Trump says ‘toughest’ weeks ahead as coronavirus spreads

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is warning that the country could be headed into its “toughest” weeks yet as the coronavirus death toll mounts, but at the same time he expressed growing impatience with social distancing guidelines and said he’s eager to get the country reopened and its stalled economy back on track.

“There will be a lot of death, unfortunately,” Trump said Saturday in a somber start to his daily briefing on the pandemic, “There will be death.”

Joining Trump were Vice President Mike Pence, virus task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government’s foremost infection disease expert. Each stood far apart from one another on the small stage.

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Trump added a twist on his familiar push for a drug that hasn’t been clearly shown to work to stop the virus — he said he may start taking it as a preventative measure after consulting with his doctor, even though there’s no evidence to show it works for that, either.

The president initially had suggested the country could reopen by Easter but pulled back seeing projections of a staggering death toll even if restrictive measures remain in place. But just days after extending tough national guidelines through the end of April, staring down historic levels of unemployment and economic standstill, he was talking about reopening as soon as possible, and speaking Saturday with leaders of professional sports leagues about filling arenas again.

“This country was not designed to be closed,” he said. “The cure cannot be worse than the problem.”

The number of people infected in the U.S. has exceeded 300,000, with the death toll climbing past 8,400; more than 3,500 of those deaths are in the state of New York. 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.

Much of the country is under orders to stay home, including professional sports leagues that were among the first to clamp down in the pandemic. Trump spoke by phone with top leaders including Roger Goodell of the National Football League and the NBA’s Adam Silver, telling them he hoped to get people back in seats as soon as possible.

“I want fans back in the arenas,” he said. “Whenever we’re ready, as soon as we can.”

The virus has decimated the sports world with the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League suspending their seasons indefinitely and Major League Baseball postponing the start of its season. The NCAA basketball tournament was also canceled; so were college spring sports.

A person with knowledge of the call said some of the commissioners weren’t quite as optimistic as Trump because of the concerns raised by public health officials but appreciated the president’s desire to give people hope and fans a reason to be optimistic. The person requested anonymity to discuss the private call.

California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has three NFL teams in his state, was asked if he thought the NFL season would start on time in September. “I’m not anticipating that happening in this state,” he said.

Hard-hit states were seeing cases rise. Trump suggested that some states were asking for more medical supplies than they really needed. He said the goal was to stay several days ahead of critical medical needs in each state.

“The fears of the shortages have led to inflated requests,” he said.

Louisiana officials have said New Orleans is on track to run out of ventilators by next week. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whose state is at the epicenter of the national pandemic with over 113,700 confirmed cases as of Saturday morning, has pleaded for ventilators for days. New York is poised to get more than 1,100 ventilators from China and Oregon.

Health officials did offer some hope that social distance measures were working. Fauci said he saw the efforts in action as he went out for a walk in Washington, D.C., and noticed people waiting six feet apart for restaurant take out.

“As sobering and a difficult as this is, what we are doing is making a difference,” Fauci said.

But even as Fauci urged Americans to be patient and let mitigation efforts work, Trump said: “Mitigation does work. But again, we’re not going to destroy our country.”

The previously booming economy had been among Trump’s biggest talking points as he heads into the 2020 presidential election, but the past few weeks have seen precipitous drops as the U.S. deals with the fallout from the virus that has shuttered businesses, gutted airlines and forced people into their homes.

The president also continued to tout hydroxychloroquine, a drug long used to treat malaria, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, after very small preliminary studies suggested it might help prevent the coronavirus from entering cells and possibly help patients clear the virus sooner. But the drug has major potential side effects, especially for the heart, and large studies are underway to see if it is safe and effective for treating COVID-19.

Trump suggested he may consider whether he should start taking the drug, though he also said he’d ask his doctor first. Some studies are testing whether hydroxychloroquine can help prevent infections in health care workers, but none has suggested that others, such as the president, should take it to prevent infection.

With Congress away, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pressed for the next aid package to be ready for an April vote in a letter to House Democrats.

“We must double down on the down-payment we made in the CARES Act by passing a CARES 2 package,” she wrote about the just-passed $2.2 trillion bill, pushing for another additional unemployment benefits, small business loans and direct payments to Americans.

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AP Pro Football Writer Rob Maaddi in Indian Shores, Florida, contributed to this report.

In years before outbreak, investment in public health fell

In the decade before Michigan and its largest city became the latest hot spot for the deadly coronavirus, officials were steadily, and at times dramatically, cutting back on their first line of defense against pandemics and other public health emergencies.

Approaching bankruptcy, Detroit disbanded most of its public health department and handed its responsibilities to a private nonprofit. When the department reopened in 2014 in the back of the municipal parking office, its per capita budget was a fraction of other big cities’, to serve a needier population.

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In Ingham County, home to the capital city of Lansing, then-Public Health Director Renee Branch Canady sat down at budget time every year for seven straight years to figure out what more to cut.

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“It was just chop, chop, chop,” Canady said. By the time she left in 2014, all the health educators, who teach people how to prevent disease, were gone.

What happened in Michigan also played out across the country and at the federal level after the 2008 recession, which caused serious budget problems for governments. But as the economy recovered, public health funding did not, a review of budget figures and interviews with health experts and officials shows.

A shortfall persisted despite several alarming outbreaks, from H1N1 to Ebola, and has left the U.S. more vulnerable now to COVID-19, experts say. In normal times, public health workers are in the community, immunizing children, checking on newborns and performing other tasks. In a health emergency, they’re tracing outbreaks, conducting testing and serving as “first responders” when people fall sick — efforts that are lagging in many states as the coronavirus spreads.

“Our funding decisions tied their hands,” said Brian Castrucci, who worked with health departments in Philadelphia, Texas and Georgia and is now president of the de Beaumont Foundation, a health advocacy organization.

The cuts came under both Democratic and Republican administrations. While there is no single number that reflects all federal, state and local spending, the budget for the federal Centers for Disease Control, the core agency for public health, fell by 10 percent between fiscal year 2010 and 2019 after adjusting for inflation, according to an analysis by the Trust for America’s Health, a public health research and advocacy organization. The group found that federal funding to help state and local officials prepare for emergencies such as the coronavirus outbreak has also fallen — from about $1 billion after 9/11 to under $650 million last year.

Between 2008 and 2017, state and local health departments lost more than 55,000 jobs — one-fifth of their workforce, a major factor as cities struggle to respond to COVID-19.

“It definitely has made a difference,” said John Auerbach, Trust for America’s Health CEO and a former public health director in Massachusetts.

New York has seen the most COVID-19 cases in the U.S., but numbers are surging in places such as Detroit, where those testing positive nearly tripled in the week between March 28 and Saturday, when officials said the city was approaching 4,000 cases, with 129 deaths. A more robust health system could have done more earlier to track down and isolate people who were exposed, said the city’s former health director, Abdul El-Sayed.

State spending on public health in Michigan dropped 16% from an inflation-adjusted high point of $300 million in 2004, according to a 2018 study.

Some of the funding problems, Canady and other public health advocates believe, stem from a fundamental belief in smaller government among Republican governors, including former Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, who called for “shared sacrifice” after the state’s auto-dependent economy was battered by the recession.

In Kansas, then-Gov. Sam Brownback ran what he called a “red-state experiment” to cut taxes. State spending on its Public Health Division, outside of federal funds, dropped 28% between 2008 and 2016.

The cuts meant a “shifting of responsibility for services from the state level to the county level,” Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly said in an interview. “And we saw that in public health.”

In Maine, then-Gov. Paul Le Page’s administration stopped replacing public health nurses who were dealing with families in the opioid crisis. The number of nurses fell from around 60 to the low 20s before the Legislature tried to reverse the action.

Although agencies often receive emergency funding when a crisis strikes, the infusion is temporary.

“Decisions are made politically to support something when it becomes an epidemic,” said Derrick Neal, a public health official in Abilene when Ebola surfaced in Texas. “And then as time passes, the funding shrinks.”

In Oklahoma, state funding for the Department of Health still hasn’t returned to its levels of 2014, when a combination of slumping oil prices, tax cuts and corporate breaks punched a giant hole in the state’s budget. When state revenues later improved, the money went to other priorities.

“It’s much easier to cut funding for public health than it is to start taking away benefits from people or access to care for people,” said former state Rep. Doug Cox, an emergency room doctor.

Castrucci said the problem with providing more money only at times of emergency is it doesn’t allow time to recruit and train new workers.

“We waited until the house was on fire before we started interviewing firefighters,” he said.

For most people, the new coronavirus 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.

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Associated Press reporters David Eggert in Lansing, Michigan, Paul Weber in Austin, Texas, John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, and Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City contributed to this report.

Alabama joins states under coronavirus stay-at-home order

Beginning 5 p.m. Saturday, Alabama joined the list of states where residents were under a stay-at-home order in response to the coronavirus outbreak.
Gov. Kay Ivey and state Health Officer Dr. Scott Harris announced that the order would be in place until April 30, with a determination before then on whether the order would be extended past that date, AL.com reported.
“We all have a duty to take this seriously,” the governor wrote in a Twitter message. “Wash your hands frequently, disinfect commonly used items often & practice social distancing.”
Ivey warned that that the state would likely see sharp rises in confirmed cases and deaths in the weeks ahead.
“Folks, April stands to be very tough, and potentially very deadly,” the governor said, according to AL.com. “You need to understand we are past urging people to stay at home. It is now the law.”
As of late Saturday, Alabama had more than 1,600 confirmed cases of coronavirus – also known as COVID-19 – and had seen at least 26 deaths, according to the state’s Department of Public Health, division of infectious diseases and outbreaks.
Ivey, a Republican, had faced some criticism in the state for not enacting a stay-at-home order sooner. On Friday she addressed those concerns.
"I tried to find the right balance, something that was measured without overreacting that looked after people’s health without choking out the life from commerce," she said at a news conference Friday, according to the Advertiser.

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey speaks to the media in Montgomery, Ala., Nov. 17, 2017. (Associated Press)

U.S. Sen. Doug Jones, a Democrat, argued that slowing the spread of the virus through a stay-at-home order would ultimately prove to be the best way to revive the economy.
“We help this economy by staying home,” Jones said Thursday, according to the Advertiser. “By staying home, we can stop the spread, and we can get this economy rolling soon.”
On Friday, Ivey said the continued growth in cases in the state prompted her to finally issue the order.
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"Yesterday [Thursday] the number of new cases jumped 160," she said at the news conference. “That was a big jump. Also EMA metrics that they got from the cell phone data, and it shows people are not paying attention to the orders we’ve asked them to abide by.” EMA refers to Alabama’s Emergency Management Agency.
Chambers County in eastern Alabama was especially hard hit, with authorities suspecting that local church gatherings may have helped spread the virus, the Advertiser reported.

Missouri coronavirus stay-at-home order starts Monday, governor says

Missouri’s governor announced a statewide stay-at-home coronavirus order Friday, leaving only a handful of states without one.
Gov. Mike Parson’s order, which takes effect Monday, says Missourians should avoid leaving their homes except for essential activities like work, food or medical care. Restaurants may stay open if they offer takeout or delivery and schools have been ordered to close, FOX 2 in St. Louis reported.
The order allows nonessential businesses to stay open as long as they adhere to social distancing requirements, according to the Kansas City Star.
The governor's March 21 order banning gatherings of more than 10 people will remain in place.

A man crosses an empty street Friday, April 3, 2020 in downtown Kansas City, Mo. The city is under a stay-at-home order, asking everyone to stay inside and away from others as much as possible, in an effort to slow the spread of the new coronavirus. (Associated Press)

Alabama joins states under coronavirus stay-at-home order
“There comes a time when we have to make major sacrifices in our lives. Many of us make sacrifices each and every day, but now more than ever, we must all make sacrifices,” the governor said in a news conference Friday.
Parson had resisted such an order for weeks, opting to leave enforcement to the local level. Most of St. Louis and Kansas City areas, Springfield and Columbia are already under local stay-at-home orders, according to FOX 4 in Kansas City.
“This power is something I think should be rare for government to ever take advantage of,” he said, according to FOX 2. “For the sake of all Missourians, be smart, be responsible, and follow this order. Stay at home, Missouri."
By Saturday evening, Missouri had nearly 2,300 cases and 24 deaths, according to FOX 4.
After Parson announced the order, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas tweeted, Kansas City’s order “adds additional limits and prohibitions to non-essential activity,” which will remain in effect, The Star reported.
The statewide order ends Friday, April 24.
By Saturday, only Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, South Carolina, Utah, and Wyoming had no stay-at-home orders in effect.

WHO and Acosta Cartoons

Face coverings recommended, but Trump says he won’t wear one

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump announced new federal guidelines Friday recommending that Americans wear face coverings when in public to help fight the spread of the new coronavirus. The president immediately said he had no intention of following that advice himself, saying, “I’m choosing not to do it.”

The new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention encourages people, especially in areas hit hard by the spread of the coronavirus, to use rudimentary coverings like T-shirts, bandannas and non-medical masks to cover their faces while outdoors.

The president exempted himself from his administration’s own guidelines, saying he could not envision himself covering his face while sitting in the Oval Office greeting world leaders.

“It’s a recommendation, they recommend it,” Trump said. “I just don’t want to wear one myself.”

The new guidance, announced as states are bracing for critical shortfalls like those that other parts of the world have experienced, raises concern that it could cause a sudden run on masks.

Trump and other administration officials sought to minimize any burden by stressing the recommendations did not amount to requirements and that a variety of homemade coverings were acceptable. Federal officials said that surgical masks and N95 respirator masks should be left for those on the front lines of fighting the spread of the infection.

Friday’s announcement capped an evolution in guidance from the White House that officials acknowledged has at times been inconsistent and confusing, with the administration insisting over the last month that masks were not necessary or even helpful.

“I want to unpack the evolution of our guidance on masks because it has been confusing to the American people,” Surgeon General Jerome Adams said Friday.

Adams said that although and he other public health experts initially believed wearing a mask would not have a substantial impact on curbing the spread, the latest evidence makes clear that people who don’t show any symptoms can nonetheless pass on the virus.

“We’re looking at the data, we’re evolving our recommendations, and new recommendations will come as the evidence dictates,” Adams said.

First lady Melania Trump embodied the contradictory messaging with a tweet endorsing the new guidance even as her husband chooses to disregard it.

“As the weekend approaches I ask that everyone take social distancing & wearing a mask/face covering seriously,” she tweeted.

The administration has said states should have done more to stockpile medical supplies, but it’s not clear if anyone is prepared for the potential rush that could ensue if people try to obtain medical masks for themselves from private industry.

In rural Florida, Okeechobee Discount Drugs has been sold out of face masks for almost two weeks, and “we don’t know where you can find any masks at this point,” said Stacey Nelson, one of the pharmacy’s owners.

“It’s very hard to get these products, but people want them,” Nelson said. “They’ve been getting mixed messages and people aren’t sure if they should be wearing masks in our daily lives. It’s very confusing. Wear them, or don’t wear them?”

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For most people, the new coronavirus 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.

In fashioning the recommendations, the administration appeared to be striving to balance political concerns about wanting to preserve as much normalcy as possible with public health concerns that some infections are being spread by people who seem to be healthy.

The White House has faced pushback against rigorous social distancing guidelines from states with lesser rates of infection. For the hardest-hit areas, where social distancing has already been in place for some time, the White House coronavirus task force thought there would be less risk of people ignoring the other guidance if they covered their faces.

The CDC is recommending that people wearing cloth face coverings in public places, such as grocery stores and pharmacies, where “other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain.” The guidance especially applies “in areas of significant community-based transmission.”

The White House task force was debating into Friday on the final language of the CDC guidance. CDC scientists wanted to make it national guidance, believing that would do more to slow the spread of the virus.

White House advisers, including Dr. Deborah Birx, wanted to limit the guidance to virus hot spots. Birx said Thursday that she feared wider guidance would lead to a false sense of security for Americans and cause them to back away from more critical social distancing.

In the end, they found a middle ground: a national advisory with special emphasis that those in hard-hit areas should wear masks. Two people familiar with the discussions outlined the internal debate, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to describe it publicly.

As with other public health guidance, the recommendation on face covering has been a moving target for the administration. Under the previous guidance, only the sick or those at high risk of complications from the respiratory illness were advised to wear masks.

Adams wrote on Twitter at the end of February that people should “STOP BUYING MASKS” and said they were not effective in protecting the general public.

On Monday, he noted that the World Health Organization does not recommend masks for healthy members of the population. Three days later, he tweeted that though there remains “scant” evidence that wearing a mask, especially improperly, can protect the wearer, “emerging data suggests facial coverings may prevent asymptomatic disease transmission to others.”

Dr. Michael Ryan, the WHO’s emergencies chief, on Friday acknowledged a “very important and very healthy debate” about how masks are used.

“We still believe the main driver of this pandemic is symptomatic (transmission),” he said, not people who may be infected but aren’t showing symptoms.

“We can certainly see circumstances in which the use of masks — but homemade or cloth masks — at the community level may help in an overall comprehensive response to this disease,” Ryan said.

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Schneider reported from Orlando, Florida. Associated Press writers Jill Colvin in Washington and Jamey Keaton in Geneva, Switzerland, contributed to this report.

Trump fires Michael Atkinson, intelligence IG who told Congress about Ukraine phone call: report

President Trump has reportedly fired Michael Atkinson, the inspector general for the U.S. intelligence community who alerted Congress to concerns about a Trump phone call with the president of Ukraine – a matter that led to the president’s impeachment last year.
Trump formally notified the intelligence committees of both the Senate and House in a letter dated Friday that was obtained by Politico.
"This is to advise that I am exercising my power as President to remove from office the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, effective 30 days from today," the president wrote.

Michael Atkinson, the inspector general of the intelligence community, leaves the Capitol after closed doors interview about the whistleblower complaint that exposed a July phone call the president had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in which Trump pressed for an investigation of Democratic political rival Joe Biden and his family, at the Capitol in Washington, Friday, Oct. 4, 2019. (Associated Press)

"It is extremely important that we promote the economy, efficiency, and the effectiveness of Federal programs and activities. The Inspectors General have a critical role in the achievement of these goals," the president continued. "As is the case with regard to other positions where I, as President, have the power of appointment, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, it is vital that I have the fullest confidence in the appointees serving as Inspectors General. That is no longer the case with regard to this Inspector General."
The president added he would nominate a replacement "who has my full confidence and who meets the appropriate qualifications," at a later time.
Tom Monheim, a career intelligence professional, will be named acting inspector general for the intelligence community, an intelligence official who requested anonymity told The Associated Press. Monheim is currently general counsel of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.

Democrats react

Leading Democrats quickly criticized the president's action.
In a statement, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., one of the Democrats' leaders of the impeachment efffort, called the firing of Atkinson an act of "retribution" by President Trump.
Schiff called Friday's action “yet another blatant attempt by the President to gut the independence of the Intelligence Community and retaliate against those who dare to expose presidential wrongdoing," according to Politico.
“At a time when our country is dealing with a national emergency and needs people in the Intelligence Community to speak truth to power, the President’s dead of night decision puts our country and national security at even greater risk,” Schiff added.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., blasted the president's move as "a brazen act against a patriotic public servant who has honorably performed his duty to protect the Constitution and our national security, as required by the law and by his oath.
“This latest act of reprisal against the Intelligence Community threatens to have a chilling effect against all willing to speak truth to power," Pelosi continued. "The President must immediately cease his attacks on those who sacrifice to keep America safe, particularly during this time of national emergency.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., condemned the president's action in a pair of late-night Twitter messages.
"Whether it's LTC Vindman, Captain Crozier, or Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson: President Trump fires people for telling the truth," Schumer wrote in one message.
"Michael Atkinson is a man of integrity who has served our nation for almost two decades," he added in a second post. "Being fired for having the courage to speak truth to power makes him a patriot."

Horowitz responds

Michael Horowitz, chairman of the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency and the inspector general at the Department of Justice, criticized the removal of Atkinson and defended his handling of the Ukraine case.
“Inspector General Atkinson is known throughout the Inspector General community for his integrity, professionalism, and commitment to the rule of law and independent oversight,” Horowitz told the AP.

House GOP investigation

In January, Fox News reported that Atkinson was being investigated by Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee for his handling of the Ukraine matter, which began with a complaint filed by an unidentified "whistleblower."
Last August, Atkinson received a complaint from someone who raised concerns about Trump's July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which Trump sought a Ukraine-led investigation into the past business dealings in the country of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.
Democrats argued that the president had tied the investigation request to the withholding of U.S. military aid from Ukraine, in what they described as a "quid pro quo" arrangement. But Trump denied any wrongdoing in connection with Ukraine.
The House ultimately impeached Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress -- but the Senate acquitted Trump of the charges in February.
Fox News' Brooke Singman and The Associated Press contributed to this story.

Steve Forbes says coronavirus hit US economy like 'a sledgehammer'

Steve Forbes, chairman and editor-in-chief of Forbes Media, reacted Friday on "The Ingraham Angle" to U.S. unemployment climbing as coronavirus spreads and its effects on the economy if the shutdown continues.
"[The] devastation is going to be very real. You've already saw in that 10 million [unemployment] number in the last two weeks. That's going to get worse," Forbes told host Laura Ingraham. "In effect, we've done the economic equivalent of a medical shutdown of the economy -- a coma, induced coma."
Forbes called for ramped up testing in order to help the economy.
"So this gets to where economics and health care intertwine, and that is we have to massively step up the testing. For example, [Abbot] laboratories, has a test that can tell you in five or 15 minutes whether you have this horrific disease," Forbes said. "They've only produced 5,000 kits. They should be producing 50,000 a day. They should be licensing and the government should push them to do it. Other manufacturers we should be doing not 100,000 tests a day for a country our size, experts tell me we should be doing at least 500,000 a day to find out who already has immunities."
"We've got to do massive testing so by the end of April we can have large parts of this economy starting to function again," Forbes added.
Forbes also said media opposition to hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug that President Trump has supported as a coronavirus treatment, was largely steeped in anti-Trump sentiment.
"The real push [against] hydroxychloroquine is the fact that Donald Trump liked it. If Donald Trump said the sun came up in the morning, they'd say, 'Oh no, that's a Chinese lightbulb in the sky. It just is perverse."
Forbes argued that another stimulus won't fix the problem and that the economy needs time to recover.
"If you take a sledgehammer to the American economy, it's going to take time to bring it back. It'll recover quickly," Forbes said. "As long as we have a benign environment which gets to the election, hopefully next year we'll have that benign environment. Then you'll really see things really start to turn."