4A ❚ FRIDAY, APRIL 3, 2020❚ USA TODAY NEWS
Customer service
To view important information online related to
your subscription, visit aboutyoursubscription.
usatoday.com. You can also manage your
subscription at account.usatoday.com
Contact USA TODAY for questions or to report
issues via email at [email protected] or by
phone at 1-800-872-0001.
Operating hours are:
❚Monday-Friday: 8:00 a.m.-7:00 p.m. EST
Available subscriptions
Subscribe and save today by visiting
usatoday.com/subscribe. The subscription below
is billed monthly and includes 24/7 access to
usatoday.com, breaking news on our tablet and
smartphone apps, subscriber benefits at
usatoday.com/memberguide and the eNewspaper,
a digital replica of the print edition.
❚Delivery of the Monday through Friday print
editions: $29.
*Plus applicable taxes
Contact us
Customer Service .............................. 1-800-872-
Newsroom .......................703-854-3400, ext. 5, ext. 5
Classified advertising ...................... 1-800-397-
National, regional advertising ..........703-854-
Corrections and clarifications
Our goal is to promptly correct errors. Email us at
[email protected] to report a mistake.
Describe the error, where you saw it, the date,
page number, or the URL.
Postal information
Volume 38, No. 144
USA TODAY, USPS #684090, ISSN #0734-7456, is
published Monday through Friday at 7950 Jones
Branch Dr. McLean, VA 22108. Periodicals postage
paid at McLean, VA 22108. Postmaster : Send
address changes to Customer Service, PO Box
94090, Albuquerque, NM 87199-
After yet another destructive hurri-
cane season in 2019, top hurricane fore-
casters from Colorado State University
on Thursday said we can expect major
activity again this year.
“We anticipate that the 2020 Atlantic
basin hurricane season will have above-
normal activity,” the forecast said. In
addition, there is an “above-average
probability for major hurricanes making
landfall along the continental United
States.”
The season begins June 1.
Meteorologist Phil Klotzbach and
other experts from Colorado State Uni-
versity – among the nation’s top sea-
sonal hurricane forecasters – predict 16
named tropical storms will form, eight
of which will become hurricanes.
An average season has 12 tropical
storms, six of which are hurricanes.
A tropical storm becomes a hurricane
when its wind speed reaches 74 mph.
Of the eight predicted hurricanes,
four are expected to spin into major hur-
ricanes – Category 3, 4 or 5 – with sus-
tained wind speeds of 111 mph or greater.
The group said there’s a 69% chance for
at least one major hurricane to make
landfall somewhere along the U.S.
coastline.
The Atlantic hurricane season runs
from June 1 to Nov. 30, though storms
sometimes form outside those dates.
The team predicts that 2020 hurri-
cane activity will be about 140% of the
average season.
Reasons for the active season include
unusually warm sea water in the Atlan-
tic Ocean and also the lack of an El Niño.
One of the major determining factors
in hurricane forecasting is whether we
are in an El Niño or La Niña climate pat-
tern.
El Niño is a natural warming of trop-
ical Pacific Ocean water, which tends to
suppress the development of Atlantic
hurricanes. Its opposite, La Niña,
marked by cooler ocean water, tends to
increase hurricanes in the Atlantic.
“One of the reasons for the above-av-
erage seasonal hurricane forecast from
CSU is due to the likely lack of El Niño
this summer/fall,” Klotzbach tweeted
Thursday. “El Niño generally increases
vertical wind shear in the Atlantic, tear-
ing apart hurricanes.”
Insurance companies, emergency
managers and the media use the fore-
casts to prepare Americans for the
year’s hurricane threat. The team’s an-
nual predictions provide the best esti-
mate of activity during the upcoming
season, not an exact measure, accord-
ing to Colorado State.
Colorado State forecasters will up-
date their predictions three times over
the next few months.
Major
hurricane
season
predicted
Doyle Rice
USA TODAY
Jan. 20. Within the next two weeks, the
World Health Organization and the
U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services had declared the disease a
public health emergency.
“Clearly there was a surge in de-
mand going on in China, and funda-
mentally this was a free market” deci-
sion, said Michelle Connolly, a Duke
University economist. “What was in
the U.S. was clearly going out, and spe-
cifically to China.”
The U.S. exported more than
$1.7 million worth of surgical masks to
China in January alone – more than
double the previous January. In Febru-
ary, shipments surged to $15.8 million,
the data show.
Jess Wang, co-founder of LuggEasy,
a company that provides shipping ser-
vices to Chinese residents in the U.S.,
confirmed the surge of masks exports
in February. His company exported
14,000 to 15,000 pounds of masks from
the U.S. to China in early 2020 alone.
At a retail price of roughly 50 cents a
mask – which is likely higher than what
wholesale customers would have paid- that meant more than 31.6 million
surgical masks were shipped to China
during the second month of the year,
based on the trade data.
Taken together, the numbers add up
to well over the 28.5 million face masks
that mayors of nearly 200 U.S. cities
told a trade organization they need to
combat the coronavirus outbreak.
Vital ventilators also were sentVentilators, too, saw a spike. The
U.S. exported $11.4 million worth of the
breathing machines to China in the
first two month of last year compared
with $27.2 million in the first two
months of this year, just weeks before
states and hospitals started begging
the federal government to send them
more.
The price of ventilators vary from
about $20,000 to $50,000 depending
on the model, meaning the U.S. sent
anywhere from 540 to 1,360 of them to
China in January and February alone.
The U.S. Department of State also
donated 17.8 tons of medical equip-
ment to China in February. The mass
donation included “masks, gowns,
gauze, respirators, and other vital
materials.”
The Census Bureau collects the data
as a dollar value representing the prod-
uct’s sale price. The total exports of
these items could be greater, because
the Census data does not capture
small, private shipments that family
members may have sent to China, or
small packages that are exempt from
certain filing requirements.
The White House did not immedi-
ately respond to a request for com-
ment.
Health care professionals across the
nation have said on social media and in
news reports that they fear for their
lives because they are being forced toration disposable protective equip-
ment for the entire week.
Private citizens are sewing masks
themselves to donate to local hospitals
as a makeshift solution so workers
don’t have to tie bandanas around their
faces. On Wednesday, a New Jersey
man was the first emergency room doc-
tor to die from the coronavirus since
the outbreak. A nurse in Houston is
also fighting the infection.
Exports of other protective gar-
ments, like surgical suits, skyrocketed,
too. The U.S. shipped more than
$271,000 worth of such supplies to Chi-
na in January – nine times more than
the previous January, the data show. In
February, those shipments reached
$13.4 million.Ordering with cash in handJared Moskowitz, Florida’s emer-
gency management director, said his
team started placing orders for respira-
tors, masks, gowns and other supplies
from private vendors more than a
month ago but received only about 10%
of what it ordered as of Thursday.
“I’m now hearing from distributors
that foreign governments are showing
up with cash at these factories and
bumping everybody else down the line
who had orders pending,” Moskowitz
told USA TODAY, referencing conversa-
tions with brokers who serve as supply
chain middlemen.
“This is going to have to be looked at
to figure out how we allowed a U.S.
company, the maker of perhaps the
most important pieces of personal pro-
tective equipment, to feed the globe
but not their home country,” Mosko-
witz said.
Moskowitz is not alone. The mayors
of 192 cities across the country said in a
survey released Friday that they do not
have sufficient face masks for their first
responders and medical personnel,
and 186 cities said they faced a short-
age of other personal protective equip-
ment.
The survey said the cities need
28.5 million face masks, 24.4 million
other types of personal protective
equipment and 139,000 ventilators.
The respondents did not include may-
ors of some of the nation’s largest cit-
ies, like New York and Chicago.
On Wednesday, Trump said the
Strategic National Stockpile – a collec-
tion of vaccines and various medical
supplies kept for emergencies – is
almost out of personal protective
equipment.
“We’re giving massive amounts of
medical equipment and supplies to the
50 states,” Trump said Wednesday.
“We also are holding back quite a bit,”
he said, referring to ventilators that are
being saved to meet peak demand.
“We will fairly soon be at a point
where we have far more than we can
use, even after we stockpile for some
future catastrophe, which we hope
doesn’t happen,” Trump said. “We’re
going to be distributing to countries
around the world. We’ll go to Italy, we’ll
go to France, we’ll go to Spain.”
Vice President Mike Pence said
Wednesday that the U.S. has distrib-uted across the country “more than 11.
million N95 masks, more than 8,
ventilators around the nation, and mil-
lions of face shields, surgical masks
and gloves.”Tariffs on imports continuedIn addition to allowing domestic
firms to export lifesaving equipment
elsewhere, the Trump administration
continued placing tariffs on Chinese
imports of many medical products into
the U.S. even as the coronavirus
reached our shores, said Chad Bown, a
senior researcher at the Peterson Insti-
tute for International Economics.
The Trump administration an-
nounced on March 10 and March 12 that
it would relax those tariffs. Bown called
the move an acknowledgement that
the administration’s trade policies
were endangering public health. By the
time they were relaxed, he said, tariffs
already affected “nearly $5 billion of
U.S. imports of medical goods from
China, about 26% of all medical goods
imported from all countries.”
A week later, Trump issued an exec-
utive order invoking the Defense Pro-
duction Act that gives the federal gov-
ernment the power to force companies
to produce medical equipment and ful-
fill needs related to national defense
before any other contracts.
The language in the order also al-
lows the administration to control dis-
tribution in civilian markets of “per-
sonal protective equipment and venti-
lators.” It’s not clear what the president
will do with this authority.
Economists are now warning that
countries are using protectionist trade
policies such as export bans and tariffs
in an effort to keep medical supplies in
their countries, and that these could
backfire for hospitals and health pro-
fessionals who need the supplies.
A team at the University of St. Gal-
len in Switzerland said in a study
March 23 that any tariffs on items will
increase the prices hospitals and
health professionals pay for such prod-
ucts. The team recommended that gov-
ernments reassess their restrictions to
meet the social challenge of COVID-19.
Bown generally supports free trade
as an economic policy, but he also said
it will benefit the public health re-
sponse. There is too much uncertainty,
he said, about which parts of the world
will be hit hard by the coronavirus to
cut off any areas of the world from
production.
“What the pandemic has revealed to
the world is that nowhere is safe,”
Bown said. “Keeping open to interna-
tional trade right now, in a time of pan-
demic, gives you many, many more op-
tions about where you might be able to
source this kind of material from.”
USA TODAY used the latest trade da-
ta published by the U.S. Census Bureau
for the analysis and looked at each
commodity’s trade value based on its
Harmonized System Code, known as
HS code. The HS codes for personal
protective equipment and ventilators
are from a reference document for
COVID-19 medical supplies published
by the World Customs Organization.Exports
Continued from Page 1AWASHINGTON – The Navy fired the
captain of the USS Theodore Roosevelt
on Thursday, four days after he pleaded
for help as the coronavirus ravaged his
crew, the Navy announced.
Acting Navy Secretary Thomas
Modly announced that Navy Capt.
Brett Crozier was relieved for loss of
confidence.
“I just know that he exercised ex-
tremely poor judgment,” Modly said.
Crozier had sent an urgent letter to
the U.S. Navy on Sunday, seeking to
evacuate and isolate the crew as cases
of coronavirus infection increased on
the vessel. “Decisive action” was re-
quired to prevent deaths from the coro-
navirus, Crozier wrote. The ship’s close
quarters prevented sailors from follow-
ing guidelines to keep them safe.
Modly said Thursday that the Navy
had been speeding help to the Roose-
velt before Crozier had sent his letter.
By Wednesday the Navy had evacu-
ated about 1,000 sailors from the nu-
clear-powered ship, which is docked at
Guam. About one-quarter of the 4,
member crew had been tested for the
virus, and 93 had been found to have
COVID-19.None were seriously ill, according
the Navy.
At a Pentagon briefing Wednesday,
Navy officials chose their words care-
fully when discussing Crozier. But the
letter’s publication by the San Francis-
co Chronicle caught the Navy by sur-
prise, and officials scrambled to show
they were responding to concerns
about sailors’ health.
The letter was sent out broadly via
email on an insecure network and cop-
ied to “20 or 30 other people,” Modly
said Thursday. Modly and other Navy
officials had not seen it until it ap-peared in the paper.
“He did not safeguard that informa-
tion,” Modly said.
The letter created a degree of “pan-
ic” on ship, Modly said.
As of late Thursday, 114 sailors have
tested positively for the virus, Modly
said. And he expects “hundreds more”
to be infected.
There are 3,000 beds available on
Guam for sailors who fall ill, Modly
said, and those measures were under-
way before the letter was made public.
Adm. Michael Gilday, the chief of
naval operations, appeared with Modly
at the hastily called briefing at the Pen-
tagon late Thursday. Gilday said he
supported the decision to relieve Cro-
zier, and that an investigation is under-
way about the letter and how it was dis-
tributed.
“Our sailors deserve the best leader-
ship we can absolutely supply,” Gilday
said.
Modly said he informed Defense
Secretary Mark Esper on Wednesday
that he was leaning toward firing Cro-
zier. At no time, Modly said, did White
House officials try to influence his deci-
sion.
“We expect more from our com-
manding officers than what they train
for,” Modly said.Navy fires captain who
raised COVID-19 concerns
Tom Vanden Brook
USA TODAYTugboats and other vessels assist the
U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt aircraft
carrier, as the ship docks at Naval
Base Guam in Sumay on Friday. There
was at least 23 COVID-19 cases
among crew members. RICK CRUZ/PDN