In Brief: April 17, 2020

Trump gives governors 3-phase plan to reopen economy

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump gave governors a road map Thursday for recovering from the economic pain of the coronavirus pandemic, laying out “a phased and deliberate approach” to restoring normal activity in places that have strong testing and are seeing a decrease in COVID-19 cases.

“We’re starting our life again,” Trump said during his daily press briefing. “We’re starting rejuvenation of our economy again.”

He added, “This is a gradual process.”

The new guidelines are aimed at easing restrictions in areas with low transmission of the coronavirus, while holding the line in harder-hit locations. They make clear that the return to normalcy will be a far longer process than Trump initially envisioned, with federal officials warning that some social distancing measures may need to remain in place through the end of the year to prevent a new outbreak. And they largely reinforce plans already in the works by governors, who have primary responsibility for public health in their states.

“You’re going to call your own shots,” Trump told the governors Thursday afternoon in a conference call, according to an audio recording obtained by The Associated Press. “We’re going to be standing alongside of you.”

Amid talk of restarting economy, virus keeps killing in New York City

NEW YORK — Hopeful talk about getting people out of their homes and back to work in some parts of the country seems a far cry from the harsh reality in New York and its suburbs: Thousands of people infected with the coronavirus are still streaming into hospitals every day. Hundreds are still dying.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo noted the lack of major improvement Thursday as he announced another 606 deaths in the state and said current social isolation rules will stay in place through at least May 15. The number dying was down from a day earlier, but remains alarmingly high.

New York hospitals are still jammed with nearly 18,000 coronavirus patients, fewer than the crushing numbers authorities once feared but still at crisis levels that have barely budged for more than a week. Nearly 4,400 of those patients were on ventilators, the majority of whom, if past trends hold, are unlikely to survive.

The virus has also continued to rage through the metro area. In New Jersey, deaths have more than doubled in a week, to more than 3,500 as of Thursday. In Connecticut, fatalities rose 40% in the last week to over 970 overall. Most of the deaths in both states have been in the greater New York City area.

Conditions inside hospitals have stabilized as help has poured in. At Jacobi Hospital in the Bronx, the emergency room is less crushed, but demands remain heavy in the intensive care unit, said nurse Sean Petty.

Some people turn to herbal medicine for virus without proof

NEW DELHI — With no approved drugs for the new coronavirus, some people are turning to alternative medicines, often with governments promoting them.

This is most evident in India and China, densely populated countries with a deep history and tradition of touting such treatments, and where there’s sometimes limited access to conventional medicine.

In India, where a lockdown of its 1.3 billion residents is underway, the government faced criticism after claiming some treatments might help prevent infections. In China, where the pandemic began, officials made unsubstantiated claims that traditional medicine was key to fighting the virus. In Venezuela, where the health care system is severely crimped, President Nicolas Maduro pitched drinking an herbal tea.

The World Health Organization had advised against taking “traditional herbal remedies” on its website. It later acknowledged that some were turning to alternative medicine “to alleviate some of the milder symptoms of COVID-19,” WHO spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic said.

Dr. Mike Ryan, WHO’s emergencies chief, welcomed rigorous studies of alternative treatments “like we would of any drug.” He said numerous studies are underway in China, many testing traditional therapies.

From wire sources

Facebook to warn users who ‘liked’ coronavirus hoaxes

Facebook will soon let you know if you shared or interacted with dangerous coronavirus misinformation on the site, the latest in a string of aggressive efforts the social media giant is taking to contain an outbreak of viral falsehoods.

The new notice will be sent to users who have clicked on, reacted to, or commented on posts featuring harmful or false claims about COVID-19 after they have been removed by moderators. The alert, which will start appearing on Facebook in the coming weeks, will direct users to a site where the World Health Organization lists and debunks virus myths and rumors.

Facebook, Google and Twitter are introducing stricter rules, altered algorithms and thousands of fact checks to stop the spread of bad misinformation online about the virus.

Challenges remain. Tech platforms have sent home human moderators who police the platforms, forcing them to rely on automated systems to take down harmful content. They are also up against people’s mistrust of authoritative sources for information, such as the WHO.

“Through this crisis, one of my top priorities is making sure that you see accurate and authoritative information across all of our apps,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote on his Facebook page Thursday.

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25 years after Oklahoma City bombing, anxiety remains high

OKLAHOMA CITY — In the 25 years since a truck bomb ripped through a federal building in downtown Oklahoma City and killed 168 people, the United States has suffered through foreign wars, a rise in mass shootings and a much deadlier act of terror, the Sept. 11 attacks.

But the April 19, 1995, assault on a sleepy city in the nation’s heartland shocked many Americans out of their sense of security and awakened them to their own vulnerability. Terror wasn’t just a foreign problem, it was here. Events since have only contributed to a shared anxiety.

Ordinarily, survivors and victims’ families would gather Sunday at the memorial where the Alfred P. Murrah Building once stood to pay tribute to the lives that were lost and tragically altered, as they have every year since the bombing. But the 25th anniversary ceremony was canceled due to the coronavirus restrictions, denying the public the chance to collectively grieve a past tragedy because a current one is unfolding. Instead, the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum will offer a pre-recorded video that will air online and on TV and will include the reading of the names of everyone killed followed by 168 seconds of silence.

“There are a lot of things to grieve this spring, and the loss of the commemoration in person is one of them,” Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt recently told The Associated Press. “But I think we’ve accepted that’s clearly the right thing to do.”

During last year’s ceremony, Holt stressed the importance of educating new generations about the attack and the dangers of the violence and hatred that inspired it. Among those killed by the massive truck bomb that sheared off the building’s front half were 19 children, most of whom were in a day care center in the basement.

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China’s economy in worst downturn since ’70s in virus battle

BEIJING — China suffered its worst economic contraction since at least the 1970s in the first quarter as it fought the coronavirus, and weak consumer spending and factory activity point to a longer, harder recovery than initially expected.

The world’s second-largest economy shrank 6.8% from a year ago in the three months ending in March after factories, shops and travel were closed to contain the infection, official data showed Friday.

That was stronger than some forecasts that called for a contraction of up to 16% but China’s worst performance since before market-style economic reforms started in 1979.

Some forecasters earlier said China, which led the way into a global shutdown to fight the virus, might rebound as early as this month. Activity started to improve in March after China’s outbreak eased and the ruling Communist Party allowed factories to reopen, but analysts have been cutting growth forecasts as negative trade and other data pile up.

“I don’t think we will see a real recovery until the fourth quarter or the end of the year,” said economist Zhu Zhenxin at the Rushi Finance Institute in Beijing.

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Nurses push back on pressure to work without right equipment

Nurse Mike Gulick was meticulous about not bringing the coronavirus home to his wife and their 2-year-old daughter. He’d stop at a hotel after work just to take a shower. He’d wash his clothes in Lysol disinfectant. They did a tremendous amount of hand-washing.

But at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California, Gulick and his colleagues worried that caring for infected patients without first being able to don an N95 respirator mask was risky. The N95 mask filters out 95% of all airborne particles, including ones too tiny to be blocked by regular masks. But hospital administrators said they weren’t necessary and didn’t provide them, he said.

Then, last week, a nurse on Gulick’s ward tested positive for the coronavirus, which causes COVID-19. The next day, doctors doing rounds on their ward asked the nurses why they weren’t wearing N95 masks, Gulick said, and told them they should have better protection.

For Gulick, that was it. He and a handful of nurses told their managers they wouldn’t enter COVID-19 patient rooms without N95 masks.

“I went into nursing with a passion for helping those who are most vulnerable and being an advocate for those who couldn’t have a voice for themselves, but not under the conditions we’re currently under,” Gulick said.