Terrence McNally, a four-time Tony Award-winning playwright, has died from complications due to coronavirus.
McNally died Tuesday at Sarasota Memorial Hospital in Sarasota, Florida, according to representative Matt Polk. He was 81, and a lung cancer survivor who lived with chronic inflammatory lung disease.
McNally is best known for writing beloved musicals “Ragtime,” “Kiss of the Spider Woman” and “The Full Monty,” as well as plays “Love! Valour! Compassion!” “Master Class” and “Mothers and Sons.” More recently, he penned the musical adaptations of hit movies “Catch Me If You Can” and “Anastasia,” both of which played on Broadway.
As a screenwriter, he wrote 1991’s “Frankie and Johnny,” starring Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer, and 1976’s “The Ritz,” which starred Rita Moreno and was adapted from his Broadway play.
On Twitter, stars including Jason Alexander and Lin-Manuel Miranda paid tribute to McNally, who received a lifetime achievement Tony Award last year.
“His work was vital, intense, hysterical and rare,” wrote Alexander, who starred in the 1997 film adaptation of “Love! Valour! Compassion!” “My hope is that he will inspire writers for years to come.”
“Heartbroken over the loss of Terrence McNally, a giant in our world, who straddled plays and musicals deftly,” Miranda wrote. “Grateful for his staggering body of work and his unfailing kindness.”
McNally was an openly gay writer who wrote about homophobia, love and AIDS. He is survived by his husband, theater producer Tom Kirdahy.
McNally is one of the first noteworthy figures in entertainment to die from coronavirus (COVID-19), which has ravaged the world with more than 380,000 confirmed cases globally. In the past two weeks, celebrities including Idris Elba, Daniel Dae Kim, Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson, and Colton Underwood have all announced that they tested positive for the virus.
President Donald Trump said Tuesday he wants the U.S. economy to “open” back up by Easter Sunday, despite expert warnings about the deadly threat of the coronavirus.
Easter is April 12, less than three weeks away.
Trump’s remarks in a Fox News “virtual town hall” event at the White House came as more states imposed extreme measures, including shutting down businesses and ordering residents to stay home, to try to slow the spread of the disease.
“We’re opening up this incredible country. Because we have to do that. I would love to have it open by Easter,” Trump said.
“I would love to have that. It’s such an important day for other reasons, but I’d love to make it an important day for this. I would love to have the country opened up, and rarin’ to go by Easter.”
In a second interview with Fox that aired Tuesday afternoon, Trump said he offered the holiday as a deadline because “Easter’s a very special day for me.”
“Wouldn’t it be great to have all the churches full?” Trump asked. “You’ll have packed churches all over our country … I think it’ll be a beautiful time.”
Trump added that “I’m not sure that’s going to be the day,” but “that would be a beautiful thing.”
In the U.S., at least 46,500 cases of COVID-19, including 590 deaths have been confirmed, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Medical experts, including the Trump administration’s scientific point man in the crisis, Dr. Anthony Fauci, have strongly advocated restrictions on people-to-people contact, saying it’s better to overreact now than to be sorry later.
Fears about the coronavirus — and the impact of government containment efforts on businesses and workers — have prompted a dramatic surge in unemployment and have sent stocks spiraling down in recent weeks.
The White House and leading lawmakers are working long hours on Capitol Hill to hash out the final details of a massive stimulus bill that would offer relief to those affected by the virus. The stimulus package is expected to cost at least $1.5 trillion and could include direct cash payments to Americans and around $350 billion in relief for small businesses.
The U.S., Trump said, can’t sustain the current trend of closing down business and commerce in entire states.
“We’re not built that way,” Trump said. “I don’t want the cure to be worse than the problem itself. … You can destroy a country this way.”
Trump also once again compared the coronavirus to more common dangers, such as flu and car accidents, in an apparent attempt to play down the risk posed by the new disease.
“We lose thousands and thousands of people a year to the flu. We don’t turn the country off,” Trump said.
Few other countries are currently looking to loosen the strict steps being taken to slow the disease’s transmission. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, for instance, announced on Tuesday a “total lockdown” for the country of 1.3 billion people.
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Eighty-five percent of new coronavirus cases have been reported in Europe and the United States, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Speaking at a Tuesday press briefing at the WHO’s headquarters in Geneva, spokeswoman Dr. Margaret Harris said that “the outbreak is accelerating very rapidly and the case numbers we received overnight will put that up considerably.”
Europe is now considered the new global epicenter of the outbreak by the WHO. Italy has been hit harder than any other European country, with 63,927 confirmed cases of the virus, including 6,077 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University’s Coronavirus Resource Center. However, Italy has seen a decline in confirmed cases and deaths for two straight days, which Harris called a “glimmer of hope” for the country.
Spain has the second most confirmed cases in Europe, 39,673, along with 2,696 deaths. About 5,400 health care professionals have tested positive for the virus, the BBC reports. On Tuesday, Spain reported 514 more deaths, its highest daily increase thus far since the pandemic hit the country. The nation is enforcing strict lockdown measures implemented by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.
The United Kingdom is the latest European nation to implement lockdown orders. On Monday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the measures, which include the closing of nonessential businesses such as places of worship, gyms and hotels. The U.K. has 6,733 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and 336 deaths.
“From this evening, I must give the British people a very simple instruction: You must stay at home,” Johnson said in his announcement. He added that people should leave home only to exercise once a day and to shop for basic needs, or for medical purposes and for work if it cannot be done from home.
While the United States is not in a national lockdown, multiple states have issued stay-at-home orders to slow the coronavirus’ spread. The U.S. has 46,481 confirmed cases of the virus and 593 deaths from its disease, COVID-19. New York has by far the most confirmed cases of any state in the country, with over 20,800, according to the New York Department of Health’s website, which was last updated at 3 p.m. Monday.
The lockdown in Wuhan, China, the city where the pandemic began and the original epicenter for the highly contagious virus, is set to be lifted April 8. China has 81,588 confirmed cases and 3,281 deaths, but cases have steadily declined since February. Over 73,000 people have reportedly recovered.
Worldwide, there are over 392,700 confirmed cases and more than 17,200 deaths.
India has mounted the largest attempted lockdown yet in the coronavirus crisis, ordering 1.3 billion people to stay at home from midnight for three weeks to prevent a public health disaster.
In a televised address on Tuesday night, the prime minister, Narendra Modi, announced that for the next 21 days, almost one fifth of the world’s population should “forget what going out means”.
“From 12 midnight today, the entire country will go under a complete lockdown to save India and for every Indian, there will be a total ban on venturing out of your homes,” said Modi. “Therefore, I request you to remain wherever you are in this country.”
So far India has had a relatively low number of coronavirus cases, with 469 infections and 10 deaths so far, and the government had already introduced stringent measures to try to halt local transmission in a country where millions live in densely populated conditions with terrible sanitation and limited healthcare access.
There are currently only 40,000 ventilators in India, one isolation bed per 84,000 people and one doctor per 11,600 Indians. More than 1.8 million people across the country are being monitored because they have shown symptoms of the illness, travelled from abroad or been exposed to confirmed cases.
It is feared that the low infection figures are linked to a lack of testing, with only around 17,000 tests carried out so far. The virus has now spread to almost all states in India, with the highest number of cases in Maharashtra, where the city of Mumbai is located, and the southern state of Kerala. There are 41 foreigners among the infected.
In his speech, Modi said that the government and experts had spent the past two months studying coronavirus outbreaks in other countries and had concluded that forcible social distancing via a lockdown was the only solution to prevent it taking hold in India.
He added: “If we are not able to manage this pandemic in the next 21 days, the country and your family will be set back by 21 years. If we are not able to manage the next 21 days, then many families will be destroyed forever.”
People buying groceries following Narendra Modi’s announcement of a lockdown. Photograph: Indranil Mukherjee/AFP via Getty Images
The announcement prompted panic buying across the country, with many thousands rushing out to get supplies and queues forming outside grocery shops, as Modi did not specify whether people would be allowed out for food shopping, though he later clarified this in a tweet.
The announcement is likely to have a devastating impact on the 300 million Indians who live below the poverty line and survive hand to mouth based on daily earnings. Indian finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman has promised a comprehensive relief package will be announced soon.
In Delhi, which has been under lockdown since Sunday, with state borders closed, taxis and rickshaws cleared from the roads, all but essential travel banned and shops and restaurants shut, the chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, set up shelters across the city where people could come for free meals.
The lockdown measures brought in by Modi were in line with what experts have recommended as necessary for India, though it remains unclear how they will be enforced in a democracy of more than a billion people.
Rupam Bhattacharya, a member of the Cov-Ind-19 study group of researchers at the University of Michigan that’s looking specifically into the coronavirus outbreak in India, said: “This pandemic is growing quick, and the only way we can cope with it is by keeping up with its pace by bringing rapid and strict precautionary measures into action.”
He added: “If too many people get affected at the same time, it creates an immense pressure on the healthcare system, which will be even more pressing on the high-population, low-resource infrastructure that India has, and may lead to an eventual collapse.”
TALLAHASSEE — While New York, California and other states shutter their economies to keep the coronavirus at bay, Gov. Ron DeSantis is refusing to follow the herd.
His cure-can’t-be-worse-than-the-disease approach has put the Republican governor under a glaring spotlight locally and nationally as cases of the virus in Florida surge past 1,400. It’s a philosophy that aligns DeSantis with other conservatives, including President Donald Trump and Florida House Speaker Jose Oliva, a Republican with a strong libertarian bent.
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On Tuesday, state Senate Democrats began papering the governor’s office with letters urging him to issue a shelter-in-place order.
“That is the dumbest s— I have heard in a long time,” said state Sen. Oscar Braynon (D-Miami Gardens). “This is a day-by-day crisis. Italy damn near saw 1,000 people die in one day, and there are people proclaiming we got this and have it solved in 15 days?”
DeSantis has grown only more defiant. On Monday, instead of buckling to political pressure to issue a shelter-in-place order, he said he would restrict visitors coming into the state from coronavirus hot spots including New York. And he’s now literally ignoring pleas from Florida Democrats to be more aggressive.
Nearly 20 governors across the state have issued some form of a stay-at-home order. DeSantis, by contrast, has taken a more piecemeal approach, shut down parks, movie theaters, gyms and most businesses and some beaches. He‘s waived work requirements for federal assistance. DeSantis has also asked the Trump administration for a major disaster declaration, a move supported by Florida GOP Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott.
But he also has overtly pushed back against a broad shelter-in-place order. Instead, on Monday he announced that anyone flying from New York, New Jersey or Connecticut to Florida would have to undergo a 14 day self-quarantine, an announcement that drew criticism from New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who said it was not the “most enlightened approach.”
“When you are ordering people to shelter in place, you are consigning probably hundreds-of-thousands of Floridians to lose their jobs,” DeSantis said Monday in remarks live streamed from the governor’s office. “You are throwing their lives into potential disarray.”
In Florida, the push for a statewide shelter-in-place order has been led by Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, the state’s only statewide elected Democrat and a member of the Cabinet. She called for a shelter-in-place order last week, but said DeSantis isn’t returning her calls or answering her questions.
“I tried to reach out a few times last week through the chief of staff just to kind of hear what their experts were telling them,” Fried told POLITICO in an interview. “Kind of like ‘talk to me, give me updates,’ but also because the Department of Agriculture has a huge responsibly in this. We need to make sure the state is fed.”
“I would have hoped for more communication out of the governor’s office,” she added.
Fried said she’s trying to strike a non-political tone, saying she is aware the governor is facing a tough balancing act.
“I do completely recognize and respect that the governor has had to face difficult choices, this is a public health crisis we have not seen in a decade,” she said.
DeSantis communications director Helen Aguirre Ferré said Cabinet liaison Beau Beaubien “is in frequent communication with all offices related to Cabinet,” including Fried’s. And the governor’s legal team, led by Joe Jacquot, speaks frequently with the Fried’s legal team.
Fried’s frustration amplifies Democrat’s own pandemic balancing act: How to criticize without politicizing.
Braynon is cognizant of perception concerns, but said feedback from Democrats such as Fried and Florida Democratic Party Chair Terrie Rizzo ultimately are rooted more in ideological and policy differences than brute politics.
“I don’t know that I would say the governor has been the worst at this, I’m not saying ‘we are all going to die due to Ron DeSantis,’ and I don’t think that is what Nikki or Terrie Rizzo are saying either,” Braynon said. “This is ideologically-driven based on things we think should be done to keep people save.”
“And I do think my ideology is better in that regard,” he added.
Florida Republicans are rallying around DeSantis, with members of the Legislature praising what they see as a “measured” approach rather than a rush to shut down the state and cripple its economy.
“Gov. DeSantis and his administration have done well to date,” Senate President Bill Galvano (R-Bradenton) said in an interview. “He has been measured and balanced in his approach. That is necessary considering facts are changing every day. A one-size-fits-all approach might not fit here.”
Galvano said he was “comfortable” with the administration’s decision to allow local leaders to make the call to shut beaches rather than issue a statewide closure. Last week, pictures of Florida beaches packed with spring breakers who will return to college campus across the country amped up calls for a statewide closure.
“Manatee County where I am is in a different situation than Broward or Miami-Dade,” Galvano said. “I think the governor has been respecting that.”
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Rob Bradley (R-Fleming Island) echoed Galvano’s sentiment on Twitter.
“I fully support the balanced approach that @GovRonDeSantis is taking to #COVID-19,” Bradley tweeted. “A ‘one size fits all’ approach doesn’t work for Florida in this situation. Floridians need to continue to practice social distancing and wash hands regularly. We can do this!”
State Rep. Evan Jenne, a Dania Beach Democrat who will be co-leader of House Democrats next session, said he is reluctant to hammer DeSantis in the middle of a crisis.
“Enough people are criticizingthe governor at this point,” Jenne said. “Some is probably justified, but right now we need to get all rowing in the same direction and need to be able to communicate with agency heads in charge of response.”
That happened Sunday night, when Democrats held a conference call with Florida Surgeon General Scott Rivkees, Department of Emergency Management Director Jared Moskowitz, a former Democratic lawmaker, and Agency for Health and Human Services Secretary Mary Mayhew.
Moskowitz led much of the call, Jenne, said but things got tense on occasion with Rivkees, who wouldn’t give straightforward answers to questions from Democrats.
“It was not that testy, but had moments,” Jenne said. “At one point they tried to shut the call down and I had to tersely tell them that was a bad idea. To their credit, the call continued.”
Jenne said now is not the time for criticism, but he is calling for a select committee to be called in the Legislature to review the administration’s response to the coronavirus.
“To not have a select committee look at this response — both what went well and what went poorly, would, quite frankly be legislative malfeasance,” he said.
It appears Trump was ready to pick up the fight again Tuesday.
During a Fox News town hall filmed in the Rose Garden, Trump slammed Cuomo for not ordering ventilators years ago. The president pointed to reports that Cuomo, a Democrat, chose to ration the state’s supply of emergency ventilators rather than order more in 2015.
New York has become the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States.
“I’m not blaming him or anyone else,” Trump said before quickly adding that: “He’s supposed to be buying his own ventilators.”
Trump’s remarks were the latest instance in which he has said states should take the lead in ordering medical equipment to confront the virus. Cuomo and other state officials say they have struggled to buy that equipment and desperately need it.
Democrats have pressed Trump to invoke the Defense Production Act to require companies to expand production of the equipment. Trump has been hesitant to do so and has said that private companies have voluntarily ramped up production.
In the town hall, Trump repeatedly said that the federal government has stepped in to help New York with medical facilities and equipment.
“We sent them ventilators,” Trump said. “They can’t blame us for that.”
The more combative position seemed to represent a departure from the president’s thoughts on Cuomo just hours earlier.
“I spoke with Governor Cuomo. He’s working hard,” Trump said on Monday. “We’re all working hard together. The relationship has really been amazing.”
Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and US treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin appeared on Tuesday morning to be close to a deal over a coronavirus stimulus bill, even as Donald Trump signaled his wish to reopen the economy and continued to attack House speaker Nancy Pelosi over her own stimulus proposal.
Mnuchin told reporters on Capitol Hill, just before midnight on Monday: “I think we’ve made a lot of progress. There’s still a couple of open issues, but I think we’re very hopeful that this can be closed out [on Tuesday].”
Mnuchin said he and Schumer had consulted the president and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell on the details of the deal, which is believed to secure around $2tn in aid for workers and businesses.
Schumer said: “We expect to have an agreement tomorrow morning. There’s still a few little differences. Neither of us think they’re in any way going to get in the way of a final agreement.”
Schumer added that Trump seemed “very positive” about the talks.
But the president took aim at Pelosi, who introduced House Democrats’ own $2.5tn stimulus plan in a bid to shape negotiations. In a late-night tweet, Trump accused Pelosi of seeking to derail a Republican-sponsored Senate bill.
Republicans criticized Pelosi’s rival bill as a wishlist, saying it included politically charged spending add-ons and regulations on federal elections, minimum wage, union regulations and climate change. Democrats made similar charges about the Republican Senate bill.
Trump tweeted: “Republicans had a deal until Nancy Pelosi rode into town from her extended vacation. The Democrats want the Virus to win? They are asking for things that have nothing to do with our great workers or companies. They want Open Borders & Green New Deal. Republicans shouldn’t agree!”
The president returned to the attack on Tuesday morning. He tweeted: “This is not about the ridiculous Green New Deal. It is about putting our great workers and companies BACK TO WORK!”
At the same time, Trump was under fire from health experts for signaling in a lengthy press conference on Monday night that he could soon re-open the country for business. The US is just over one week into a 15-day self-quarantine and social-distancing initiative aimed at slowing transmission of Covid-19.
Speaking at the White House on Monday, Trump appeared to override his own health experts, including taskforce head and vice-president Mike Pence.
Trump said: “Our country wasn’t built to be shut down. This is not a country that was built for this.
He continued: “America will again and soon be open for business. Very soon. A lot sooner than three or four months that somebody was suggesting.”
Trump’s lack of commitment to following expert advice appears to be creating stress within the coronavirus task force. Dr Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has contradicted Trump at White House briefings and given interviews containing measured criticism of the president.
Trump jokes with health official who mentions ‘low grade fever’ during coronavirus briefing — video
Asked why by the Guardian, Trump said: “I was just with him. He’s at the taskforce meeting right now.”
Asked if Fauci agreed about the need to reopen the economy soon, Trump said: “He doesn’t not agree.”
Later on Monday night, a former Food and Drug Administration commissioner who served under Trump said opening America up for business too hastily could undo any progress that has been made to “flatten the curve” of infections and prevent the healthcare system from becoming overwhelmed.
Scott Gottlieb tweeted: “There’s a strong and understandable desire to return to better times and a functioning economy.
“But it should not be lost on anyone that there’s no such thing as a functioning economy and society so long as Covid-19 continues to spread uncontrolled in our biggest cities.”
On Tuesday, Trump tweeted that although “the world market for face masks and ventilators is crazy”, his administration was “helping the states to get equipment” and had “just got 400 Ventilators for [New York mayor] Bill de Blasio. Work beginning on 4 hospitals in New York! Millions of different type items coming!”
At the same time, CNN anchor Chris Cuomo said his brother, New York governor Andrew Cuomo, had said he had been very clear with the White House about his state’s immediate need for 30,000 ventilators and other protective medical equipment and “there has been no response”.
Most people who contract Covid-19, a respiratory illness, recover relatively quickly. But it can be fatal, particularly among older people and those with underlying health problems.
According to figures collated by the New York Times, by Tuesday morning around 43,500 cases had been confirmed in the US and 537 people had died. Confirmed cases are increasing rapidly as testing increases, with New York state emerging as a leading hotspot.
The lieutenant governor of Texas argued in an interview on Fox News Monday night that the United States should go back to work, saying grandparents like him don’t want to sacrifice the country’s economy during the coronavirus crisis.
Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, 69, made the comments on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight” after President Donald Trump said he wanted to reopen the country for business in weeks, not months.
Patrick also said the elderly population, who the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said are more at risk for COVID-19, can take care of themselves and suggested that grandparents wouldn’t want to sacrifice their grandchildren’s economic future.
“No one reached out to me and said, ‘as a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren?’” Patrick said. “And if that’s the exchange, I’m all in.”
“And that doesn’t make me noble or brave or anything like that,” he continued. “I just think there are lots of grandparents out there in this country like me… that what we care about and what we love more than anything are those children.”
Patrick claimed after speaking to over a hundred people over the phone that there’s a consensus that they don’t want to “lose our whole country” over the current public health crisis and face an economic collapse.
Health experts have made clear the coronavirus poses a particular danger for older patients – 60 years old and older – who face the highest risk of serious illness or death from the rapid spread of COVID-19.
They say unless Americans continue to dramatically limit social interaction — staying home from work and isolating themselves — the number of infections will overwhelm the health care system, as it has in parts of Italy, leading to many more deaths.
Dr. Tom Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, warned in a series of tweets that curbing social distancing could cost millions of lives. Inglesby said the U.S has seen exponential growth and that health officials are just beginning to understand how pervasive it is.
While the worst outbreaks are concentrated in certain parts of the country, such as New York, experts warn that the highly infectious disease is certain to spread.
Texas has more than 350 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and nine deaths related to the virus. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has resisted a stay-at-home order for all of Texas but local officials in Dallas and San Antonio have.
Contributing: Associated Press. Follow Adrianna Rodriguez on Twitter: @AdriannaUSAT.
First, Fox downplayed the coronavirus threat for weeks. Then, two weeks ago, their anchors abruptly pivoted. But on Monday night, the network’s coverage of the crisis slid back off the rails in spectacular fashion.
All three of the shows making up the network’s top-rated primetime lineup — Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham — featured segments about the coronavirus that ran with misinformation President Trump has embraced, from advocating that people start thinking about heading back to work even if it could leave more people dead to promoting unproven and potentially dangerous drugs as coronavirus cures.
Trump and his high-profile backers are struggling to come to grips with the reality that there are no shortcuts back to normalcy. And now shows watched by millions could put a lot of people’s health and lives in danger.
“Those of us who are 70-plus, we’ll take care of ourselves. But don’t sacrifice the country.”
Tucker Carlson’s Monday night broadcast came on the heels of Trump’s marathon news conference — one in which he insisted that he plans to reopen the American economy next week even though 138 Americans died from the coronavirus on Monday, the most on a single day yet.
Carlson, however, didn’t seem particularly bothered by Trump’s position that trying to revive the economy is just as important as saving lives through social distancing. And during his interview with Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R), the quiet part was said loudly.
“My heart is lifted tonight by what I heard the president say,” Patrick said. “My message is, let’s get back to work. Let’s get back to living. Let’s be smart about it. And those of us who are 70-plus [years old], we’ll take care of ourselves. But don’t sacrifice the country.”
“So you’re basically saying that this disease could take your life, but that’s not the scariest thing to you. There’s something that would be worse than dying?” Carlson asked.
“Yeah,” Patrick replied.
Patrick’s position, in short, is that after just a week of social distancing measures, older Americans like him — the demographic experts believe are most at risk of dying due to Covid-19 — should be willing to risk death to get the economy going again. And in that respect, his thinking echoed the president’s, who claimed on Monday that keeping the economy shut down “causes other problems, and maybe it causes much bigger problems than the problem we’re talking about now.”
The choice that Trump and Patrick alluded to between trying to get the coronavirus under control or restoring the economy is a false one. In reality, there will be no economic recovery until the number of coronavirus cases in the country stabilizes and the pressure on the health care system is relieved.
Hannity pushes quackery
On the heels of Carlson’s show, Sean Hannity hyped a shortcut that he thinks might take care of both problems at the same time.
During an interview with Vice President Mike Pence, Hannity read a letter “from a doctor in the New York area” recommending an unproven drug “regimen” involving the anti-malarial hydroxychloroquine that supposedly treats Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus:
This is what he has seen: Him and his team have now treated about 350 patients … and another 150 patients in other New York areas. His results — “We have had zero deaths, zero hospitalizations, zero incubations.”
Beyond the dubiousness of a doctor who discovered a miracle coronavirus drug immediately reaching out to Hannity of all people, the “regimen” he talked about is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
Taking drugs for unapproved usages is risky, but Trump has promoted part of that treatment — hydroxychloroquine taken with azithromycin — repeatedly and against the advice of his experts. And that rhetoric has already had tragic results: On Tuesday, NBC broke news about an Arizona man who died after listening to Trump tout the unproven coronavirus treatments and decided to take a similar substance (chloroquine phosphate, from a fish treatment) in an effort to protect himself from the coronavirus.
From NBC:
The man’s wife told NBC News she’d watched televised briefings during which President Trump talked about the potential benefits of chloroquine. Even though no drugs are approved to prevent or treat COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, some early research suggests it may be useful as a therapy.
“We were afraid of getting sick.”
Ingraham touts unproven drugs as well
But Hannity wasn’t the only Fox News host to push medical quackery on Monday. Immediately following his show, Laura Ingraham interviewed a coronavirus patient named Rio Giardinieri, who not only attributed his recovery to an unproven hydroxychloroquine treatment but also gave Ingraham direct credit for the fact that he’d heard about it in the first place.
As my colleague Umair Irfan has detailed, despite Trump’s public enthusiasm for the drug, hydroxychloroquine is unproven and “right now, the evidence for its effectiveness is sparse.” And while it’s good that the man Ingraham interviewed is recovering, it’s unclear what role, if any, hydroxychloroquine actually played.
Lots of people watch Fox and take Hannity and company seriously
The triple hit of absurdity during Fox News’s primetime programming on Monday demonstrated how the network continues to struggle to cover the pandemic, even if its hosts are no longer dismissing it as the “coronavirus impeachment scam” and framing criticism of the federal response as just another attempt to take down the president.
As I detailed last week, this sort of coverage has consequences. In 2019, Fox News’s primetime averaged 2.5 million viewers, and polling indicates that when it comes to the coronavirus, its viewers are less likely than others to be worried about the virus and more likely to believe that other media sources are overplaying the dangers.
People who tuned in on Monday may have been convinced that exchanging humans lives for better GDP and jobs numbers is a reasonable trade-off for policymakers to consider, or that unproven drugs can save them if they get sick. As the man in Arizona has shown, buying into this sort of rhetoric can lead to high-risk behavior at worst. And at best, viewers don’t end up more informed about how they can protect themselves and their families from a pandemic that experts — including those in the Trump administration — say will get worse before it gets better.
GENEVA/TOKYO (Reuters) – The World Health Organization said on Tuesday that the United States could become the global epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, which finally forced reluctant organizers to postpone the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics.
Britain joined the ranks of countries in lockdown to try to hold back the virus, and data showed business activity collapsing from Australia and Japan and Western Europe at a record pace in March, with the United States showing expected to be just as dire.
“The coronavirus outbreak represents a major external shock to the macro outlook, akin to a large-scale natural disaster,” analysts at BlackRock Investment Institute said.
But amid the gathering gloom, the Chinese province of Hubei, where the virus was first identified in December, said it would lift travel restrictions on people leaving the region as the epidemic eases there.
Confirmed coronavirus cases around the world exceeded 377,000 across 194 countries and territories as of early Tuesday, according to a Reuters tally, more than 16,500 of them fatal.
In Geneva, WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris told reporters there had been a “very large acceleration” in infections in the United States.
Over the previous 24 hours, 85 percent of new cases were in Europe and the United States, and of those, 40 percent were in the United States.
As of Monday, the virus had infected more than 42,000 people there, killing at least 559.
Asked whether the United States could become the new epicenter, Harris said: “We are now seeing a very large acceleration in cases in the U.S. So it does have that potential.”
Some U.S. state and local officials have decried a lack of coordinated federal action, saying that having localities act on their own has put them in competition for supplies.
President Donald Trump acknowledged the difficulty.
“The World market for face masks and ventilators is Crazy. We are helping the states to get equipment, but it is not easy,” he tweeted.
OLYMPIC ORGANIZERS GIVE IN
Olympic Games organizers and the Japanese government had clung to the hope that the world’s biggest sporting event could go ahead, but finally bowed to the inevitable to make Tokyo 2020 the latest and biggest victim of a ravaged sporting calendar.
After a call with International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the July 24-Aug. 9 event would be rescheduled for the summer of 2021 at the latest – as proof of victory over the coronavirus.
“President Bach said he is in agreement, 100%.”
It was the first time in the Olympics’ 124-year history that they had been postponed, though they were canceled outright three times during the two 20th-century world wars.
Of the top 10 countries by case numbers, Italy has reported the highest fatality rate, at around 10%, which at least partly reflects its older population. The fatality rate globally – the ratio of deaths to confirmed infections – is around 4.3%, though national figures can vary widely according to how much testing is done.
Britain, believed by experts to be about two weeks behind Italy in the outbreak cycle, on Tuesday began curbs on movement without precedent in peacetime after Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered the country to stay at home.
The streets of the capital were eerily quiet as all but essential shops closed and people only went to work if it was unavoidable.
Johnson had resisted pressure to impose a full lockdown even as other European countries had done so, but was forced to change tack as projections showed the health system could become overwhelmed.
Meanwhile China’s Hubei province, the original center of the outbreak, will lift curbs on people leaving the area, but other regions will tighten controls as new cases double due to imported infections.
Slideshow (7 Images)
The provincial capital Wuhan, which has been in total lockdown since Jan. 23, will lift its travel restrictions on April 8.
However, the risk from overseas infections appears to be on the rise, prompting tougher screening and quarantine measures in major cities such as the capital Beijing.
Interactive graphic tracking global spread of coronavirus: open in external browser – here
Additional reporting by Emma Farge, Stephanie Nebehay, Karolos Grohmann, Leika Kihara, Sakura Murakami, Lusha Zhang and Huizhong Wu; Writing by Nick Macfie; Editing by Jon Boyle and Angus MacSwan
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced new action on Monday to encourage social-distancing measures, including closing parking lots at state parks, and warned that California will need more than twice as many hospital beds for coronavirus patients than previously anticipated.
The governor said he was closing parking lots in an effort to prevent people from congregating at California’s outdoor recreational areas and unintentionally spreading the virus.
His announcement came four days after he ordered all residents to remain in their homes, making California the first state in the nation to place such restrictions on the movement of its residents.
As of Monday, 40 people have died and 2065 people have tested positive for COVID-19 in the state.
“We’re looking at bending the curve. We’re looking at interventions that work,” Newsom said. “As a consequence of updating our models, we are looking to significantly increase our procurement of assets, specifically beds, throughout our healthcare delivery system.”
Newsom said he believes California will need 50,000 hospital beds for coronavirus patients, a significant increase from the 20,000 beds his administration had forecast last week. The Democratic governor said the state’s 416 hospitals were doubling so-called “surge plans” to 40% of their capacity, which includes providing 30,000 new beds across the system.
At the same time, the state is securing an additional 20,000 beds outside the state hospital system. Newsom said his administration had identified 3,000 new beds through mobile hospital units sent from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, an agreement to lease an empty hospital near downtown Los Angeles, and other plans, but still needs another 17,000 beds.
Under Newsom’s stay-at-home executive order announced last Thursday, Californians are allowed to venture outside for necessities and for recreational purposes, but are required to stay at least six feet away from one another.
Despite millions of residents heeding the call, reports of noncompliance prompted local officials to admonish people and take additional action over the weekend.
A thick crowd of shoppers at a farmers’ market in Sacramento on Saturday made it nearly impossible for people to stay a safe distance from one another. Laguna Beach officials closed beaches and blocked trail access to county wilderness parks in response to growing alarm about people amassing on the city’s pristine coastline.
While anyone who defies Newsom’s order could be punished with a misdemeanor, the first-term Democrat has repeatedly said that he doesn’t believe law enforcement intervention is necessary. Newsom said his administration is conducting a public awareness campaign and he believes that “social pressure” will encourage people to remain at home.
President Trump granted Newsom’s request on Sunday to declare a major disaster in California to help the state respond to the COVID-19 pandemic with emergency medical aid and unemployment assistance.
Newsom declared his own state of emergency in California on March 4 to help the state prepare for the spread of the coronavirus. At the time, the California Department of Public Health reported that 53 people had tested positive and one had died from the virus.
“It will become the largest hospital in Los Angeles when it docks,” Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles said on Sunday night.
In San Francisco, hospitals have checked out patients without critical needs and are looking for spare capacity wherever they can find it. One hospital, St. Francis Memorial, brought back into service four dozen vacant beds in a furloughed surgery unit. A bankrupt hospital in Daly City, south of San Francisco, was rescued from imminent closure with an infusion of state funds.
The city has also been laying out plans to turn convention centers into temporary shelters, and lease hotel rooms for health care workers and vulnerable people who cannot self-quarantine. Measures to combat the virus were being taken at the state, county and local levels, sometimes resulting in a confusing patchwork of directives, and the governor is also leaning heavily on the private sector.
Mr. Newsom has conferred with Elon Musk, the head of the electric carmaker Tesla, and Tim Cook, the head of Apple. The two executives, along with the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, have announced separately that their companies would give a total of 2 million protective masks to the state. Mr. Musk vowed to produce 1,000 ventilators, according to Mr. Newsom.
Within a few minutes at a news conference over the weekend, the governor spoke of the ambivalence of the moment — a feeling of an abundance of resources and talent and yet the scarcities of crucial supplies as the virus spreads.
“I’ve had just in the last 48 hours the opportunity to speak to more scientists, more researchers, more engineers, more Nobel laureates, more C.E.O.s of companies large and small than I have quite literally in years,” Mr. Newsom said.
Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday that he is closing parking lots at California’s state parks in order to deter people from congregating and unintentionally spreading the novel coronavirus.
Fox News contributor Raymond Arroyo reveals the story behind the headlines.
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden was mocked on Monday after the gaffe-prone 2020 Democratic front-runner appeared to lose his train of thought when his teleprompter malfunctioned during remarks on the coronavirus pandemic.
Biden’s remarks, livestreamed from a studio set up in his home, began with his touching his face despite ongoing warnings not to do that during the coronavirus pandemic. His remarks were also short compared with the president’s near-daily coronavirus briefings, lasting less than 15 minutes in total, and featured a clear teleprompter issue that became a social media punchline.
The former vice president was detailing his plan to fight the coronavirus crisis, but appeared to lose track of his place on the teleprompter. Biden signaled to his staff that there was something wrong, before going off on an awkward ad-lib.
“And, in addition to that, in addition to that we have to make sure that we, we are in a position that we are, well met me go the second thing, I’ve spoken enough on that,” Biden said before going on to speak about the aggressive action he would like Trump to take under the Defense Production Act.
“Joe Biden when the teleprompter stops working is a train wreck,” social media strategist Caleb Hull wrote.
Biden — who had been oddly silent during the pandemic until Monday — covered a range of topics including what he would do if he were in the Oval Office and the lessons that can be learned from governors’ actions to fight the coronavirus – but some viewers harped on the blunders.
“What a disaster,” GOP spokesperson Elizabeth Harrington wrote. “Biden has had plenty of time to think about this, and he can’t even figure out what to say without help from a teleprompter.”
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