An increasing number of businesses both large and small recently joined in the battle against the novel coronavirus. A small business in the United States changed course from sewing boat sails to sewing cotton masks for caregivers on the frontlines. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi sets sail for this story
…

Taiwan’s invitation to American journalists harassed by China to locate here instead would free them from government pressure but distance them from Asia’s hub for international news.Foreign minister Joseph Wu tweeted the invitation Saturday. He mentioned three media organizations whose reporters had been thrown out of China, apparently in response to U.S. curbs against journalists working for state-run Chinese media in the United States.“He said as that as New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post journalists face intensifying hostility in China, I would like to welcome you to be stationed in Taiwan, a country that’s a beacon of freedom and democracy,” ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou said, referring to Wu’s tweet.As Wall Street Journal reporters Julie Wernau embraces a colleague before her departure at Beijing Capital International Airport in Beijing, March 28, 2020.Unlike in China, in Taiwan foreign reporters are legally free to interview scholars, ordinary people and government officials without filing applications.Taiwan police seldom interrupt a journalist’s fieldwork, again unlike as in China, and the foreign ministry does not expel reporters over disagreements about their news coverage. China threw out three Wall Street Journal reporters in February because of the news organization’s headline calling China a “sick man of Asia” due to its COVID-19 outbreak.Those protections, typical of a democracy, however, come at the expense of distance from China, the epicenter for Asia news closely followed by American audiences. China was the source of COVID-19 in December. Over the past two years, it has captured attention for its role in the Sino-U.S. trade dispute.Americans, including those based in Taiwan, need visas every time they visit China unless transiting for three to six days in some of the larger cities. If discovered gathering news there without Chinese government permission, they could be expelled, and any China-based colleagues harassed.“It don’t think it’s easy for journalists to make their story if they are not on the ground in Beijing or Shanghai, but if Taipei can be an alternative choice when there’s a situation or scenario, that would be a good thing,” said Alexander Huang, strategic studies professor at Tamkang University in Taiwan.        
…

In tiny Munfordville, Kentucky, the closure of the public library has cut people off from a computer used only for filling out census forms online. In Minneapolis, a concert promoting the once-a-decade count is now virtual. In Orlando, Florida, advocates called off knocking on doors in a neighborhood filled with new residents from Puerto Rico.Across the U.S., the coronavirus has waylaid efforts to get as many people as possible to participate in the count, which determines how much federal money goes to communities. The outbreak and subsequent orders by states and cities to stay home and avoid other people came just as the census ramped up for most Americans two weeks ago.On Saturday, the Census Bureau announced it was going to continue to suspend its 2020 census field operations for another two weeks, to April 15.That leaves thousands of advocates, officials and others who spent years planning for the U.S. government’s largest peacetime mobilization scrambling to come up with contingency plans for pulling it off amid a pandemic.In this March 24, 2020 photo, forms from the U.S. Census Bureau arrive at a home in Orlando, Fla. The coronavirus has waylaid efforts to get as many people as possible to take part in the census.Right now, everybody is faced with figuring out how to outreach to our communities not being face to face,'' said Jennifer Chau, leader of a coalition of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander organizations in Phoenix that passed out 300 reusable boba tea cartons in January to people who signed a card pledging to complete their census form.Nonprofits and civic organizations leading census outreach efforts are pivoting to digital strategies. Texting campaigns, webinars, social media and phone calls are replacing door-knocking, rallies and face-to-face conversations. But it comes at a cost: Experts say connecting with trusted community leaders in person is the best way to reach people in hard-to-count groups that may be wary of the federal government.It’s making it exponentially more difficult to get the kind of accurate count that is needed for this census. There’s no sugarcoating it. It’s really tough,” said Arturo Vargas, CEO of NALEO Educational Fund, a Latino advocacy group. Thank goodness for technology. We wouldn't be able to do what we're doing without it.''Although the U.S. Census Bureau is spending $500 million on outreach efforts, including advertising, it's relying on more than 300,000 nonprofits, businesses, local governments and civic groups to encourage participation in their communities.FILE - This March 19, 2020, file photo shows an envelope containing a 2020 census letter mailed to a U.S. resident, in Glenside, Pa.The groups are recalibrating their messaging to address the upheaval in people's lives, including job losses and stay-at-home orders, and to focus on how census numbers help determine the distribution of federal aid or medical supplies their communities may get during the coronavirus crisis. The groups also are emphasizing that if people answer the questionnaire online, by phone or by mail now, they can avoid having a census taker sent to their house to ask them questions come late spring and summer.We want people to understand that even though we have this health emergency going on, there’s a connection to the census with how the distribution of funds to states is all going to rest on how many people there are in a community,” Minnesota’s demographer Susan Brower said.The 2020 census will help determine how many congressional seats and Electoral College votes each state gets, as well as the distribution of some $1.5 trillion in federal spending.The coronavirus has forced the U.S. Census Bureau to delay the start of tallies of homeless people and other transient populations such as racetrack workers, college students, prisoners and nursing home residents. It has pushed back the deadline for wrapping up the count by two weeks, to mid-August.Signs advertising the 2020 U.S. Census cover a closed and boarded-up business amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Seattle, Washington, U.S., March 23, 2020.Of all of our worst nightmares of things that could have gone wrong with the census, we did not anticipate this set of actions," said Al Fontenot of the Census Bureau.But our staff has been extremely resilient about looking for solutions.”On the plus side, more people at home now have time to answer the questionnaire, and the deadline extension offers chances to reach out to more people, Brower said.In some places, outreach done well before the virus spread in the U.S. is paying off, but organizers aren’t sure it will last. For the first week that people could start answering the 2020 questionnaire, New York City — which had dedicated $40 million to outreach efforts — was well ahead of its 2010 pace of self-responses. But now it’s the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak.The coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms for most people, including fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For others, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia and death.More than 30 percent of U.S. residents already had answered the census questionnaire as of Friday. Most of the temporary census takers hired by the government won’t be sent out until May to knock on the doors of homes where people haven’t yet responded.We are trending much better than 10 years ago, even in this craziness," said Sheena Wright, president and CEO of United Way of New York City.That's despite events meant to generate participation getting canceled or delayed.Pittsburgh had commissioned Jasmine Cho, who uses cookie decorating to highlight Asian American and social justice issues, to lead decorating workshops with a census theme. An October session drew almost 50 people and grabbed attention, but workshops planned for March and April were canceled.I’m hopeful that under the current quarantine measures, that people will actually pay more attention to their census mailings and take the time to complete it,” Cho said.The self-described cookie activist'' and the city are in talks to make an online instructional video about census-themed cookie decorating.San Francisco was supposed to ring in Census Day on April 1 with one of its famous cable cars rolling through iconic neighborhoods, but that became a casualty of COVID-19. Money from a $3.5 million budget earmarked for food and venues for census form-filling parties and town halls in the Bay Area will now go toward video marketing and printed materials, according to Stephanie Kim of the United Way Bay Area.It’s been hard to have to pivot on all the activities and events they were planning for for a long time,” Kim said. “So many organizations had planned for big community get-togethers.”       
…

Almost all American presidents have faced a crisis while in office, whether it’s a political scandal, natural disaster, economic calamity or terrorism. But not all have the misfortune of having to deal with epidemics and pandemics. Here are some of them and how historians view their performance.Woodrow Wilson – Spanish fluPresident Woodrow Wilson faced the influenza pandemic of 1918-19 that killed 20 million to 50 million people around the world while the United States was fighting in World War I.“Even though President Trump has talked about being at war with the pandemic, in the case of Wilson and the Spanish flu, the United States really was at war,” said Thomas Schwartz, professor of history at Vanderbilt University.FILE – President-elect Woodrow Wilson and President William Howard Taft laugh on the White House steps before departing together for Wilson’s inauguration in Washington, D.C., U.S. in March 1913.The war was the reason Wilson’s administration downplayed the crisis, from the moment the outbreak began until it eventually killed 675,000 Americans.
 
“Woodrow Wilson never made a public statement of any kind about the pandemic,” said John M. Barry, professor at the Tulane University School of Public Health and author of The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History.
 
“It was an indication of Wilson’s intense focus on the war – that was all he cared about,” Barry said.
 
Like Britain, France and Germany, the U.S. kept the outbreak secret because it didn’t want to show weakness to the enemy. At the height of the outbreak, Wilson sent troops abroad packed into ships that were “cauldrons of virus transfers,” said Max Skidmore, political science professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and author of Presidents, Pandemics and Politics.Eventually a quarter of all Americans became infected, including several who worked at the White House. Many historians believe Wilson himself fell ill. Barry said that during negotiations ahead of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles in Paris, Wilson had “103, 104 fever, violent coughs, and other symptoms that were unique to the 1918 virus.”As states and cities began to order what we now know as social distancing – closing businesses and schools, banning public gatherings – Wilson’s administration continued to downplay the pandemic. Spain, a neutral party in the war, was the only country that reported casualty numbers accurately, hence the name Spanish flu, even though the flu did not originate there.
 Dwight Eisenhower – Asian flu      
 
The H2N2 virus was first reported in Singapore in February 1957 and reached the United States that summer.President Dwight D. Eisenhower was aware of the impending pandemic, Skidmore said, but he initially refused to start a nationwide government-supported vaccination program. “He had faith in the ability of free-market vaccines to take care of the impending crisis,” Skidmore said. “And as a result, the death rate was perhaps about doubled what it might have been otherwise.”FILE – President Dwight Eisenhower speaks during a news conference in Washington, Dec. 10, 1958.In August 1957, Eisenhower asked Congress for $500,000 in funding and authorization to shift an additional $2 million, if needed, to fight the outbreak. He set a goal of 60 million doses of vaccines, enough to vaccinate a third of the population, around 171 million at that time. By early November, about 40 million doses had been given, and the pandemic began losing steam.
 
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated the number of deaths from H2N2 at 1.1 million worldwide and 116,000 in the United States.
 Gerald Ford – Swine flu
 
Leaders are often faulted for downplaying crises, but Gerald Ford was accused by some of overreacting.Not long after a soldier died of a new form of flu in February 1976, the U.S. secretary of health, education and welfare announced that the virus could turn into an epidemic by fall.Scientists at the CDC thought it could be even deadlier than the 1918 flu strain. To avoid an epidemic, the CDC said at least 80 percent of the U.S. population would need to be vaccinated, leading Ford to sign emergency legislation for the National Swine Flu Immunization Program, in mid-April. Within a few months, close to 50 million Americans were vaccinated.FILE – U.S. President Gerald Ford rolls up his sleeve and receives a swine flu shot from White House physician Dr. William Lukash, Oct. 14, 1976.Ford took action quickly, but issues with the vaccine caused more problems in the end, Vanderbilt’s Schwartz said. Hundreds of people came down with Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare neurological disorder, after getting the flu shot.
 
“Ironically,” Skidmore said, “it was the sophistication of the government’s own monitoring system that led them to identify those cases and associate them with the vaccine.”
 
While Ford demonstrated the government’s efficiency in marshaling resources, his massive vaccination program, on top of other political blunders, contributed to Ronald Reagan’s attempt to wrest the Republican nomination from Ford in 1976. Ford lost to Democrat Jimmy Carter later that year.“The general consensus is that he was overreacting,” said Skidmore, who nevertheless lauded the president’s better-safe-than-sorry approach. “He seemed to be convinced, and I think correctly so in retrospect, that it would be far better to have a vaccine and no pandemic, then to have a pandemic and no vaccine.”By the time immunizations began in October, a large outbreak had failed to emerge, and swine flu became known as the pandemic that never was. The experience contributed to the hesitance of some Americans to embrace vaccines, even now.
 Ronald Reagan – the AIDS crisisThe Reagan administration FILE – President Ronald Reagan gestures during a White House East Room news conference, May 22, 1984 in Washington.Reagan’s approach was “certainly not a model for future presidents,” Schwartz said. Part of this is because in the early phase of the outbreak, most of the victims were either homosexuals or drug addicts, groups outside Reagan’s conservative coalition.Despite American gay men showing signs of what would later be called AIDS as early as 1978, Reagan did not publicly use the word “AIDS” until September 17, 1985, well into his second term.“Reagan simply failed to recognize the severity of the AIDS epidemic,” Skidmore said. Reagan also believed that government was the problem, not the solution, so his predisposition was to diminish its role even in crises, Skidmore added.In April 1987, Reagan declared AIDS “public health enemy No. 1.” He allocated $766 million for AIDS research and education, to be increased to $1 billion in fiscal 1988. But he advised sexual abstinence instead of methods of protection.“Let’s be honest with ourselves,” Reagan said. “AIDS information cannot be what some call ‘value neutral.’ After all, when it comes to preventing AIDS, don’t medicine and morality teach the same lessons?”By the end of Reagan’s presidency in 1989, the United States had suffered 89,343 AIDS-related deaths.
 George W. Bush – AIDS crisis and SARS
 
President George W. Bush has received applause from both Republicans and Democrats for the commitment he made to help fight HIV/AIDS globally and particularly in Africa.His success contrasted with the mixed legacy of his father, George H.W. Bush. During his time in office, the elder Bush signed two important pieces of legislation — the Americans with Disabilities Act, which protected people with HIV and AIDS from discrimination, and the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Act, which provided funding for AIDS treatment. But some see a lack of urgency on the part of the administration and criticize Bush for refusing to change a policy that blocked people with HIV from entering the United States.FILE – President George W. Bush, with first lady Laura Bush, makes a statement on World AIDS Day at the White House in Washington, Dec. 1, 2008 in Washington.In 2003, the George W. Bush administration created the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), an initiative to address the global epidemic.“PEPFAR was probably one of the best things in his presidency,” Barry said. “It got pretty much universal applause.”Since its inception, PEPFAR has provided more than $80 billion for HIV/AIDS treatment, prevention and research, making it the largest global health program in history focused on a single disease. It is widely credited with having helped save millions of lives, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa.In April 2003, after an outbreak in Asia, Bush signed an executive order adding severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) to a list of communicable diseases that can lead to people being involuntarily quarantined. Eventually more than 8,000 people worldwide became sick with SARS, and 774 died during the 2003 outbreak. In the United States, only eight people had laboratory evidence of the infection.In 2005, the Bush administration created the National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza, which called for the federal government to maintain and distribute a national stockpile of medical supplies in the event of an outbreak, and an infrastructure for future presidents to learn from and build upon in dealing with their own pandemics.
 Barack Obama – H1N1, Zika and Ebola
 
A few months into President Barack Obama’s first term in 2009, reports started coming in about H1N1, or swine influenza, which was detected first in the United States and spread quickly around the world.According to the CDC, the first case was reported April 15, 2009. The Obama administration assembled a team and declared H1N1 a public health emergency on April 26, six weeks before it was declared a pandemic and before any deaths had been recorded in the U.S.The Obama administration “geared up as soon as the virus surfaced,” Barry said. “They were 100% all in, both in terms of scientific research and trying to generate vaccines and in public health measures.”
 
Six months after that initial declaration, with more than 1,000 American lives lost, Obama declared swine flu a national emergency.
 
The CDC estimated that from April 2009 to April 2010, there were 60.8 million cases of swine flu and 12,469 deaths from it in the United States. The World Health Organization declared an end to the pandemic on August 10, 2010.FILE – President Barack Obama, with Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Guinean President Alpha Condé, speaks at the White House in Washington, April 15, 2015, on progress made in the international Ebola response.Four years later, Obama faced another crisis – the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak that killed more than 11,000 people in West Africa.Obama activated the CDC Emergency Operations Center in July 2014 to help coordinate technical assistance, including deploying personnel to West Africa to assist with response efforts. The CDC trained almost 25,000 health care workers in West Africa on infection prevention and control practices.Only 11 people were treated for the virus in the U.S. Yet some Republicans criticized Obama for not instituting travel bans from countries where the Ebola outbreak was pervasive.Obama fought a different virus on the home front – Zika, a virus transmitted by mosquitoes. The 2015 Zika outbreak was first recorded in Brazil, and by 2016 about 40,000 cases were reported in the U.S. The Obama administration requested $1.9 billion in emergency federal funding to fight the virus in February 2016, $1.1 billion of which was approved by Congress that September.In 2015, Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, created the Global Health Security and Biodefense unit, a team responsible for pandemic preparedness under the National Security Council, a forum of White House personnel that advises the president on national security and foreign policy matters.In May 2018, during the presidency of Donald Trump, the Global Health Security and Biodefense unit was disbanded. Its leader left the administration, and some of its members were merged into other units within NSC.Lessons learnedHistorians say that in the face of public health crises, presidents who are informed, focused, organized and transparent are most likely to be successful.Skidmore, of the University of Missouri-Kansas City, said American presidents can learn from their predecessors, particularly in establishing strong coordination between the federal government and states, and ensuring the private sector is fully engaged. Skidmore said the Obama administration greatly benefited from George W. Bush’s National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza, a plan that spanned every department of the federal government, every state and broad swaths of the private sector to stockpile antiviral medications and provide scientists resources to develop vaccines.Schwartz, of Vanderbilt, and Barry, of Tulane, said that leaders must be optimistic and provide hope. But more important, they must be transparent, both to prevent unfounded information from spreading and to create the credibility that will encourage people to follow guidelines instead of being skeptical of their government.
…

Three more of America’s most popular national parks have closed their gates as pressure mounts on superintendents to prevent crowded trails that could lead to more spread of the coronavirus, even as the Trump administration sticks to its decision to waive entrance fees at the parks.Glacier in Montana and Arches and Canyonlands in Utah announced their decisions to close Friday night, days after several other well-known parks such as Yellowstone, Grand Teton and the Great Smoky Mountains did the same.Visitors travel to Arches and Canyonlands to hike red rock trails that lead to picturesque rock arches and canyons outside Moab, Utah — where city leaders and regional health leaders this week sent letters to the National Park Service pleading for the closure of the parks. The health department had already banned local hotels from allowing tourists to stay after seeing continued crowds in town and the parks, even as the virus spread across the United States.Visitors kept comingIn a tweet announcing the closures, Arches and Canyonlands said the decision to close was made in response to local health officials.Park staff was at risk as visitors kept coming to the parks, including about 700 cars per day last weekend, the Southeast Utah Health Department said in a letter Wednesday to the park service. Moab’s small hospital has only two ventilators — vital for patients with severe cases of COVID-19 — and no intensive care rooms, the letter said.FILE – Snow covers the entrance sign to Glacier National Park in West Glacier, Mont., Dec. 11, 2012.Glacier National Park Superintendent Jeff Mow said in a statement Friday night that the decision was made after listening to concerns from local leaders and was based on current health guidance. The Montana park, known for its towering snow-capped mountains and valleys near the Canadian border, heard from gateway communities in Flathead and Glacier counties, along with the Blackfeet Indian Reservation and the state.Nearly two weeks ago, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt announced that he would waive entrance fees to give people outdoor spaces to recreate, while authorizing park superintendents to make their own decisions about what’s needed to adhere to recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”This small step makes it a little easier for the American public to enjoy the outdoors in our incredible National Parks,” Bernhardt said in a news release on March 18.Nicholas Goodwin, a spokesman for Bernhardt, said Thursday that the decision was meant to give a financial break to those visitors who had decided they wanted to go, not to draw people outdoors and together on vistas and trails as coranavirus deaths and illnesses grow.The agency is deciding whether to shut down individual sites on a park-by-park basis, in consultation with state and local health officials, he said.Flocking to Great Smoky MountainsGreat Smoky Mountains National Park, on the border of North Carolina and Tennessee, was one of those whose request to close was granted by the Interior Department earlier this week.The number of visitors there surged last week compared with the previous year’s figures despite infection risks, with about 30,000 people entering the park each day. Despite efforts at Smoky Mountains park to protect staff and visitors from COVID-19, including closing restrooms and visitor centers, the park found it impossible to keep people from crowding together in popular spots, spokeswoman Dana Soehn said.The day after the closure announcement, park officials learned that an employee had tested positive.For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, which can include fever and cough but also milder cases of pneumonia, sometimes requiring hospitalization. The risk of death is greater for older adults and people with other health problems.Many parks that remain open have closed shuttles, campgrounds, visitor centers and some trails to try to prevent the spread of COVID-19.At Zion National Park in Utah, campgrounds and part of a popular trail called Angel’s Landing that remained crowded with people over the weekend are closed.In Arizona, local governments and the Navajo Nation are waiting for an answer to their request earlier this week for federal officials to shut down Grand Canyon National Park as cases of COVID-19 grow in surrounding areas. The park has already closed shuttles, river trips and lodges.
 
The National Parks Conservation Association, a nonprofit group that advocates on park policy issues, called the administration’s decision to keep the Grand Canyon open “beyond reckless.”
…