Federal social distancing guidelines to be extended to April 30, Trump says
WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Donald Trump announced Sunday that federal social distancing guidelines meant to slow the spread of the coronavirus would be extended to April 30, setting aside his calls to jump-start the U.S. economy within another two weeks and fill churches on Easter Sunday.
Speaking at a briefing in the Rose Garden of the White House, Trump said the voluntary guidelines, which were originally put in place for 15 days that would have ended Monday, were being extended because “we just felt it would be too soon” to lift them.
Previously, Trump had expressed impatience with isolation measures that have all but shut down large parts of the economy and upended people’s daily lives. Many stay-at-home orders were imposed by states and municipalities before the federal guidelines took effect; as a result, many of those closures and restrictions would have continued regardless of whether Trump declared he was easing the federal guidelines.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease specialist, called the guidelines extension a “wise and prudent” decision. Earlier in the day, Fauci said that between 100,000 and 200,000 Americans might die in the outbreak, and that millions would be infected —a figure he said he stood by during the briefing.
But he said that without the measures currently in place, the cost in illness and lives would be much worse.
“We feel that the mitigation that we’re doing right now is having an effect,” Fauci said.
After announcing the extension, Trump proceeded to give his administration credit for saving lives, saying “2.2 million people would have died if we didn’t do what we’re doing.”
An academic study suggested earlier this month such a death toll would result if nothing were done to stem the spread.
Dr. Deborah Birx, the task force’s coordinator, acknowledged the “sacrifices” being made by ordinary Americans, and said the decision to extend the guidelines was based on science.
Trump had said in recent days he wanted to “open up” the economy and fill the churches on Easter, which falls on April 12. Such talk dismayed leading epidemiologists, who called it an unrealistic scenario if there were to be any hopes of containment.
“That was aspirational,” Trump acknowledged Sunday. Instead, he said “Easter should be the peak number” of deaths, which have surpassed 2,400 nationwide.
— Los Angeles Times
Stuck-at-home Americans get robbed less often, but fight more
With more than two-thirds of the U.S. population ordered to stay home amid the coronavirus pandemic, it’s tougher for burglars to find an empty house to rob. But the cooped-up residents seem more likely to fight each other.
That’s what crime statistics show in major U.S. cities where residents are spending almost all their time inside.
In Los Angeles, property crime was down 18% in the four weeks that ended March 21 from the previous four weeks. Calls for police services in Chicago have declined 30% for the month and crime in New York City fell almost 25% in the week ended March 22, compared with the week before.
“You know, you’ve never seen Fifth Avenue so open,” New York Police Department Commissioner Dermot Shea said last week. “You never see crosstown streets so open. We saw an immediate drop in most categories, I would say, of crime.”
The rapidly spreading infections from the coronavirus, with New York City as now the epicenter, have most Americans hunkering down. About 217 million people in at least 23 states, 17 cities and one territory were being urged to stay home as of Friday.
In Los Angeles, the number of burglaries and theft from motor vehicles, the most prevalent crime in the car-loving city, was down 24%. In areas such as Hollywood, car break-ins fell more than 40%, according to police. Burglaries dropped almost 20% in New York and rapes were down by more than half; there was one murder, compared with eight in the earlier week.
The changes in violent crime were less pronounced in other cities.
In Chicago, there’s been a significant reduction in vehicle and pedestrian stops by police, Charlie Beck, the city’s interim police superintendent, said at a press conference Tuesday.
“All of this indicates to me that people are doing what we ask,” Beck said. “That they are staying home, that they are by and large creating good social distance, that our police officers are only focusing on things that have a direct impact on public safety and making sure that we all get through this together.”
In San Francisco, larceny-theft, which includes shoplifting and bicycle theft, was down 30% during the first three weeks of March versus the same period a year earlier.
But with people stuck indoors enduring the stress of an unprecedented public-health crisis and worrying about jobs disappearing, domestic squabbles are rising.
In Seattle, police got 614 domestic violence calls in the first two weeks of March, a 22% increase from a year earlier.
“The vast majority were for a DV disturbance, which means there is no arrest because it was just an argument where the police ended up responding,” Detective Patrick Michaud of the Seattle police department said in an email, referring to domestic violence calls. “No assault. No property damage. No additional crime. Just an argument.”
In San Diego, District Attorney Summer Stephan on Friday acknowledged the increased risk of domestic violence.
“Losing a job and kids at home due to school closures can be triggers for domestic violence,” Stephan said in a statement. “We want people who are seeing warning signs of abuse or who are being abused to know that we stand ready to help them and that they shouldn’t suffer in silence.”
— Bloomberg News
Coronavirus is mutating and now has 8 strains, doctors say
The novel coronavirus is mutating, as viruses do, and eight strains are now making the rounds globally, medical experts say.
The good news is that the mutations are not more lethal, said Trevor Bedford, whose website, NextStrain.org, is tracking the virus’s genome from samples provided to him from throughout the world. But they are informative.
Researchers are dissecting the genomes of coronavirus and discovering the strains that have emerged since the virus first jumped from animals to humans in a Wuhan, China, wildlife market late last year. The work “shows how the virus is migrating and splitting into similar but new subtypes,” as USA Today explained.
“In the literal sense of ‘is it changing genetically,’ the answer is absolutely yes,” Harvard University infectious disease epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch told NPR. “What is in question is whether there’s been any change that’s important to the course of disease or the transmissibility or other things that we as humans care about.”
The strains emerging are only slightly tweaked, with no variations in lethality, experts said.
“The observed rate of mutation (about two mutations per month) is completely normal for a virus,” Bedford wrote on Twitter. “Flu and the common cold have similar mutation rates. Even a bit faster for flu.”
While the genomes retrieved so far are providing reassuring information about how the virus can be stopped and whether social distancing is working —indications are that it is —they do not provide more than a sketch, the experts said.
Scientists agree that there is much more to be discovered. But the microscopic changes are helping them map the pathogen’s pathway through the human population.
“The outbreaks are trackable,” Charles Chiu, a professor of medicine and infectious disease at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, told USA Today. “We have the ability to do genomic sequencing almost in real-time to see what strains or lineages are circulating.”
— New York Daily News
Italian contagion slows; lockdown to continue ‘at least until Easter’
ROME — While there were more encouraging signs of a slowing novel coronavirus contagion, Italy’s health minister said on Monday that a national lockdown would be prolonged “at least until Easter.”
The Civil Protection Agency said active coronavirus cases, excluding deaths and recoveries, had risen by 1,648 to 75,528 — the smallest daily variation since March 10.
However, overall infections, including deaths and recoveries, soared above 100,000 to 101,739, and 812 more people died, bringing the total death toll to 11,591 —the most in the world.
According to Matteo Villa, a researcher at the ISPI think tank, Monday’s figures showed that “the peak (in the contagion curve) is nearing.”
“If today’s trend were to be confirmed tomorrow, we could finally say we are past (the peak),” he tweeted, adding that there will be a “plateau” before the contagion curve starts falling.
Civil Protection Agency chief Angelo Borrelli reported 1,590 new recoveries from the virus, the highest daily figure on record, bringing the total to 14,620.
In the northern Lombardy region, the worst hit by the outbreak, the number of active cases on Monday fell by almost 400 to 25,006. It was a first since the start of the epidemic.
Italy’s outbreak, the first and largest in Europe, began on Feb. 20, in Lombardy. To limit the spread of the virus, the government imposed a national lockdown on March 10, which expires on April 3.
“There will certainly be an extension” of the measures, professor Franco Locatelli, head of the Supreme Health Council, said at the civil protection news conference.
Encouraging contagion data “gives us a reason to continue making these sacrifices,” Locatelli said. “We are going in the right direction and we must not in any way change our strategy.”
— McClatchy News Service
John Prine has coronavirus, condition is critical, his family says
CHICAGO — John Prine, the Maywood, Ill., postman and Army mechanic who went on to become one of the most revered American songwriters of the past half century, is in critical condition “after a sudden onset of COVID-19 symptoms,” his official Twitter feed reported Sunday afternoon.
Prine “was hospitalized on Thursday. He was intubated Saturday evening, and continues to receive care, but his situation is critical,” said the note “From the Prine family” on the @JohnPrineMusic Twitter feed.
Prine, 73, has battled cancer twice, in the late 1990s and the early 2010s, and just last month received a lifetime achievement award at the Grammys.
His 2018 album “Tree of Forgiveness,” his first of original material in 13 years, included guest appearances by Jason Isbell, Brandi Carlile, the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach and Amanda Shires, and earned wide critical praise.
The week before the singer’s diagnosis his wife Fiona Whelan Prine said she had tested positive for coronavirus through her Instagram feed and said a test on her husband was indeterminate.
“We wanted to let you know,” the family Twitter post said, “and give you the chance to send on more of that love and support now.”
— Chicago Tribune
Trump says he’s asked Pence to stop calling Washington Gov. Jay Inslee
Gov. Jay Inslee isn’t being “appreciative,” President Donald Trump said Friday, adding he’s told Vice President Mike Pence not to call Washington’s chief executive.
Pence, who is the designated head of the federal fight against COVID-19, apparently hasn’t stopped calling.
During a news conference Friday, Trump criticized some governors for their reaction to the federal response to the outbreak.
“I think they should be appreciative. Because when they’re not appreciative to me, they’re not appreciative to the army corps, not appreciative to FEMA,” Trump said. “Mike Pence, I don’t think he sleeps anymore. These are people that should be appreciated. He calls all the governors. I tell him, I’m a different type of person. I say Mike, don’t call the governor of Washington. You’re wasting your time with him.”
Inslee later responded on Twitter: “I’m not going to let personal attacks from the president distract me from what matters: beating this virus and keeping Washingtonians healthy.”
The Washington governor has been a critic of Trump on a number of issues, including questioning in-person the president’s stand on arming teachers to thwart school shootings during a 2018 meeting with governors in the White House. While running unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination, Inslee frequently threw verbal jabs at Trump.
In recent weeks, Inslee has said he was getting good cooperation from Pence and help from the military and FEMA. On Thursday, he declined to criticize Trump when saying the White House would have stronger bargaining power than the states if it called companies to get them to manufacture needed supplies and equipment.
— The Spokesman-Review
Surfer fined $1,000 for ignoring coronavirus closure in Manhattan Beach
LOS ANGELES — A man received a $1,000 citation for surfing in Manhatthan Beach on Saturday after he ignored numerous warnings by police and lifeguards cautioning him not to go in the water because of the coronavirus beach closures.
Manhattan Beach Police Sgt. Mike Sistoni said it was the only citation for failing to follow the stay-at-home orders the department had issued.
“Everybody else was in compliance,” Sistoni said. “People have been pretty good about it.”
Authorities were out in force over the weekend to make sure people were staying away from beaches, parks and hiking trails as part of unprecedented restrictions on public movements to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
Most beaches, trails, recreation facilities as well as nonessential businesses were closed because of the state and local orders, and many people obeyed.
A Ventura County Sheriff’s Department cruiser could be seen guarding the entrance to a popular trail in Wildwood Regional Park in Thousand Oaks, upon which hundreds of hikers and families descended on Saturday. In Venice, a Los Angeles Police Department helicopter was seen circling a skate park, announcing that people who did not leave the area would be “arrested for trespassing.”
Still, some crowds continued to flock to some outdoor areas, officials said.
Many state parks already were closed to vehicle traffic, but those that remained open Saturday “once again experienced visitation surges that made it impossible for the public to implement appropriate social/physical distancing practices,” California State Parks said in a statement.
As a result, the state parks system announced Sunday that it was temporarily cutting off vehicle access to all 280 state parks.
