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NY’s COVID-19 stats show African-Americans, Hispanics, nursing homes at higher risk as reopening looms  5/8/2020 Record Online: "The leading underlying illness was hypertension, which showed up in 55% of the deaths. Next was diabetes, which was diagnosed in 7,414 deaths, or about 36% of the cases."

Many States Are Reporting Race Data For Only Some COVID-19 Cases And Deaths  5/7/2020 FiveThirtyEight: "Last week, we published an analysis finding that several states have yet to break down their COVID-19 data by race and ethnicity. At least three states — Nevada, North Dakota and Nebraska — and five U.S. territories have yet to release any demographic information about the cases and deaths they’ve reported so far. But even the places reporting some demographic data aren’t necessarily giving the full picture. For both cases and deaths, almost every state is missing varying amounts of race and ethnicity data — data that’s critical to understanding how communities are being affected by the novel coronavirus. According to our review of data available, 18 states and U.S. territories are not reporting information on the race and ethnicity of people who have died of COVID-19.1"

'We have to test more people': Wisconsin expands coronavirus testing for African American, Latino and tribal communities  5/7/2020 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "Individuals in high risk racial and ethnic groups, including African Americans, Latinos and tribal community members, will now be able to get a free test at those sites, regardless of whether they are having symptoms. "We can bend the curve on this if we test more," Evers said. "Is that going to solve economic disparities? No. But hopefully, it's going to save some lives. That's the critical thing right now.""

Minorities, more likely to have jobs that make them 'essential workers,' disproportionately affected by COVID-19  5/7/2020 ABC: ""The excess morbidity and mortality that we're seeing in COVID-19 is really a reflection of centuries really of systems that have created this sort of perfect storm, where people have less opportunities to work in places where they're able to shelter in place so minorities are more likely to be those 'essential workers.'" Payne owns a taxi and limo service. He thinks he got the coronavirus after driving a client. "I definitely had to work because that's my only way of making a living," Payne said. "There's nothing else for me really to depend on. If I don't transport clients, we don't eat.""

Why Trump and Anti-Lockdown Protesters’ Calls to Return to Normal Are Acts of White Supremacy  5/7/2020 IMI: "Ending lockdowns too early will kill more Americans—it’s that simple, and even the government’s own agencies project such a scenario. President Donald Trump has admitted it, saying, “Will some people be affected badly? Yes. But we have to get our country open and we have to get it open soon.” Except that ending the lockdowns now will specifically kill far more African Americans than any other demographic. The health news website MedPage referred to the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on blacks as a, “Wildly disproportionate mortality.” Researchshows that African Americans are dying from COVID-19 at a rate that is, “2.3 times higher than the rate for Asians and Latinos, and 2.6 times higher than the rate for Whites.” In fact, whites are the least impacteddemographic in the nation. In New York City, the national epicenter of the disease, the same racialized outcomes are observed, with more African Americans being hospitalized and dying from the disease than any other racial group, followed by Latinos. Black and brown Americans are also more impacted financially by the virus-related lockdown. A Pew Research survey found that African Americans and Latinos were far more likely to lose their jobs and lack the savings to cover their expenses than whites."

Nueva York deja morir a los hispanos y personas de color, denuncia enfermera en desgarrador video  5/7/2020 Tu Nota: "Acá no importan las vidas de los negros y de los hispanoamericanos", dice entre lágrimas en la grabación difundida a través de Internet y publicado en el NewYorkPost. “La negligencia grave y la mala gestión médica completa”, aseguró la profesional en el video, y se lamentó: “No les importa lo que le está pasando a estas personas. Y sólo tengo que seguir viéndolos morir… Oh, Dios”. "

African Americans are disproportionately dying from COVID-19. Here are states with the worst disparities  5/6/2020 WUSA: "Since then, more states have released data showing COVID-19 cases and deaths by race. According to the Racial Data Transparency map by Johns Hopkins University, as of early May, 41 states have released race-specific data on confirmed cases, and 38 states have started reporting COVID-19 deaths by race. The new data shed light on the extent of racial disparities in the pandemic. In Wisconsin, African Americans make up 32% of coronavirus deaths as of May 1, but the group makes up just 6.7% of the population. Similarly, in Michigan and Missouri, African Americans account for roughly 40% of coronavirus deaths despite comprising only 14% and 12% of the population respectively."

Disproportionately black counties account for over half of coronavirus cases in the U.S. and nearly 60% of deaths, study finds  5/6/2020 WaPo: "Although public health experts and political leaders have attributed the high rate of serious illness and deaths from covid-19 among black Americans to underlying health conditions, such as heart disease and diabetes, the Amfar study found that those factors were not the primary cause of the disparities. Rather, other social determinants, including employment, access to health insurance and medical care and poor air and water quality, were more predictive of infection and death from covid-19."

Black Americans are bearing the brunt of coronavirus recession – this should come as no surprise  5/6/2020 The Conversation: "As the COVID-19 pandemic worsened in April, many Americans were shocked by the extent that black Americans were being disproportionately impacted: higher infection rates, more deaths and greater job loss. But many black Americans were not surprised. This is not new. The same dynamic has been going on at times of crisis for decades and generations. As a labor economist and former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor under the Clinton administration, I know that history has shown that black Americans consistently bear the brunt of recessions and natural disasters."

'It's gone haywire': When COVID-19 arrived in rural America  5/6/2020 AP: "As the world’s attention was fixated on the horrors in Italy and New York City, the per capita death rates in counties in the impoverished southwest corner of Georgia climbed to among the worst in the country. The devastation here is a cautionary tale of what happens when the virus seeps into communities that have for generations remained on the losing end of the nation’s most intractable inequalities: these counties are rural, mostly African American and poor. "

Rand Paul says he’s not wearing a mask in Senate because he already got coronavirus  5/5/2020 Fox News: "There is always some immunity when you get a virus — but the question is, how long does it last? Right now, we are learning the answers to that question,” former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Chief Medical Officer Dr. Robert Amler told Fox News."

Anti-lockdown "movement": Powered by racism  5/4/2020 Salon: "But as with so much of the horror show that is unfolding in the era of Trump, the rot runs deeper than political expediency. There's obviously something deeply compelling to white identity ideologues about the idea that this virus is a hoax concocted by the "deep state," beyond their desire to defend Trump. The far right has grown increasingly hostile to the government in the face of social programs — most recently Obamacare — that they view as redistributing money from "deserving" white people to people of color. All the bellyaching about "tyranny" and patriotic cosplay is about creating a moral justification for anti-government views that are rooted in racist resentment and xenophobia. The lockdown protests are about further enshrining their hatred of Democrats, and their reluctance to pay taxes or share public goods with nonwhite people, as resistance to "tyranny." "

What are the ‘reopen’ protesters really saying?  5/1/2020 The Conversation: "One clearly visible theme in the #Reopen protests is how white the attendees are – but not just in terms of their own race. Their compassion also seemed limited to fellow white people. None that I saw were calling attention to the fact that the coronavirus doesn’t hit all populations equally: Blacks and other racial minorities had less access to high-quality health care before the outbreak, and as a result are less healthy and less able to fight off the virus when it strikes."

Averting Our Gaze From Biowarfare: Pandemics and Self-fulfilling Prophecies  4/30/2020 AntiWar: "By not taking on the issue of biowarfare, the left is effectively turning it over to the pro-war right which is weaponizing it against China instead of taking a comprehensive approach to ensure a bioweapons arms race doesn’t continue to threaten humanity."

More than 80% of hospitalized COVID-19 patients in Georgia last month were black, CDC study finds  4/30/2020 CBS: "A CDC study released Wednesday found that over 80% of the COVID-19 patients hospitalized in Georgia last month were black. It's the latest analysis showing that communities of color are being hit disproportionately hard by the coronavirus. The study comes just days after Georgia Governor Brian Kemp started reopening some of the state's businesses — a move condemned as premature and dangerous by local black leaders as well as public health officials and even President Trump."

Minority groups at risk as states withhold, provide partial COVID-19 racial data  4/30/2020 ABC: "As the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.S. tops one million, a review of nationwide data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows racial and ethnic information is still missing in over 50% of the total cases reported to the federal government."

Ibram X. Kendi: Why the coronavirus is hitting black people so hard  4/30/2020 Salon: "Then we ask, "OK, why is it that we're dying?" It's not because there's something wrong with black people. It's because we live in neighborhoods where there's environmental hazards, where there's pollution, so that causes young black kids to have asthma. We live in food deserts where it's hard to get access to high quality, cheaper food. That causes people to be more likely to suffer from heart disease and you suffer from respiratory disease, which then is going to make you more likely to die. We're just showing through this book, over time, there's never been anything wrong with black people as a group and always been wrong with the way in which we've been forced to live in this country."

HOW MILWAUKEE REPRESENTS THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC FOR AFRICAN AMERICANS  4/29/2020 The Undefeated: "Researchers at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health also recently found that long-term exposure to air pollution can possibly lead to higher rates of deaths from COVID-19. A 2019 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America found that, on average, African Americans are exposed to 56% more air pollution than they themselves cause, air pollution that is disproportionately caused by white Americans. White people, on the other hand, are exposed to 17% less of the air pollution they’re responsible for."

Top coronavirus model predicts 100,000 dead by the end of the pandemic's 1st wave this summer  4/29/2020 Yahoo News: "The economy cannot safely reopen, he said, unless states have the ability to immediately test, isolate and contact-trace for those who fall ill. Vespignani said that because of the coronavirus’s long incubation period and asymptomatic carriers’ ability to “start those invisible chains of transmission,” this infrastructure must be in place first. “Any surveillance system for diseases only captures the tip of the iceberg,” he said, before adding that achieving testing and contact tracing on a large scale will require “building a kind of war economy against this disease.”"

There could be 22 emerging COVID-19 hotspots in small cities or rural areas in eight states that are lifting lockdown restrictions, analysis of social media coronavirus posts reveals  4/29/2020 Daily Mail: "There could be up to 22 emerging coronavirus hotspots in small cities and rural counties across eight US states that are lifting lockdown restrictions, data researchers have found. An analysis conducted by data firm Dataminr used artificial intelligence to examine social media posts related to coronavirus and predicts the smaller areas where infections are set to increase. The firm identified the areas based on clusters of public social media posts that directly referenced, among other things, firsthand accounts of symptoms, relatives who have been infected and testing supply shortages."

USS Kidd Arrives in San Diego to Treat COVID-19 Outbreak; First Cases Emerged More than A Month After Hawaii Port Visit  4/28/2020 USNI News: "The first sailor began to show symptoms of the virus on April 22, more than 30 days after the ship’s last port visit in Hawaii, according to a status update provided to Congress and reviewed by USNI News. The time between port visits and the first reported case of symptoms have raised questions inside the Navy as to how the virus operates and how long it could exist undetected on a ship."

Coronavirus is spreading fast in states that may reopen soon  4/24/2020 CBS: "Cases are growing fastest in Grand Forks, N.D.; Sioux City, Iowa; Waterloo, Iowa; Columbus, Ohio; Green Bay, Wisc.; Amarillo, Texas; Lincoln, Neb.; Des Moines, Iowa; Wichita, Kan.; and Chattanooga, Tenn., according to the study. "Governors should be taking careful account of what the status of the outbreak is in their region before they ease restrictions or impose more restrictions," Fisher said. "Five of the top 50 growth rate areas are in Texas, a state that's pulling back on physical distancing. Two of the highest top 50 growth rate areas are in Georgia," which announced this week it would allow some businesses to reopen soon, Fisher said. The data came from the Dartmouth Atlas Project, which aggregated county-level data from The New York Times to track the spread of COVID-19 across the nation."

COVIDeniers: Anti-Science Coronavirus Denial Overlaps with Climate Denial  4/22/2020 Desmog: "These are dangerous operatives at work spreading all manner of doubt and delusion to confuse the public, and their actions and words will forever cement them on the wrong side of history. Explore the report materials below, and please contact DeSmog with any other examples of COVID denial you come across."

Director of key federal vaccine agency says his departure was retaliation  4/22/2020 CNN: "Bright was removed from his position but is not resigning, the source familiar said. He said Wednesday he will request that the HHS inspector general "investigate the manner in which this administration has politicized the work of BARDA and has pressured me and other conscientious scientists to fund companies with political connections as well as efforts that lack scientific merit." He has not yet filed the request, according to the source, but intends to do so in the next day or so. His lawyers said in the statement that that they will request a stay of the termination and that Bright "be permitted to remain in his position" pending the investigation's findings."

Watch: Georgia doctor reacts with horror to Gov. Kemp’s decision to ‘reopen’ state despite pandemic risks  4/22/2020 Alternet: "Dr. Bernice King, daughter of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., was just as vehement if not more so than Dr. Lorraine. King is actually a member of Kemp’s “Coronavirus Task Force,” but, inexplicably, even she was not informed of his decision beforehand."

Georgia's Covid-19 reopening pits white governor against black mayors  4/22/2020 Guardian: "In a state where African Americans make up more than 32% of the population but account for an estimated 54% of known coronavirus deaths, the decision pitted a white Republican governor against mostly black Democratic mayors and critics. “By trying to push a false opening of the economy, we risk putting more lives in danger,” Stacey Abrams, the Democrat who lost to Kemp in a controversial election in 2018, told MSNBC. Citing the close contact needed for grooming services, Abrams said: “There is nothing about [the measure] that makes sense.”"

Southern governors create a Covid-19 coalition and experts fear a 'perfect storm'  4/21/2020 Politico: "The newly formed coalition includes Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi, a part of the country that has underfunded health systems, as well as high rates of obesity, diabetes and other illnesses that amplify the deadliness of the coronavirus. And unlike their peers in New York, New Jersey and other Northeastern states that have been working cooperatively since last week to restart their economies, the six in the South have lagged on testing and social distancing measures."

Black Leaders Condemn Republican Governors’ Plans to Reopen State Economies: ‘More People Can Die’  4/21/2020 Atlanta Black Star: "“I’m extremely concerned about the governor’s plans and what his decisions will mean for the safety, health and lives of Georgia residents,” King said in a Periscope video. She is a member of Kemp’s coronavirus task force and revealed the governor did not inform them of his intentions. In the video, King also highlighted the elevated risk for Black people. “I am particularly concerned about populations most affected by the virus,” she said. “It is well-known and conveyed by scientists, medical professionals and data that the coronavirus is proven to be especially dangerous for members of my community, the Black community.”"

Antibody surveys suggesting vast undercount of coronavirus infections may be unreliable  4/21/2020 Science: "Even if the antibody surveys show a COVID-19 death rate well below 1%, says Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, control measures will be needed for a long time to avoid overwhelmed hospitals. “The seroprevalence data only confirm the challenge we face. The data [these studies] are generating … is just showing how hard this is.”"

The Same People Who Peddle Climate Denial Are Behind Coronavirus Pseudoscience  4/20/2020 Gizmodo: "Some of that misinformation has been crafted to foster doubt about government responses to the pandemic. Some fossil fuel industry-backed climate deniers are now claiming that the pandemic is a plot by “globalist elites” like Bill Gates and George Soros to alternately force vaccines or function as a “world population cull.” Other schemes use misinformation to exploit people’s fear. Organisations that previously argued that plastic bag bans were hysterical overreaches by the climate movement, for instance, are now misrepresenting scientific studies to advocate for an end plastic bag bans to stop the spread of coronavirus. Many of those same organisations, like the Manhattan Institute and Heartland Institute – US-based conservative think tanks – have also received fossil fuel company money."

Hundreds of thousands in L.A. County may have the coronavirus, study finds  4/20/2020 LA Times: "The initial results from the first large-scale study tracking the spread of the coronavirus in the county found that 2.8% to 5.6% of adults have antibodies to the virus in their blood, an indication of past exposure. That translates to roughly 221,000 to 442,000 adults who have recovered from an infection, according to the researchers conducting the study, even though the county had reported fewer than 8,000 cases at that time."

Coronavirus protests test Facebook's free speech pledges  4/20/2020 Politico: ""Given Big Tech’s history of bias and censorship, I’m deeply concerned that they and government officials are partnering not to protect public health, but to shut down views with which they disagree," Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said in a statement Monday evening. "Now, more than ever, companies like Facebook should focus on connecting people, not shutting down communities because they hold different views.” But Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal praised the company’s move Monday night, tweeting: “Powerful special interests are using astroturfing & dangerous tactics to undermine the fight against COVID-19. Facebook is right to take a stand against harmful misinformation.”"

Racial toll of virus grows even starker as more data emerges  4/19/2020 ABC: "As a clearer picture emerges of COVID-19’s decidedly deadly toll on black Americans, leaders are demanding a reckoning of the systemic policies they say have made many African Americans far more vulnerable to the virus, including inequity in access to health care and economic opportunity. A growing chorus of medical professionals, activists and political figures is pressuring the federal government to not just release comprehensive racial demographic data of the country’s coronavirus victims, but also to outline clear strategies to blunt the devastation on African Americans and other communities of color."

Stanford study: More than 48K Santa Clara County residents have likely been infected by coronavirus  4/17/2020 Palo Alto: "The number of coronavirus infections in Santa Clara County could be between 50 and 80 times higher than the officially confirmed count, preliminary results from a community-based study by a team of Stanford University researchers indicates."

How the coronavirus pandemic shows that Christian white nationalism is a much greater threat to the US than radical Islam  4/17/2020 Alternet: "Islamist terror groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda encourage suicide bombing, which — as countless anti-terror Muslims will point out — is an insult to Islam because the Qu’ran is very anti-suicide. For that matter, Christianity is equally anti-suicide. And yet, the Christian Right and many of President Donald Trump’s far-right white evangelical supporters have been encouraging behavior that is suicidal. When far-right white evangelicals, white nationalists and coronavirus truthers rail against social distancing and encourage large gatherings, they are encouraging suicidal behavior. And there have been many examples."

The GOP has become a death cult  4/17/2020 Alternet: "“Long live death!” That was the defiant cry of José Millán-Astray y Terreros, a general in Francisco Franco’s fascist army during the Spanish civil war. It could just as well suit Trump’s foot soldiers."

Meet the right-wing groups protesting against social distancing and stay-at-home orders: report  4/17/2020 Alternet: “While protesters in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and other states claim to speak for ordinary citizens, many are also supported by street-fighting right-wing groups like the Proud Boys, conservative armed militia groups, religious fundamentalists, anti-vaccination groups and other elements of the radical right,” Wilson explains.

The Black Plague  4/16/2020 New Yorker: "In Philadelphia, a scientist at Drexel University found that, in Zip Codes with a “lower proportion of minorities and higher incomes,” a higher number of tests were administered. In Zip Codes with a higher number of unemployed and uninsured residents, there were fewer tests. Taken together, testing in higher-income neighborhoods is six times greater than it is in poorer neighborhoods."

A New Statistic Reveals Why America’s COVID-19 Numbers Are Flat  4/16/2020 Atlantic: "The high positivity rate also suggests that new cases in the U.S. have plateaued only because the country has hit a ceiling in its testing capacity. Looking solely at positives, the U.S. is steaming toward 650,000 confirmed cases, but the number of new cases per day appears to be plateauing or even declining... Since April 1, the country has tested roughly 145,000 people every day with no steady upward trajectory. The growth in the number of new cases per day, and the growth in the number of new tests per day, are very tightly correlated."

CDC director: Agency sent guidance to Florida weeks before gov ordered some residents to stay at home  4/13/2020 The Hill: "If true, Redfield's remarks would mean that the state had received advice from federal officials on necessary steps to prevent the spread of coronavirus weeks before DeSantis publicly alluded to a lack of guidance from the White House coronavirus task force while facing criticism for his decisions not to shutter state beaches or issue a statewide stay-at-home order."

Louisiana Pastor - If Parishioners Die After Contracting COVID-19 ... It's a Sacrifice for God and Freedom!!!  4/8/2020 TMZ: "Tony Spell, leader of Life Tabernacle Church in Baton Rouge, tells TMZ ... he thinks true Christians do not mind dying from COVID-19. He insists that what they fear instead is living in fear. As he puts it, "People that can prefer tyranny over freedom do not deserve freedom." He's also not flinching at medical experts suggesting most of the nation will eventually contract the virus, even if only mildly. Spell's reaction is, "Let's get on with life.""

'It's a racial justice issue': Black Americans are dying in greater numbers from Covid-19  4/8/2020 Guardian: "According to CDC guidelines, every state is legally required to track data on testing and treatment by race, as it has done during other outbreaks. Fewer than a dozen have released that data so far. Last week congressional Democrats, including Senator Elizabeth Warren and Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, both of Massachusetts, sent a letter demanding the CDC provide racial data. Without demographic data, health officials and lawmakers would not be able to address inequities in health outcomes and testing that might emerge, the letter said. The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights also called out the CDC for not including those racial breakdowns. “This is a crisis like none other and officials in our state and federal governments play a large role here in bringing transparency,” said Kristen Clarke, committee president and executive director. The committee sent letters urging state health departments, as well as Washington DC, to release their numbers. On Monday, Washington’s Mayor Muriel Bowser published coronavirus numbers by race for the first time: of the District’s 24 deaths, 14 were of black patients. After losing its majority-black status in 2011, Washington DC is now 45.5% African American. Bowser dismissed questions on racial disparities, claiming “all deaths are a concern”. But for many black communities the threat of being infected by Covid-19 is proportional to their fear. According to Pew, 46% of black Americans viewed the coronavirus as a threat to their health, more than double their white counterparts."

A Nurse Bought Protective Supplies for Colleagues. The Hospital Suspended Her.  4/8/2020 Truth Out: "But rather than thanking the staff, hospital administrators on Saturday suspended Matievskaya for distributing “unauthorized” protective gear. Across the country, front-line medical providers and hospital administrators are butting heads about precautions against the coronavirus pandemic. Clinicians are being told to reuse or go without necessary supplies even when treating patients infected with COVID-19. That goes against the way they’ve been trained. Some doctors and nurses now say they are being instructed not to speak to journalists and disciplined for doing so or taking action to protect themselves."

AMERICA SET UP BLACK COMMUNITIES TO BE HARDER HIT BY COVID-19  4/8/2020 The Verge: "“When you look at [COVID-19] that particularly is virulent for persons who have higher rates of disease, that’s exactly the picture of African Americans. But it’s not their genes. It’s the social conditions that we have created,” says, David Williams, a professor of public health at Harvard whose research has examined how race and class affect health. “I hope this is a wake up call for America.”"

US: black, Latino communities hit hard by COVID-19  4/7/2020 AA, Turkey: "Nationwide, black Americans tend to have higher rates of chronic health conditions like hypertension, heart disease and diabetes, than do white Americans. The same is true for Latinos. The conditions put individuals at greater risk for death caused by COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus. U.S. congressman Joaquin Castro noted the risk factors for Latinos, noting the group is also less likely to have access to health care, according to the Hill. “Locally, we are already seeing evidence that communities of color, including immigrant communities, have higher rates of coronavirus cases, even though testing is still not widely available,” Castro, who is the chairman of the Hispanic Congressional Caucus, told the Hill."

Louisiana’s COVID-19 deaths were 70 percent Black residents  4/7/2020 Griot: "More than 70 percent of Louisianans who have died from COVID-19 are African-American, and the leading underlying issue is hypertension. The news comes a day after The Grio reported that 70 percent of all COVID-19 deaths in Chicago are Black people."

What the COVID-19 Pandemic Means for Black Americans  4/7/2020 Scientific American: "One of the main solutions to combating COVID-19 is widespread testing that would allow us to cohort and quarantine groups of patients who test positive so as to restrict the spread of disease. However, COVID1-9 testing has had limited availability for a variety of reasons, including ineffective federal leadership, the bureaucracy of federal agencies and an uncoordinated health care system. As a physician, I’ve found it upsetting that celebrities and government officials without symptoms have been able to access testing quickly with same-day results, while I’ve had to ration out testing to my patients with turnaround times of five, seven and sometimes 10 days as a result of backlogs."

Black America must wake up to this viral threat  4/6/2020 CNN: "In addition, younger African Americans are already dying at higher rates from diabetes, HIV and cancer than white populations of the same age, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And people who contract Covid-19 and are already immunocompromised appear at greater risk of complications from the virus, should they contract it. Furthermore, obesity rates are significantly higher among both African American children (17 and under) and adults (18 and older), according to the Department of Health and Human Services. And obesity puts them at greater risk of those underlying immunocompromising illnesses such as diabetes and high-blood pressure."

Rate of deaths, illness among black residents alarms cities  4/6/2020 Miami Herald: "Public health experts in Chicago said the trend was unsurprising to anyone familiar with decades-old barriers to health care in the geographically divided city; residents of the city’s South and West sides historically have poorer access to health care, higher poverty rates and jobs that require them to keep showing up while others are able to work from home. Similar conditions mark other large cities with large black populations that are considered hot spots for the coronavirus, including New York, Detroit, Milwaukee and New Orleans. Figures released Monday by Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services showed African Americans, who make up 14% of the state population, make up about 33% of cases statewide and 41% of deaths."

Nueva York, el Covid 19 ya golpea al pueblo garífuna: van 3 muertos  4/6/2020 Kenny Castillo: "Tristes noticias desde Nueva York. Tres muertes de garífunas en relación COVID 19 se habrían producido ya. Nueva York es el punto en el mundo en donde la enfermedad golpea con mayor fuerza. La comunidad se encuentra en alarma. Como era de esperarse, al vivir ahi aproximadamente 200 mil garífunas procedentes de Honduras, Guatemala y Belice serían parte del impacto. Las autoridades no suelen revelar nombres de las víctimas, pero en la comunidad todos se conocen y por ello trascienden los nombres. Es así como en las redes sociales, amigos de Beverly Guity lamentaron su muerte. Guity es una mujer joven de Brooklyn. De madre procedente de Santa Fe y de padre de Santa Rosa de Aguan. Ella perdió la batalla y falleció dejando un profundo pesar en sus familiares. No se pudo determinar la edad de la infortunada, pero las fotos difundidas la muestran como una mujer joven, quizá menos de los 40."

Here’s what Wall Street doesn’t want you to know about its grip on emergency rooms  4/4/2020 Raw Story: "Doctor Ling Min is the first emergency room doctor to be fired for going public with his concerns about poor hospital emergency room safety practices and shortages of medical supplies and protective gear for health workers. He won’t be the last."

The rightwing Christian preachers in deep denial over Covid-19's danger  4/4/2020 Guardian: "André Gagne, an associate professor of theological studies at Concordia University, and a researcher of the Christian right, recently published on the phenomenon of coronavirus denialism among evangelicals. Asked why evangelical leaders are committed to taking such a risk in denying the reality of the infection, or even assisting its spread, Gagne said it was rooted in their theology. “Many of these preachers believe Christians shouldn’t be controlled by a ‘spirit of fear’,” Gagne said. “They often quote biblical texts which promise God’s healing and protection to those who have faith. They are confident that God is in control; that this is part of his overall plan before a great end-times spiritual revival.” He said: “There are those who also understand this in terms of ‘spiritual warfare’, and that Jesus gave Christians authority over every demon and sickness. And if a Christian dies, no worries: he or she will ‘be with the Lord’.”"

Leaked Memo Reveals Amazon Execs Plotted to Paint Fired 'Not Smart' Worker as 'Face of Entire Union/Organizing Movement'  4/3/2020 Common Dreams: "The richest man on earth, @JeffBezos, had a meeting to develop a PR strategy to smear Christian Smalls, a young, African American Amazon warehouse worker, father of 3, who organized a walkout because of unsafe conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Look how they talk about him"

The South Doesn’t Want to Self-Isolate  4/2/2020 Washington Monthly: "Whether religiosity explains it, or a probably related skepticism toward scientific expert advice, or maybe something to do with their car culture, I don’t know. But their slowness to respond to this outbreak has undermined the effectiveness of the efforts of the areas that did respond. And, because of the nature of this disease, we’re all going to be paying for that for the foreseeable future."

DeSantis order relaxes rules for churches, freeing megachurch pastor to resume services  4/2/2020 Fox: "The pastor canceled his upcoming in-person services after being arrested for hosting hundreds inside his megachurch despite a Hillsborough County "safer at home" social distancing order, banning gatherings of 10 or more to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus. But Governor Ron DeSantis issued his own, statewide order Wednesday, which says the rules will be different for places of worship. Under his new order, church services are considered "essential" and there is no clear indication social distancing rules must be followed. This new executive order is giving leaders at the local level whiplash."

New Mexico's governor warns tribal nations could be 'wiped out' by coronavirus  3/30/2020 ABC: ""The rate of infection, at least on the New Mexico side — although we've got several Arizona residents in our hospitals — we're seeing a much higher hospital rate, a much younger hospital rate, a much quicker go-right-to-the-vent rate for this population. And we're seeing doubling in every day-and-a-half," she said."

“Everyone is on the frontlines,” talking to an emergency room doctor about COVID-19 in New York  3/30/2020 Al Dia: "One of the recommendations regarding a crisis-level shortage of face masks suggests doctors use a bandana or scarf to protect when none are available. “It’s disappointing that the CDC would offer such suggestions. That’s not going to protect anything,” said Mollette."

Police, Military Begin Door to Door Searches to Hunt Down New Yorkers Seeking Refuge  3/28/2020 Activist Post: "In perhaps the most unprecedented attack on the Constitution on which the Free Thought Project has ever has ever reported, the governor of Rhode Island has announced that the National Guard will begin conducting house-to-house searches to hunt down New Yorkers seeking refuge in their state. Not only will cops be violating the 4th Amendment rights of citizens in their homes, the governor also announced that Rhode Island cops have already begun pulling over every vehicle they see with a New York license plate."

‘People will die’: Trump White House objects to $1 billion price tag for 80,000 ventilators  3/27/2020 Alternet: "President Donald Trump is expected as early as the end of this week to sign legislation that would establish a $4.5 trillion bailout fund for large corporations, but the prospect of spending around a billion dollars for the production of tens of thousands of much-needed ventilators amid the coronavirus crisis is apparently a bridge too far for the White House. The New York Times reported late Thursday that the Trump administration abruptly canceled its planned announcement of an agreement with General Motors and Ventec Life Systems “that would allow for the production of as many as 80,000 desperately needed ventilators to respond to an escalating pandemic.” One of the primary reasons for the White House’s decision to cancel the announcement set for Wednesday, according to the Times, was the supposedly prohibitive price tag." [Ventilators cost several times that much and we need a million in the US, not 80,000. There are only 160,000 currently available.]

Christian pastor who thought COVID-19 is just ‘mass hysteria’ among the first in Virginia to die from virus  3/26/2020 Raw Story: "On March 13, Spradlin shared a misleading meme that compared coronavirus deaths to swine flu deaths and suggested the media is using the pandemic to hurt Trump. In the comments, Spradlin acknowledged that the outbreak is a “real issue,” but added that he believes “the media is pumping out fear and doing more harm than good”. “It will come and it will go,” he wrote. That same day, he shared a post from another pastor that told the story of a missionary in South Africa who “protected” himself from the bubonic plague with the “Spirit of God.”"

Man under investigation for plotting an attack at a hospital believed to be treating Covid-19 patients was killed during an FBI investigation  3/25/2020 CNN: "The suspect, who hasn't been identified by authorities, was the subject of a months-long investigation into alleged white supremacist activity, and recently had made threats the FBI took seriously, the sources said. Among the threats was one to carry out an attack on a hospital in the Kansas City, Missouri, area, where he lived, in part because of the belief that patients may be treated there for the Covid-19 virus."

Repurposing a drug for blood clots: A stopgap measure to treat respiratory distress in COVID-19  3/25/2020 Medical Xpress: "Researchers at MIT and the University of Colorado at Denver have proposed a stopgap measure that they believe could help Covid-19 patients who are in acute respiratory distress. By repurposing a drug that is now used to treat blood clots, they believe they could help people in cases where a ventilator is not helping, or if a ventilator is not available."

Coronavirus crisis approaches tipping point: 'Can't have the cure be worse than the problem'  3/23/2020 Washington Times: "A senior administration official told The Washington Times there’s a “universal” sense within the White House that the health-vs-economy equation needs to be rebalanced and it will take more than the bill working its way through Congress right now. “Liquidity is great. Small business loans are great. Beefed up unemployment insurance is great. But none of it will mean anything unless people go back to work and we start having people buying and selling and working and doing,” the official said. “For the last week we’ve been a socialist country. You know what? It has been terrible. It turns out being Denmark sucks,” the official added.'

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick: 'I'm all in' on risking my health to lift social distancing guidelines for economic boost  3/23/2020 CNN: ""No one reached out to me and said, 'As a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren?' And if that is the exchange, I'm all in," Patrick told Fox News. He added, "My messages is that let's get back to work, let's get back to living. Let's be smart about it and those of us who are 70+, we'll take care of ourselves. But don't sacrifice the country."" [It is not only

Trump itching to scale back social distancing after 15 day-period, aides say  3/23/2020 CNN: "Already, some conservatives have suggested the US went too far in limiting people's movements to protect health at the expense of businesses, including Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham and Steve Hilton. "You know that famous phrase, 'the cure is worse than the disease'?" Hilton asked during his monologue on Sunday night. "That is exactly the territory we are hurtling towards." An open question is whether Trump is willing to cast aside Fauci's recommendations once the economic picture becomes clearer. Meanwhile, Fauci has been vocal in his disagreements with Trump -- including in interviews openly discussing his role in correcting the President's false or misleading statements. On Monday, Trump began sending retweets that seem to be encouraging an end to strong social distancing measures after the current 15-day period, despite concern from public health officials that it won't be long enough to blunt the worst of the coronavirus. "15 days," one user tweeted. "Then we isolate the high risk groups and the rest of us get back to work before it's all over for everyone!! #Landslide2020" [There are no lo risk groups.]

Trump never actually banned flights from China or Europe. Why?  3/22/2020 Washinton Times: "That the Trump administration “banned flights,” “closed the borders,” or “stopped flights” from first China and later the European Union to halt the spread of COVID-19 has become a staple of its defense of its response to the pandemic. But it simply isn’t true. At no time through the course of this awful period have flights even once been halted between either China and the U.S. or Europe — including even Italy — and the United States."

Why President Trump is at odds with his medical experts over using malaria drugs against Covid-19  3/22/2020 Stat News: Good review of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine and what is known about them. Like all US media, passes the Cuban Interferon alpha 2B under silence.

How the World Will Look After the Coronavirus Pandemic  3/20/2020 Foreign Policy: "To help us make sense of the ground shifting beneath our feet as this crisis unfolds, Foreign Policy asked 12 leading thinkers from around the world to weigh in with their predictions for the global order after the pandemic."

I’m A Doctor. The U.S. Response To Coronavirus Has Been Nothing Short Of Criminal  3/20/2020 Huff Post: "Each day we get more reports of health care workers infected, hospitalized, and dying all over the world. This week we lost the brilliant Dr. Steven Schwartz to COVID-19 in Seattle. Others will follow. They will continue to die because of the inaction of their leaders. Their lives will end because factories were not taken over by their governments to manufacture test kits and personal protective equipment in time. They will die because they are putting their limp, used masks in little brown paper bags after their 12-hour shift, to be used again tomorrow; they are wiping down their lone allotted face shields with disinfectant, or wrapping them in saran wrap, and cutting plastic Coke bottles to make new ones."

Washington Post: US intelligence warned Trump in January and February as he dismissed coronavirus threat  3/20/2020 CNN: "Citing US officials familiar with the agencies' reports and warnings, the Post reported that intelligence agencies depicted the nature and global spread of the virus and China's apparent downplaying of its severity, as well as the potential need for government measures to contain it -- while Trump opted to dismiss or simply not address their seriousness. "Donald Trump may not have been expecting this, but a lot of other people in the government were -- they just couldn't get him to do anything about it," the official noted to the Post. "The system was blinking red.""

The Best-Case Outcome for the Coronavirus, and the Worst  3/20/2020 DNYUZ: "Here’s the grimmest version of life a year from now: More than two million Americans have died from the new coronavirus, almost all mourned without funerals. Countless others have died because hospitals are too overwhelmed to deal adequately with heart attacks, asthma and diabetic crises. The economy has cratered into a depression, for fiscal and monetary policy are ineffective when people fear going out, businesses are closed and tens of millions of people are unemployed."

Infected people without symptoms might be driving the spread of coronavirus more than we realized  3/19/2020 CNN: "But it appears that a Massachusetts coronavirus cluster with at least 82 cases was started by people who were not yet showing symptoms, and more than half a dozen studies have shown that people without symptoms are causing substantial amounts of infection."

‘Things will get worse’: A doctor fighting coronavirus explains what the crisis is exposing about our health care system  3/18/2020 Alternet: "I’m part of a discussion group of health care workers; a nurse in New York City recently contacted us, saying, “Ok, so now we get two masks each and that’s it!!! WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON????”

Rubio: 'Now is not that time' to look into Trump's coronavirus failings  3/17/2020 American Independent: "Now is the time to act, to keep this from being worse than it needs to be, and we can't do that if we spend all our time taking political potshots or arguing over ideological purity."

Tests indicate coronavirus can survive in the air  3/11/2020 The Hill: "A study awaiting peer review from scientists at Princeton University, the University of California-Los Angeles and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) posted online Wednesday indicated that the COVID-19 virus could remain viable in the air "up to 3 hours post aerosolization," while remaining alive on plastic and other surfaces for up to three days. "Our results indicate that aerosol and fomite transmission of HCoV-19 is plausible, as the virus can remain viable in aerosols for multiple hours and on surfaces up to days," reads the study's abstract."

Laurie Garrett on How Trump Has Sabotaged America’s Response to the Coronavirus Pandemic  2/3/2020 Democracy Now: "Well, the Trump administration, from the moment it came in, wanted to disband programs that were signature programs of the Obama administration. One of them had to do with global health security in response to the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa, which, as you know, was a very deadly outcome and involved three countries. The United States played a big role, including having our military on site in Liberia in support. And the Trump administration pretty much disbanded the entire program, got rid of the National Security Council’s special pandemic response unit, got rid of the equivalent in the Department of Homeland Security, cut the budget of the Centers for Disease Control, and, you know, we can go down a huge list. Even a program that is specifically aiming at protecting you and me, citizens inside the country, by beefing up the hospital capacities and training of local healthcare workers and public health leaders is running out of money and will be officially shut down in May, unless something happens. And Congress has refused to even look at it. McConnell has never allowed it to even come up for a vote. So, we’re in a situation now where we’re flying on fumes, with people in charge who have never really been in the middle of epidemics, haven’t listened to those who really understand how to stop an epidemic."

Trump Has Sabotaged America’s Coronavirus Response  1/31/2020 Foreign Policy: "When Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), declared the Wuhan coronavirus a public health emergency of international concern on Thursday, he praised China for taking “unprecedented” steps to control the deadly virus. “I have never seen for myself this kind of mobilization,” he noted. “China is actually setting a new standard for outbreak response.”"
     

Links/Enlaces

USA

www.covidiq.org

Coronavirus State-By-State Projections: When Will Each State Peak?
 

Anti Physical Distancing

wehaverights.com

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