Trump urges disclosure against confinement

US President Donald Trump urged the rebellion against him confinement, despite the fact that his country has become the main focus of the coronavirus with close to a quarter of the more than 154,000 deaths in the world.

A week after Catholics and Protestants, the Orthodox world in turn lives the confined Easter weekend, like the Romanian faithful, who were called to celebrate these religious holidays from the balcony of their homes.

And it is that social distance has slowed down the virulent spread of the pandemic with 4.5 billion people, that is, more than half of the world’s population, confined to their homes.

However, in the United States, the primary instigator of ending confinement is the president himself. “Free Minnesota!” “Free Michigan!” Trump tweeted as protesters, sometimes armed, prepare to once again challenge the authorities of these Democratic states on the streets this Saturday.

As the world exceeds 154,000 dead, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) announces the worst recession since the Great Depression of 1929, governments face the dilemma of when and how to end confinement, in an attempt to seek the balance between buffering damage to the economy and saving lives.

Practically, there is not a single country or territory on the planet where the coronavirus, which has already infected a total of 2,250,000 people and caused more than 154,000 deaths. Europe registers half of the infections (1.11 confirmed cases) and almost two thirds of the deceased (almost 98,000), according to the latest AFP count carried out on Saturday at 11:00 GMT.

Italy registers about 23,000 deaths, Spain more than 20,000, France about 19,000 and the United Kingdom is close to 15,000.

In Latin America the death toll exceeds 4,000 and Africa registers more than 1,000.

The United States is the country hardest hit by the virus that emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019. So far, it has registered more than 706,000 infections and 37,079 deaths.

“Our employees can’t take it anymore,” says Dan Flowers, head of a food bank in Ohio. “They are overwhelmed. We would like to see the end,” he says.

In this context, the Democratic governor of the State of Washington, Jay Inslee, is outraged by the president’s tweets that he encourages, according to him, “dangerous and illegal acts”.

“It puts millions of people at risk of becoming infected with covid-19. Their lopsided onslaught and their calls to ‘liberate’ states could also lead to violence,” he tweeted.

According to a study by Stanford University, in Santa Clara, California, between 2.5% and 4.1% of the local population was infected with the coronavirus, between 50 and 85 times more than the number of cases officially confirmed.

Far from the first world power, in South Africa, the confinement has already begun to unleash a “war” to be able to eat.

“Mr President, we are going through a food crisis. Here is a war,” says Joani Fredericks, an activist from South Africa, concerned that confinement in her country has led to clashes with the police and looting in the most impoverished neighborhoods, due to the hungry.

Given signs of the slowdown in the epidemic in Europe, although the death toll continues to rise, some countries will begin to reopen schools.

From May 11 they are scheduled to do so in France and Switzerland, on May 4 in Germany, on April 27 in Norway and from now on in Denmark. In Spain, students will continue studying at home in the third quarter and there is no date to reopen the educational centers.

But is it an assumed risk? The data shows that the coronavirus It hardly affects the youngest, so the risk of this age group of becoming seriously ill or being vectors of the virus when returning to classes seems lower, experts say.

The coronavirus continues to leave tragic scenes, such as that of a Capuchin convent in southeastern France, where five of the eleven brothers have died from covid-19 while the youngest recover little by little.

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