(FLORIDA) — Two juveniles are in custody in connection with the murders of three teenagers in the “rural, tight-knit community” of Ocklawaha, Florida, the sheriff said Friday, adding that the third suspect, also a juvenile, remains at large.
The first victim, 16-year-old Layla Silvernail, was found shot on the side of a road on March 30, Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods said.
The next day, about a half mile away, a 17-year-old boy was discovered on the side of a road, also fatally shot, the sheriff said.
One day later, Silvernail’s car was found partially submerged in a pond about 9 miles from where she had been found, the sheriff said. The third victim, a 16-year-old girl, was found inside the trunk with a gunshot wound, according to the sheriff.
The three victims were all associated with gangs and were all involved in committing burglaries and robberies, Woods said at a news conference Friday.
At one point, the three victims and three suspects were all in Silvernail’s car, and the suspects then “turned on our three victims and murdered them,” Woods said.
The sheriff said robbery was the motive.
The suspects “fled the scenes, but left a lot of evidence in their wake,” Woods said, adding that the two juveniles in custody have been arrested for first-degree murder.
“They took a life without thought. They deserve the full extent of the law,” Woods said.
Russell Pierce, CEO of Southeastern Fastpitch, called Layla Silvernail “a caring young lady, an amazing athlete, and a cherished teammate to so many young girls.”
“She was a softball player from a young age and played for many teams in both recreation and travel softball,” Pierce said in a statement. “She was known for uplifting new and younger teammates and encouraging them to play hard and believe in themselves. She was truly a gifted softball player.”
The identities of the other two victims have not been released.
Harrison Ford‘s Dr. Henry “Indiana” Jones is a man out of time when we first see him in the just-released new trailer to Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.
The professor is jolted awake in 1969 to the sounds of The Rolling Stones‘ “Sympathy for the Devil,” which plays through most of the new footage, and we see his university colleagues throwing him a retirement party.
He’s later joined by his goddaughter Helena, played by Emmy winner Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who reminds him about the Dial of Destiny. It’s an elusive MacGuffin, the pursuit of which apparently drove her father — played by Toby Jones — crazy, according to Indy. It can “change the course of history.”
Through flashbacks that set up the film — with Ford de-aged with the help of digital magic — we see Jones’ pursuit of the dial. In the present, 1969, Mads Mikkelsen‘s former Nazi officer Jürgen Voller wants to use it to change Hitler’s “mistakes” and presumably win WWII.
“You stole it,” Indy says. “Then you stole it,” Voller replies. “Then I stole it,” Helena says. “It’s called capitalism.”
Amid action in both the past and present, Jones recalls to Helena, “I’ve been tortured with voodoo. I’ve been shot nine times, including once by your father, but I’ve been looking for this all my life.”
Ford’s last ride as Jones debuts in theaters June 30.
Lucasfilm is owned by Disney, the parent company of ABC News.
Fans attending the Star Wars Celebration expo in London were treated to tons of new news from that galaxy far, far away.
A teaser was revealed for Ahsoka, which also debuted online. The festival crowd was also treated to a cast reveal for Skeleton Crew, and were the first to see the hints of another upcoming Star Wars Disney+ show, The Acolyte.
The Ahsoka trailer stars Rosario Dawson reprising her role as the former Jedi and fan favorite Ahsoka Tano, who is reunited with characters from the animated series Star Wars: Rebels, shown for the first time in live action.
Also shown are Mary Elizabeth Winstead as ace Rebels pilot and green-skinned Twi’lek Hera Syndulla and Natasha Liu Bordizzo as Mandalorian Sabine Wren. Also shown was the animated show’s plucky droid Chopper.
“Something’s coming, something dark, I can sense it,” Ahsoko says in voice-over, amid shots of battles in space, and with lightsabers, one of which is wielded to deadly effect by a bearded Ray Stevenson, playing a Sith.
Also shown, from behind, is the show’s main villain, Grand Admiral Thrawn. “I started hearing whispers of Thrawn’s return as heir to the Empire,” Ahsoka says. The series, which will also star Eman Esfandi as another Rebels character, Ezra Bridger, and Hayden Christensen as Darth Vader, debuts in August on Disney+.
The Jude Law-starring Skeleton Crew is set during the same period as The Mandalorian and Ahsoka, a few years after the events of Return of the Jedi. The Acolyte, which takes place hundreds of years before the events of the Star Wars prequels, is about a Sith threat to the High Republic.
The Last Of Us star Bella Ramsey has been tapped to star in the period drama Monstrous Beauty, according to Deadline. The 19-year-old actress, whose other credits include Game of Thrones, will play an aspiring playwright in the court of King Charles II who, due to a rare medical condition, is entirely covered in hair. Dominic West, Ruth Negga and Fiona Shaw also star. Filming is set to begin in September…
Fox has canceled The Resident after six seasons, according to Deadline. The series — which depicts the good, the bad and the ugly of the medical profession, as seen through the eyes of doctors and nurses — starred Matt Czuchry, Emily VanCamp, Merrin Dungey, Shaunette Renée Wilson, Melina Kanakaredes and Bruce Greenwood. The Resident, which saw its ratings decline as the seasons progressed, wrapped up its sixth season on January 16…
Variety reports This Is Us alum Sterling K. Brown is reuniting with series creator Dan Fogelman for a new drama coming to Hulu. The title, as well as plot details, are still unknown, but it’s reportedly a thriller in which Brown will play the head of security for an ex-president. Brown will next be seen in the film Biosphere, hitting theaters in July…
Norman Reynolds, famous for his production design work for films in the Star Wars franchise and Raiders of the Lost Ark, “died peacefully with his wife Ann and three daughters by his side,” according to a statement obtained by BBC. He was 89. Reynolds worked as an art director on 1977’s Star Wars: A New Hope, for which he won an Oscar in 1978. Reynolds’ other design work can be seen in films like Superman, Empire of the Sun, Alien 3, Return to Oz and the first Tom CruiseMission Impossible movie…
(NEW YORK) — When Loni James decided to look for love, she wanted to cast a wide net — and try to date around the world.
“I have always loved traveling and I realized that there’s benefits of traveling long term and you get a really unique piece when you can be overseas for a longer period of time,” James told “Good Morning America.”
The 40-year-old Washington state native decided to leave for London in the spring of 2022. Since then, she’s not only seen the sights but has been able to make connections. So far, she’s gone on dates with 34 men in 19 different countries.
“I went paragliding on a date, which was so much fun. I’m a big adventure junkie. And then I’ve had dates where it’s just been incredible chemistry and we’ve had the best conversation and haven’t looked at our phones for five hours,” she said.
James said she connects with the men through online apps and knows she has to be careful, including not sharing her personal information with strangers and making sure she stays connected to friends and family.
“I don’t let people know exactly where I’m staying,” she said. “I don’t give out my number until I’ve met you. I share my location with people back in the States, actually a couple different time zones, just to cover my bases, because my time zone is always changing.”
James was inspired to set out on this journey by her mother, who died after a longtime battle with Alzheimer’s disease and never got to fully live out her retirement dreams.
“Life isn’t guaranteed, retirement isn’t guaranteed. I wanted to create the life that I wanted now and I didn’t want to put it off and hope that it would be a possibility somewhere down the line,” said James, who has since started a blog documenting her dating and traveling experiences.
James said she’s learned a lot about personal connections. Since James said she is upfront with each man about her mission, she’s found that men have been more willing to open up since there’s no pressure for a second date.
“I sit across from someone, or go on a walk or go on an adventure and get to ask them about their culture,” said James. “I get to ask them what it’s like dating. I get to ask them about gender roles and their views on love and relationships.”
(CALIFORNIA) — In the small community of Silver Lakes, California, Sabrina and Robert Limon were once the life of the party. The so-called “it couple” was known for throwing booze-filled gatherings for their tight-knit group of friends dubbed “the wolf pack.”
But when a firefighter named Jonathan Hearn swept Sabrina off her feet, it led to a sordid crime that no one saw coming.
The love triangle murder case involving wiretapping, Bible verses and allegations of poisoned pudding is the subject of a new “20/20” airing April 7 at 9 p.m. ET. The broadcast features interviews from friends, family and investigators, and ABC News’ Deborah Roberts goes back to the location of the murder with detectives to retrace the investigation.
In 2008, Sabrina and Robert Limon decided that they wanted to have a bit more excitement in their lives, so they opened up their marriage to other couples.
“They went on adult vacations. They went out boating. They partied a lot at the North Lake,” Julie Cordova, Sabrina’s sister, told “20/20.”
Cordova said that Sabrina eventually grew “tired of being in an open marriage” and “wanted [the couple] to go back to church,” but her husband didn’t want anything to change.
“Sabrina was drinking so much, all the time, that she was pretty numb,” Cordova said.
On Aug. 17, 2014, Robert was shot and killed while working at the BNSF railyard in Tehachapi. Investigators believed the crime scene had been staged to look like Robert was killed during a botched robbery, former Kern County Detective Darin Grantham told “20/20.”
But who would have a motive to kill the beloved husband and father of two?
“He was well-liked by everyone and no one could imagine any reason why someone would want to kill Robert,” former Kern Country Detective Tommy Robins told “20/20.”
Detectives scoured the area for surveillance cameras. Footage from the railyard around the time of the murder showed an unknown man limping around. A nearby company provided surveillance video that showed Robert Limon on the road that led to his office, with multiple other vehicles on the road. All of the other motorists, with the exception of a man on a motorcycle, were able to be identified, Grantham said.
That motorcyclist’s identity remained a mystery until investigators received a call two weeks after Limon’s death. Jason Bernatene, a friend of the Limons, told detectives that he got a strange voicemail from a man named Jonathan Hearn, who seemed “very apologetic for Rob’s death,” Grantham said.
The tip put Hearn on detectives’ radar for the very first time and changed the course of the investigation.
Detectives would learn that Sabrina and Hearn were having an affair after meeting at a Costco where Sabrina worked part-time. Bonding over their shared Christian faith, they started a relationship behind Robert’s back. Eventually, Robert Limon discovered intimate texts between the two on Sabrina’s phone and demanded Sabrina end the affair. But she kept seeing Hearn.
In the wake of Robert’s murder, detectives decided to wiretap Sabrina and Hearn’s phones. The couple talked a lot about God and the Bible. In one exchange with Sabrina, Hearn can be overhead saying, “Hi God. We are on our knees for a reason. We have been dirt bags, we’ve been sinners. We’ve been selfish and we sinned.”
Despite some intriguing exchanges between the couple, nothing proved a murder plot against Robert, detectives said. Investigators then decided to feed Sabrina false information about the murder investigation to see how she would react — Sabrina immediately called Hearn on a burner phone to alert him about the new details.
On Nov. 18, 2014, Hearn and Sabrina were arrested on suspicion of killing Robert. At Hearn’s home, detectives found a motorcycle, a helmet, a red bandana and a backpack matching the description of a mystery man seen on surveillance footage in the area where Robert was killed, and a grocery bag full of receipts, authorities said.
Within a few days, Sabrina was let go from custody due to insufficient evidence linking her to the crime, while Hearn, charged with murder, remained behind bars.
Hearn struck a plea deal that would give him a 25-year sentence in exchange for testifying about Sabrina’s alleged involvement in the murder scheme.
Two years after her husband’s death, Sabrina was arrested for his murder. She pleaded not guilty to all charges.
At trial, Hearn admitted to killing Robert and alleged Sabrina helped him plan it, after she rejected Hearn’s suggestion to divorce her husband. Hearn testified that Sabrina “expressed that [Robert] would honestly rather be dead than divorced…Losing her would essentially kill him.” Hearn also claimed there was a first failed plot to poison Robert’s banana pudding with arsenic prior to the fatal shooting. Hearn testified that when it came to the fatal attack on Robert in Tehachapi, Sabrina provided a layout of the BNSF facility and Robert’s work schedule.
Testifying in her own defense, Sabrina denied any involvement in planning her husband’s murder, along with the attempted poisoning plot alleged by Hearn. Richard Terry, Sabrina’s defense attorney, argued that Hearn’s plea deal gave him an incentive to lie on the stand.
As for the wiretapped conversations, Sabrina Limon said at trial, “[Jonathan] wanted to know everything that was going on, and I told him. I trusted him. He had told me that, you know, just the dangers of what could happen when an affair is exposed, how the police think and how they work.”
On Feb. 21, 2018, Sabrina Limon was convicted on four of the six counts against her, including first-degree murder, attempted murder, solicitation of murder and conspiracy. She was acquitted of the alleged poisoning attempt on Robert’s life. She was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
In January, the California Supreme Court denied a petition to review Sabrina’s murder conviction after she previously appealed for a new trial.
Hearn was convicted of manslaughter, not murder, and sentenced to 25 years and four months in prison.
Jeremy Renner opened up about his life-threatening snow plow accident in his first interview since the incident, Jeremy Renner: The Diane Sawyer Interview — A Story of Terror, Survival and Triumph, which aired Thursday on ABC.
The Avengers and Hawkeye star detailed the January 1 incident, recalling that he used his 14,330-pound Sno-Cat to help his nephew, Alex pull a truck out of the snow. After successfully freeing the vehicle, Renner’s plow began to slide on the ice. He stuck one foot out of the plow to look back at Alex, neglecting to set the parking brake, which caused him to lose his footing and fall out of the cab.
Renner attempted to jump back into the Sno-Cat, but ended up under the vehicle.
“You shouldn’t be outside the vehicle when you’re operating it…It’s like driving a car with one foot out of the car,” Renner said. “…And it’s my mistake, and I paid for it.”
Meanwhile, Alex summoned Rich Kovach and Barb Fletcher, the second of whom remembered Renner letting out loud moans, which he described as “the sound of someone that was dying.”
“I really feel he did pass away for a couple seconds. I really do,” he added.
Renner’s injuries were so serious that he wrote a goodbye note to his family in the hospital. “I’m writing down notes in my phone to — last words to my family,” Renner said through tears. “Don’t let me live on tubes on a machine, if my existence is going to be on drugs and painkillers, let me go now.”
“I have no regrets. I’d do it again,” Renner insisted. “That is a man that I’m proud of, because I wouldn’t let that happen to my nephew.”
(NEW YORK) — As cameras captured former President Trump entering Manhattan criminal court earlier this week to face a 34-count indictment, a number of images of him began circulating on social media.
Some of the images, which were fabricated, appeared to be mug shots of the former president, even though his lawyers told reporters the former president did not take a booking photo during police processing on Tuesday.
Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign nonetheless capitalized on the trend, sending out an email advertising a T-shirt with a fake mug shot of Trump that could be purchased online. It’s a tactic the Trump team has turned to before, fundraising off both of his impeachments and the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago in a search for classified documents.
While that image appeared to be a more obvious fabrication, others were markedly more subtle and may have been generated by artificial intelligence, the latest in a series of hyper-realistic fake images deceiving many online and raising concerns over the sophistication and accessibility of AI-powered tools.
Here’s what to know about these AI-generated images:
What other images went viral?
A fabricated image of Pope Francis wearing a floor-length, white puffer jacket racked up over 30 million views last week across several posts. It’s just the latest in a series of recent images that have flooded social platforms.
“These cases where it feels like the stakes are low are worrying because it shows that when our guard is not up, the general public is more susceptible to fakes,” Henry Ajder, an AI researcher who hosts a podcast on the technology on BBC Radio, told ABC News.
The fictional image of Pope Francis was first posted by a user in a Subreddit dedicated to showing works created by an image generator program called Midjourney and was possibly created by the tool.
Last week, Midjourney announced that because of “extraordinary demand and trial abuse” it has paused the ability for users to generate a certain set of images for free. The service is now only available through a variety of subscription plans.
The tool, which ABC News reviewed, is one of several text-to-image tools powered by artificial intelligence, that allows users to input a natural language description, called a prompt, to get an image in return.
Some tools like OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 don’t allow users to create images of public figures. Their content policy also states that users should not upload images of people without their consent.
Why are experts alarmed?
It’s the hyper-realism of the images that worries synthetic media experts like Ajder.
“When you are scrolling through social media, these images are subconsciously flying past,” he said. “You don’t need to critically examine an image for it to impact the way you see a person or see the world.”
On the day of Trump’s court hearing, ABC News found that thousands of fabricated images of Trump had been generated on the platform. Only a dozen leaped onto social media platforms and circulated more widely, but it wasn’t the first time the public had seen an AI-fake connected to him.
When asked about the viral images created using their tool, Midjourney founder David Holz told ABC News they are working on more “nuanced moderation policies based on community feedback.”
“There are always risks that are hard to predict and the goal has to be to find them, adapt to them, and move forward,” Holz added in an email.
On March 20, as news of former President Donald Trump’s possible indictment made headlines, a series of fake photos imagining his supposed arrest circulated on Twitter.
The former president had not yet been arrested, but he predicted (incorrectly) just days earlier that his arrest was imminent.
The Trump photos, which falsely depicted events that did not happen, were created by Eliot Higgins, the founder of Netherlands-based investigative news outlet Bellingcat.
“Making pictures of Trump getting arrested while waiting for Trump’s arrest,” Higgins tweeted on March 20 along with the images. Higgins told ABC News he created the series of images for fun.
Higgins told ABC News he was surprised these fake images of Trump received so much attention, but it was good to see that they encouraged discussion around AI image creation.
What is causing this wave of hyper-realistic fakes?
Experts like Sam Gregory, the executive director at the global human rights network WITNESS, say it’s a combination of factors: ease of use and accessibility of these tools, improved photo-realism and the ability to churn out volume.
“This is a real worry,” said Gregory, who has spent the last five years leading an initiative to prepare journalists and educate the public on the potential harms of AI-generated media.
Gregory added a commercial arms race between AI-companies is contributing to the rapid development of these tools and the lack of safeguards.
“We’re also in the middle of a headlong commercial rush that is completely about the needs of Silicon Valley, and ignoring the needs of most people across the U.S. and frankly, most people across the world who might say wait a second, where are the safeguards here? How are you making sure these are not misused,” Gregory said.
What are the solutions?
Ajder said the onus should be on the companies creating the AI technology to limit access by “creating friction for bad actors.”
Steps like providing bank details or verifying users’ identities through other accounts might make it more challenging for some to misuse the tools, he told ABC News.
Gregory stressed the importance of not putting all the pressure of identifying AI-generated media on the public, but instead focusing on making detection tools widely available.
“We’re going to be living with tremendously creative power that’s more distributed, more available, more fun in many ways, but we have to really understand how we put these guardrails around it,” he said.
Hundreds of top AI researchers along with some of the biggest names in tech signed a letter this week urging labs to immediately pause on training new powerful AI systems for six months, in order to ensure their “effects will be positive and their risks manageable.”
(COLORADO) — The humble beaver could become one of America’s hardest working allies in the race to adapt to climate change.
Beavers are natural engineers. They instinctively build dams and canals of water to keep themselves safe because they’re clumsy on land. And capturing that water creates ecosystems for other animals to survive, earning beavers the moniker of a “keystone species.”
A growing movement of nonprofits, experts and government agencies see a potential to take a lesson from beavers’ natural engineering prowess to capture more of that water for the places that desperately need it.
“Beavers benefit a lot of things in the context of climate change,” Emily Fairfax, assistant professor of environmental science and resource management at California State University Channel Islands, told ABC News.
“The ones that are most directly sort of in our eyesight right now is the beavers’ ability to protect ecosystems during droughts, during floods, during wildfires, during extreme disturbances. And in those patches of habitat that they’re protecting, there’s a huge amount of biodiversity”
In addition to storing water, Fairfax’s research has shown that areas with beaver dams are more resilient to wildfires because the plants and trees are so wet they don’t burn. And she said they could help capture water from extreme rain events like the atmospheric rivers in California to be accessed by those water systems later.
“Beavers sort of figured this out instinctually over 7 million years of evolution that their dams and their canals work because they take the whole hydrologic cycle and they just make it more stable, more consistent,” she said.
Beavers haven’t always been recognized for their benefits. Fur trapping dramatically reduced the population starting in the 1700s and even today beavers are sometimes seen as a nuisance and killed. The animals are sometimes relocated away from urban areas where their dams could cause disruptions and flooding, which experts like Fairfax said can sometimes be appropriate but is not always the right approach.
Instead of treating them like pests, groups like the National Forest Foundation are looking to take a lesson from beavers’ work to find a nature-based approach to adapt to impacts of climate change like worsening drought conditions.
“There’s a lot of streams and headwaters to the Colorado River that used to run perennially, year-round, that we now see have stopped. And so we might be able to, as we do enough of these, turn some of those stream flows back on on an annual basis. And seeing those regular additions throughout the year could have huge benefits to the system as a whole,” said Marcus Selig, chief conservation officer with the National Forest Foundation.
The National Forest Foundation is a nonprofit created by Congress to support national forests. Selig said their work building man-made “beaver dam analogs” can help capture more water in the Colorado River, which has been struggling with historically low water levels after more than two decades of drought.
The analogs are a manmade version of what beavers would instinctively build, using sticks and mud to create a natural barrier to slow water down and create a wetland area that feeds into the river.
“The work we do with beaver dam analogs and low-tech process-based restoration is holding that water in the higher elevations as the snow melts and so that it can be released slowly throughout the year, giving more continuous, dependable flows to downstream users,” Selig said, adding that it can help communities downstream receive water more consistently.
“Our big dream is that we can restore every headwater, every watershed that feeds into the Colorado River on national forest lands. And so we’re working on creating that pipeline of projects right now,” he added.
Selig said this kind of work hasn’t been scaled up enough to identify how much of a larger impact it could have and they still need more funding to do so, but said the foundation is working with the U.S. Forest Service to add projects in 14 different national forests around the Colorado River.
Fairfax said river systems like the Colorado have lost a lot of the wetlands that would have existed 200 years ago so replicating them either by creating man-made beaver dams or relocating beavers to streams in the area can help make the river more resilient to the impacts of climate change.
“Bringing back beavers and restoring the wetlands, it’s not like we’re introducing something new to save the Colorado River Basin. We’re just trying to get it back to the state it was in when it was stable and when it was healthier,” she said.
Similar projects are growing around the country, some with support from states or the federal government. California has dedicated $1.6 million to hire staff to start similar projects in the state.
And the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has partnered with groups like Trout Unlimited to relocate beavers in Washington state to beef up streams and protect salmon populations.
Fairfax said there will need to be a balance between this kind of low tech restoration work around rivers and streams and limiting the impacts on infrastructure or getting buy-in from private property owners.
“If we wanna do this at scale, not just in like a hobby context, we as a society need to be giving up control and giving up space. And those are 2 things that we don’t like to give up,” she said.
But Fairfax said she’s optimistic that beavers could be a relatively low cost solution with big potential benefits to help us adapt to the changing climate. And she said supporting beaver populations or protecting beavers that live in your area is a way for individuals to be involved in a climate solution.
“It’s easy to recruit a beaver. Literally just leave it alone, and it’s recruited. And that’s really powerful. Because then you get all these benefits of the beaver engineering and as long as you don’t step on its toes too much, it’s gonna keep doing its thing,” she said.
“So parting with beavers, I think, is a very powerful way for us to expand our ability to tackle climate change without having to do it all ourselves.”
(NEW YORK) — As temperatures begin to warm up, announcing the arrival of spring, it also means the arrival of allergy season for millions of Americans.
Health departments across the U.S. have started to warn that high pollen levels could mean exacerbated symptoms including itchy and watery eyes; runny noses; sneezing; hives; and coughing.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), recent research has shown that pollen seasons start 20 days earlier and are 10 days longer than they were in 1990.
Allergists told ABC News a mix of climate change and more carbon emissions in the atmosphere have led to plants in many areas having a longer growing season and, therefore, higher pollen levels.
In fact, the USDA said allergy seasons feature 21% more pollen than three decades ago.
“Each earlier, longer growing season just leads to more time for exposure to those things which patient may react to,” Dr. Arveen Bhasin, an allergist-immunologist at Mayo Clinic, told ABC News.
Here’s what people with seasonal allergies can do to help handle their symptoms and get some relief:
Why do seasonal allergies occur?
Allergies occur when the immune system views food, medicine, things in the environment or something else as harmful and overreacts.
“Seasonal allergies occur when your immune system, which is normally designed to fight unwanted things like germs, becomes hyperactive in an abnormal way against anything, in this case airborne allergens,” Dr. Purvi Parikh, an allergist and immunologist at NYU Langone Health, told ABC News. “Pollen is the biggest culprit for season allergies,” which can come from plants such as trees, grasses and weeds.
The immune system then releases chemical compounds, such as histamine, which causes those hallmark symptoms of allergies.
Reactions can range from mildly annoying symptoms to life-threatening reactions including anaphylactic shock, which is when blood pressure drops suddenly and the organs can’t get enough oxygen.
In 2021, approximately 81 million people in the U.S. were diagnosed with seasonal allergies, otherwise known as hay fever, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America (AAFA).
How long do seasonal allergies last and are they getting worse?
Typically, spring allergies begin in March and last until the early summer while fall allergies begin in late August and last through autumn.
However, a report released last year from the AAFA found cities throughout the country — from Scranton, Pennsylvania, to San Antonio, Texas — are reporting worsening seasonal allergies.
Additionally, research has suggested that allergy seasons were getting longer and worse.
“Because our planet is warming up, it’s taking longer to get that first frost in the fall and so, there’s just longer growing seasons, and then we’re seeing the pollen in the spring start to come up earlier,” Bhasin said.
Parikh said that because more carbon dioxide has been released into the air, and plants feed off of carbon dioxide, this has released more pollen into the air, too.
“It’s a trend that we’ve been seeing over the past decade and [allergy seasons have] been gradually getting worse,” she said. “This year was especially bad. Usually we start seeing patients mid-March and this year we started seeing patients come in February with symptoms, and I think it’s because we had such a warm winter.”
The COVID-19 pandemic also had an effect on allergies. According to the AAFA report, few people reported pollen allergies in 2020 because people were inside due to workplace and school closures and stay-at-home orders.
“These trends continued in spring 2021,” according to the report. “But by fall 2021, the number of people affected by seasonal allergies rose to pre-pandemic levels. Experts believe this jump was due to fewer COVID-19 restrictions and more people going out, likely because of the introduction of COVID-19 vaccines.”
How can I treat my seasonal allergies?
“First and foremost is trying to identify what specifically patients are reactive to, so then we can talk about trying to control exposures or avoidance measures,” Bhasin said. “A lot of times that’s not effective for outdoor pollen allergies, but whatever we can do to try to mitigate some symptom exposure helps.”
She said there are a number of over-the-counter medications that people can try as well as nasal sprays and rinses.
Some are tailored to relieve symptoms while others are used to prevent symptoms. Additionally, certain medications work for certain symptoms.
Parikh sad because some patients can have more severe reactions to allergens than others, not all medications will be effective for all patients.
If people are not sure if their symptoms are linked to allergies, or they’re having trouble controlling their allergies, they should visit an allergist or immunologist.
Bhasin also recommends being proactive rather than reactive when it comes to treating seasonal allergies.
“By that, I mean start your medications, a couple of weeks before the season is anticipated to start,” she said. “So, take your antihistamine, take your nasal spray, start those a couple of weeks before so that, when the pollen hits, you’ve already got some protective measures within you.”
How do I distinguish season allergies from COVID-19?
Although COVID-19 and seasonal allergies share many symptoms, there are some differences.
For example, itchy, watery eyes and sneezing are common symptoms of seasonal allergies but rarely are symptoms of COVID-19.
However, symptoms such as fever, headaches or loss of taste and smell are more likely due to a respiratory illness like COVID-19.
“I think if you’re concerned about COVID, get a COVID test and see,” Bhasin said. “But for the most part, patients will say, ‘Hey, listen, every spring or every summer, I seem to get these symptoms, and I’m miserable for a few years.'”
She continued, “So there’s some historical pattern for allergies, whereas COVID, you know, he’s going to tend to come out of nowhere, if you will.”
