed that staying physically separate for now is the right decision.  “We want my mom to survive this,” Bufkin said.  And the grandparents can still step in remotely — Bufkin sets up a phone or a tablet in Calvin’s playpen, where they can sing songs, show him around the yard, look at the cat or play piano over FaceTime.  “Anything we can, even five to 10 minutes to give her a little rest. That makes my day,” Cameron said.  They’re only 5 miles (eight kilometers) away in suburban Phoenix, and for a time Bufkin was dropping off food weekly, then touching hands or exchanging kisses through the window. More often, they’re sharing their lives through a phone or tablet screen.The baby watches his grandparents on the screen, looking up from his own games to smile and laugh at his grandpa or focus on his grandmother playing the saxophone.Other grandparents are also looking for moments of brightness. They’re replacing chats on the porch with friends with Facebook conversations, or connecting with church congregations through video-messaging apps like Marco Polo.Others are turning the technological clock back. Margret Boes-Ingraham, 72, used to drive her 14-year-old granddaughter to choir practice a few times a week near Salt Lake City, then stay to listen to her sing. Without those rides spent listening to show tunes, she’s encouraging her granddaughter to keep a journal.  “I asked her if I could read, and she said no!” Boes-Ingraham said with a laugh.  For grandparents who live alone, hunkering down during the crisis can increase their isolation. Terry Catucci is a 69-year-old retired social worker and recovering alcoholic of 30 years in Maryland. She has seven grandchildren nearby in the Washington, D.C., area including a 5-year-old and a 1-year-old who she helps care for sometimes. She tries not to think about the little changes she’s missing during the years when children seem to grow every day.”When you’re in a time of crisis, you want to be with people you love, and we can’t,” she said. “I’ve run the whole gamut of the five stages of grief at any given day.”  But she’s getting by, talking with her family and checking in daily with her Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor. Every night, neighbors in her retirement community set up lawn chairs at the end of driveways to chat with friends walking by at a safe distance.”We’re all learning how to survive in this time,” she said, “to live a little bit the best we can.” 
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 The U.S. Navy hospital ship Comfort sailed into New York Harbor early Monday, bringing hope and relief to the city of 8.6 million, which has become the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States. The mammoth white ship emblazoned with red crosses has 1,000 beds and 12 operating theaters. Its medical personnel will care for nonvirus patients in an effort to shift some of the burden from the city’s overwhelmed hospitals, which are focused on the outbreak.  “Feeling the presence of the United States military here just gave me a sense that things are going to be OK,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters at the pier where the ship docked. “This ship is so impressive. It’s just looming there in our harbor like a beacon of hope.” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, left, speaks as he stands beside Rear Adm. John B. Mustin after the arrival of the USNS Comfort, March 30, 2020, at Pier 90 in New York.The Comfort sailed from Norfolk, Virginia, where it had to undergo some maintenance before deploying to New York. The city’s harbor also had to be dredged to allow the ship to moor. Officials said the ship is expected to begin receiving patients as soon as Tuesday.   “This was supposed to take two weeks to make it possible for this ship to dock — they did it in eight days,” a relieved de Blasio said. “That means help has arrived quicker, and we are going to be able to do the lifesaving work right now.” U.S. Navy Vice Commander of Fleet Forces Rear Adm. John Mustin said the Comfort normally is at the forefront of U.S. humanitarian missions overseas.   “This ship represents all that is good about the American people. All that is generous. All that is ready, responsive and resolute,” he said. New York City has more than 36,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. As of Monday, 790 city residents had succumbed to the virus.   The last time the USNS Comfort came to the aid of New Yorkers was in the bleak weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. First responders and federal workers were housed on the ship, and its doctors provided them with crisis counseling. The Comfort’s mission is even more critical this time. “At this point, we assume at least half of all New Yorkers will contract this disease,” de Blasio said, adding that it “could be substantially more.”   That would be more than 4 million people who could fall ill.  He emphasized that for 80% of people who contract it, it is in a fairly mild form.  “I’ve been honest, I think the weeks ahead will be tougher,” de Blasio said. “To date, I still fear that the worst is not going to be April but actually the beginning of May.” April is when experts have projected New York’s cases will hit their peak. De Blasio said he would continue appealing to the federal government to send more ventilators, personal protection equipment and trained medical personnel to help the city ramp up for the expected waves of cases.  
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For weeks, President Donald Trump carved out a trail of groundless assurances about the coronavirus pandemic as health officials, governors and local officials sounded alarm about what was coming — and already here. That sunlit trail now has hit a wall.On Sunday, Trump appeared to be bracing the country for a grim death toll as he accepted the advice of public-health experts and gave up on letting federal social-distance guidelines lapse Monday as initially intended. In doing so, he acknowledged what his officials had told him — that 100,000 people or many more could die from COVID-19 in the U.S. before it’s over. And he recognized it won’t be over for some time.A look at some of his statements over the past week as a reality check caught up with him:NATIONAL SHUTDOWNTRUMP: “I would love to have the country opened up and just raring to go by Easter.” — Fox News virtual town hall Tuesday.TRUMP: “We have to open up our country, I’m sorry.” — conference call with governors Tuesday, audio of which was obtained by The Associated Press.THE FACTS: The public-health community, governors and many others knew when they heard Trump say this that a revival by Easter, April 12, was not going to happen. On Sunday, Trump extended the federal government’s restrictive distancing recommendations until April 30. That may not be enough, either.To be clear, the federal government did not close down the country and won’t be reopening it. Restrictions on public gatherings, workplaces, mobility, store operations, schools and more were ordered by states and communities, not Washington. The federal government has imposed border controls; otherwise its social-distancing actions are mostly recommendations, not mandates.On Sunday, Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health cautioned  that the virus outbreak could ultimately kill 100,000 to 200,000 Americans with possibly millions infected as it continues to surge across the nation. Trump shifted his tone and backed off trying to rush the country back to work and to normalcy in a matter of a few weeks.TRUMP: “I mean, we have never closed the country before, and we have had some pretty bad flus, and we have had some pretty bad viruses.” — Fox News virtual town hall Tuesday.THE FACTS: He’s making a bad comparison.The new coronavirus is not the same as the annual flu because it’s a disease that hadn’t been seen before in humans. For that reason, human populations lack immunity to the virus. It can spread unchecked, except by measures such as social distancing.VIRUS TESTINGTRUMP: “Over an eight day span, the United States now does more testing than what South Korea (which has been a very successful tester) does over an eight week span. Great job!” — tweet Wednesday.THE FACTS: The comparison with South Korea isn’t very illuminating. The U.S. has more than six times the population of South Korea, about 330 million compared with about 50 million. Yet South Korea is testing about four times more people as a percentage of its population.The two countries are also at different stages in their outbreaks. Daily case counts are rapidly rising in the U.S., where the coronavirus took hold later on. In South Korea, the curve has been leveling off.  The U.S. count is going up fast in part because the virus is spreading and in part because of a test shortage that lasted weeks, as well as a backlog in laboratories reporting results. In that time, Trump falsely asserted that anyone who wanted or needed to get the test could.  South Korea’s coronavirus response has been marked by an emphasis on widespread testing that earned global praise. But even in that country the government is stressing social distancing measures because of worries the outbreak could pick up again. HOW DEADLY?TRUMP on the death rate from COVID-19: “I think it’s substantially below 1%, because the people don’t report.” — Fox News interview Thursday.Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks during a coronavirus task force briefing in the Rose Garden of the White House, Sunday, March 29, 2020, in Washington, as President Donald Trump listens.THE FACTS: No one knows the death rate. Fauci says it may end up being roughly 1%. If that turns out right, it would mean that the disease is 10 times deadlier than the average seasonal flu, with its death rate of about 0.1%. Fauci’s estimate includes people whose cases are not reported.TRAVEL RESTRICTIONSTRUMP: “In Canada we do have troops along the border.” — news briefing Thursday.THE FACTS: No, the U.S. has not sent troops to police the mutual closing of the Canada-U.S. border to nonessential, noncommercial traffic. The border is controlled on both sides by nonmilitary entry stations.”Canada and the United States have the longest unmilitarized border in the world and it is very much in both of our interests for it to remain that way,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Thursday.TRUMP: “We’re the ones that gave the great response, and we’re the ones that kept China out of here. … If I didn’t do that early call on China — and nobody wanted that to happen. Everybody thought it was just unnecessary to do it.” — news briefing Wednesday.TRUMP: “Everybody was against it. Almost everybody, I would say, was just absolutely against it. … I made a decision to close off to China that was weeks early. … And I must say, doctors — nobody wanted to make that decision at the time.” — Fox News virtual town hall Tuesday.TRUMP: “I’ll tell you how prepared I was, I called for a ban.” — news briefing on March 19.THE FACTS: His decision was far from solo, nor was it made over opposition from health experts, as the White House coronavirus task force makes clear. His decision followed a consensus by his public health advisers that the restrictions should take place.Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, who was coordinator of the task force at the time and announced the travel restrictions, said Trump made the decision in late January after accepting the “uniform recommendation of the career public health officials here at HHS.”  While the World Health Organization did advise against the overuse of travel restrictions, Azar told reporters in February that his department’s career health officials had made a “considered recommendation, which I and the president adopted” in a bid to slow spread of the virus.FILE – An American Airlines aircraft is preparing to land at Reagan National airport near Washington, DC. (Photo: Diaa Bekheet)Most major airlines had already suspended flights to China prior to the announcement on Jan. 31, following the lead of several major international carriers that had stopped due to the coronavirus outbreak. Delta, American and United cited a sharp drop in demand for the flights, and an earlier State Department advisory told Americans not to travel to China because of the outbreak.TRUMP, on the early China travel restrictions: “And if we didn’t do that, thousands and thousands of people would have died.” — news briefing Wednesday.THE FACTS: The impact hasn’t been quantified. While Fauci has praised the travel restrictions on China for slowing the virus, it’s not known how big an impact they had or if “thousands and thousands” of lives were saved.There were plenty of gaps  in containment.Trump’s order did not fully “close” the U.S. off to China, as he asserts. It temporarily barred entry by foreign nationals who had traveled in China within the previous 14 days, with exceptions for the immediate family of U.S. citizens and permanent residents. Americans returning from China were allowed back after enhanced screening at select ports of entry and for 14 days afterward. But U.S. scientists say screenings can miss people who don’t yet show symptoms of COVID-19; while symptoms often appear within five days or six days of exposure, the incubation period is 14 days.A recent study from the journal Science found China’s internal crackdown modestly delayed the spread of the virus. It cast doubt that travel restrictions elsewhere will do much compared with other preventive measures, citing in part the likelihood that a large number of people exposed to the virus had already been traveling internationally without being detected.For weeks after the first U.S. case of the coronavirus was confirmed in January, government missteps  caused a shortage of reliable laboratory tests for the coronavirus, leading to delays in diagnoses.  ECONOMYTRUMP on the economic hit: “I don’t think its going to end up being such a rough patch.” — briefing Wednesday.THE FACTS: His optimism is a stretch.Even in a best case — the pandemic subsides relatively quickly and economic growth and jobs come back without a long lag — some damage is done. The $2.2 trillion federal rescue package, equal to half the size of the entire federal budget, means record debt on top of the record debt that existed before the crisis.The Capitol Hill building is pictured in Washington. (Photo: Diaa Bekheet)Why is too much debt bad? A report this month by the Congressional Budget Office says that over time, the growth in the government’s debt can dampen economic output and progressively reduce the income of U.S. households, among other “significant risks to the nation’s fiscal and economic outlook.”That said, the global markets consider this a good time for the U.S. government to borrow. With interest on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note at 0.75%, investors are offering to loan money to the federal government at a loss after accounting for inflation.Meantime the longest economic expansion in U.S. history is surely over. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell says: “We may well be in a recession.”DRUG TREATMENTSTRUMP, on the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine: “I want to thank the FDA because they approved it immediately, based on the fact that it was already out for a different purpose. They approved it immediately.” — news briefing Friday.TRUMP: “Clinical trials in New York will begin … for existing drugs that may prove effective against the virus. … The hydroxychloroquine and the Z-Pak, I think as a combination, probably, is looking very, very good. And it’s going to be distributed. … And I think a lot of people are going to be — hopefully — they’re going to be very happy with the results.” — news briefing on March 23.THE FACTS: For days Trump inflated the prospects for a quick treatment or cure for COVID-19. This is one example. No drugs have been approved as a treatment, cure, preventive medicine or vaccine for the disease, and public health officials say not to expect anything imminently.  Technically, doctors can already prescribe the malaria drug to patients with COVID-19, a practice known as off-label prescribing. But Trump falsely suggested to reporters that the FDA had just cleared the drug specifically for the viral pandemic spreading in communities across the U.S. That would mean that the drug had met the FDA’s standards for safety and effectiveness.Although research studies are beginning on using hydroxychloroquine specifically to treat the coronavirus, scientists urge caution about whether the drugs will live up to Trump’s promises.  Dr. Michelle Gong, a critical care chief at New York’s Montefiore Medical Center, told the Journal of the American Medical Association that it is imperative for doctors to do careful studies of drugs such as chloroquine to make sure they actually work, rather than just administering them to patients because they have nothing else to offer. Without that proof, “it is very easy for us to do more harm,” she said.So far there is very little data to go on, mostly anecdotal reports from some other countries. But test tube studies in laboratories suggest the drugs may interfere with the coronavirus being able to enter cells. U.S. cardiologists have been warned by colleagues in China to be alert for side effects in heart patients.In Arizona, an older couple experienced disastrous results when they took an additive used to clean fish tanks, chloroquine phosphate. The husband died and his wife was in critical condition. That prompted a major Phoenix health system to warn the public against self-medicating.Trump’s mention of a Z-Pak is a reference to azithromycin, an antibiotic. Antibiotics kill bacteria, not viruses, but people severely ill with viral pneumonia sometimes develop secondary bacterial infections. When there are signs of that, hospitals already are using antibiotics. It’s part of standard supportive care for severe pneumonia.
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U.S President Donald Trump on Monday called the coronavirus “a horrible scourge” that is going to lead to a sharp increase in deaths in the U.S. in the coming days and weeks. Hours after calling for Americans to continue social distancing through April 30, Trump told the “Fox & Friends” show, “There’s going to be a spike [in deaths] and then it will come down and that will be a good day. By June 1, we think the deaths will come down.” “Nobody is more worried than me about the country,” Trump said, as health experts predict that 100,000 or more Americans could die from the coronavirus pandemic, about 50 times the current death toll of about 2,400. “If we didn’t shut it down” to continue social distancing and limiting the size of gatherings to 10 people, Trump said, the death toll could reach 2.2 million. “We wanted to do something where we have the least deaths,” he said. “It’s a very sad thing, it’s a vicious thing.”  “If you [end restrictions] too soon, it comes back,” Trump said. “The worst thing we can do is declare victory” prematurely. Medical personnel help each other at a federal coronavirus drive-thru testing site in the parking lot of Walmart in North Lake, Illinois, March 25, 2020.Trump told “Fox and Friends” Monday the U.S. has now tested more people for coronavirus than anywhere else in the world. However, the U.S testing figure is not as high on a per capita basis as South Korea and Italy.  “That’s why we have more cases” of people testing positive for the infection, more than 140,000 as of Monday and rising rapidly. But he said the U.S. has a lower mortality rate compared to other countries — about 1.7% of all those who test positive for the virus, compared to nearly three times that across the globe in the 151 countries where the pandemic has been found.Relatives attend the funeral of a woman who died from coronavirus disease (COVID-19), as Italy struggles to contain the spread of disease, in Seriate, Italy, March 28, 2020.The virus has now killed more than 34,000 people throughout the world. Trump, as he has in recent days, voiced hope for the experimental use of an anti-malarial drug to treat coronavirus, which 1,100 patients in New York have been given, even though normal clinical tests have not been carried out. “I think it might be very successful even though this is not what scientists want to do,” Trump said. “Let’s see what happens. We’re going to know very soon.” He said officials are looking for ways to give bonuses, extra cash to health care workers on the front lines of treating coronavirus patients. When the coronavirus outbreak finally ends, the president said he envisions a changed country in a couple ways, with more Americans conscious of the need to regularly wash their hands. And he said fewer people will be so quick to shake hands when greeting others.Trump’s “Fox & Friends” interview came after he first announced the extension of the social gathering guidelines at a White House news conference Sunday evening.   “The better you do, the faster this whole nightmare will end,” Trump said in the White House Rose Garden.  “I want our life back again,” he said.  The initial two-week period of government-recommended mitigation was set to expire Monday.  Trump had said he wanted the country back in business by Easter, April 12, saying he didn’t want the cure of an economic shutdown to be worse than the disease.  He backed away from that promise Sunday, now calling that Easter deadline “aspirational.”  Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks during a coronavirus task force briefing in the Rose Garden of the White House, March 29, 2020, in Washington, as President Donald Trump listens.The U.S. government’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said the decision to extend federal social distancing guidelines was “wise and prudent.” He said what has been done to date has had an effect, although he stood by his previous forecast of more than 100,000 coronavirus deaths in the United States.  “What we’re trying to do is not let that happen,” he said.  “So instead of concentrating on the upper and the lower, we’re saying that we’re trying to push it all the way down.”  Trump thanked the Food and Drug Administration for its speedy approval of a new coronavirus test that he says produces “lightning-fast” results in five minutes.  Trump’s recent job approval rating has hit an all-time high for his presidency — 49% — in part over the way he has handled the outbreak. But he said he doesn’t want popularity this way and would rather be credited for a strong economy.  Trump on Friday signed a $2 trillion economic stimulus package to help Americans and businesses weather the outbreak. The centerpiece of the bill is direct cash payments to most U.S. families.   He said most people will start seeing checks within a few weeks.  
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New York City’s strained health system is about to get some help with the arrival of a Navy hospital ship to care for general patients and a new field hospital to handle those infected with the novel coronavirus. The 68-bed field hospital is going up in the city’s iconic Central Park. Governor Andrew Cuomo said it is expected to open Tuesday.A 68-bed field hospital is under construction in New York’s Central Park to handle those infected with the novel coronavirus. (VOA/Vladimir Badikov)The U.S.-based Christian global relief group Samaritan’s Purse is behind the project. The group says a team of doctors and nurses will deploy to the site and care for coronavirus patients from the Mount Sinai Health System. It is already operating a similar facility in hard-hit northern Italy. New York City has more than 33,000 coronavirus cases and nearly 800 deaths. 
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The U.S. state of New York has passed the somber milestone of 1,000 coronavirus deaths, while governments across the world instituted or extended new lockdowns to try to blunt the effects of the outbreak. Hospitals in New York City are set to get some relief with Monday’s arrival of the Navy’s USNS Comfort hospital ship, which will clear space for coronavirus patients by taking those in need of other care.  Its sister ship, the USNS Mercy, began taking patients Sunday at the port of Long Beach, outside Los Angeles.  U.S. President Donald Trump announced U.S. guidelines on social distancing to prevent the virus from spreading would be extended from an initial Monday end date to the end of April. The United States has the most cases worldwide. Italy, which has by far the most deaths and has been under strict lockdown for weeks, reported more than 750 more deaths Sunday, but saw signs of hope with a slowdown in new infections. An Italian government official told Italy’s Sky TG24 television that while everyone wants to return to life as usual, talking about such a move at this point is inappropriate, and that the lockdown measures set to expire Friday will inevitably be renewed. Several world leaders have focused on the economic impact of the crisis, often drawing criticism amid mounting case counts and death tolls. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro ran afoul of Twitter rules with several posts featuring videos in which he met with groups of people and questioned the need to shut down businesses and keep people from gathering. Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro walks after a meeting with the governors to define strategies to combat to COVID-19 during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Brasilia, Brazil, March 23, 2020.Twitter said it would ban posts that go against public health recommendations and encourage ineffective prevention techniques that could increase the likelihood of people getting sick.  The social media company deleted two of Bolsonaro’s posts, saying he violated the policy. Among new restrictions going into effect Monday are isolation orders in Moscow, where people are only allowed to leave their homes for essential jobs, shopping for food or medicine, or for a medical emergency. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari announced stay-at-home orders for the country’s capital, Abuja, and its largest city, Lagos, and said that travel to and from other parts of the country should be avoided.In Britain, where Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Prince Charles are among 22,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases, the government’s deputy chief medical officer says the lockdown there could last as long as six months, but could be eased if people do as they’re told and conditions improve. Lockdowns are also being extended in Nepal, Slovenia and Argentina. Worldwide, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases stood at more than 723,000 with 34,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University statistics early Monday. Victims include popular Japanese comedian Ken Shimura, whose death was reported late Sunday.  The 70-year-old was hospitalized March 20 with a fever and breathing problems. China’s government is starting to encourage businesses to reopen as health officials keep an eye on the threat of imported cases after making vast progress in essentially eliminating locally transmitted cases. China was the first country to report cases of the new coronavirus and put in place its own strict lockdowns, especially in the city of Wuhan, which accounted for the highest number of the more than 81,000 infections in China. With hospitals all over the world facing an influx of patients and short supplies, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres highlighted their contributions in a late Sunday Twitter post. “Health workers worldwide continue providing critical assistance to those affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, often through personal sacrifice.  I’m grateful for their courage, commitment and sacrifice,” he said. 
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Lonnie Franklin, the convicted serial killer known as the “Grim Sleeper” who preyed on the women of South Los Angeles for more than two decades, has died in prison. He was 67.California corrections officials said Franklin was found unresponsive in his cell at San Quentin State Prison on Saturday evening. An autopsy will determine the cause of death; however, there were no signs of trauma, corrections spokeswoman Terry Thornton said in a statement.The stepmother of a victim named Barbara Ware told People magazine she was shocked by the news.”I won’t say I’m pleased he died but at the end there was justice for all the bad things he did in his life,” Diana Ware said. “We can now be at peace.”  Franklin had been on death row since August 2016 for the deaths of nine women and a teenage girl. Franklin was linked at trial to 14 slayings, including four women he wasn’t charged with killing. Police have said he may have had as many as 25 victims.  Most of the victims were fatally shot at close range, though two were strangled. Their bodies were dumped and left to rot in alleys and trash bins.The killer earned his moniker because of the apparent hiatus from the late 1980s to 2002. The murders went unsolved for years and Franklin avoided suspicion by working as a city trash collector and onetime garage attendant for Los Angeles police.  Community members complained that police didn’t seriously investigate the killings because the victims were black and poor and many were drug users and prostitutes during the crack cocaine epidemic.Franklin was connected to the crimes after a task force that re-examined the old cases discovered that DNA from Franklin’s son, which was in a database because of an arrest, showed similarities to genetic evidence found on some of the “Grim Sleeper” victims.A detective posing as a busboy at a pizza parlor collected utensils and crusts while Franklin was attending a birthday party. Lab results connected him to some of the bodies and led to his arrest.Investigators found a gun used in one of the killings and photos of victims in Franklin’s house after his arrest.Last year, Franklin was granted a reprieve when Gov. Gavin Newsom halted the execution of more than 700 condemned inmates on the nation’s largest death row for at least as long as he’s governor.California hasn’t executed anyone since 2006, under then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, and inmates are far more likely to die of old age. 
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A Democratic Party leader in western Missouri died Sunday after contracting COVID-19 as the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the state exceeded 900 and the death toll reached 12.
The death of William “Al” Grimes, the Henry County Democratic Party chairman, was announced in a tweet from state Chairwoman Jean Peters Baker. It came after the Henry County Health Center in Clinton, about 60 miles (96.56 kilometers) southeast of Kansas City, announced that a man in his 70s had died.
“We will miss you, Al,” Peters wrote. “The stars will not shine as brightly.”
Peters said that Grimes, a Navy veteran, had been active in campaigns throughout eastern and central Missouri. He also ran for the Missouri House in 2014 and 2016.
Grimes was first hospitalized in Clinton before being transferred on March 8 to a Kansas hospital, The Kansas City Star reported.  His positive test for coronavirus was reported March 13, but he was among the state’s first confirmed cases.
His death was among two new deaths reported Sunday by the state Department of Health and Senior Services. There were no details about the other new death.
The number of coronavirus cases confirmed in Missouri rose by 65 from Saturday to 903, according to the department, but the increase of 8% was considerably lower than the 25% increase Saturday and the average daily increase of 45% over the past week.
For most people, the virus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia, and death.
Meanwhile, a third St. Louis-area police officer tested positive for the coronavirus and was in isolation.
The St. Louis County Police Department said Saturday that one of its officers had contracted the virus, but the agency does not believe it happened while the officer was on duty. The department provided no other details.
The St. Louis County police said affected work areas and vehicles have been thoroughly cleaned and they don’t know of any other cases associated with the officers.
Two officers in the St. Louis city police force’s traffic division also have tested positive for the virus.
Also, Jim Edmonds, a broadcaster for baseball’s St. Louis Cardinals said he underwent tests at an area hospital for coronavirus after going to the emergency room. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that the 49-year-old former outfielder said he has pneumonia and was awaiting the results of other tests. 
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President Donald Trump said on Sunday that the United States would not pay for security protection for Britain’s Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, who, according to media reports, have settled in Los Angeles.Trump wrote on Twitter that “now they have left Canada for the U.S. however, the U.S. will not pay for their security protection. They must pay!” In January, the couple said they would step away from their royal duties.
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The second-largest river in California has sustained Native American tribes with plentiful salmon for millennia, provided upstream farmers with irrigation water for generations and served as a haven for retirees who built dream homes along its banks.  With so many competing demands, the Klamath River has come to symbolize a larger struggle over the increasingly precious water resources of the U.S. West, and who has the biggest claim to them.Now, plans to demolish four hydroelectric dams on the river’s lower reaches to save salmon — the largest such demolition project in U.S. history — have placed those competing interests in stark relief. Each group with a stake — tribes, farmers, ranchers, homeowners and conservationists — sees its identity in the Klamath and ties its future to the dams in deeply personal terms.”We are saving salmon country, and we’re doing it through reclaiming the West,” said Amy Cordalis, a Yurok tribal attorney fighting for dam removal. “We are bringing the salmon home.”The project, estimated at nearly $450 million, would reshape the Klamath River and empty giant reservoirs. It could also revive plummeting salmon populations by reopening hundreds of miles of potential habitat that has been blocked for more than a century, bringing relief to a half-dozen tribes spread across hundreds of miles in southern Oregon and northern California.The proposal fits into a trend toward dam demolition in the U.S. that’s been accelerating as these infrastructure projects age and become less economically viable. The removals are also popular with environmentalists who are fighting for the return of native fish species to rivers long blocked by concrete.  More than 1,700 dams have been dismantled around the U.S. since 2012, according to American Rivers, and the Klamath River project would be the largest by far if it proceeds.Backers of the dam removal say the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission could vote this spring on whether to transfer the dams’ hydroelectric licenses from the current operator, PacifiCorp, to a nonprofit formed to oversee the demolition. Drawdown of the reservoirs behind the dams could begin as early as 2022, according the nonprofit, the Klamath River Renewal Corp.Opponents, including a group of residents who live around a meandering lake formed by the oldest dam, have vowed to fight the project. Without the dam to create the reservoir, they say, their bucolic waterfront properties will become mudflats. Many say their homes have already lost half their value.”If we get halfway through and they blow a hole in the dam just to let the water out — to say, ‘Yeah, we done this’ — they can walk away from it. And we have no recourse whatsoever,” said Herman Spannus, whose great-grandfather first ran a ranch in the area in 1856.  The structures at the center of the debate are the four southernmost dams in a string of six constructed in southern Oregon and far northern California beginning in 1918.  They were built solely for power generation. They are not used for irrigation, they are not managed for flood control, and none has “fish ladders,” concrete chutes fish can pass through.Two dams to the north are not targeted for demolition. Those dams have fish passage and are part of a massive irrigation system that straddles the Oregon-California border and provides water to more than 300 square miles (777 square kilometers) of alfalfa, potatoes, barley and other crops.  Those farmers won’t be directly affected by the demolition but worry it will set a precedent that could eventually endanger the dams they rely on. An earlier, more comprehensive agreement would have given farmers a guaranteed annual minimum of water in exchange for the lower dams’ removal, but it fell apart in Congress. That leaves irrigators on the sidelines now during the most critical water-management decision for the larger Klamath River system in generations.Farmer Ben DuVal said he’s optimistic the demolition will help restore salmon but also has “some real concerns.””Dam removal on this scale is kind of unprecedented,” said DuVal, who inherited his 300-acre (121-hectare) farm from his grandfather, a World War II veteran who won the land in a lottery in 1949. “I don’t want to be the one who ends up giving up my livelihood in order to fix a problem down there that was caused by a big experiment.”The demolition plan is good business for PacifiCorp, which holds the dams’ hydroelectric license. The dams make up less than 2% of its overall power portfolio and are no longer an important part of the regional power picture due to new energy sources such as wind and solar and other factors, it says. In addition, the hydroelectric licenses have expired, and renewing them would require more than $400 million in federally mandated modifications.Under the plan awaiting federal officials’ approval, $200 million for the demolition and river restoration will come from California and Oregon ratepayers, and $250 million will come from a voter-approved California water bond, with no liability for PacifiCorp and a guaranteed cap on its costs.  For the region’s tribes, however, the push to remove the dams is much more than financial calculus.Salmon were once plentiful in the Klamath River, and the people who have lived alongside it for thousands of years have a powerful connection to the fish. Even now, with numbers of coho salmon and spring and fall chinook in free fall, tribal members name their children after the river and its fish, tattoo their bodies with elaborate images of fish hawks clutching salmon, and return to fishing holes that have been passed down through generations.  “I actually credit a lot of our men and women’s depression to the fact that they fish for days and days and days and days and don’t catch anything,” said Georgiana Gensaw, who is Yurok and lives on the reservation.”We want to bring salmon home. We want to show off in front of our kids,” she said. “We want to show them how to do it and how to pass that on. And you can’t do that if there’s nothing in your net.”Coho salmon from the Klamath River are listed as threatened under federal and California law, and their population in the river has fallen anywhere from 52% to 95%. Spring chinook, once the Klamath Basin’s largest run, has dwindled by 98%.Fall chinook, the last to persist in any significant numbers, have been so meager in the past few years that the Yurok canceled fishing for the first time in the tribe’s memory. In 2017, they bought fish at a grocery store for their annual salmon festival.Tribal members see a rejection of their entire way of life in the opposition to dam removal.  “It ain’t about how much they love those dams. It ain’t about that. It’s about Indians having any say or having any power or having anything kind of go our way (that) is a danger to American ideals. We’re supposed to be gone. We’re not supposed to be here,” said Chook-Chook Hillman, a Karuk Indian whose 10-year-old son wrote a rap song about damage to tribal traditions titled “Dry Your Eyes.”But homeowners around the biggest reservoir, Copco Lake, say it’s not so simple — and they, too, feel a strong sense of place in the homes they built decades ago, with no idea the dams could ever come down and drain the man-made lake. Their property values have plunged.  “The real estate people are not anxious to take listings here because it’s the rumors there all the time,” said Tom Rickard, who had to take the retirement home he and his wife built 20 years ago off the market last summer when it didn’t sell.”You hear people from Los Angeles, the Bay Area, all over the place, and they keep asking, ‘Well, what’s going to happen to the dams?'”Other residents say removing the dams will mean losing an easily accessible water source for fighting wildfires. Voters in three counties who would be affected by dam removal voted against it in a non-binding question that demolition advocates say was an “opinion poll.””Does it really fix the fish equation just by removing the dams? I haven’t seen anything that tells me this is foolproof and we’re not going to have any problems,” said Siskiyou County Supervisor Michael Kobseff.Even demolition advocates say dam removal, while critical, won’t be enough on its own to restore the salmon.  Salmon face deteriorating ocean conditions due to climate change, and the many tributaries that feed into the Klamath River — critical spawning habitat for returning salmon — are degraded. Some ranchers who graze cattle along those tributaries are working with environmentalists, but were stung when the earlier agreement among farmers, ranchers and tribes fell apart.Dam removal “is such a small piece of the restoration of the entire basin,” said Becky Hyde, who runs a cattle ranch near Beatty, Oregon, with her husband.  “The pieces of what would bring stability to the entire basin and the agricultural community are gone — and we’re supposed to be cheerleading for dam removal,” she said. “This is not good enough.” 
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White House candidates aren’t usually bashful about asking supporters for money. But as the coronavirus upends everyday life, inundating hospitals, tanking financial markets and putting 3.3 million Americans out of work, President Donald Trump and his likely Democratic rival, Joe Biden, suddenly find themselves navigating perilous terrain. What used to be a routine request for political cash could now come across as tone-deaf or tacky. The two also run the risk of competing for limited dollars with charities trying to raise money for pandemic relief. With a recession potentially on the horizon, there’s a question of whether wealthy donors are in a giving mood and whether grassroots supporters who chip in small amounts will still have the wherewithal to keep at it. That presents a delicate challenge as both candidates try to stockpile the massive amounts of cash needed for the general election campaign. “It’s hard to have a conversation with someone right now to ask how they’re getting by, and then ask them for financial support in the next sentence,” said Greg Goddard, a Democratic fundraiser who worked for Amy Klobuchar’s presidential campaign before the Minnesota senator dropped out of the Democratic race. To Tim Lim, a Democratic consultant who worked for both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, “it’s a world where no one has a good answer.” He said that ”on the fundraising side, we are going to take some massive hits as a party.” Democratic U.S. presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden speaks about the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic at an event in Wilmington, Delaware, March 12, 2020.The task is particularly acute for Biden. The former vice president is trying to pivot from the primary to the general election in a race essentially frozen by the virus. He lacks Trump’s reelection cash reserves, which were built up over the past three years of his presidency. Biden also has yet to clinch the nomination and won’t be able to do so until postponed primary contests are held in the months ahead. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, his sole remaining 2020 rival, has given no indication that he will back out, despite Biden’s virtually insurmountable lead in the delegate race. The pandemic has put all big-dollar fundraisers on hold, like all in-person political events. That’s forced Trump and Biden, for now, to rely on online fundraising. Biden is holding virtual fundraisers via video conferences. But they lack the exclusivity and tactile nature of an in-person event, where donors can network, see and be seen. Biden and Trump continue to send out fundraising emails and texts. “It isn’t easy for me to ask you for money today,” Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a fundraising email Thursday, seeking contributions as low as $5. “There are so many deserving charities and small businesses in your community where your money makes a huge difference right now. And of course, your own needs and the needs of your family take precedence.” But, she continued, “we have to keep fundraising because we have to keep campaigning. And we have to keep campaigning because it’s the only way we can defeat Trump in November.” President Donald Trump speaks about the coronavirus as he walks to Marine One to depart the White House, March 28, 2020, in Washington.Trump repeatedly played down the threat posed by the virus in the early days of the outbreak, and his campaign was no exception. It blasted out fundraising texts with familiar themes, such as attacking Biden, Sanders and the media. The campaign enticed donors by offering Trump-themed items, including a set of shamrock whiskey glasses offered up in exchange for a $35 contribution around St. Patrick’s Day. But in a March 12 message, his campaign also texted supporters a “coronavirus update,” which reflected Trump’s newfound concern over the virus and did not include a request for money. “The safety, security, and health of the American People is President Trump’s top priority right now,” the message said. It also urged supporters to visit the U.S government’s coronavirus website to “learn ways to keep you, your family, and your community safe.” His campaign has since returned to form, and one recent text excoriated former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, whom Trump nicknamed “Mini Mike,” for using a provision in campaign finance law to transfer $18 million leftover from his abandoned presidential campaign to the Democratic National Committee. Trump campaign spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany didn’t respond to a request for comment. On Saturday, the Biden and Trump campaigns sent out multiple fundraising requests over email and text. Biden asked for $5 while suggesting that Trump’s early minimizing of the virus means it “will hit all of us harder than it otherwise might have, and it will take us longer to recover.” Trump sent out an email with the subject line: “LET’S CRUSH IT.” The email asked supporters to “keep America great” and suggested that donations would help block “radical SOCIALISTS like Crazy Bernie or Quid Pro Joe gain an ounce of momentum.” Sanders has earned praise for turning to his army of small-dollar donors to raise $3.5 million for virus relief instead of his campaign. The senator, whose campaign is fueled by grassroots online donors, has stopped sending out fundraising emails. “Right now my focus is on this extraordinary crisis,” Sanders told The Associated Press on Wednesday, after declining to discuss the future of his campaign. Bloomberg also shelved plans to leverage his billions of dollars of personal wealth to run an outside group aimed at preventing Trump’s reelection. Instead, he recently promoted a $40 million philanthropic effort aimed at curtailing the spread of the virus. While the virus has disrupted many facets of life, Democratic fundraisers are optimistic that a degree of normalcy will return eventually. That will be a benefit to Biden. Trump, as the incumbent, controls the Republican National Committee, giving him a major fundraising edge Biden lacks because he is not the nominee. Fundraising committees controlled by political parties can take in massive sums for candidates, such as Trump, with whom they have entered into joint agreements. The DNC does not yet have a similar arrangement with Biden. His supporters are laying the groundwork for when it does. “People like me are quietly reaching out to the bigger donors to let them know we are about to enter the next phase,” said Steve Westly, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist. “There’s not a lot of fundraising going on right now, but the big picture is we’re getting near the time when the DNC will be involved and there will be much higher limits.” Many Democrats also think Trump’s handling of the crisis will be a clarifying moment and they predicted an outpouring of donations once the campaign resumes. “We are in a life or death situation, and people like the idea of a competent president, like Joe Biden,” said Mathew Littman, a former Biden speechwriter who is the executive director of Win the West, a pro-Biden super PAC that is focusing on Western states. Still, Littman acknowledged that for at least the time being, fundraising might be a little slow. “Not everybody is going to be able to donate to a super PAC, that’s for sure,” he said. 
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The top U.S. government infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, predicted Sunday that 100,000 or more Americans could die from the coronavirus pandemic, 50 times the current death toll. Fauci told CNN that the U.S. could have “millions of cases” of COVID-19, a vast spread of the pandemic in the country, where officials now officially count 124,000 confirmed cases and 2,100 deaths, although both figures are rapidly increasing by the day. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Dr. Thomas Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins University, both rebuffed suggestions by President Donald Trump that the advice to stay home and social distance with other people to prevent the spread of the coronavirus can be eased. Trump suggested last week that U.S. businesses would be “raring to go” by Easter Sunday in two weeks. Fauci said he would only support any easing of anti-coronavirus protections in lesser-impacted regions of the country if there is increased availability of testing to monitor those areas. But he said, “It’s a little iffy there” currently. A usually busy 7th Avenue is mostly empty of vehicles, the result of citywide restrictions calling for people to stay indoors and maintain social distancing in an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19, March 28, 2020, in New York.Initial U.S. social distancing recommendations to slow the spread of the virus end Monday, but Inglesby told the “Fox News Sunday” show, “I don’t think we’ve had anywhere near enough time” for the restrictions to have an appreciable effect. “We must hold steady with social distancing.” The pace of the coronavirus toll in the U.S. has been frightening, with the first 1,000 deaths recorded over a month, and the second 1,000 over the last two days. President Donald Trump talks with host Bill Hemmer during a Fox News virtual town hall with members of the coronavirus task force, in the Rose Garden at the White House, March 24, 2020, in Washington.Trump suggested last week that the country can soon safely return to work while continuing to ”social distance ourselves and wash our hands.” Asked whether that would be a viable strategy, Inglesby said, “I don’t think so.” He said if the U.S. workforce, millions of whom are teleworking from home or furloughed by their employers, return too soon, the coronavirus will spread “widely and aggressively. We really should hold the course.” He said any relaxation of protections against the spread of the virus should be a “conditions-based decision.” Inglesby said “it’s not clear to me” when restrictions might have had enough of an effect to gradually return to normal life in the U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, who is heading Trump’s coronavirus task force, told Fox News in a separate interview, that in the coming days he would “bring data to him” about the advance of the disease. “We’ll open up our country as soon as we can responsibly do so,” Pence said. While the number of the confirmed coronavirus cases is spiraling, Pence said it “should be encouraging to Americans” that of the hundreds of thousands of people who have been tested for the virus in the U.S. only 10% have tested positive. Trump on Saturday floated the idea of imposing a quarantine around the particularly hard-hit New York metropolitan area that includes parts of the states of New Jersey and Connecticut, but backed off the idea. Instead, health officials called on the millions who live in the megalopolis to continue to stay home and practice social distancing — staying at least two meters from other people.  Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy Vice President Mike Pence and Rep. Kevin Brady applaud President Donald Trump during then bill signing ceremony, March 27, 2020.Trump signed a congressionally approved $2 trillion stimulus package on Friday to boost the country’s economic fortunes from the significant damage wreaked by the coronavirus. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told Fox said he would leave it “to the medical professionals” about how soon to fully reopen the country, but he said the cash infusion businesses and about 90% of American families could return the country to economic health again by the July-to-September period, even if the April-to-June period is rocky. Some economists are saying the U.S. has already fallen into a recession and could soon see a 20% unemployment rate and a 24% decline in the country’s economy, the world’s biggest. “I don’t know what these numbers are going to be,” Mnuchin said. But he predicted that within months there would be a “very large” growth in the country’s economy and “low numbers” in unemployment. “We are going to kill this virus,” he said. 
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Child welfare agencies across the U.S., often beleaguered in the best of times, are scrambling to confront new challenges that the coronavirus is posing for caseworkers, kids and parents.For caseworkers, the potential toll is physical and emotional. Child welfare workers in several states, including Michigan, Massachusetts, New York and Washington, have tested positive for COVID-19.Many agencies, seeking to limit the virus’s spread, have cut back on in-person inspections at homes of children considered at risk of abuse and neglect. Parents of children already in foster care are missing out on weekly visits. Slowdowns at family courts are burdening some of those parents with agonizing delays in getting back their children.A usually busy 7th Avenue is mostly empty of vehicles, the result of citywide restrictions calling for people to stay indoors and maintain social distancing in an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19, March 28, 2020, in New York.”There are real sad consequences for folks who’ve been making progress toward reunifying,” said Boston social worker Adriana Zwick, who represents unionized caseworkers with Massachusetts’ Department of Children and Families.She recounted how one supervisor broke down in tears after learning that a mother on the verge of getting her son back from foster care was told there would be a delay because the food service job she’d been promised was scrapped because of COVID-19.”She was almost there,” Zwick said. “This has really thrown a wrench into things.”For workers, widespread shortages of gloves, masks and other safety gear are raising concerns, said Angelo McClain, CEO of the National Association of Social Workers.”If a report comes in of a kid in danger, you need to go out and make sure that child is safe — but you need a face mask, gloves, sanitizer,” he said.In New York City, the nation’s worst-hit area, child protection staff are instructed mostly to use “virtual visiting,” even while investigating potential risks to a child’s safety.The city’s Administration for Children’s Services has provided staff with questions to ask families to gauge whether any household member may have the virus. If they do, the agency says special medical assistance might be requested if pursuing an investigation.The CEO of one of New York’s biggest youth and family services providers, Michelle Yanche, says some of her 1,200 staffers at Good Shepherd Services have tested positive for COVID-19, and she’s bracing for the number to rise.A sign with corrected spelling tells visitors the playground at the Community Park is closed until further notice due to COVID-19 on March 27, 2020, in Zelienople, Pa.”We’ve had to triage,” she said. “For the most high-risk families, there’s no other alternative than to see them in person.”Because of insufficient supplies, she said her staffers sometimes make urgent visits either with no equipment or gear that’s been used.In Massachusetts, Zwick’s department confirmed Thursday that one of its Boston-based employees has tested positive for COVID-19. The union says at least three other workers are presumed infected after becoming seriously ill.Many child welfare professionals worry the pandemic, by increasing stress on already fragile families, will fuel a rise in child abuse and neglect.”You have families that don’t have stable housing, stable income. Maybe there’s a mental health challenge or a substance abuse problem — and now the schools are closed,” Zwick said. “That is a recipe for disaster.”Teachers and other school employees normally offer a safeguard by reporting suspicious bruises and other warning signs, said McClain of the social workers association.”Now you don’t have those eyes and ears,” he said.In Fort Worth, Texas, Cook Children’s Medical Center recently admitted seven kids under 4 who suffered severe abuse, including two who died the same day.Dr. Jayme Coffman, who heads the hospital’s child abuse prevention center, linked the surge of cases to the heightened stress on many families during the pandemic.A sign posted in front of the emergency entrance of Harborview Medical Center gives thanks to health care workers during the coronavirus outbreak March 28, 2020, in Seattle, Washington.The Houston-based sheriff of Harris County tweeted his concern.”We cannot let a health pandemic become a child abuse pandemic!” Ed Gonzalez wrote. “The number one reporters of child abuse are teachers, but kids aren’t seeing them right now. Neighbors and other family members, PLEASE pay close attention.”Because older people are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 and relatively few children have died from it, kids have not been a focus of public health efforts.That’s a mistake, according to University of Pennsylvania professor Marci Hamilton, also CEO of CHILD USA, a think tank seeking to prevent child abuse and neglect.”Already some areas are reporting spikes in abuse,” she said. “If caseworkers don’t have that protective equipment, it’s likely we’ll have fewer home visits, and fewer home visits mean more kids at risk.”For many parents whose children are in foster care, and who yearn to get them back, the pandemic has worsened their predicament. Many family courts have postponed non-emergency cases, and many social services required for reunification, such as addiction treatment programs, have been disrupted.A traffic message board displays a message about coronavirus prevention on Interstate 94 in Chicago on March 28, 2020.”One thing that jumps out: The system’s inability to move forward when courts shut down,” said professor Vivek Sankaran, who directs the University of Michigan Law School’s Child Advocacy Law Clinic.”The courts don’t have the technology to hold virtual hearings, case files aren’t available electronically. There’s almost this sense of paralysis,” he said.The disruption of services also can heighten concern about children’s safety. Elizabeth Novotny, a social worker in Northern California’s Santa Clara County, said a boy was recently reunified with his mother, but now a drug-testing program has been suspended that would have let Novotny verify that the mom was staying off drugs.”I hope the kid is safe,” she said.Foster care also is facing upheaval, with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services easing its oversight rules.Under longstanding law, caseworkers are required to make monthly in-person visits to children in foster care. The agency now says caseworkers instead can do videoconferencing visits.JooYeun Chang, executive director of Michigan’s Children’s Services Agency, said caseworkers should make in-person home visits only when “absolutely necessary.” Her agency confirmed Thursday that six staffers had tested positive for COVID-19.As for visits between foster children and their biological families, Chang said they’re no longer required to be face to face but can be done through Skype or FaceTime.These changes have confused many foster parents, said Irene Clements, executive director of the National Foster Parent Association. They’re used to accommodating frequent court-ordered visits from their foster child’s biological family and now are unsure about their obligations, Clements said.She said school closures have created severe disruptions for foster parents who still need to leave home to work.”But it’s not just about the foster families,” Clements said. “Some of the birth parents are going to suffer the consequences of not being able to reunify because of lack of income. It’s nobody’s fault, and it’s heartbreaking for all of us.”
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Taiwan’s invitation to American journalists harassed by China to locate here instead would free them from government pressure but distance them from Asia’s hub for international news.Foreign minister Joseph Wu tweeted the invitation Saturday. He mentioned three media organizations whose reporters had been thrown out of China, apparently in response to U.S. curbs against journalists working for state-run Chinese media in the United States.“He said as that as New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post journalists face intensifying hostility in China, I would like to welcome you to be stationed in Taiwan, a country that’s a beacon of freedom and democracy,” ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou said, referring to Wu’s tweet.As Wall Street Journal reporters Julie Wernau embraces a colleague before her departure at Beijing Capital International Airport in Beijing, March 28, 2020.Unlike in China, in Taiwan foreign reporters are legally free to interview scholars, ordinary people and government officials without filing applications.Taiwan police seldom interrupt a journalist’s fieldwork, again unlike as in China, and the foreign ministry does not expel reporters over disagreements about their news coverage. China threw out three Wall Street Journal reporters in February because of the news organization’s headline calling China a “sick man of Asia” due to its COVID-19 outbreak.Those protections, typical of a democracy, however, come at the expense of distance from China, the epicenter for Asia news closely followed by American audiences. China was the source of COVID-19 in December. Over the past two years, it has captured attention for its role in the Sino-U.S. trade dispute.Americans, including those based in Taiwan, need visas every time they visit China unless transiting for three to six days in some of the larger cities. If discovered gathering news there without Chinese government permission, they could be expelled, and any China-based colleagues harassed.“It don’t think it’s easy for journalists to make their story if they are not on the ground in Beijing or Shanghai, but if Taipei can be an alternative choice when there’s a situation or scenario, that would be a good thing,” said Alexander Huang, strategic studies professor at Tamkang University in Taiwan.        
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A global shortage of condoms is looming, the world’s biggest producer said, after a coronavirus lockdown forced it to shut down production.Malaysia’s Karex Bhd makes one in every five condoms globally. It has not produced a single condom from its three Malaysian factories for more than a week due to a lockdown imposed by the government to halt the spread of the virus.That’s already a shortfall of 100 million condoms, normally marketed internationally by brands such as Durex, supplied to state healthcare systems such as Britain’s NHS or distributed by aid programs such as the UN Population Fund.The company was given permission to restart production on Friday, but with only 50 percent of its workforce, under a special exemption for critical industries.“It will take time to jumpstart factories and we will struggle to keep up with demand at half capacity,” Chief Executive Goh Miah Kiat told Reuters.“We are going to see a global shortage of condoms everywhere, which is going to be scary,” he said. “My concern is that for a lot of humanitarian programs deep down in Africa, the shortage will not just be two weeks or a month. That shortage can run into months.”Malaysia is Southeast Asia’s worst affected country, with 2,161 coronavirus infections and 26 deaths. The lockdown is due to remain in place at least until April 14.The other major condom-producing countries are China, where the coronavirus originated and led to widespread factory shutdowns, and India and Thailand, which are seeing infections spiking only now.Makers of other critical items like medical gloves have also faced hiccups in their operations in Malaysia.In emailed comments, a spokesman for Durex said operations are continuing as normal and the company was not experiencing any supply shortages. “For our consumers, many of whom will be unable to access shops, our Durex online stores remain open for business.”“The good thing is that the demand for condoms is still very strong because like it or not, it’s still an essential to have,” Goh said. “Given that at this point in time people are probably not planning to have children. It’s not the time, with so much uncertainty.”
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The hospital ship USNS Comfort departed from Norfolk, Virginia, Saturday en route to New York to assist with the coronavirus outbreak. President Donald Trump flew to Norfolk on Saturday as it set off. During a speech, he said is considering a two-week quarantine for the states of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut to help officials contain the pandemic. VOA’s Carolyn Presutti has our story.
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The state’s top Native American gaming official rejected Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt’s latest casino gambling offer Friday and accused the governor of trying to take advantage of the tribes during the coronavirus pandemic.Matthew Morgan, chairman of the Oklahoma Indian Gaming Association, described the governor’s latest offer as “yet another unsuccessful attempt to divide the tribes.””The letter confirms the real intent of Governor Stitt is to destroy the tribal interest outlined in the existing compacts,” Morgan said. “The tribal leaders who received the letter reject the proposal as disrespectful and disingenuous.”In a letter Tuesday to tribal leaders, one of Stitt’s outside attorneys, Steve Mullins, wrote that the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the landscape for tribal and non-tribal governments.FILE – In this Feb. 3, 2020, file photo, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt delivers his State of the State address in Oklahoma City.”Now more than ever is the time for us to stand together,” Mullins wrote.Included with the letter is the proposed new compact, which would require tribes to pay a flat 5 percent fee on gambling revenue and authorize both the tribe and the state to offer sports gambling, Morgan said. The state would receive 2 percent of the amount wagered on sports gambling, a figure Morgan said would make it difficult for tribes to compete with illegal sports gambling. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the proposed compact Friday.The compact would also give the state more power over tribal casino operations, including approval of casino vendors and a requirement that tribes put a certain number of electronic machines on its casino floor.”This compact is a huge power grab for his office,” Morgan said.A spokeswoman for Stitt said the governor, who is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, remains committed to negotiating with every tribe in Oklahoma to secure a new compact.”The state has been aggressively communicating with every tribe in Oklahoma to advance a common-sense solution on model gaming compacts,” spokeswoman Baylee Lakey said in a statement. “We cannot comment on the details of compact negotiations while engaged in court-ordered mediation, which is still ongoing.”The state and the tribes have been locked in dispute for months over whether the existing compact expired on January 1. Stitt maintains it expired, while the tribes contend it renewed for another 15-year term.Three of the state’s most powerful tribes sued Stitt in federal court in December, and a federal judge has ordered mediation.
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Almost all American presidents have faced a crisis while in office, whether it’s a political scandal, natural disaster, economic calamity or terrorism. But not all have the misfortune of having to deal with epidemics and pandemics. Here are some of them and how historians view their performance.Woodrow Wilson – Spanish fluPresident Woodrow Wilson faced the influenza pandemic of 1918-19 that killed 20 million to 50 million people around the world while the United States was fighting in World War I.“Even though President Trump has talked about being at war with the pandemic, in the case of Wilson and the Spanish flu, the United States really was at war,” said Thomas Schwartz, professor of history at Vanderbilt University.FILE – President-elect Woodrow Wilson and President William Howard Taft laugh on the White House steps before departing together for Wilson’s inauguration in Washington, D.C., U.S. in March 1913.The war was the reason Wilson’s administration downplayed the crisis, from the moment the outbreak began until it eventually killed 675,000 Americans.
 
“Woodrow Wilson never made a public statement of any kind about the pandemic,” said John M. Barry, professor at the Tulane University School of Public Health and author of The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History.
 
“It was an indication of Wilson’s intense focus on the war – that was all he cared about,” Barry said.
 
Like Britain, France and Germany, the U.S. kept the outbreak secret because it didn’t want to show weakness to the enemy. At the height of the outbreak, Wilson sent troops abroad packed into ships that were “cauldrons of virus transfers,” said Max Skidmore, political science professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and author of Presidents, Pandemics and Politics.Eventually a quarter of all Americans became infected, including several who worked at the White House. Many historians believe Wilson himself fell ill. Barry said that during negotiations ahead of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles in Paris, Wilson had “103, 104 fever, violent coughs, and other symptoms that were unique to the 1918 virus.”As states and cities began to order what we now know as social distancing – closing businesses and schools, banning public gatherings – Wilson’s administration continued to downplay the pandemic. Spain, a neutral party in the war, was the only country that reported casualty numbers accurately, hence the name Spanish flu, even though the flu did not originate there.
 Dwight Eisenhower – Asian flu      
 
The H2N2 virus was first reported in Singapore in February 1957 and reached the United States that summer.President Dwight D. Eisenhower was aware of the impending pandemic, Skidmore said, but he initially refused to start a nationwide government-supported vaccination program. “He had faith in the ability of free-market vaccines to take care of the impending crisis,” Skidmore said. “And as a result, the death rate was perhaps about doubled what it might have been otherwise.”FILE – President Dwight Eisenhower speaks during a news conference in Washington, Dec. 10, 1958.In August 1957, Eisenhower asked Congress for $500,000 in funding and authorization to shift an additional $2 million, if needed, to fight the outbreak. He set a goal of 60 million doses of vaccines, enough to vaccinate a third of the population, around 171 million at that time. By early November, about 40 million doses had been given, and the pandemic began losing steam.
 
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated the number of deaths from H2N2 at 1.1 million worldwide and 116,000 in the United States.
 Gerald Ford – Swine flu
 
Leaders are often faulted for downplaying crises, but Gerald Ford was accused by some of overreacting.Not long after a soldier died of a new form of flu in February 1976, the U.S. secretary of health, education and welfare announced that the virus could turn into an epidemic by fall.Scientists at the CDC thought it could be even deadlier than the 1918 flu strain. To avoid an epidemic, the CDC said at least 80 percent of the U.S. population would need to be vaccinated, leading Ford to sign emergency legislation for the National Swine Flu Immunization Program, in mid-April. Within a few months, close to 50 million Americans were vaccinated.FILE – U.S. President Gerald Ford rolls up his sleeve and receives a swine flu shot from White House physician Dr. William Lukash, Oct. 14, 1976.Ford took action quickly, but issues with the vaccine caused more problems in the end, Vanderbilt’s Schwartz said. Hundreds of people came down with Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare neurological disorder, after getting the flu shot.
 
“Ironically,” Skidmore said, “it was the sophistication of the government’s own monitoring system that led them to identify those cases and associate them with the vaccine.”
 
While Ford demonstrated the government’s efficiency in marshaling resources, his massive vaccination program, on top of other political blunders, contributed to Ronald Reagan’s attempt to wrest the Republican nomination from Ford in 1976. Ford lost to Democrat Jimmy Carter later that year.“The general consensus is that he was overreacting,” said Skidmore, who nevertheless lauded the president’s better-safe-than-sorry approach. “He seemed to be convinced, and I think correctly so in retrospect, that it would be far better to have a vaccine and no pandemic, then to have a pandemic and no vaccine.”By the time immunizations began in October, a large outbreak had failed to emerge, and swine flu became known as the pandemic that never was. The experience contributed to the hesitance of some Americans to embrace vaccines, even now.
 Ronald Reagan – the AIDS crisisThe Reagan administration FILE – President Ronald Reagan gestures during a White House East Room news conference, May 22, 1984 in Washington.Reagan’s approach was “certainly not a model for future presidents,” Schwartz said. Part of this is because in the early phase of the outbreak, most of the victims were either homosexuals or drug addicts, groups outside Reagan’s conservative coalition.Despite American gay men showing signs of what would later be called AIDS as early as 1978, Reagan did not publicly use the word “AIDS” until September 17, 1985, well into his second term.“Reagan simply failed to recognize the severity of the AIDS epidemic,” Skidmore said. Reagan also believed that government was the problem, not the solution, so his predisposition was to diminish its role even in crises, Skidmore added.In April 1987, Reagan declared AIDS “public health enemy No. 1.” He allocated $766 million for AIDS research and education, to be increased to $1 billion in fiscal 1988. But he advised sexual abstinence instead of methods of protection.“Let’s be honest with ourselves,” Reagan said. “AIDS information cannot be what some call ‘value neutral.’ After all, when it comes to preventing AIDS, don’t medicine and morality teach the same lessons?”By the end of Reagan’s presidency in 1989, the United States had suffered 89,343 AIDS-related deaths.
 George W. Bush – AIDS crisis and SARS
 
President George W. Bush has received applause from both Republicans and Democrats for the commitment he made to help fight HIV/AIDS globally and particularly in Africa.His success contrasted with the mixed legacy of his father, George H.W. Bush. During his time in office, the elder Bush signed two important pieces of legislation — the Americans with Disabilities Act, which protected people with HIV and AIDS from discrimination, and the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Act, which provided funding for AIDS treatment. But some see a lack of urgency on the part of the administration and criticize Bush for refusing to change a policy that blocked people with HIV from entering the United States.FILE – President George W. Bush, with first lady Laura Bush, makes a statement on World AIDS Day at the White House in Washington, Dec. 1, 2008 in Washington.In 2003, the George W. Bush administration created the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), an initiative to address the global epidemic.“PEPFAR was probably one of the best things in his presidency,” Barry said. “It got pretty much universal applause.”Since its inception, PEPFAR has provided more than $80 billion for HIV/AIDS treatment, prevention and research, making it the largest global health program in history focused on a single disease. It is widely credited with having helped save millions of lives, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa.In April 2003, after an outbreak in Asia, Bush signed an executive order adding severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) to a list of communicable diseases that can lead to people being involuntarily quarantined. Eventually more than 8,000 people worldwide became sick with SARS, and 774 died during the 2003 outbreak. In the United States, only eight people had laboratory evidence of the infection.In 2005, the Bush administration created the National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza, which called for the federal government to maintain and distribute a national stockpile of medical supplies in the event of an outbreak, and an infrastructure for future presidents to learn from and build upon in dealing with their own pandemics.
 Barack Obama – H1N1, Zika and Ebola
 
A few months into President Barack Obama’s first term in 2009, reports started coming in about H1N1, or swine influenza, which was detected first in the United States and spread quickly around the world.According to the CDC, the first case was reported April 15, 2009. The Obama administration assembled a team and declared H1N1 a public health emergency on April 26, six weeks before it was declared a pandemic and before any deaths had been recorded in the U.S.The Obama administration “geared up as soon as the virus surfaced,” Barry said. “They were 100% all in, both in terms of scientific research and trying to generate vaccines and in public health measures.”
 
Six months after that initial declaration, with more than 1,000 American lives lost, Obama declared swine flu a national emergency.
 
The CDC estimated that from April 2009 to April 2010, there were 60.8 million cases of swine flu and 12,469 deaths from it in the United States. The World Health Organization declared an end to the pandemic on August 10, 2010.FILE – President Barack Obama, with Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Guinean President Alpha Condé, speaks at the White House in Washington, April 15, 2015, on progress made in the international Ebola response.Four years later, Obama faced another crisis – the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak that killed more than 11,000 people in West Africa.Obama activated the CDC Emergency Operations Center in July 2014 to help coordinate technical assistance, including deploying personnel to West Africa to assist with response efforts. The CDC trained almost 25,000 health care workers in West Africa on infection prevention and control practices.Only 11 people were treated for the virus in the U.S. Yet some Republicans criticized Obama for not instituting travel bans from countries where the Ebola outbreak was pervasive.Obama fought a different virus on the home front – Zika, a virus transmitted by mosquitoes. The 2015 Zika outbreak was first recorded in Brazil, and by 2016 about 40,000 cases were reported in the U.S. The Obama administration requested $1.9 billion in emergency federal funding to fight the virus in February 2016, $1.1 billion of which was approved by Congress that September.In 2015, Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, created the Global Health Security and Biodefense unit, a team responsible for pandemic preparedness under the National Security Council, a forum of White House personnel that advises the president on national security and foreign policy matters.In May 2018, during the presidency of Donald Trump, the Global Health Security and Biodefense unit was disbanded. Its leader left the administration, and some of its members were merged into other units within NSC.Lessons learnedHistorians say that in the face of public health crises, presidents who are informed, focused, organized and transparent are most likely to be successful.Skidmore, of the University of Missouri-Kansas City, said American presidents can learn from their predecessors, particularly in establishing strong coordination between the federal government and states, and ensuring the private sector is fully engaged. Skidmore said the Obama administration greatly benefited from George W. Bush’s National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza, a plan that spanned every department of the federal government, every state and broad swaths of the private sector to stockpile antiviral medications and provide scientists resources to develop vaccines.Schwartz, of Vanderbilt, and Barry, of Tulane, said that leaders must be optimistic and provide hope. But more important, they must be transparent, both to prevent unfounded information from spreading and to create the credibility that will encourage people to follow guidelines instead of being skeptical of their government.
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The Reverend Joseph Lowery, a key ally of Martin Luther King in the U.S. civil rights movement of the 1960s, died late on Friday at the age of 98, his family said in a statement.“Our beloved, Rev. Dr. Joseph Echols Lowery, made his transition peacefully at home at 10 p.m., Friday, March 27, at the age of 98. He was surrounded by his daughters,” Lowery’s family said.Lowery was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, by President Barack Obama in 2009, a few months after he had given the benediction at Obama’s inauguration.Lowery co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with King and other black ministers in 1957, to fight segregation across the U.S. South. He served for 20 years as its president before stepping down in 1998.He continued working for racial equality into his 90s.He spoke against South African apartheid, sought better conditions in U.S. jails, pushed for more economic opportunities for minorities, promoted AIDS education and railed against what he saw as government indifference toward the lower classes.Lowery was married to Evelyn Gibson Lowery, who shared his activism, for 63 years before her death in 2013. The Lowery Institute, now known as the Joseph and Evelyn Lowery Institute for Justice & Human Rights, was founded in his honor in 2001 and he was a member of its board.
 
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A prominent member of the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday issued a highly critical statement on U.S. policy toward Kosovo.Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia in 2008. Since than the country has been recognized by more than 110 countries, including the United States, but not by Serbia and its ally Russia.House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel, a Democrat, said there is something wrong with the U.S. foreign policy toward Kosovo and “we need to correct it.”In his statement, Engel expressed his serious concerns “with the heavy-handed tactics the Trump administration is using with Prishtina,” Kosovo’s capital.Engel was referring to State Department pressure on Prishtina, especially on the government of Prime Minister Albin Kurti, to lift tariffs the country had imposed on Serbia.“This administration turned to economic penalties just a few short weeks after the Kurti government took office. Rather than letting a new government facing a pandemic staff its agencies and set up internal procedures, the U.S. contributed to a political crisis in Prishtina over the tariffs on Serbia,” Engel said.On March 25, after only 50 days in office, the Kurti government did not survive a no-confidence vote in parliament, initiated by its ruling coalition partner, the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK).The government was dismissed following political bickering over whether to declare a state of emergency to prevent the spread of the coronavirus and after Kurti dismissed the LDK internal affairs minister, Agim Veliu.Kurti’s government is expected to continue as a caretaker government, pending creation of a new government.“There are good reasons for Kosovo to lift tariffs, mostly that they are hurting Kosovo more than they are providing leverage to reach a peace deal with Serbia,” Engel said.“Regardless, tariffs are a legitimate tool of a sovereign nation. As such, they’ve been imposed around the world by [U.S.] President [Donald] Trump against friends and foes, alike, for economic and political reasons,” Engel said.Engel said the Trump administration used “overbearing tactics with a friend which relies on our support” instead of working with Kurti government, “as it sought to work with the previous Kosovo government” to forge policies that promote lasting peace and prosperity.“Strong-arming a small democracy is the act of a bully,” Engel said.While Serbian diplomats are campaigning around the world to “derecognize” Kosovo’s independence, and Serbia is purchasing heavy weaponry from Russia and strengthening the relationship with Moscow, the pressure imposed on Prishtina for its tariffs on Serbia has been “decidedly unbalanced,” Engel said.The U.S., he added, should work with European allies “to treat both countries as independent and sovereign partners, applying consistent standards to both sides as we try to restart peace talks.”The arms purchases from Russia require U.S. sanctions on Serbia under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, passed in the aftermath of 2016 Russian interference in U.S. elections, Engel said.“Neither have we imposed those sanctions, nor have we energetically pressed Serbia to end its derecognition efforts,” Engel said.“When U.S. law says we should sanction Serbia due to its security ties with Russia, we should.”    
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