Pelosi rips up Trump speech. Right there on the podium.

By LAURIE KELLMAN and LISA MASCARO

WASHINGTON (AP) — And then she tore up the speech.

No sooner had President Donald Trump finished his State of the Union address than House Speaker Pelosi ripped the paper it was printed on in two.

Right there, on camera, behind Trump’s back. As he stepped down, she ripped again. Then a third time. And a fourth. If Trump knew about the American carnage going on behind him, he didn’t react as he left. But Pelosi was on her turf, with a deep understanding of her audience — and she wasn’t finished. In case any confusion remained, Pelosi held up what remained of the address to her family in the gallery, in full view of reporters.

“It was a manifesto of mistruths,” Pelosi told reporters as she left the Capitol. The ripping was not planned, according to a person close to the speaker who was unauthorized to speak publicly.

Tearing the speech gave Pelosi the last visual word over Trump, who had spoken to the House from a position of strength. He arrived in the chamber with the full force of the Republican Party behind him. She is leading a party in the throes of a divisive presidential nomination fight that had botched the kickoff Iowa caucuses only the night before. The House had impeached Trump on her watch. But the Senate was poised to acquit him.

From the start, the event was awkward because the history between those two was so icy. They had not spoken since October, when Pelosi pointed at Trump over a White House conference table, suggested that Russia controls him and walked out.

Now, Trump was returning to the very chamber where he was impeached, standing before the same Democrats who have called him unfit for office and sought to oust him. He stepped to the podium and handed navy blue folders containing his speech to Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence. Photos from that moment show that Trump mistakenly handed Pence’s copy to Pelosi. The outside reads in gold letters: “The President of the Senate of the United States.” That’s Pence’s title.

At that moment, Pelosi extended a hand. Trump did not acknowledge it, instead turning around to begin his speech.

Pelosi, famous for casting shade, especially on Trump, gave a look.

For 78 minutes, Trump went on to extol a “Great American Comeback” on his watch, just three years after he took office decrying a land of “American carnage” under his predecessor. Pelosi read through her copy as he spoke.

**On February 8, the first American citizen died of the coronavirus in Wuhan. The death was announced hours after two flights evacuated US citizens from Wuhan. This is the first American to die from the virus that has killed hundreds in China. (CNN)

** How deadly is new coronavirus? It’s still too early to tell

By LAURAN NEERGAARD

WASHINGTON (AP) — Scientists can’t tell yet how deadly the new virus that’s spreading around the globe really is — and deepening the mystery, the fatality rate differs even within China.

As infections of the virus that causes COVID-19 surge in other countries, even a low fatality rate can add up to lots of victims, and understanding why one place fares better than another becomes critical to unravel.

People who travel generally are healthier and thus may be better able to recover, noted Johns Hopkins University outbreak specialist Lauren Sauer. And countries began screening returning travelers, spotting infections far earlier in places where the medical system wasn’t already strained.

That’s now changing, with clusters of cases in Japan, Italy and Iran, and the death toll outside of China growing.

A cousin of this new virus caused the far deadlier severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak in 2003, and about 10% of SARS patients died.

Flu is a different virus family, and some strains are deadlier than others. On average, the death rate from seasonal flu is about 0.1%, said Dr. Anthony Fauci of the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

That’s far lower than what has been calculated so far for COVID-19. But millions of people get the flu every year around the world, leading to an annual death toll in the hundreds of thousands.

WHO’S MOST AT RISK FROM COVID-19?

Older people, especially those with chronic illnesses such as heart or lung diseases, are more at risk.

Among younger people, deaths are rarer, Aylward said. But some young deaths have made headlines, such as the 34-year-old doctor in China who was reprimanded by communist authorities for sounding an early alarm about the virus only to later succumb to it.