CDC release early demgraphic data on who gets the virus . . . Approximately 90 percent of the 1,482 hospitalized patients included in the study released Wednesday had one or more underlying medical conditions. Older people infected with the virus were more likely to be hospitalized; men were more likely to endure severe cases than women; and black people were hospitalized at a higher rate than whites. The study also found that hospitalization rates for Covid-19 have been significantly higher than for recent outbreaks of influenza. New York Times

 

Coronavirus was spreading in NYC weeks before first official case . . . The coronavirus was likely spreading in New York City as early as February, weeks before the Big Apple’s first confirmed case, according to a report citing new research. Dr. Adriana Heguy, a member of an NYU Grossman School of Medicine team studying the genomes of coronaviruses from city patients, told The New York Times that early findings indicate that the virus was in the city well before a Manhattan woman in her 30s became the city’s first official patient on March 1. Heguy and her team learned of the discrepancy by analyzing the different viral mutations between the city cases, according to the report. Certain viruses, Heguy told the paper, shared mutations not seen elsewhere. “That’s when you know you’ve had a silent transmission for a while,” she said. New York Post

 

Baltimore, Washington DC, and Philadelphia could be next hotspots . . . Baltimore, Washington DC and Philadelphia are being closely watched as potential looming hot spots amid the coronavirus pandemic due to a recent spike in infections. Dr Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, said national health officials were growing increasingly concerned about the Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia metro areas. In the past week, Dr Birx has also warned about the growing cases in Chicago and Detroit and the states of Colorado and Pennsylvania. 

'We're watching them because they are starting to go on that upside of the curve,' Dr Birx said. Daily Mail

 

Hundreds of young Americans have been killed by virus . . . Two weeks after her husband died alone in an intensive care unit in Fort Myers, Fla., Nicole Buchanan is quarantined at the home they shared with their 12-year-old daughter, wrestling not only with grief but also with why and how the coronavirus could steal someone so young and healthy. “My husband didn’t have diabetes, he didn’t have asthma, he didn’t have high cholesterol. He didn’t have anything,” Buchanan said. “There’s just so much I’ll never know, that I’ll never get the answers to.” Washington Post

 

 

103-year-ol Italian woman survived coronavirus with "courage" and "faith" . . . To recover from the coronavirus, as she did, Ada Zanusso recommends courage and faith, the same qualities that have served her well in her nearly 104 years. Italy, along with neighboring France, has Europe’s largest population of what has been dubbed the “super old” — people who are at least 100. As the nation with the world’s highest number of COVID-19 deaths, Italy is looking to its super-old survivors for inspiration. “I’m well, I’m well,” Zanusso said Tuesday during a video call with The Associated Press from the Maria Grazia Residence for the elderly in Lessona, a town in the northern region of Piedmont. “I watch TV, read the newspapers.” Associated Press

 

Bye bye Bernie: Sanders finally quits . . . 

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders withdrew Wednesday from the Democratic race, a helpful moment for Joe Biden, who has had to suffer with kissing his socialist keister and devoting resources to finishing him off. Republicans will be disappointed, and they should be. Now Biden can consolidate his power base, get the left behind him to the extent he can, and start running a general election campaign early. On the other hand, at least the socialist movement gets diminished. Republicans were far too eager to have Bernie as the nominee. A man who honeymooned in the Soviet Union should be permitted nowhere near the presidency. Democrats should be ashamed they ever considered him. White House Dossier 

 

Far-left groups issue demands for Biden

 

Hospital driven to financial ruin by venture linked to Biden's brother . . . Pennsylvania officials are seeking access to critical medical supplies and equipment from an abandoned rural hospital at the center of a fraud scandal involving Joe Biden's brother, James Biden. Ellwood City Medical Center in Pennsylvania, which is currently controlled by a court-appointed bankruptcy trustee, was one of a string of rural hospitals owned by and driven into financial ruin by Americore Health, a business venture linked to James Biden. Washington Free Beacon

 

Trump's new chief of staff Meadows rattles White House in crisis mode . . . President Donald Trump’s new chief of staff, Mark Meadows, has escalated tensions in the White House with a swift series of staff changes that have drawn complaints from some in the West Wing about his management style, according to people familiar with the matter. Trump changed his top aide last month just as the U.S. coronavirus outbreak began to accelerate. After a slow start -- Meadows didn’t resign his North Carolina House seat until the end of March -- the new chief of staff kicked off his tenure by ousting a top legislative liaison last week and then, on Monday, replacing the White House press secretary, Stephanie Grisham. Bloomberg

 

Oversight sputters as Trump doles out coronavirus aid . . . Congress assured America that its frenzied rush to deliver $2 trillion in coronavirus relief wouldn't lead to waste, fraud or abuse because they packed the sprawling law with powerful safeguards. Yet, as the Trump administration begins pumping billions of taxpayer dollars into the economy, none of the built-in oversight mechanisms are even close to functional. And their absence will soon be glaringly obvious as the gusher of cash and extraordinary new power granted to the administration fuels massive logjams, headaches and fear across overburdened hospitals, overcrowded unemployment offices and many sectors of the ailing economy. Politico

 

 

White House and Democrats do battle over small business funding . . . The Trump administration’s demand for $250 billion in new funding for small businesses provoked a high-stakes standoff Wednesday as congressional Democrats rejected the no-strings-attached request and made an expensive counter-offer. As of late Wednesday, Senate Republicans and Democrats planned to bring competing measures to the floor on Thursday, virtually ensuring that neither measure would pass. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said any package that included $250 billion in new small-business funding would need to include more than $250 billion in extra money for hospitals, state and local governments and food stamp recipients. Washington Post

 

 

AOC remained in posh DC apartment as coronavirus ravaged her district . . . Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) spent the opening weeks of the coronavirus outbreak in her luxury Washington, D.C., apartment as the deadly virus ravaged her New York City district. On April 1, Ocasio-Cortez held a "virtual forum" with New York City constituents from her lavish apartment building in D.C.'s swanky Navy Yard neighborhood. Her Democratic primary opponent, Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, criticized the freshman lawmaker's absence. "She is out of touch," Caruso-Cabrera said in a statement. "For weeks families have been worried about where they are going to get their next paycheck. AOC hasn't been here to see their desperation and their struggle to survive. Why is she in DC when Congress isn't in session?" Washington Free Beacon

 

Ilhan Omar gets pushback for defending illegal immigrants as "American taxpayers" . . . Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., sparked online controversy Wednesday after she attempted to reframe reporting on her desire to direct coronavirus aid to illegal immigrants. "There, fixed it for you," Omar tweeted alongside an image of a New York Post headline that read: "'Squad' members want to make illegal immigrants eligible for coronavirus aid." The Minnesota congresswoman crossed out the phrase "illegal immigrants" and replaced it with "American taxpayers." Fox News

 

Tracy Morgan defends Trump from coronavirus criticism . . . 

 

US Intel report warned in as early as November of coronavirus crisis . . . As far back as late November, U.S. intelligence officials were warning that a contagion was sweeping through China’s Wuhan region, changing the patterns of life and business and posing a threat to the population, according to four sources briefed on the secret reporting.Concerns about what is now known to be the novel coronavirus pandemic were detailed in a November intelligence report by the military's National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI), according to two officials familiar with the document’s contents.

The report was the result of analysis of wire and computer intercepts, coupled with satellite images. It raised alarms because an out-of-control disease would pose a serious threat to U.S. forces in Asia -- forces that depend on the NCMI’s work. And it paints a picture of an American government that could have ramped up mitigation and containment efforts far earlier to prepare for a crisis poised to come home. ABC News

 

 

Previoiusly undisclosed Iran nuclear weapons site identified . . . 

A new Iranian nuclear weapons site has been identified by a team of experts, who are now calling on Tehran to acknowledge the previously undisclosed site to international inspectors. The Institute for Science and International Security announcedon Wednesday that it has evidence Iran operated a nuclear weapons construction facility in northern Iran until at least 2011, when it was likely destroyed as Western nations began to investigate the country's weapons program. The information was found in a tranche of records recently smuggled out of Iran by Israel. Washington Free Beacon

 

Another great moment for the Obama Iran deal

 

Pence vows "tough questions" for WHO over handling of coronavirus . . . Vice President Mike Pence told "Hannity" Wednesday night that the U.S. will ask "tough questions" of the World Health Organization (WHO) over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic after the global health agency's director warned President Trump and other world leaders against "politicizing" the outbreak. "This is a president who believes in accountability, and the American taxpayers provide tens of millions of dollars to the World Health Organization," Pence said. "And as the president said yesterday, I suspect we will continue to do that, but that doesn't mean that at the right time in the future we aren't going to ask the tough questions about how the World Health Organization could have been so wrong. Fox News

 

WHO chief tells Trump to "behave" . . . World leaders must “behave” if they want to avoid a wave of new fatalities related to the coronavirus pandemic, the World Health Organization’s top official said in response to President Trump’s criticism of his performance. "We will have many body bags in front of us if we don't behave,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters Wednesday when asked to address Trump's specific criticisms of the WHO. “When there are cracks at national level and global level, that’s when the virus succeeds. For God's sake, we have lost more than 60,000 citizens of the world.” Washington Examiner

 

 

Pope suggests coronavirus caused by climate change . . . 

Pope Francis likened the coronavirus pandemic to recent fires and floods as one of “nature’s responses” to the world’s ambivalence to climate change. “There is an expression in Spanish: ‘God always forgives, we forgive sometimes, but nature never forgives,'” the pope said in an interview published Wednesday in The Tablet, a United Kingdom-based Catholic weekly. New York Post

Another six million workers expected to join jobless rolls . . . The coronavirus outbreak continues its devastating march across the American economy, and Thursday will bring fresh evidence. The Labor Department will announce the number of new unemployment claims filed last week at 8:30 a.m. Eastern. Several analysts expect the report to show that six million workers joined the jobless rolls, in addition to the nearly 10 million who filed over the previous two weeks. With astonishing swiftness, the pandemic has shut down businesses large and small, as if “the economy as a whole has fallen into some sudden black hole,” said Kathy Bostjancic, chief U.S. financial economist at Oxford Economics. New York Times

 

Investment firm dangled huge profits to rich using coronavirus programs for poor . . . A New York investment firm pitched wealthy investors in recent days on a way to make returns of 22% to 175% using U.S. government programs designed to help Americans keep their jobs and boost the coronavirus-stricken economy, according to a marketing document seen by Reuters. Following questions posed by Reuters, Arcadia Investment Partners LLC, which has about $1 billion under management, said it had put its plans on hold. Reuters

 

Americans could start receiving stimulus checks today . . . 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. USA Today

 

The all had stable jobs. Now they want to work for Amazon . . . One was an executive chef in Milwaukee. One was a small-business owner in Oregon. One managed merchandise for touring musicians. These three newly out-of-work Americans have one thing in common: They are all recently applied to work at an Amazon. AMZN 1.56% com Inc. warehouse. Amazon’s 100,000 job openings in its warehouses and delivery network are a rare bright spot in a U.S. economy that has been wracked by the shutdown of ordinary life, causing about 10 million people to apply for unemployment in March due to coronavirus-related layoffs. While numerous restaurant, hospitality and hourly workers have flocked to Amazon after being laid off or furloughed, the opportunities are also attracting seasoned professionals in traditionally white-collar jobs.  Wall Street Journal

 

Linda Tripp dies at 70 . . . Linda Tripp, a key figure in the presidential sex scandal that nearly brought down the administration of Bill Clinton over his affair with onetime White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky, leading to the president’s impeachment in 1998, died April 8. She was 70. The death was confirmed by her son, Ryan Tripp, who declined to discuss other details. Acquaintances said she had been hospitalized for breast cancer. Ms. Tripp was praised as a whistleblower by some for calling out presidential misbehavior with an intern in the Oval Office, and was vilified by others as a snitch who betrayed her friendship with Lewinsky in an effort to bring down a president. Washington Post