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Births have fallen dramatically in many states during the coronavirus outbreak, according to an Associated Press analysis of preliminary data from half the country.

NEW YORK — When most of the U.S. went into lockdown over a year ago, some speculated that confining couples to their homes — with little to entertain them beyond Netflix — would lead to a lot of baby-making. But the statistics suggest the opposite happened.

Births have fallen dramatically in many states during the coronavirus outbreak, according to an Associated Press analysis of preliminary data from half the country.

The COVID-19 baby boom appears to be a baby bust.

Nationally, even before the epidemic, the number of babies born in the U.S. was falling, dropping by less than 1% a year over the past decade as many women postponed motherhood and had smaller families.

But data from 25 states suggests a much steeper decline in 2020 and into 2021, as the virus upended society and killed over a half-million Americans.

Births for all of 2020 were down 4.3% from 2019, the data indicates. More tellingly, births in December 2020 and in January and February 2021 — nine months or more after the spring 2020 lockdowns — were down 6.5%, 9.3% and 10% respectively, compared with the same months a year earlier.

December, January and February together had about 41,000 fewer births than the same three-month span a year earlier. That’s an 8% decline.

“When there’s a crisis, I don’t think people are thinking about reproduction,” said Dr. John Santelli, a Columbia University professor of population and family health who reviewed the AP’s analysis.

The analysis included 24 states that provided data on births to residents. Joining them in the analysis was California, the most populous state, which provided data on all births that happened in the state, including among visitors.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to provide a national picture later this year. But the data for the 25 states is not expected to change substantially; preliminary birth numbers usually end up being pretty close to the final counts, experts say.

The AP’s findings echo projections by researchers at the Brookings Institution and elsewhere, who have predicted a sizable drop in births this year.

“The widespread consensus is there is going to be a decline,” said Hans-Peter Kohler, a University of Pennsylvania researcher who focuses on fertility and health.

It didn’t look that way to some around March 2020, when much of America was cooped up inside. Some figured couples had more time together and some women might find it harder to run out and get birth control, leading to at least a small uptick in births.

For Bryan and Katie Basamanowicz, it was more complicated than that.

The couple had planned to try to have a baby last summer to provide their son, Simon, with a younger sibling, but then came COVID-19 and the lockdown.

For a time “it was so intense and scary” that the couple thought they would have to put off trying to conceive, said Bryan, 39, a managing editor at a small publishing house who lives in Ventura, California.

But then a lull occurred in the early summer, as the first wave of COVID-19 illnesses waned and lockdowns were eased. The couple decided to try after all. Then cases started surging again.

“We decided: ‘Let’s put this on hold,’” said Katie, a 32-year-old teacher. But it turned out to be too late: A pregnancy test came back positive in early July. “We were already pregnant,” she said.

Fritz Basamanowicz was born last month, on March 6. The pregnancy was a worry-filled experience because expectant mothers run a greater risk of severe illness from the virus.

“I’m very thankful that we made it through,” Katie said.

New York, the deadly epicenter of the U.S. outbreak in the spring of 2020, was not part of the analysis. Its Health Department said the figures were not available.

A majority of the babies born in 2020 were, of course, conceived in 2019, before the virus took hold in the U.S., so the numbers partly reflect the pre-existing downward trend.

But births in December 2020 declined in 23 of the 25 states from the same month a year earlier, the exceptions being Alaska and Wyoming. They dropped about 11% in Massachusetts and Virginia; 10% in California; and 7% in Florida, Illinois, Indiana and Nevada.

Declines were even more dramatic in January 2021 in many of the 25 states.

Still, Emily Newell, 31, who lives in Portland, Maine, with her husband, Ben Keller, said she witnessed the opposite phenomenon during the outbreak: “We know so many people who decided to have kids.”

The couple married in January 2020 and were eventually forced to work from home. They saw a certain appeal in going through a pregnancy with both partners at home, said Newell, a 31-year-old assistant professor of sports management at the University of Southern Maine.

“It gives us a little more flexibility in terms of care” for the baby, she said.

Their son, Manuel, was born two months ago.

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The Associated Press Health & Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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The decision marked the U.S. government’s latest step toward normalcy, but came as much of the country already had moved on from mask rules.

In the small Nebraska town of Oxford, the school district dropped its mask mandate last month in what was a fairly straight-forward decision: Cases were down dramatically, and it didn’t bother local officials that their move flouted Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines.

Those federal mask guidelines just didn’t seem to fit local conditions well in the town of about 800 people where hardly anyone wears a mask.

“We haven’t paid a whole lot of attention to what is going on at the federal level — mainly what is coming out through the state,” Southern Valley Superintendent Bryce Jorgensen said. “You just can’t compare Chicago to Oxford, Nebraska. Things are just different.”

On Tuesday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eased its guidelines on the wearing of masks outdoors, saying fully vaccinated Americans don’t need to cover their faces anymore unless they are in a big crowd of strangers. And those who are unvaccinated can go outside without masks in some situations, too.

For most of the past year, the CDC had been advising Americans to wear masks outdoors if they are within 6 feet of one another.

The decision marked the U.S. government’s latest step toward normalcy, but came as much of the country already had moved on from mask rules. The CDC essentially endorsed what many Americans have already been doing.

On the same day the CDC updated its guidance, Louisiana’s governor partially lifted the state’s mask mandate, the first Democratic governor to make such a move during Joe Biden’s presidency. Elsewhere, local government leaders have been doing away with mask rules, and in many states, face coverings are an infrequent sight indoors, let alone outside.

In Montgomery, Alabama, 73-year-old Judy Adams said she hasn’t worn a mask outside since the early days of the pandemic a year ago and only puts them on inside when stores mandate them. Alabama had a statewide mask mandate until earlier this month, when the governor let it expire.

“I think it’s ridiculous, because it’s not helping,” she said of mask rules. “This is about control and fear. It ain’t about nothing but control and fear.”

Since the start of the pandemic, the federal government has struggled to accomplish consistency in public health measures from state to state. The CDC has issued guidelines on masks, social distancing, travel and other activities but it’s up to governors on whether to adhere to the measures. Some states never had mask mandates, while others still have them on the books.

“Today, I hope, is a day when we can take another step back to the normalcy of before,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Tuesday. “Over the past year, we have spent a lot of time telling Americans what you can’t do. Today, I am going to tell you some of the things you can do, if you are fully vaccinated.”

The CDC says that, whether they are fully vaccinated or not, people do not have to wear masks outdoors when they walk, bike or run alone or with members of their household. An unvaccinated person can also go maskless to a small outdoor gathering with fully vaccinated people.

But unvaccinated people — defined as those who have yet to receive both doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine or the one-shot Johnson & Johnson formula — should wear masks at small outdoor gatherings that include other unvaccinated people, the CDC says. They also should keep their faces covered when dining at outdoor restaurants with friends from multiple households.

And everyone, fully vaccinated or not, should keep wearing masks at crowded outdoor events such as concerts or sporting events, the CDC says.

The agency continues to recommend masks at indoor public places, such as hair salons, restaurants, shopping centers, gyms, museums and movie theaters, saying that is still the safer course even for vaccinated people.

The change comes as more than half of U.S. adults — or about 140 million people — have received at least one dose of vaccine, and more than a third have been fully vaccinated.

Walensky said the decision was driven by rising vaccination numbers; declines in COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths; and research showing that less than 10% of documented instances of transmission of the virus happened outdoors.

The new guidance represents another carefully calibrated step on the road back to normal from the coronavirus outbreak that has killed over 570,000 people in U.S.

In Plano, Texas, Rob Webster, a 49-year-old church employee, said the new guidelines sound “reasonable” but he has some reservations.

“My only concern is that there are so many people who want to buck the system anyway,” said Webster, communications director at Custer Road United Methodist Church, which requires masks on church property, including for outdoor youth group meetings.

“So I don’t know if I was around a group of people who weren’t wearing masks, are they really vaccinated? … It makes me maybe a little more fearful and less trusting of the people around me.”

In the Nebraska school district, Superintendent Jorgensen said the district decided to eliminate its mask rule based on conditions in the area and in the state, which never had a statewide mask mandate.

The district did see an elevated risk of the virus last fall when cases statewide were peaking, but there hasn’t been a single case in the district since January and fewer than a dozen cases had been reported in the two counties around the district when they made the decision.

Jorgensen said the district is still being careful and will require students to quarantine for 10 days if they test positive for the virus, but the mask mandate didn’t seem necessary anymore.

“It’s not like we’ve totally thrown everything out the window. We still are closely watching it and monitoring every situation we can. But it just seems that those seem a little bit extreme,” Jorgensen said of the federal mask recommendations. “I think we have people here who can make some good local decisions, so that’s why we did it the way we did it.”

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Associated Press Writer John Zenor contributed to this report. The AP Health & Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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“I felt like it should have been 20 minutes,” Brandon Mitchell, 31, said of the deliberations, which led to Chauvin’s conviction on all counts.

MINNEAPOLIS — A juror who cast one of the unanimous votes to convict a white former Minneapolis police officer of killing George Floyd said deliberations were primarily spent trying to convince one person who was uncertain about part of the jury instructions.

Brandon Mitchell is the first juror that deliberated in Derek Chauvin’s trial to talk publicly about his experience. An alternate juror who was dismissed before deliberations, Lisa Christensen, spoke to reporters last week, saying she would have voted to convict Chauvin.

“I felt like it should have been 20 minutes,” Mitchell, 31, said of the deliberations, which led to Chauvin’s conviction April 20 on all counts: second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

Mitchell, who is Black, told ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Wednesday that much of the time in deliberations was spent going over terminology and “making sure we understood what exactly was being asked.” The identities of jurors and alternates are protected under a judge’s order.

“I think the one juror that was kind of — I wouldn’t say slowing us down — but was being delicate with the process, more so, was just kind of hung up with a few words in the instructions. They wanted to make sure they got it right,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell, who first shared his story with gospel artist Erica Campbell on her podcast, wrote in his jury questionnaire he wanted to serve as a juror “because of all the protests and everything that happened after the event. This is the most historic case of my lifetime, and I would love to be a part of it.”

Mitchell speculated that he was picked for the jury because he was mild mannered. He said the images during the trial trouble him.

“It was just dark. It felt like every day was a funeral and watching someone die every day,” Mitchell told CNN. “It was tense every day. I wasn’t nervous, but it was stressful. It was a lot of pressure.”

Prosecutors said Chauvin pinned Floyd, a Black man, to the pavement outside Cup Foods in Minneapolis for 9 minutes, 29 seconds on May 25. Floyd had been accused of passing a counterfeit $20 bill at the store. Three other officers, since fired, face trial in August.

Prosecutors played a wide range of videos for the jury, including teenager Darnella Frazier’s bystander video that was seen worldwide in the hours after Floyd’s death. That video and the officers’ body camera video captured bystanders shouting at Chauvin and the other officers to get off Floyd, warning that they were cutting off his breathing and asking them to check for a pulse.

Mitchell told “Good Morning America” that he didn’t think the jury was affected by tensions in Minneapolis or concerns about what effect their verdicts would have. Floyd’s death triggered worldwide protests, violence at times and a furious reexamination of racism and policing in the U.S.

“We weren’t watching the news, so we don’t know what was going on. We were really just locked in on the case. There was so much stress coming through the case. Those things are so secondary because you’re literally, throughout the trial you’re watching someone die on a daily basis. That stress alone is enough to take your mind away from whatever’s going on outside of the four walls of the courtroom,” he said.

Mitchell also said he thought Chauvin hurt himself by choosing not to testify.

“It probably was to his detriment that he didn’t take the stand because people were curious on what his thoughts were throughout the entire incident,” he said.

In the wake of the attention and weighty deliberations, Mitchell said he has been decompressing.

“I’m starting to feel like the weight is lifted off my shoulders now,” Mitchell told Campbell.

Mitchell also said he doesn’t worry about his safety for breaking his silence.

“I’m a person that kind of thrives in the positives. So I’m not too much concerned about that. Nor do I dwell on negativity,” he told “CBS This Morning.”

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NFL draft week is finally here! For many football fans around the league, this time of year can bring a wide range of emotions. If you’re a fan of any of the best teams in the league, you might be wondering what talent your team can find with their later picks as they look to build on their success. But, if you cheer for a bad team with a high draft pick, you’ll either be nervous or excited with no in-between. And really, it all comes down to the faith you have in your team’s front office staff for the 2021 NFL draft.

For us Chicago Bears fans, it’s safe to say that the overall faith in the organization to make the right moves come draft night has dwindled slightly. The big reason for this comes from 2017 draft night when the Bears traded up to draft Mitchell Trubisky with the second overall pick. There were many groans and sighs with that choice, and some say you can still hear those groans echo through Halas Hall if it’s quiet enough. Regardless of how you feel about Pace and Nagy leading this Bears draft, they’re going to do what they think is best for this team. And we’ll be right here rooting for them along the way, but before they can make their picks, let’s dive into a quick Chicago Bears mock draft!

2021 NFL Mock Draft: Chicago Bears

In this year’s NFL Draft, the Chicago Bears have eight picks in all. Round 1 with pick 20, round 2 with pick 52, round 3 with pick 83, round 5 with pick 164, and round 6 with picks 204, 208, 221, and 228. 

The 20th draft pick is the highest first round pick we’ve had since Pace has been a GM. It also happens to be his first one outside the top 10 since coming to Chicago. In Ryan Pace’s pre-draft press conference, he made one thing clear about this pick: the team could move up, down, or stay put. It truly is all up in the air.

Round 1, Pick 20

We can’t predict if the Bears will stay at 20. But, we’d like to think we have a good idea at what position they’ll be going for. The needs for this team are clear, a future quarterback, rebuilding the o-line, and adding pieces on both sides of the ball. With that, we like to think that the Bears either go quarterback, cornerback, or maybe wide receiver at this spot. The wide receiver class in this year’s draft runs deep, so the team shouldn’t have trouble finding talent with a later pick. As for cornerbacks, there is some premium talent Jaycee Horn, Caleb Farley, or even Greg Newsome II. The Bears shouldn’t draft up if they go with this position, but we can see them leaning this way as they look to replace Kyle Fuller this year. Should the Bears go with a quarterback at this spot, they’ll most likely miss out on guys like Trevor Lawrence, Justin Fields, and Zach Wilson. This leaves them with Trey Lance or Mac Jones as the possible remaining top talent. All options are on the table, and if we have to pick, we’re going with cornerback Greg Newsome II out of Northwestern.

Round 2, Pick 52

After going with a cornerback in the first round of our mock draft, the Bears will certainly look to add something on the offensive side of the ball. But whether it’s a quarterback or offensive lineman remains to be seen. If we had a say in it, we’d like to think they’d look towards building up that offensive line. The area is one of the most important pieces of success for any football team. It also happens to be one that Chicago has struggled with recently. They won’t be able to develop any future QB without a line to protect him, so this is where we think they go. With the 52nd pick in our 2021 NFL mock draft, the Chicago Bears select Jalen Mayfield from the University of Michigan.

Round 3, Pick 83

The final pick we’ll be predicting in our mock draft is the Chicago Bears 83 pick in the third round. They went cornerback and offensive line in our first two mock rounds. And now they’ll be looking to add another weapon on offense. Based on the picks of Cole Kmet and David Montgomery in years past, we’ll be taking our mock pick to the wide receivers. This draft class is particularly loaded at this position, and things continue to look promising when it comes to the later rounds. Because of this, our mock pick for the Bears in the third round of the 2021 NFL draft is WR Nico Collins, another Michigan alumni.

No matter how this draft plays out for the Bears, they’re almost certain to be in a better position for the future after it concludes. No one can confidently pick who Pace & Nagy will pick in round one, and we’re pretty sure they don’t know which direction they’re going either. It’ll all come down to the moment and the picks beforehand, and we’ll be locked in to all the action come draft night on Thursday, April 29!

The post 2021 NFL Mock Draft: Predicting The Bears Moves appeared first on UrbanMatter.

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If they trade up to get one of the highly touted quarterbacks, it likely would buy the general manager another year or two. Oh, and he’d probably draft the wrong guy.

The NFL Draft starts Thursday, making this the perfect time to discuss the greater good as it pertains to the Bears.

Many fans would love for the team to use its first-round pick on a quarterback, the general thinking being that if the Bears ever landed a talented QB, there’d be many more victories ahead and fewer damaged souls wandering around town muttering, “Cade McNown.’’ In this view, life would be good and everybody could stop talking about the franchise’s decades-long quarterback aridity, the way everybody stopped talking about the Cubs’ being cursed once they won the 2016 World Series.

Getting one of the top QBs in the draft will be problematic, given that the Bears are picking 20^th in the first round, though when it comes to the buildup to the annual draft, there are no problems, only millions of words of solutions from fans and media. But I can’t help but think people are missing the point here — that if the organization is to have the slightest chance of winning a Super Bowl in the coming years, it has to be rid of general manager Ryan Pace.

This is where we confront the greater good. If the Bears were to trade up Thursday to get an intriguing quarterback – someone like Alabama’s Mac Jones, North Dakota State’s Trey Lance or Ohio State’s Justin Fields – it would feel good in the moment. But it would almost surely buy Pace another year or two on the job, which would feel like a debilitating hangover that refuses to budge. It’s true that one of those three players might turn out to be a “franchise quarterback,’’ a term so titillating to Bears fans you’d think it was erotica. But it’s also true that, given Pace’s history, he’d end up picking the quarterback best suited for a career in mutual funds, architecture or costume design.

Is this what you really want, Bears fans? You want to take the huge chance that Pace has finally figured out the quarterback position? You want him rolling the dice? You want him around for a few more years? And you want him trading future draft picks in an attempt to make up for a massive mistake?

You’ll remember that Pace traded up one spot in the 2017 draft to take North Carolina quarterback Mitch Trubisky with the second overall pick. He loved the kid, raved about him, probably would have adopted him if that option had been open. Trubisky failed, and the passers Pace passed on, Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson, very much did not. There is no way in the world I would want Pace drafting a quarterback in the first round.

I don’t trust him to choose the right one.

And I don’t want team chairman George McCaskey to see the presence of a highly touted rookie quarterback on the roster as an opportunity to weasel out of having to fire Pace for another few years.

The safe and correct bet right now is for the Bears to pick an offensive lineman, a wide receiver, a cornerback or anybody whose primary job isn’t throwing a football. The goal of Thursday’s first round is to get a player who can help the team and still get Pace canned.

I know: very defeatist thinking and possibly damaging long term for the franchise. What if Lance is the next Mahomes, an athletic, game-changing quarterback? If he is, then I’ll go with the historical evidence I have and apply it: Pace will look at Lance on Thursday night, find him lacking and draft another, lesser QB.

This is about trust, and when it comes to the Bears general manager choosing a quarterback, I’d have more faith in a nun with a fantasy football addiction making the selection.

This is about moving on, something the organization should have done with Pace and head coach Matt Nagy after its second straight 8-8 season in 2020. The Bears can’t afford to have Pace in charge at this point next season. The absolute worst thing would be for NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to announce Thursday: “The Atlanta Falcons have traded the fourth overall pick to the Chicago Bears. With the fourth pick, the Bears select quarterback …’’

It’s terrible that the franchise is in quarterback hell. But don’t forget that the Bears are there because the general manager’s QB record includes Mike Glennon, Trubisky, Nick Foles and now Andy Dalton.

The greater good would have the Bears taking a wide receiver Thursday and Pace looking for work a year from now. The greatest good would involve the McCaskeys selling the team to someone who knows how to hire people who know how to choose quarterbacks who know how to play the position.

But you can’t ask for everything at once with this franchise. You start small. What would you call the Bears’ inability to draft a quarterback in the first round Thursday? A victory.

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The copyright to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic Jazz Age novel expired at the end of 2020, meaning anyone is now allowed to adapt it to a movie, make it into an opera or stage a Broadway musical without permission from the estate.

NEW YORK — Florence Welch is ditching the machine for musicals.

The Grammy-nominated leader of Florence + The Machine is supplying the lyrics and co-writing music for a stage musical adaptation of “The Great Gatsby,” it was announced Wednesday. No cast or premiere venue was announced.

Welch will collaborate on the music with Thomas Bartlett — who earned a Grammy nomination for best song written for visual media in 2019 for “Mystery of Love” by Sufjan Stevens — and story writer Martyna Majok, who was awarded the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for drama for “Cost of Living.” The musical will be directed by Olivier Award nominee Rebecca Frecknall.

The copyright to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic Jazz Age novel expired at the end of 2020, meaning anyone is now allowed to adapt it to a movie, make it into an opera or stage a Broadway musical without permission from the estate.

“This book has haunted me for a large part of my life,” Welch said in a statement. “It contains some of my favorite lines in literature. Musicals were my first love, and I feel a deep connection to Fitzgerald’s broken romanticism. It is an honor to have been offered the chance to recreate this book in song.”

Formed in London in 2007, Florence + the Machine’s 2009 debut “Lungs” was a hit in the United Kingdom and reached No. 14 on the Billboard 200. The band’s breakout track is “Dog Days Are Over.”

Other rock and pop stars who have written original musicals include Cyndi Lauper, Sheryl Crow, John Mellencamp, Sarah McLachlan, Dave Stewart, Tori Amos, Edie Brickell and Trey Anastasio from Phish. For every Elton John, who found amazing success with “The Lion King,” there is U2′s Bono and The Edge, who were battered by “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.”

Some big names in the pop world who stumbled in musical theater include Paul Simon, whose 1998 Broadway show “The Capeman” was the most high-profile failure of his career. “Taboo,” Boy George’s foray into the world of musicals, went fine in London but not in New York.

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