“I think the American public have done a really terrific job of just buckling down and doing those physical separation and adhering to those guidelines,” National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci said Thursday.
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“I think the American public have done a really terrific job of just buckling down and doing those physical separation and adhering to those guidelines,” National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci said Thursday.
Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
The U.S. is enduring a “very bad week” during the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci says. But he also says that the American public’s embrace of physical separation and other restrictions is sharply reducing projections of the death toll from the respiratory virus.
The final toll currently “looks more like 60,000 than the 100,000 to 200,000” that U.S. officials previously estimated, Fauci said.
Fauci, America’s leading expert on infectious diseases and a key member of the White House’s coronavirus task force, also said that antibody tests have been developed and will be available “very soon.”
Fauci discussed COVID-19 and its death toll Thursday morning, during a segment of NBC News’ Today show.
“The number of deaths and the cases that we’re seeing right now are really validating what we said, that this is going to be a very bad week, on the one hand,” Fauci said. “On the other hand, as you can see there are some glimmers of hope, particularly when you look at the situation in New York — where the number of hospitalizations, requirements for intensive care and intubation over the last few days have actually stabilized and [are] starting to come down.”
The new projection sharply undercuts an estimate Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, made just 11 days ago. In late March, he said “between 100,000 and 200,000” people in the U.S. could die from COVID-19.
The 60,000 figure is reflected in a new projection by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, or IHME, a research center at the University of Washington. The estimate predicts the U.S. death toll through early August; it also predicts that COVID-19 deaths will peak in this country on April 11.
The revised analysis comes as millions of Americans are living under “shelter in place” and business shutdown orders that have contributed to massive job losses and other disruptions. The pandemic has left many anxiously waiting for the virus to peak in their state.
COVID-19 has now caused nearly 15,000 deaths in the U.S., and more than 430,000 people are infected with the virus, according to a COVID-19 dashboard created by Johns Hopkins University’s Whiting School of Engineering, which reports the numbers in near real time. It has also taken a horrible toll on minority communities, particularly African Americans.
New York is the epicenter of COVID-19 in the U.S., with more than 150,000 cases. Despite a recent spike in deaths there, Fauci said there are signs that the state is flattening the curve.
“I don’t want to jump the gun on that,” Fauci said, “but I think that is the case.”
He added, “I’m always very cautious about jumping the gun and saying, ‘Well, we have turned the corner.’ But I think we are really looking at the beginning of that, which would really be very encouraging. We need that right now.”
Another crucial question on many people’s minds is when they can take an antibody test, a blood test that can reveal whether someone might have had the new coronavirus without being diagnosed, either before the national alarm was sounded over the outbreak or during the delay in providing enough tests to meet demand.
“The antibody tests are developed, there are several out there,” Fauci said. “We are told by the people, the companies that make them, that very soon — when they say soon, they’re talking days to weeks — that we’d be able to have a large number of these tests available.”
The tests will be important, Fauci said, because “there may be many people out there, and I suspect there are a fair amount, that have been infected, were asymptomatic and didn’t know it.”
People who have been infected will likely have protection from the coronavirus in the future, he said, while adding that further tests are needed to ensure that is the case with COVID-19.
“You may have a cohort of people who are actually protected, who have more of a chance at getting back into the normality of society,” Fauci said.
Such a test will be vital, he added, to health care workers who could do their jobs much better if they know they’re protected from the virus.
While he praised the American public’s efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus, Fauci also warned that it’s not yet time to stop those measures.
“I think the American public have done a really terrific job of just buckling down and doing those physical separation and adhering to those guidelines,” Fauci said on Thursday. “But having said that, we better be careful that we don’t say, ‘OK, we’re doing so well we could pull back.’ We still have to put our foot on the accelerator when it comes to the mitigation and the physical separation.”
The senators cited a 2008 law mandating that the president provide Congress with a detailed explanation of his decision to fire Atkinson, who defied Trump last year when he turned over to lawmakers a whistleblower complaint that led to the president’s impeachment.
Last weekend, Trumpdefended the firing of Atkinson, calling him a “total disgrace” over his handling of the whistleblower complaint, which detailed Trump’s conversations with Ukraine’s president. Atkinson was required by law to transmit the complaint to the House and Senate intelligence committees.
In his letter informing lawmakers of Atkinson’s termination, Trump said only that he had lost confidence in Atkinson. That wasn’t enough for the senators.
“As supporters of the Inspector General community, and as advocates for government transparency and accountability, it is our responsibility to confirm that there are clear, substantial reasons for removal,” the senators wrote, asking for an explanation no later than April 13 and citing a 2008 Senate report about ensuring that watchdogs “are not removed for political reasons.”
The lawmakers also accused Trump of going around Congress when he placed Atkinson on administrative leave when he fired him, effectively sidestepping the mandatory 30-day notice to the congressional intelligence panels.
“By placing the IG on 30 days of administrative leave and naming an acting replacement, the administration has already effectively removed that IG and appears to have circumvented Congress’s role in this process,” the senators wrote.
They added that the purpose of the 30-day requirement was “to provide an opportunity for an appropriate dialogue with Congress in the event that the planned transfer or removal is viewed as an inappropriate or politically motivated attempt to terminate an effective inspector general.”
Democrats have condemned the firing as a dangerous abuse of power and act of political retribution, while some Republicans have criticized the move as unwarranted.
Trump has adopted an aggressive posture toward inspectors general, most recently criticizing the Health and Human Services Department’s watchdog over a report that revealed medical supply shortages and coronavirus testing issues across the country. The president alsoremoved the acting Pentagon inspector general, Glenn Fine, from his post shortly after he was named to lead a watchdog panel overseeing implementation of the $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief package that Congress approved last month.
In their Wednesday letter, the senators said inspectors general should “only be removed when there is clear evidence of wrongdoing or failure to perform the duties of the office, and not for reasons unrelated to their performance, to help preserve IG independence.”
In addition to Grassley, two Republicans signed the Wednesday letter: Susan Collins of Maine and Mitt Romney of Utah, who both criticized Trump’s posture toward Ukraine. Romney was the only Republican to vote to convict the president in his impeachment trial.
The Democratic signers were Gary Peters of Michigan, Mark Warner of Virginia, Ron Wyden of Oregon, Dianne Feinstein of California and Jon Tester of Montana.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he is bringing in more funeral directors as coronavirus deaths across the state hit a third-straight daily record with 799 fatalities on Wednesday.
New York state is grappling with the worst COVID-19 outbreak in the country with more than 151,000 confirmed cases across the state and 81,800 in New York City alone — almost as many as China, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
“We’re in a battle, right, but this is about a war,” Cuomo said at a press conference in Albany on Thursday. “This virus is very, very good at what it does. We lost more lives yesterday than we have to date.”
New York has lost more lives and is suffering greater economic damage than from the 9/11 attacks, Cuomo said.
At least 6,268 people across the state and 4,571 in New York City alone have died from the coronavirus, according to Hopkins. The state’s deaths have been steadily rising all week: 731 fatalities on Monday, 779 on Tuesday and 799 on Wednesday, according to a chart presented at the press conference.
While the number of deaths is climbing, the rate of new cases is starting to level off, Cuomo said. But he warned residents against becoming complacent, saying officials worry the coronavirus could resurge if they let up on stay-at-home restrictions that were put in place 18 days ago. It’s been just 80 days since the first case in the U.S. was confirmed outside of Seattle and 39 days since New York state diagnosed its first case, he said.
“The 1918 Spanish Flu came in three waves. We’re on the first wave. Everybody is assuming, ‘Well, once we get through this we’re done.’ I wouldn’t be so quick to assume that,” he said. “This virus has been ahead of us from day one. We’ve underestimated the enemy, and that is always dangerous, my friends. And we should not do that again.”
Cuomo said the social distancing policies have saved lives, but the number of cases will “shoot through the roof” again if local officials start easing restrictions that have shuttered businesses, cost jobs and forced many who still have them to work from home. “Before you start talking about restarting the economy, you’re going to have to address the damage that is done to society today, which is intense,” he said.
Earlier in the day, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio warned that the city may need to tighten its social distancing restrictions to contain the coronavirus outbreak and prevent it from resurging, saying it’s going to be a “long, tough” April.
“Unfortunately, restrictions may have to go up, meaning if things really get worse, we might have to tighten up further,” de Blasio said Thursday at a press conference. “It’s not what I envision today. It’s not what any of us want. But the truth is the truth. I don’t think anyone watching out there wants to be told pretty lies.”
Nor was it the case, as the president said in remarks on March 13, that Google was building a website to facilitate widespread testing. “Google has 1,700 engineers working on this right now,” he said falsely. Vice President Pence sought to clarify the details the next day, telling reporters the website would be put to use in “areas that have been deeply impacted — Washington state, California, New York.”
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., then tried to unanimously pass a Democratic amendment. McConnell blocked it, and the Senate adjourned until Monday after a roughly 30-minute pro forma session.
It is unclear if Republicans and Democrats will try to reach agreement on emergency legislation to pass in the coming days. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has indicated she could try to pass a Democratic bill on Friday — which Republicans can likely block with most representatives out of Washington.
Speaking to reporters Thursday, Pelosi said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin called on Tuesday and “asked for a quarter of a trillion dollars in 48 hours, with no data” to justify why it was needed.” She echoed Cardin in calling McConnell’s move a “stunt.”
“Let’s negotiate on the timing, the amount and the rest,” Pelosi said of emergency aid.
The Kentucky Republican said Thursday that the small business aid is the only part of the $2 trillion rescue law “at risk of exhausting its funding right now.”
The Trump administration cited strong demand for the loans this week as it asked Congress for more money for the program, which is designed to help small businesses keep employees on payroll. Lawmakers initially approved $350 billion for loans. They can be forgiven partly or fully if companies use them on expenses such as payroll, rent and utilities.
On Wednesday, Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer asked for an emergency bill to include $250 billion for hospitals, health systems, state and local governments and food assistance programs, on top of money for small companies. However, Pelosi said she only wanted $125 billion for the existing program specifically, and another $125 billion for community-based lenders and SBA disaster assistance loans and grants.
The Democrats said they wanted the bill to be separate from another package they hope to pass to extend major provisions of the $2 trillion emergency measure, such as direct payments to individuals, enhanced unemployment insurance and state grants.
After the small business loan program started Friday, reports emerged about confusion around applications, loan terms and eligibility. Democrats also said they worried it left out rural business owners, farmers and small firms who do not already work with a bank participating in the program.
McConnell contended Democrats did not need to attach other emergency funding measures to the small business plan.
“Nobody believes this is the Senate’s last word on COVID-19. We don’t have to do everything right now,” he said.
And if need be, the Mercy may be ordered to shift to treating only patients infected with coronavirus.
That was recently the case for the Norfolk, Va.-based Comfort, the Navy hospital ship that is now in New York City. Its mission is similar, but the Comfort’s crew is working under much different circumstances.
[Read more about the Comfort and its mission in New York.]
New York’s hospitals have been overwhelmed — a fate California leaders have said repeatedly they are working hard to head off, by opening alternate care sites at convention centers and arenas, and by calling upon the Mercy.
Such a mission would most likely be the biggest of the ship’s three-decade-long career.
Normally, the Mercy is tied up at a Navy base in San Diego with a small full-time crew of civilian mariners. Only when it is activated for humanitarian missions does the Navy send a large contingent of active-duty doctors, nurses and other sailors to the ship.
In San Pedro now, the Mercy sits next to the Iowa, another old vessel at the opposite end of the hospital ship’s mission — the former for treating the wounded, and the latter for blasting targets at sea and on land in combat.
The Iowa is a relic — a type of warship this country has not built in more than 70 years, now serving as a floating museum.
Painted haze-gray, it bristles with gun barrels and is armored with thick steel plates.
The Mercy, on the other hand, is a converted oil tanker built in 1976 and recommissioned as a hospital ship in 1986, painted bright white with thick red crosses along its length to show potential enemies that it is protected by the Geneva Convention as a noncombatant ship.
The ongoing surge in filings for unemployment insurance has been exacerbated by the expansion of those who can file claim. The $2.2 trillion federal coronavirus relief bill enacted last month has expanded the group to include the self-employed and independent contractors.
California, New York and Michigan saw the largest increase in claims last week. Those states are also among the hardest hit from the coronavirus pandemic.
Prior to the social distancing efforts used to combat the outbreak, the jobs market had been strong. In the six-month period prior to the economic shutdown, nonfarm payroll growth had averaged 221,000 a month. However, March saw a decline of 701,000 that only began to measure how deeply the virus had impacted the employment situation.
Most of that employment decline came in restaurants and drinking establishments, although health care and social assistance also took a hit. A more representative number of the actual impact to employment came through the Labor Department’s survey of households, which indicated a drop of nearly 3 million from the employment ranks.
A large contributor to that number was the 1.3 million people who dropped out of the labor force as they lost their jobs but were unable to look for work because of coronavirus-related restrictions. Those numbers helped push up the headline unemployment rate from 3.5% to 4.4% and drove a more encompassing number that includes those not looking for work and the underemployed from 7% to 8.7%, the biggest one-month gain in the history of that measure.
In its announcement Thursday, the Fed said the programs would total up to $2.3 trillion and include the Payroll Protection Program and other measures aimed at getting money to small businesses and bolstering municipal finances with a $500 billion lending program.
Fauci said the US should develop its capacity for widespread testing, contact tracing, and case isolation — “the things that were not in place in January.”
Antibody testing could help experts understand how many people may be immune to the virus and how many people are still vulnerable.
Even if things go back to normal, Fauci said, we can’t “ever let it get out of hand again.”
In a livestreamed interview on Wednesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci said he and the rest of the White House coronavirus task force were still trying to figure out what to do after April 30, when federal stay-at-home guidelines are set to expire.
Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, spoke with Howard Bauchner, the editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association. He said he had been in the West Wing “until the wee hours” the night before as the coronavirus task force discussed a major question: “What are the kind of things you have to have in place to safely and carefully march towards some sort of normality?”
That normality will be hard to come by without risking more death and overwhelmed hospitals, since experts warn of that new infections could surge after lockdowns lift. There’s also a chance the virus could make a resurgence in fall weather.
In the interview, Fauci laid out a playbook to prepare for new waves of COVID-19.
‘The things that were not in place in January’
Healthcare workers at a COVID-19 drive-thru testing site at Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital on March 25.
Carlos Osorio/AP
For the next few months and into the fall, Fauci wants the US to get more prepared than it was when the new coronavirus arrived.
“The keys are to make sure that we have in place the things that were not in place in January, that we have the capability of mobilizing identification — testing — identification, isolation, contact tracing,” Fauci said. “There will be cases. We’ve got to be able to act on them in a very deliberate way that doesn’t allow us to get into the situation we find ourselves right now.”
That’s the tack South Korea took at the beginning of its outbreak. Health officials quickly started testing tens of thousands of people a day and opened COVID-19 drive-thru testing facilities. The government also implemented a robust — though privacy-invasive — contact-tracing program: After tests there reveal a positive case, officials use interviews, GPS phone tracking, credit-card records, and video surveillance to trace that person’s travel history, according to The Washington Post.
A man crossing a nearly empty 5th Avenue in midtown Manhattan in New York City on March 25.
REUTERS/Mike Segar
Many experts have said the slow response contributed to the virus’ rapid spread.
“This is such a rapidly moving infection that losing a few days is bad, and losing a couple of weeks is terrible,” Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, told Bloomberg. “Losing two months is close to disastrous, and that’s what we did.”
Testing in the US is now ramping up, but it’s too late to contain the outbreak by testing and contact tracing alone. More than 14,700 people have died nationwide.
“Ultimately the answer is going to be a vaccine,” Fauci said.
It could take at least 18 months, however, to develop, test, and distribute a vaccine. That means other interventions are needed during that time.
Antibody testing
A lab technician working on a neutralizing antibody test on the MERS coronavirus at a laboratory at the International Vaccine Institute in Seoul, South Korea — part of an attempt to learn more about the coronavirus on March 11.
Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images
People who have been infected develop antibodies that can probably fight off the virus if it they encounter it again. This would most likely make them immune, though it’s unclear how long that protection lasts.
“Clearly one of the things is to get a feel for what the penetrance of infection was and who out there has been infected, recovered, and is now not vulnerable,” Fauci said.
Fauci said immunity should last at least through September for people who were infected in February. People who are immune, then, could go back to work earlier than others.
“Those are the people, when you put them back to particularly critical infrastructure jobs, that you worry less about them driving an outbreak,” Fauci said.
“There has been some unfortunate international experience,” he said.
He was most likely referring to the UK, where the government ordered millions of antibody test kits only to find out that none of them worked.
‘Don’t ever let it get out of hand again’
A healthcare worker wheeling a patient into the Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York, on Monday.
REUTERS/Brendan Mcdermid
“If we get back to some form of normality, we’ve got to be careful we don’t ever let it get out of hand again,” Fauci said during the Wednesday interview. “Do not send a sick child to school. Do not send a sick worker into the workplace. Don’t anybody ever shake hands again. I mean it sounds crazy, but that’s the way it’s really got to be, until we get to a point where we know that the population is protected.”
Even after a vaccine is widely available, Fauci said, the pandemic should prompt the country to rethink its local public-health systems and better prepare for the next infectious disease outbreak.
“We have a habit of when we get over a challenge, we say let’s move on to the current problem,” Fauci said. “We should never be in a position of getting hit like this and have to scramble to respond again.”
On Wednesday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said that the state is beginning to flatten the coronavirus curve, because of the actions taken by New York residents.
“We took dramatic actions in this state. New York pause program that closed down schools, businesses, social distancing, and it’s working,” Cuomo said during Wednesday’s press briefing. “It is flattening the curve and we see that again today so far. Meaning that curve is flattening because we are flattening the curve by what we are doing. If we stop what we are doing, you will see that curve change. That curve is purely a function of what we do day in and day out.”
Flattening the curve in New York does not mean an immediate decrease in coronavirus cases, but instead a slow decline in the number of daily cases. The decline in daily cases helps to alleviate the stress on the state’s health care system, ensuring that hospitals won’t become overwhelmed by the number of patients, which Cuomo touched upon during his press briefing.
“The number of patients hospitalized is down, and again we don’t just look at day-to-day data, you look at the three-day trend, but that number is down. The three-day average trend is also down,” Cuomo said. “So, we see the quote on quote flattening of the curve. We have more capacity in the hospital system than ever before, so we’ve had more capacity in that system to absorb more people.”
Cuomo also noted that if New York residents don’t continue to social distance and follow other measures that are helping to slow the spread of the virus, the flattening of the curve could stop.
“There’s a big caution sign. That’s if we continue doing what we’re doing,” Cuomo added. “We are flattening the curve because we are rigorous about social distancing, etc. So, if we continue doing what we’re doing then we believe the curve will continue to flatten. But, it’s not a time to get complacent, it’s not a time to do anything different than what we have been doing.”
“We have to remain diligent; we have to remain disciplined going forward,” the New York governor said.
Despite Cuomo pointing to success for the state thus far, the governor announced in the press conference that New York state saw its highest single-day death toll yet. On April 6, New York reported 779 deaths, which Cuomo called, “terrible.”
During his press briefing, a graphic was displayed showing how the number of deaths in the state has continued to increase on a daily basis, but the governor noted that the increasing number of deaths stem from those who have been hospitalized for a long period of time.
“The number of deaths will continue to rise, as those hospitalized for a longer period of time pass away,” Cuomo said. “The hospitalizations can start to drop but the deaths actually increase because the people who have been in the hospital for 11 days, 14 days, 17 days, pass away. That’s what we’re seeing.”
New York continues to have the highest number of cases across the U.S. According to a tracker provided by Johns Hopkins University, there are over 140,000 cases in New York and at least 13,007 deaths.
N95 masks in a box | Thomas Wells/The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal via AP Photo
OAKLAND — After California ordered 200 million masks a month to protect essential workers from coronavirus, will states and nations elsewhere lose out? Gov. Gavin Newsom says no.
Newsom announced Tuesday night that California — which boasts the fifth largest economy in the world — will channel nearly $1 billion toward obtaining 200 million masks a month for California’s healthcare personnel, grocery store clerks, homeless outreach teams and other frontline workers at heightened risk for the coronavirus.
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The market-altering magnitude of that purchase spurred questions about whether California would effectively compete with similar efforts across America and beyond, driving up prices and exacerbating an already-dire shortfall of medical equipment. But Newsom predicted the effort would have the opposite effect by augmenting the available supply.
“We are not just looking at supplies in a scarce marketplace where it’s a zero-sum game, we are being additive,” Newsom told reporters, saying “California, in this case, has been a catalyst to increase supply that will not only avail itself to the state of California but across this country and potentially in other parts of the globe.”
Governors in other virus-stricken states, like New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, have bemoaned a fragmented procurement system that leaves states vying for the same finite stock of supplies — a situation Cuomo likened to a bidding war on eBay.
But Newsom said California was looking to collaborate with other states, citing incipient efforts to coordinate with procurement counterparts and saying other governors have had a “favorable” response.
And while other governors have regularly blasted the federal government for not asserting a role as a central supplier, Newsom rejected the notion that California was delivering a rebuke to federal inaction.
“This is not political. This is not in any way, shape or form usurping or undermining,” Newsom said.
Newsom frequently compares California to a nation-state and did so again on Wednesday, saying California is uniquely positioned to wield the procurement powers that come with the world’s fifth-largest economy. Former Gov. Gray Davis echoed Newsom’s characterization and said “during a crisis, that makes the challenge even more important, even more weighty.”
“Being the governor of California can be a big asset, not only in developing relationships with other countries that can help provide needed medical equipment, but also dealing with the president or vice president,” said Davis, adding that the state’s economic might has opened up to Newsom “all kinds of relationships for development for trade, for helping one another out,” particularly given that China “sees this as an opportunity to be a positive actor on the world stage.”
The initiative could avoid undercutting other states and countries if it uses new suppliers and provides long-term stability in the market, encouraging companies to expand and up their production, said Prashant Yadav, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development who has worked for years to improve supply chains for medicines and health products. But it’s important that California allow other states to make purchases on the platform as well, Yadav said.
“If the dynamics are, this is only for the state of California or primarily for California — and others are second at best — then I think it risks fragmenting the market state by state, which is not what we want,” he said.
It will now fall to the Legislature to authorize hundreds of millions of dollars for masks, starting with a $495 million allocation that relied on cobbling together funds from different state pots. Under the deal Newsom announced, California would spend on masks alone $990 million — nearly the equivalent value of an up to $1.1 billion relief package the Legislature passed last month.
The governor’s deals are intended to secure 200 million masks per month for two months, with the first ones arriving at the beginning of May, according to a Capitol source.
Of the monthly allotment, 150 million will be the highly sought N95 masks, while 50 million will be surgical masks, Newsom said.
Newsom spoke to his “deep respect and gratitude” to legislators who could help “leverage our investment” in a manner that “protects the taxpayers, as well.”
While legislators applauded Newsom’s aggressive move, some were frustrated that they have received scarce information from his administration on the huge volumes of medical supplies the state has been rapidly stockpiling — especially since the Legislature controls the state’s pursestrings. The governor announced the deal on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show Tuesday night.
“It would be great to get a heads-up directly from the governor’s office rather than watching it on national TV,” Assemblyman Phil Ting (D-San Francisco), who chairs the Assembly Budget Committee, said in an interview on Wednesday morning. “We don’t have any information as to how many masks we’re buying, who we’re buying them from, at what price. …What are we obligated? For how long are we obligated?”
An array of private companies and nongovernmental organizations will lean on existing and already-vetted supply chains, many of them stretching to China, to obtain the new burst of masks, Newsom and administration officials said. The administration cited humanitarian organizations like Americares, medical supply companies like McKesson and Cardinal, and global procurement firms Big Mountain Development and JR Resources.
“We’ve leveraged all of those partnerships and relationships to build in to using their pipelines to leverage those to help,” Newsom said. “So, that has been a source of ongoing PPE, particularly masks, but it’s also shields and gowns and other kinds of commodities, both in real time and in our effort to build in the out weeks and the out months additional PPE.”
California also plans to shore up its supply by cleaning and then reusing masks. The state will work with federal authorities and a defense contractor to deploy technology allowing up to 80,000 masks a day to be prepared for a second use. That amounts to just under 2.5 million masks a month, roughly 1 percent of the total mask allocation Newsom touted.
The governor said the technology would allow masks to be sterilized and reused up to 20 times and that the state is already working with hospitals to retain some of their used masks.
But Stephanie Roberson with the California Nurses Association said her organization has examined various sterilization methods, and “we have determined unequivocally that none of these methods are safe or effective.”
“That’s concerning to us,” she said. “The science isn’t there from where we sit.”
Newsom said the state is spending $1.4 billion on personal protective equipment, though it remained unclear Wednesday as to whether the $990 million mask purchase is part of that total or in addition.
California got a stark reminder of the potential pitfalls of the scramble to obtain masks last week, when a health care union’s announced deal to acquire 40 million masks collapsed and yielded a federal fraud investigation.
Ting said that the massive outlay announced by Newsom would necessitate strict oversight — “We’re going to need a little more details before we are able to approve this purchase,” he said — and he said it generates more questions for elected officials who have already struggled to wring timely information from the Newsom administration.
“We understand we’re in crisis mode, so we don’t want to slow things down,” Ting said, “but having said that, we do have legislators that represent areas that haven’t seen anything. So their question is: ‘We hear 41 million masks have been delivered, have any of those have been delivered to my counties, my cities, my district?’ and they just haven’t heard anything.”
Those concerns notwithstanding, health care professionals said the reinforcements would arrive at a time of critical need. Roberson said more masks are needed given that “we literally have nurses dying now,” but she expressed skepticism about new shipments making it to those who need protection the most.
“The stats on Covid-positive health care workers continue to climb at an alarming rate, and so it is a good news the governor is prioritizing PPE by any means necessary,” Roberson said, “but I am still getting daily, daily concerns from our nurses that they are not getting the PPE in their hands.”
Catch episode three of Fox News’ 7-part series ‘Scandalous’ on Sunday, February 4 at 8 p.m. ET.
Linda Tripp, the longtime civil servant who surreptitiously recorded former White House intern Monica Lewinsky as she detailed her sexual relationship with President Bill Clinton, died Wednesday at the age of 70.
In November 2017, Tripp gave one of her final interviews to Fox Nation as part of their “Scandalous” docu-series on Bill and Hillary Clinton. The program traced the Arkansas Whitewater land deal scandal that led to the exposure of the 42nd president’s extramarital affair with Lewinsky, his impeachment by the House and subsequent acquittal by the Senate.
“I had a career with the civil service that spanned over 27 years and always had top-secret clearances,” said Tripp.
Tripp said that while she regretted that George H.W. Bush had lost his bid for reelection in 1992, she had high hopes for Clinton, the first president to be born during the post-World War II baby boom.
“There was an excitement there — and a sense of optimism,” said Tripp, adding that as the months passed, she grew disillusioned with the inner workings of the Clinton White House.
“I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with the information I was seeing,” she said. “So many distressing things were happening and it was nothing at all the way it was presented to the country and I struggled with what to do about it.”
Former independent counsel Kenneth Starr described Tripp in the docu-series as a “skillful assistant” in the White House counsel’s office. In 1994, Tripp moved across the Potomac to take a job in the public affairs office at the Pentagon, where she later began working with Lewinsky.
She told Fox Nation that she was “stymied” to see a young woman like Lewinsky take a job normally given to seasoned government employees and added that she had never met a “needier person in my entire life.”
Tripp’s recorded conversations with Lewinsky, which Tripp later turned over to Starr, exposed Clinton’s liasons with Lewinsky. Details of the sexual encounters between the president and the intern were recounted in graphic detail in Starr’s final report, published in September 1998.
Tripp told Fox Nation that the idea that she and Lewinsky were close friends was actually a “huge fallacy.”
“It wasn’t a friendship,” she said. “I wasn’t her mother on any level [but] her mother was absent.”
In 2018, Tripp spoke at a whistleblower conference, saying that while she lost a lot due to the tribulations of the Lewinsky scandal, her oath was always to the institution of the presidency and not a particular politician.
She added that she regretted “not having the gumption or the courage to do it [come forward] sooner.”
In another interview, Tripp described her derision for Hillary Clinton, claiming that every scandal that originated from within Bill Clinton’s administration was the “brainchild of Hillary.”
When Tripp was asked when she thought of the former first lady, she recalled a “lingering taint of scandal and wrongdoing — and a hint of criminal activity.”
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Social distancing and other mitigation efforts by the American people are working, raising hopes that the US can defy projected death tolls, the White House coronavirus task force said on Wednesday.
The task force projected on 31 March that the pandemic could claim between 100,000 and 240,000 American lives, even if the federal guidelines were maintained, based in part on evidence from Europe. There is now cautious optimism that the final total, while still monumental, will be lower.
Dr Deborah Birx, the response coordinator, told reporters: “We carefully looked at Italy and Spain and we are doing much better in many cases than several other countries and we’re trying to understand that. We believe that our healthcare delivery system in the United States is quite extraordinary.”
One model run by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington School of Medicine predicts the virus will kill 60,000 people in the US over the next four months – some 33,000 fewer than its estimate last Thursday.
Birx continued: “That is modelled on what America is doing. That’s what’s happening and I think what has been so remarkable to those of us who have been in the science field for so long is how important behavioural change is and how amazing Americans are in adapting to and following through on these behavioural changes.
“And that’s what’s changing the rate of new cases and that’s what will change the mortality going forward because now we’re into the time period of full mitigation that should be reflected within the coming weeks of decreasing mortality. That’s what we really hope to see. We are impressed by the American people.”
The public response will change the way scientists look at respiratory diseases and consider what is possible, Birx added. “We are still in awe, really, of the American people’s strength in this in following through.”
Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, added: “This is a consequence of the commitment of the American people … What’s been remarkable to watch here is how the American public has changed their behaviour when it protects the vulnerable.”
A sign near a Los Angeles freeway encourages people to stay at home to slow the spread of coronavirus. Photograph: David McNew/Getty Images
And Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told the briefing: “Remember, what you do with data will always outstrip a model. You redo your models depending upon your data and our data is telling us that mitigation is working. So again, as Dr Birx said, keep your foot on the accelerator because that’s what’s going to get us through this.”
The task force warned against complacency, however, insisting that the advice must still be followed and warning that moving too soon could result in a “second wave”. After the current guidelines end on 30 April, a battle is looming between cautious public health experts and Trump’s economic team who are eager to restart.
Laura Ingraham, a Fox News host whom Trump name-checked on Tuesday, tweeted: “At some point, the president is going to have to look at Drs. Fauci and Birx and say, we’re opening on May 1. Give me your best guidance on protocols, but we cannot deny our people their basic freedoms any longer.”
At Wednesday’s briefing, Trump sounded bullish about the prospects of getting back to business sooner than some had expected. “Aspirationally, I said let’s see if we can do it at Easter, but I said it would be very tough, and I was criticised for that.
“But I don’t think we’re going to be very far behind and some of these models are looking like Easter’s going to be a very important date anyway because of the curve. It’s hitting the top and it’s starting to come down.”
Trump claimed that Louisiana needs far fewer beds than expected, a makeshift hospital at the Javits Center in New York “isn’t too heavily used” and in general “the numbers are coming way down”. He went on, “I’m not getting called where they need ventilators any more, so we were right on those ventilators” – though he had taken a call from Senator Cory Gardner in Colorado on Tuesday night requesting a hundred.
Such claims are likely to raise fears that Trump is sliding back into complacency, even as states such as New York and New Jersey struggle for ventilators and other equipment. The current US death toll is more than 13,000.
Trump was also asked about reports that US intelligence officials warned as far back as late November that the coronavirus was spreading through China’s Wuhan region and posing a severe threat. He said: “When I learned about the gravity of it was some time just prior to closing the country to China … so I don’t know exactly, but I’d like to see the information.”
The briefing also strayed into absurdity when a reporter asked whether he would consider a pardon for Joe Exotic, who tried to hire a hit man to kill a rival and whose story is told in the hit Netflix series Tiger King. “You think he didn’t do it?” Trump said. “Are you recommending a pardon?” He added: “I’ll take a look.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued new guidelines for essential workers, such as those in the health care and food supply industries. The guidance is focused on when those workers can return to work after having been exposed to the new coronavirus.
The mixed-to-negative views of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus emergency also poses a significant threat to his reelection prospects, now that former Vice President Joe Biden has emerged as the presumptive Democratic nominee and the virus threatens to become the dominant issue of the 2020 campaign.
“There’s no ‘rally ‘round the flag’ because people see he hasn’t been handling it well,” said Margie Omero, a Democratic pollster who collaborates on a Navigator Research project that has been tracking public opinion of the outbreak and Trump’s response.
On Wednesday, six separate pollsters released new surveys. In all six, Trump’s approval rating was below 50 percent, ranging between 40 percent and 45 percent. And each suggested Americans had at best a mixed opinion of his response to the virus, and those with trendlines from weeks earlier in the crisis showed an uptick in the percentage of those critical of Trump’s response.
Trump’s low approval ratings early in a crisis defy historical precedent. Presidents, dating back to the start of the modern polling era after World War II, typically see their approval ratings rise significantly when the country faces emergencies, though they more typically occur around international conflicts, mostly involving the military.
According to Gallup’s archives, John F. Kennedy’s approval rating stood at 61 percent at the start of the Cuban Missile Crisis in the fall of 1962, but it had surged to 74 percent a month later.
In October 1979, Jimmy Carter had a 31 percent approval rating. But after the siege of the U.S. embassy in Iran, Carter’s approval topped 50 percent in early December and hit a high of 58 percent in January 1980. It didn’t begin sagging again until the spring of 1980, and Carter was defeated by Ronald Reagan in November.
More recently, George H.W. Bush’s approval rating shot up from 58 percent in early January 1991, to as high as 87 percent following the climax of Operation Desert Storm, the U.S.-led military action to drive Iraqi forces out of Kuwait.
Bush’s son, George W. Bush, had a 51 percent approval rating in the Gallup poll conducted in the four days leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. By the end of the month, as Bush handled the immediate recovery and investigation, his approval rating hit 90 percent.
Trump, by contrast, saw only the slightest increases in his approval ratings. According to the RealClearPolitics average, his approval rating stood at 44.5 percent a month ago, on March 8. By last week, it had ticked up to 47.4 percent — but as of Wednesday afternoon, including the new polls, it was back down to 45.2 percent.
“We saw something,” said Patrick Murray, the director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. “Whatever we saw was certainly not anywhere what the typical rally effect would look like, but there was a slight bump for him.”
Monmouth’s new poll, out Wednesday, showed Trump’s overall approval rating at 44 percent, down slightly from 46 percent last month, during the early days of the crisis.
In the new Monmouth poll, 46 percent of respondents said Trump was doing a good job dealing with the coronavirus outbreak, while 49 percent said he was doing a bad job. Last month, 50 percent said Trump was doing a good job, compared to 45 percent who said he was doing a bad job.
That slightly increasing dissatisfaction with the federal response to the crisis was echoed in other polls. A new CNN/SSRS poll out Wednesday showed 45 percent of Americans approve of the way Trump is handling the outbreak, while 52 percent disapprove. The previous poll was conducted in early March — days before any significant restrictions or physical and social distancing measures were recommended — and it showed a similar, 7-point spread between the percentages of Americans who disapproved and approved of Trump’s performance on the issue.
A Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday also showed a narrow majority disapproved of how Trump is handling the situation — 51 percent disapprove, compared to 46 percent who approve. That poll actually showed up a slight uptick in Trump’s overall job approval, to 45 percent, compared with the previous poll in early March, before any of the distancing measures were put in place by the federal government.
Those numbers were echoed by a POLITICO/Morning Consult poll out early Wednesday — which showed Trump’s approval rating at 44 percent, unchanged from four weeks ago at the start of the crisis — and other surveys released by Reuters/Ipsos and Navigator Research, the Democratic operation.
Private political polling generally shows the same stability — and a lack of a bounce — for Trump. Scott Tranter, the co-founder of the Republican data firm 0ptimus, told POLITICO that Trump’s job ratings have been relatively unchanged over the course of their polling. Some governors, Tranter said, have seen upticks in their approval ratings, while perceptions of Congress dipped during the negotiations over the last rescue package, which was passed and signed into law in late March after a week of back-and-forth between the parties on Capitol Hill.
Republicans aren’t sweating public opinion of Trump amid the Covid-19 pandemic, though the Trump campaign last week did tout results from battleground-state surveys that it said showed Trump with far greater approval ratings for his handling of the situation than in public polls.
Neil Newhouse, a partner at the GOP polling firm Public Opinion Strategies, said Trump’s near-constant approval ratings have always demonstrated that he has “a high floor and a very low ceiling.”
“He doesn’t have the room to grow that far. That’s just his ceiling,” Newhouse said. “People came into this with preconceived notions about the president, and there’s nothing he can do about that.”
While Trump’s approval ratings have dipped slightly in recent days, Newhouse cautioned that a strong response to the crisis in the upcoming weeks could reverse that negative momentum, at least at the margins.
“I think it’s still too soon to come to a verdict about how the president’s handled this,” he said. “There’s still a long way to go.”
Omero, the Democratic pollster and partner at GBAO Strategies, said Navigator’s data “beneath the surface” is more ominous for Trump. In the new poll out Wednesday, only 42 percent of voters said the word “competent” describes his reaction to the coronavirus, while 49 percent said it doesn’t apply. Forty percent say “honest” describes Trump’s handling of the situation, while 54 percent said it does not.
Part of what Trump can’t undo, Omero said, is his initial response to the virus during the earliest days of the outbreak. “He obviously downplayed the threat in the beginning, so I think people are responding to that,” she said.
Whether it’s the consistent polarization that has characterized his presidency or a specific reaction to his response to this grave crisis, it’s clear that Americans’ views of Trump break from U.S. political tradition.
“At the end of the day, the fact that there wasn’t a huge rally effect given the severity and the breadth of this crisis is really what’s unusual here,” said Monmouth’s Murray. “And it says a lot about Trump’s unwillingness or inability to capitalize on a moment like this.”
The novel coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. has seen its deadliest day yet, with nearly 2,000 deaths reported on Tuesday. The country’s death toll climbed to just below 13,000, as of Wednesday, according to the latest figures from Johns Hopkins University.
The virus, which was first reported in Wuhan, China, has infected more than 1.4 million people wordwide, including nearly 400,000 in the U.S., as of Wednesday. There were 1,970 deaths in the U.S. reported on Tuesday, which means the virus has killed an American every 45 seconds.
The majority of the deaths have been in New York, which saw its highest daily death toll with 731 fatalities on Tuesday. The state’s death count is now at nearly 5,500, New York Governor Cuomo confirmed. New York City alone has at least 4,009 casualties, as of Wednesday.
New Jersey has the second highest number of deaths in the country, with at least 1,232 fatalities, according to the New Jersey government website.
New Jersey and Connecticut both saw their largest daily death tolls, with 229 and 71 deaths, respectively, recorded on Tuesday. The tri-state area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut has seen a combined total of nearly 7,000 deaths among its nearly 191,000 infected people.
Michigan has seen at least 845 casualties, while 582 patients have died in Louisiana, according to each state’s health department.
California has seen at least 450 deaths, the Los Angeles Times reported on Tuesday, while Massachusetts has seen 356 fatalities, according to the Massachusetts Department of Health.
The U.S. braced for a surge in deaths this week. U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams told Fox News on Sunday this week will be “the hardest and the saddest week of most Americans’ lives.”
“[The surge in deaths] is not going to be localized. It’s going to be happening all over the country,” he warned. But “there is a light at the end of the tunnel if everyone does their part for the next 30 days,” he added.
Several states across the country have issued a “stay at home” order. The order requires residents to remain at home, while all non-essential businesses, including bars, restaurants and other places of public gathering, are shuttered.
President Donald Trump noted at a White House press briefing on Tuesday: “Even during this painful week, we see glimmers of very, very strong hope. And this will be a very painful week.”
“But signs are that our strategy is totally working. Every American has a role to play in winning this war [against the virus],” he added.
The graphic below, provided by Statista, illustrates the spread of COVID-19 in the U.S.
Data on COVID-19 cases is from Johns Hopkins University unless otherwise stated.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Advice on Using Face Coverings to Slow Spread of COVID-19
CDC recommends wearing a cloth face covering in public where social distancing measures are difficult to maintain.
A simple cloth face covering can help slow the spread of the virus by those infected and by those who do not exhibit symptoms.
Cloth face coverings should be washed regularly. A washing machine will suffice.
Practice safe removal of face coverings by not touching eyes, nose, and mouth, and wash hands immediately after removing the covering.
World Health Organization advice for avoiding spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19)
Hygiene advice
Clean hands frequently with soap and water, or alcohol-based hand rub.
Wash hands after coughing or sneezing; when caring for the sick; before, during and after food preparation; before eating; after using the toilet; when hands are visibly dirty; and after handling animals or waste.
Maintain at least 1 meter (3 feet) distance from anyone who is coughing or sneezing.
Avoid touching your hands, nose and mouth. Do not spit in public.
Cover your mouth and nose with a tissue or bent elbow when coughing or sneezing. Discard the tissue immediately and clean your hands.
Medical advice
Avoid close contact with others if you have any symptoms.
Stay at home if you feel unwell, even with mild symptoms such as headache and runny nose, to avoid potential spread of the disease to medical facilities and other people.
If you develop serious symptoms (fever, cough, difficulty breathing) seek medical care early and contact local health authorities in advance.
Note any recent contact with others and travel details to provide to authorities who can trace and prevent spread of the disease.
Stay up to date on COVID-19 developments issued by health authorities and follow their guidance.
Mask and glove usage
Healthy individuals only need to wear a mask if taking care of a sick person.
Wear a mask if you are coughing or sneezing.
Masks are effective when used in combination with frequent hand cleaning.
Do not touch the mask while wearing it. Clean hands if you touch the mask.
Learn how to properly put on, remove and dispose of masks. Clean hands after disposing of the mask.
Do not reuse single-use masks.
Regularly washing bare hands is more effective against catching COVID-19 than wearing rubber gloves.
The COVID-19 virus can still be picked up on rubber gloves and transmitted by touching your face.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday that the coronavirus outbreak could “stabilize” within weeks if the state maintains strict social distancing policies, even as he announced the highest daily death count yet and said life for New Yorkers will never be the same.
“I don’t think we return to normal. I don’t think we return to yesterday,” Cuomo said at a news conference in Albany. “I think if we’re smart, we achieve a new normal.”
The governor offered a glimmer of hope that the state’s stringent policies — closing nonessential businesses and requiring residents to stay home — are helping to slow down the spread of the virus.
Those social distancing measures are working, he said: “It is flattening the curve.”
If those rules are maintained, he said, there’s reason to believe the health “system should stabilize over these next couple of weeks.”
The coronavirus pandemic continues to hammer the Empire State, new figures showed. New York reported 10,453 new cases Wednesday, comprising 4,927 positive tests in New York City and 5,526 in the rest of the state.
Half of all tests in two New York City boroughs – Queens and the Bronx – came back positive, the state reported.
Cuomo said the state appears to be flattening the curve of the outbreak, referring to a line chart that projects the growth in new cases over time. But he quickly added that would only last if people continue to adhere to social distancing guidelines.
“If we stop what we are doing, you will see that curve change,” Cuomo said.
The bad news, he said, “isn’t just bad. The bad news is actually terrible.”
Cuomo announced that 779 people had died from the virus since the last count, marking the state’s highest daily death toll yet.
New York is the epicenter of the COVID-19 crisis in the United States, with 140,386 confirmed cases and more than 5,489 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Congress won’t be back in town until April 20, but lawmakers are already considering passing another “interim” coronavirus relief package as soon as this week. The timing depends, of course, on whether Democrats and Republicans can agree on what the bill should include.
Everyone can get behind at least one measure:Lawmakers from both parties support allocating more money to small businesses, via a new loan program called the Paycheck Protection Program.
In the CARES Act, $349 billion was set aside for PPP, which includes forgivable loans for small businesses and nonprofits that have been hurt by the effects of the coronavirus outbreak. Already, more than 220,000 applications have been processed, accounting for $66 billion in loans, since the program launched last Friday. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has called for another $250 billion for the program, in the wake of the overwhelming demand.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, too, supported a vote specifically on these funds. “I will work with Secretary Mnuchin and Leader Schumer and hope to approve further funding for the Paycheck Protection Program by unanimous consent or voice vote during the next scheduled Senate session on Thursday,” he said in a statement.
At this point, McConnell’s statement only includes support for the narrow increase in funding to PPP. Democratic leaders, meanwhile, want the latest funding boosts to be a bit more expansive.
In a proposal they released on Wednesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called for an “interim” spending bill that includes $100 billion for hospitals and health systems, $150 billion for state and local governments, and more support for SNAP (also known as food stamps) along with the additional small-business funding.
“As Democrats have said since Day One, Congress must provide additional relief for small businesses and families, building on the strong down-payment made in the bipartisan CARES Act,” Pelosi and Schumer said in a statement.
The passage of more money this week will be heavily dependent on whether the two parties are able to sort out their differences once more.
Congress approved $2.2 trillion in relief money. It’s not nearly enough.
While Congress has already approved well over $2 trillion in relief funds to respond to the outbreak’s effects on the economy, it’s likely far from enough given how much the illness — and related social distancing measures — are hurting businesses and workers.
Take the intense demand that the small-business loan program has seen since it began last Friday.
In the past few days, PPP has processed hundreds of thousands of loans, with thousands of organizations continuing to submit applications. Because of the immense interest in the program, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) has repeatedly warned that money for PPP could run out before all the businesses and nonprofits that need it are able to apply. Rubio had estimated that existing funds would likely be depleted by June 6.
Both Republicans and Democrats are backing more money to ensure that small businesses and nonprofits will be able to use the program.
Democrats, however, are interested in adding a few other items to the bill. One of their stipulations is some conditions on the small-business money. Pelosi and Schumer would like to see half of the new funds, or $125 billion, allocated to community-based financial institutions to increase access for this money to businesses that have been less likely to seek out funds from the large banks.
As the Wall Street Journal reported, minority-owned businesses and rural businesses are among those that are less likely to have relationships with larger banks. Additionally, one of the biggest issues to emerge with the PPP is that institutions like Bank of America, TD Bank, and Chase require businesses to have an existing relationship with the bank in order to even apply to the program. That limitation is shutting out many small businesses and is an issue that Democrats are trying to address by putting requirements on how these funds are distributed.
Additionally, Democrats are urging the allocation of more funds to hospitals and states as they continue to grapple with surging costs of resources that are needed to combat the coronavirus pandemic. Their requests, which include $100 billion for hospitals, community health centers, and health systems, are intended to help bolster the funds these organizations need for personal protective equipment and other coronavirus-related needs.
As NPR reports, hospitals are struggling to deal with the uptick in costs related to fighting the coronavirus, while they simultaneously suffer from reduced revenue as other medical procedures are tabled. This money would be in addition to $100 billion that was allocated to help hospitals in the CARES Act.
The $150 billion requested for states is also aimed at supplementing what’s already been allocated: The CARES Act had previously been criticized by state officials for including just $150 billion for states and cities — an amount many deemed insufficient for the scale of the problem.
Democrat leaders are pushing for funds that can help expand the maximum SNAP support families can receive by 15 percent as well.
Democrats argue that these adds are straightforward and necessary commitments, while at least one Republican has accused them of being obstructionist. “Senate Democrats should drop their shameful threat to block this funding immediately. Our small businesses desperately need help — now,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) said in a statement.
A vote on this spending bill is complicated again by the current recess
McConnell had signaled that he’s interested in holding a vote for this spending measure via unanimous consent in the Senate or voice vote, both methods that don’t require all lawmakers to be physically present. The House, too, could try to use similar approaches.
Even if Democrats and Republicans can find common ground on a proposal, however, the bill could encounter procedural stumbling blocks, much like the CARES Act did. Since lawmakers in both chambers are working remotely from their home districts, opposition by even a single member could mean some would have to physically return to the Capitol.
For the CARES Act, for example, House leaders had planned to hold a vote via voice vote — which garnered pushback from Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY). Because of Massie’s focus on getting a physical quorum, many lawmakers needed to fly back to the Capitol at the last minute in order to participate in the vote.
Massie has already tweeted his disappointment with the possibility of a voice vote or unanimous consent for the latest spending bill, indicating he might try to pull a similar maneuver this time around.
Before lawmakers even get to that point, however, Democrats and Republicans will need to figure out exactly what it is Congress will be considering.
Much-awaited stimulus cash will begin flooding into millions of bank accounts next week in the first wave of payouts to shore up the nation’s wallets.
Millions of taxpayers will begin receiving the extra money to pay rent, groceries and other bills next week, or possibly as early as Thursday or Friday, some say.
The first group – estimated to cover 50 million to 60 million Americans – would include people who have already given their bank account information to the Internal Revenue Service.
The first group also would include Social Security beneficiaries who filed federal tax returns that included direct deposit information, according to an alert put out today by U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich. Dingell’s announcement said the expectation is that the first direct deposits would hit in mid-April, likely the week beginning April 13.
But other sources say many bank accounts could see the money as soon as Thursday or Friday.
Here’s something you need to know: “For security reasons, the IRS plans to mail a letter about the economic impact payment to the taxpayer’s last known address within 15 days after the payment is paid. The letter will provide information on how the payment was made and how to report any failure to receive the payment. If a taxpayer is unsure, they’re receiving a legitimate letter, the IRS urges taxpayers to visit IRS.gov first to protect against scam artists.”
If you filed your 2019 tax return, for example, the IRS is going to use the same bank account information that you might have supplied for the direct deposit for your income tax refund. You’d want to check your account to verify whether the money has arrived.
If you did not yet file a 2019 return, the IRS is using information from your 2018 tax filing to calculate the payment. And the money would be deposited directly into the same banking account reflected on the return.
The next wave of money could begin as early as the week of April 20 for a group of people who receive Social Security benefits via direct deposit but may not make enough money to be required to file a federal income tax return in 2018 or 2019. You will not need to file any extra forms to receive this money.
“The estimates are that nearly 99% of Social Security beneficiaries who do not file a return receive their benefits through direct deposit,” according to Dingell’s alert.
Finally, the last wave of money would involve the mailing of actual stimulus checks at a later date. The paper checks themselves would be staggered over several weeks.
The first paper checks are expected to go out to families who have the lowest incomes, possibly those who make less than $10,000 a year, but do not have direct deposit information on file with the IRS.
The idea is to get money to those who need it the most but may be the least likely to have bank accounts.
The first round of checks could be sent out sometime after April 24, according to experts, into the first week of May. Dingell’s announcement said first group of checks are expected to be go out to families the week of May 4.
But if you’re stuck getting a check, experts say, you may need to wait into May, June and July – depending on how many physical checks the IRS actually ends up mailing.
Your best bet, if you have a bank account, is to make sure that the IRS has your bank account information for direct deposit.
The Treasury Department is expected to launch a web-based portal system sometime late next week that would allow people to provide their own direct deposit information in order to speed the delivery of money and avoid the checks altogether. See www.irs.gov/coronavirus for updates and information on the portal.
The goal is to make the process smoother so people can receive money more quickly by making sure that stimulus money goes directly into bank accounts.
Waiting around for a check could take months. And who’s going to be watching your mailbox if you’re battling the coronavirus in the hospital?
Thieves who make stealing our money their business also would be watching mailboxes, then attempting to steal checks and later cash them via unreputable outfits.
How much money you get will depend on your adjusted gross income, based on information on your 2018 or 2019 tax return.
Tax filers with adjusted gross income up to $75,000 for individuals and up to $150,000 for married couples filing joint returns will receive the full payment.
The maximum is $1,200 for an adult – $2,400 for a married couple – and $500 for children under age 17.
Taxpayers would have an opportunity to reconcile some differences relating to stimulus payouts when they file the 2020 tax return in the 2021 filing season.
“You’ll get any additional money due to you then, but you won’t have to pay anything back if your payment was too high,” according to Jackie Perlman, principal tax research analyst with H&R Block’s Tax Institute.
The stimulus money is not taxable.
“First and foremost, the payments will not be included in 2020 income. Any payment you receive is an advance payment of a credit that will appear on your 2020 income tax return,” said Ken Milani, professor of accountancy at the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame.
Milani gives this example: Say a single taxpayer with two children (both under 17) receives a stimulus check for $2,200 – which breaks down to $1,200 for the taxpayer plus another $1,000 for the children.
When the taxpayer prepares a 2020 income tax return, a $2,200 credit appears on the Form 1040. Elsewhere on the return, the $2,200 advance payment of the credit will surface.
The result is a “wash,” he said.
The final result, Milani said, is that the taxpayer receives $2,200 (non-taxable) to spend and the money is not returned to the IRS.
The vast majority of people do not need to take any action. The IRS will calculate and automatically send the “economic impact payment” to those eligible.
Follow Detroit Free Press reporter Susan Tompor on Twitter: @tompor.
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