Rabu, 01 April 2020

Coronavirus created new dictator, emboldens authoritarians worldwide - Business Insider - Business Insider

On Monday, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban effectively became the world's newest dictator when the country's parliament voted to suspend elections and granted him the power to rule by decree with no time limit.
"At this point, Hungary is a full-on dictatorship. No if, ands, or buts. This was simply the last step in the process," Sheri Berman, a political scientist at Barnard College, told Insider.
But experts on authoriatiarnism say that while Hungary presents a particularly concerning case in terms of leaders exploiting the crisis, it is not unique.
"Authoritarian leaders, whether in authoritarian regimes (e.g. China and Venezuela) or in (nominal) democracies (e.g Israel and UK), are using the coronavirus crisis, like most crises, to strengthen their grip on power and weaken dissent and opposition," Cas Mudde, a political scientist at the University of Georgia, told Insider.

The coronavirus pandemic has morphed Hungary into a full-blown authoritarian state, as autocratic leaders around the world are exploiting panic and fear surrounding the virus to consolidate power and dismantle democracy, experts warn.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Monday was granted sweeping emergency powers by the country's parliament in order to combat the coronavirus, giving him the right to rule by decree indefinitely (the power to bypass the national assembly) and suspend existing laws. The European Union member has also suspended future elections, effectively eradicating democracy in the country and making Orban the world's newest dictator.

Orban, one of Europe's most controversial leaders who's garnered a reputation for Islamophobia, xenophobia, and anti-Semitism, was already widely considered to be a populist authoritarian and an enemy to democratic values.

"At this point, Hungary is a full-on dictatorship. No if, ands, or buts. This was simply the last step in the process," Sheri Berman, a professor of political science at Barnard College and author of "Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe," told Insider.

Hungary's new law also includes harsh penalties — up to five years in prison — for anyone the Hungarian government decides has disseminated "false" information.

Human rights groups and top European officials have expressed grave concern about Orban's new powers.

"This bill creates an indefinite and uncontrolled state of emergency and give Viktor Orban and his government carte blanche to restrict human rights," David Vig, Amnesty International's Hungary Director, said in a statement. "This is not the way to address the very real crisis that has been caused by the COVID-19 pandemic."

Meanwhile, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen warned Hungary it's "of utmost importance that emergency measures are not at the expense of our fundamental principles and values...democracy cannot work without free and independent media."

The global coronavirus power grab

Orban is hardly unique in terms of using the coronavirus crisis as a means of extending or expanding his rule.

"Authoritarian leaders, whether in authoritarian regimes (e.g. China and Venezuela) or in (nominal) democracies (e.g Israel and UK), are using the coronavirus crisis, like most crises, to strengthen their grip on power and weaken dissent and opposition," Cas Mudde, a political scientist at the University of Georgia who's an expert on populism, extremism, and democracy, told Insider.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu looks on as he delivers a statement during his visit at the Health Ministry national hotline, in Kiryat Malachi, Israel March 1, 2020. REUTERS/Amir Cohen — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu looks on as he delivers a statement during his visit at the Health Ministry national hotline, in Kiryat Malachi, Israel

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been accused of conducting a "coronavirus coup." Netanyahu, who's been indicted on corruption charges, has seen his trial delayed and rule of the country extended amid the pandemic.

"In Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu has tried to use the coronavirus to extend his power, and thereby stay out of prison, but he still has to depend on alliances with independent parties and politicians," Mudde, author of "The Far Right Today," said.

"Hungary is particularly problematic, as the government has virtually no counterpower and liberal democracy had been largely dismantled in the past decade. Consequently, as Orban now rules by decree, and most courts have already been under his rule, Hungary has become truly an authoritarian state, despite its nominal democratic facade," Mudde added.

Echoing this perspective, Berman said the most striking instance of a leader using coronavirus panic as a power grab is Hungary. But she added that "other dictatorial minded leaders," such as Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, are also "exploiting the crisis and people's fears to attempt to consolidate power and undermine their opponents."

From Brazil to Belarus, authoritarian-minded leaders are are "using fear to consolidate their power while at the same time peddling untruths about the causes and nature of the crisis," Berman said.

The pandemic could lead to an erosion of democracy worldwide

Bolsonaro, who has misleadingly called the novel coronavirus a "measly cold," has been attacking the media and accusing it of attempting to spark hysteria over the pandemic to undermine his government. The Brazilian leader has ignored science and remained obstinate over adopting measures, such as lockdowns, to quell the spread of the virus.

Similarly, Erdogan's government in recent days has detained people, including a trucker driver who shared a video that trended on social media, who have been critical of its response to the virus.

In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte has been granted broad emergency powers and has warned he's ordered the police and military to shoot anyone who "creates trouble."

"Let this be a warning to all. Follow the government at this time because it is critical that we have order," Duterte said on Wednesday. "And do not harm the health workers, the doctors...because that is a serious crime. My orders to the police and the military, if anyone creates trouble, and their lives are in danger: shoot them dead."

Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus, has rejected the science on coronavirus over what he refers to as the global "psychosis" surrounding the pandemic. Lukashenko, who has been in power for a quarter century and is known for brutal crackdowns on dissent, has encouraged citizens to drink vodka and visit the sauna to stay healthy.

Trump Bolsonaro — President Donald Trump is seated before a dinner with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, left, at Mar-a-Lago, Saturday, March 7, 2020, in Palm Beach, Fla. turday, March 7, 2020, in Palm Beach, Florida.

In many countries, including China and Israel, governments are engaging in invasive surveillance in the name of public health. Coronavirus has also seen governments worldwide, from Bolivia to Chile, postpone elections or important referendums.

Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump has blamed China for the spread of the virus, for a time referring to it as the "Chinese virus." Though Trump has taken a more serious tone on the pandemic this week, the president and his political allies in both Congress and the media (Fox News) have suggested, without evidence, that Democrats hyperbolized the threat of coronavirus in order to hurt his reelection chances.

The trend of autocrats and would-be authoritarians downplaying the threat of coronavirus and scapegoating or blaming other groups could backfire as the pandemic worsens, but the emergency powers such leaders are being granted at present are also increasing fears among experts about the long-term erosion of democracy across the world.

"We could have a parallel epidemic of authoritarian and repressive measures following close if not on the heels of a health epidemic," Fionnuala Ni Aolain, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights, told the New York Times on Monday.

"In times of crisis, checks and balances are often ignored in the name of executive power. The danger is that the temporary can become permanent," Florian Bieber, a professor history and politics at the University of Graz, Austria, wrote in a recent op-ed for Foreign Policy. "If strongmen are threatened with a loss of legitimacy, they're likely to double down on their authoritarian practices and take advantage of the state of emergency to consolidate power"

Do you have a personal experience with the coronavirus you'd like to share? Or a tip on how your town or community is handling the pandemic? Please email covidtips@businessinsider.com and tell us your story.

And get the latest coronavirus analysis and research from Business Insider Intelligence on how COVID-19 is impacting businesses.

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2020-04-01 22:50:12Z
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Brazil and Coronavirus: Defiant Bolsonaro Dismisses Threat - The New York Times

RIO DE JANEIRO — As coronavirus cases and deaths mount in Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro has remained defiant, the last notable holdout among major world leaders in denying the severity of the coronavirus.

Brazilians, he declared last week, are uniquely suited to weather the pandemic because they can be dunked in raw sewage and “don’t catch a thing.”

Defying guidelines issued by his own health ministry, the president on Sunday visited a busy commercial district in Brasília, the capital, where he called on all but elderly Brazilians to get back to work.

Then he insisted that an anti-malaria pill of unproved efficacy would cure those who fall ill with the virus that has killed more than 43,000 people worldwide.

“God is Brazilian,” he told a throng of supporters. “The cure is right there.”

Several world leaders — among them President Trump and Prime Minister Boris Johnson — were slow to grasp the menace of the highly contagious virus, and reluctant to embrace disruptive and economically painful social distancing measures that have become the norm in much of the world.

But Mr. Bolsonaro remains the highest profile holdout in eschewing the scientific consensus on the lockdown measures required to keep health care systems from being overwhelmed.

His handling of the crisis has led to consternation across the country’s political spectrum as congressional leaders, editorial boards and the head of the Supreme Court have essentially beseeched Brazilians to ignore their president. A movement to impeach Mr. Bolsonaro is gaining popular support, with Brazilians banging pots from their windows nightly to repudiate their president.

“He has demonstrated that he is unfit to be president,” said Maria Hermínia Tavares de Almeida, a political scientist at the University of São Paulo. “He remains in power for one very simple reason: No one wants to create a political crisis to oust him in the midst of a health emergency.”

Since the new coronavirus was first detected in Brazil in late February, the virus has spread quickly across the country, with large clusters in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, the country’s most populous states. As of Wednesday, there were 6,836 confirmed cases in Brazil, where testing is limited, and 240 recorded deaths.

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In a televised address Tuesday night, Mr. Bolsonaro spoke about the virus in graver terms, calling it “the greatest challenge of our generation.”

But the president notably did not endorse strict quarantine measures and misleadingly paraphrased remarks by the head of the World Health Organization to assert that informal workers should continue to toil.

“The collateral effects of the measures to fight the coronavirus cannot be worse than the actual illness,” he said.

In much of the country, his words were drowned out by protesters banging pans and chanting “Down with Bolsonaro!”

In mid-March, governors started urging Brazilians to stay indoors unless they work in critical sectors and called on several business categories to shut down. Since then, commerce, transit and flights have been sharply reduced, throttling Latin America’s largest economy, which has yet to recover from a brutal recession in 2014.

As the patchwork of lockdown measures hardened, Mr. Bolsonaro lashed out at governors for falling into a state of “hysteria” and asserted, without proof, that they were inflating coronavirus figures for political gain. He attacked journalists, accusing them of drumming up panic in an effort to undermine his government. He has called the virus a “measly cold.”

“Some will die” from it, he said, because “such is life.”

Over the weekend, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram deleted posts by Mr. Bolsonaro in which he questioned social distancing measures, deeming the posts in violation of guidelines prohibiting content that endangers public health.

On Tuesday, the World Health Organization urged leaders in the Americas to urgently expand patient-care capability while implementing social distancing measures that may have to remain in place for at least three months.

“Such measures might seem drastic but they are the only way to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed by too many sick people,” Dr. Carissa F. Etienne, the director of the Pan American Health Organization, the regional office of the World Health Organization, told reporters in Washington. She added that social distancing protocols “remain our best bet” to fight the virus.

Mr. Bolsonaro and his allies say he is unfairly being portrayed as reckless for positing that the strict isolation measures could be more detrimental to the welfare of Brazilians than allowing the virus to crest more quickly.

“The president and the government are working on two fronts: saving lives and saving jobs,” said Victor Hugo de Araújo, a federal lawmaker who serves as Mr. Bolsonaro’s main conduit to Congress. “What the government is doing is trying to find middle ground between total lockdown and allowing the economy and commerce to continue.”

While Mr. Bolsonaro’s conduct may appear politically self-destructive, he is probably making a calculated bet, said Malu Gatto, an assistant professor of Latin American politics at University College London.

“Governors are taking action, effectively ensuring isolation practices, while Bolsonaro can continue to preach that the federal government is focused on promoting economic growth,” Ms. Gatto said. That positions the president to “reap the benefits,” she added, of lockdown measures while publicly portraying himself as a champion of Brazilians who are out of work.

Mr. Bolsonaro’s response to the pandemic has made him an aberration in a region where most leaders moved swiftly to implement stay-at-home measures, shut down borders and close businesses. Such measures have been adopted in other politically polarized nations including Chile, Argentina and Colombia, with little discord.

Another outlier is Nicaragua, where the socialist government of Daniel Ortega has kept schools open and convened mass rallies. Rosario Murillo, Nicaragua’s vice president and its first lady, said on Sunday that the nation could not come to a standstill and that “with faith we can conquer fear.”

While the virus has devastated the global economy, countries in Latin America stand to take particularly painful hits because several were struggling to lift growth, curb inflation and pay off debt well before the pandemic plunged them into crisis mode.

Brazil’s Senate last week passed an assistance package to give an estimated 30.8 million informal workers a $115 monthly subsidy for three months. Earlier in the month, Brazil declared a state of public calamity, which allows the government to exceed spending caps and boost spending on health care.

In the face of the mixed messages coming from the capital, Brazilians in vulnerable communities have been taking matters into their own hands in recent days in an effort to shield themselves from the virus.

Indigenous leaders have shut off access to remote villages, in some cases barricading roads, fearing the coronavirus could wipe out entire communities that have limited access to medical care.

“They’ve been trying to adhere to isolation guidelines and restrict the comings and goings of Indigenous people to and from the cities,” said Márcio Santilli, an Indigenous rights activist.

But Mr. Santilli said there is grave danger in Indigenous territories that have been overrun by wildcat miners and loggers, whose trespasses are impossible to curb. And he also expressed concern about uncontacted tribes, whom Evangelical missionaries have been trying to reach.

On Wednesday, a 20-year-old woman from the Kokama tribe near the border with Colombia tested positive for the virus, the first case reported among Brazil’s Indigenous groups, according to the health ministry’s Indigenous health service agency, Sesai.

In favelas in Rio de Janeiro, drug gangs have imposed nightly curfews and community leaders have launched campaigns to persuade people to limit their movement to essential tasks.

Verônica Brasil, an activist in the City of God favela, one of the city’s largest, said volunteers had been collecting hygiene products and food baskets to help families already struggling to get by before businesses started closing.

“Despair is growing,” Ms. Brasil said. “People are running out of food and losing jobs.”

Ernesto Londoño and Manuela Andreoni reported from Rio de Janeiro and Letícia Casado reported from Brasília. Frances Robles contributed reporting from Key West, Florida, and Alfonso Flores Bermúdez contributed reporting from Managua, Nicaragua.

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2020-04-01 22:21:08Z
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Trump called Russia’s coronavirus aid to U.S. ‘very nice.’ Putin may use it as a propaganda coup. - The Washington Post

Russian Defense Ministry Reuters Boxes with medical equipment and masks to help fight covid-19 on board a Russian military transport plane ahead of its departure to the United States from Moscow on April 1, 2020.

MOSCOW — When Russia announced it was sending the world’s biggest cargo plane, an Antonov-124, to the United States loaded with medical aid, President Trump called it “very nice.”

But others wonder if the real beneficiary is the Kremlin, leveraging a chance for some pandemic propaganda.

[Sign up for our Coronavirus Updates newsletter to track the outbreak. All stories linked in the newsletter are free to access.]

The Russian military flight took off Wednesday, Russia’s Defense Ministry announced, but it gave no details on what kind of equipment the plane was carrying. The Trump administration also has not elaborated on the aid from Russia — or on how much else could be coming from other countries. The Russian plane arrived at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport on Wednesday afternoon local time.

“China sent us some stuff, which was terrific. Russia sent us a very, very large planeload of things, medical equipment, which was very nice,” Trump told reporters Monday, apparently mistaken that the Russian plane had already arrived.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/video/world/russian-state-tv-reports-plane-is-headed-to-us-loaded-with-coronavirus-aid/2020/04/01/3ba9ff55-a3bc-4f33-9dda-bbaffd11a957_video.html

South Korean President Moon Jae-in said last week that Trump had asked him for testing kits and medical equipment and that South Korea — one of the countries hardest hit by the virus — was doing what it could.

“Other countries sent us things that I was very surprised at, very happily surprised,” Trump said Monday, though he did not cite specific shipments.

‘A gift TO the Kremlin’

A different type of surprise was registered from some critical of Moscow’s motives.

A former commanding general of the U.S. Army in Europe, Ben Hodges, tweeted that a photograph published by Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs of thousands of cardboard boxes stacked in a plane hold was a “hoax” because “no professional Loadmaster in the world . . . in any air force . . . would load a plane like this.”

“But it’s a gift TO the Kremlin, not FROM it, if it is true,” he added.

[Live Updates: The latest on the coronavirus pandemic]

The idea that Russia — under U.S. sanctions for its interference in the 2016 presidential election and its annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 — was sending medical aid in a giant military aircraft to the most powerful nation on earth seemed astounding to some longtime Kremlin watchers.

A Russia analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Andrew S. Weiss, tweeted: “This is nuts,” calling it a Kremlin propaganda ploy. Nina Jankowicz, an expert on disinformation at the Wilson Center, said in a Twitter post that it was “mind boggling.”

Kirill Kudryavtsev

AFP/Getty Images

A man works in a deserted Red Square in Moscow on April 1. The city is under lockdown to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said the plane refueled at Shannon in Ireland before continuing across the Atlantic. The aid was offered by Russian President Vladimir Putin when he spoke by phone to Trump on Monday.

Earlier aid to Italy

In Russia, however, the aid shipment was framed as part of Russia’s wider help for countries struggling with covid-19. With Moscow on lockdown, Russia’s reported cases of coronavirus rose by 440 in a day Wednesday, reaching 2,777 — slower than the previous day, when the rise was 501.

Publicity around the aid also would boost Putin, whose messaging on the coronavirus has been weak and contradictory. Other analysts wondered if a longer-range objective was in play, such as gaining leverage to ease U.S. sanctions in the future.

[Analysis: Coronavirus reopens Europe’s angry divide]

Trump’s admiration for Putin has sparked criticism and speculation ever since the U.S. president’s election, but former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report last year did not find evidence that Trump colluded with Russia over its election interference. Trump said the inquiry was a witch hunt and that the report exonerated him.

It is not Moscow’s first shipment of medical aid to a NATO country this month. Earlier it sent 15 planeloads of medical equipment and military virologists and epidemiologists to Italy, in trucks emblazoned with “From Russia with love.”

“To put it mildly, it’s a propaganda coup for Putin,” said Andrew Foxall, director of research at the Henry Jackson Society in London. “Putin has long argued that democracy is not the sunny uplands that the West professes it to be and in the current crisis the world’s democracies don’t appear to be any more effective than its autocracies in stemming the spread of” the coronavirus.

Foxall also said Putin wants to make a specific point about the United States: putting forward the case that “in some senses, Russia is now superior to the U.S.”

“And the argument for that is: If Russia weren’t superior, why would it be sending [aid] to the U.S., and why would the U.S. be accepting it?” Foxall said.

Putin working remotely

Russian officials have said Putin’s only motive is to lend a hand at a difficult time for all. The Russian president is working remotely “as much as possible,” his spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday, after Putin last week shook hands with a doctor who Tuesday came down with covid-19.

Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, said Russia took advantage of a moment when the European Union had failed to help its hardest-hit members.

[Perspective: I returned to the U.K. from Thailand in January with a fever of 103. I wasn’t tested for coronavirus.]

“In international relations there is no goodwill without some calculus,” said Trenin. “There is a propaganda element, certainly. While the E.U. dragged its feet and scratched its head, Russians and Chinese were practicing solidarity, not just preaching it.”

Trenin said Putin hoped sending aid would lead to improved relations in the future.

“With the United States, Moscow’s calculus is based on the expectation that covid-19, like any other major adverse development in world affairs, has the potential to radically change the global agenda,” he said. “On 9/11, you would recall, Putin called Bush to offer support and help. The idea then and now is that a common cause would help make a clean slate and put the more contentious issues to one side, to be dealt with later and in an improved atmosphere.”

Mark Galeotti, director of London-based analytical firm Mayak Intelligence, said that the Russian aid delivered Putin some useful optics for his domestic audience after he fumbled his messaging on covid-19 but that it would not damage the United States.

“I think we have to move beyond the usual sort of paranoias at the moment. Of course, the Russians are motivated by the desire to look like good citizens, but mainly I think [it’s] for domestic consumption,” he said.

“Two weeks ago [Putin] was saying, ‘It’s not a pandemic. The situation is under control,’ and so forth. And now they’re in a massive sort of clampdown,” said Galeotti. “So obviously there’s a lot of disquiet, and it’s nice to be able to say, ‘Don’t worry — look, the Americans are in such a bad state that we’re giving them help.’ It’s an attempt to say, ‘No, look, we aren’t behind the curve.’ ”

As Russian coronavirus cases rise, Putin delegates tough action to Moscow mayor

Russia’s official coronavirus numbers are relatively low. Even Moscow’s mayor is questioning the count.

Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world

Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news

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2020-04-01 22:22:50Z
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Coronavirus created new dictator, emboldens authoritarians worldwide - Business Insider - Business Insider

On Monday, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban effectively became the world's newest dictator when the country's parliament voted to suspend elections and granted him the power to rule by decree with no time limit.
"At this point, Hungary is a full-on dictatorship. No if, ands, or buts. This was simply the last step in the process," Sheri Berman, a political scientist at Barnard College, told Insider.
But experts on authoriatiarnism say that while Hungary presents a particularly concerning case in terms of leaders exploiting the crisis, it is not unique.
"Authoritarian leaders, whether in authoritarian regimes (e.g. China and Venezuela) or in (nominal) democracies (e.g Israel and UK), are using the coronavirus crisis, like most crises, to strengthen their grip on power and weaken dissent and opposition," Cas Mudde, a political scientist at the University of Georgia, told Insider.

Hungary's new law also includes harsh penalties — up to five years in prison — for anyone the Hungarian government decides has disseminated "false" information.

Human rights groups and top European officials have expressed grave concern about Orban's new powers.

The global coronavirus power grab

Orban is hardly unique in terms of using the coronavirus crisis as a means of extending or expanding his rule.

From Brazil to Belarus, authoritarian-minded leaders are are "using fear to consolidate their power while at the same time peddling untruths about the causes and nature of the crisis," Berman said.

The pandemic could lead to an erosion of democracy worldwide

Similarly, Erdogan's government in recent days has detained people, including a trucker driver who shared a video that trended on social media, who have been critical of its response to the virus.

In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte has been granted broad emergency powers and has warned he's ordered the police and military to shoot anyone who "creates trouble."

And get the latest coronavirus analysis and research from Business Insider Intelligence on how COVID-19 is impacting businesses.

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Brazil and Coronavirus: Defiant Bolsonaro Dismisses Threat - The New York Times

Brazilians, he declared last week, are uniquely suited to weather the pandemic because they can be dunked in raw sewage and “don’t catch a thing.”

Then he insisted that an anti-malaria pill of unproved efficacy would cure those who fall ill with the virus that has killed more than 43,000 people worldwide.

“God is Brazilian,” he told a throng of supporters. “The cure is right there.”

But Mr. Bolsonaro remains the highest profile holdout in eschewing the scientific consensus on the lockdown measures required to keep health care systems from being overwhelmed.

Latest Updates: Coronavirus Outbreak

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In a televised address Tuesday night, Mr. Bolsonaro spoke about the virus in graver terms, calling it “the greatest challenge of our generation.”

“The collateral effects of the measures to fight the coronavirus cannot be worse than the actual illness,” he said.

In much of the country, his words were drowned out by protesters banging pans and chanting “Down with Bolsonaro!”

“Some will die” from it, he said, because “such is life.”

Indigenous leaders have shut off access to remote villages, in some cases barricading roads, fearing the coronavirus could wipe out entire communities that have limited access to medical care.

“They’ve been trying to adhere to isolation guidelines and restrict the comings and goings of Indigenous people to and from the cities,” said Márcio Santilli, an Indigenous rights activist.

In favelas in Rio de Janeiro, drug gangs have imposed nightly curfews and community leaders have launched campaigns to persuade people to limit their movement to essential tasks.

“Despair is growing,” Ms. Brasil said. “People are running out of food and losing jobs.”

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Italy, Seen By White House As A U.S. Analogue, Extends Nationwide Lockdown - NPR

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A soldier walks past the Pantheon monument in central Rome on April 1, as Italy extends its lockdown aimed at curbing the spread of the COVID-19 disease. The country has more than 110,000 coronavirus cases. Filippo Monteforte/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

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Filippo Monteforte/AFP via Getty Images

Italy is extending its coronavirus lockdown to April 13, as the country's death toll from COVID-19 now tops 13,000 people. The death toll rose by the smallest amount in days, but officials say it's too soon to declare the epidemic over. The number of new cases, which had been declining, was higher than the previous day.

News of the continued lockdown in Italy comes after members of the White House's coronavirus task force referred to Italy as an example of how the coronavirus could play out in the U.S.

"We think Italy may be the most comparable area to the United States at this point," Vice President Pence said during an interview with CNN Wednesday.

Hours later, Italy's health ministry said the country's death toll had risen to 13,155, with a total of more than 110,000 cases. More than 28,000 people are hospitalized. By contrast, the U.S. now has more than 200,000 confirmed cases.

Italy's population is equal to about 19% of the U.S. total: around 62 million people, compared to some 332 million in the U.S., according to the most recent CIA World Factbook data.

On Wednesday, Italy's leaders said the coronavirus crisis is far from over, despite reaching a plateau in new cases.

"Addressing the nation, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte told Italians, we realize we're asking for more sacrifices but we're facing an acute emergency and we cannot lift the lockdown now," NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports from Rome for our Newscast unit.

Italians face fines of around $230 if they violate lockdown restrictions. In his remarks, Conte also compared the COVID-19 pandemic to "an epochal tsunami" that requires new thinking in order to cope with it.

In the U.S., Dr. Deborah Birx said Italy is starting to see progress in its fight against the coronavirus, saying at a White House briefing Tuesday, "you can see that they're beginning to turn the corner in new cases."

"This is what gives us a lot of hope," Birx said, showing a graphic depicting Italy's curve of new cases finally starting to descend from its height.

People in Italy, Birx added, are "entering their fourth week of full mitigation and showing what is possible when we work together as a community, as a country, to change the course of this pandemic together."

The U.S. is not under a national lockdown order, although many states have suspended school and business operations and ordered residents to stay at home for all but essential activities. President Trump has asked Americans to stay home when they can, and to avoid forming groups of 10 or more people, through the end of April.

Administration officials say the mitigation efforts are working: without them, they say, about 2.2 million Americans could die during the COVID-19 pandemic. But they also warn that even if Americans closely follow federal advice, current projection models still predict between 100,000 to 240,000 deaths in the U.S.

In Tuesday's briefing, Birx was asked to discuss which groups of Americans are most vulnerable to dying from COVID-19.

She replied, in part, "We're seeing in New York exactly what we saw in Italy: very low mortality. Not to say that young people under 30 or young people under 40 aren't getting ill. They are, but most of them are recovering. So the profile looks identical to Italy, with increasing mortality, with age and preexisting medical conditions."

Dr. Anthony Fauci said that overall, the picture should encourage Americans to observe strict mitigation measures, including social distancing. As Birx did, he used Italy as an example of the horrible toll that awaits the U.S., even if Americans heed federal guidance to wash hands and avoid public contact.

"The deaths and the intensive care and the hospitalization always lag behind that early indication that there are less new cases per day," Fauci said, "the way we saw in Italy and the way we're likely seeing — I don't want to jump the gun on it — we're seeing little inklings of this right now in New York."

"We're going to continue to see things go up," Fauci warned. "We cannot be discouraged by that because the mitigation is actually working and will work."

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2020-04-01 21:23:40Z
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