Category Archives: Essential Workers

Home of the Brave

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In educated and affluent Massachusetts, coronavirus cases surged. The decline has yet to come.

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Clinical Testing, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Essential Businesses, Essential Workers, Health Policy, Infection Control, Infectious Virus, Mortality, Pandemic, Partisanship, Public Health, Public Safety, Social Distancing • Leave a comment

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Coronavirus cases surged in educated and affluent Massachusetts ...

Massachusetts has one of the most educated and affluent populations in the country. It’s home to some of the nation’s most preeminent medical centers. And it has political leaders who have worked cooperatively, across party lines, in the face of a crisis.

Massachusetts also has the third-highest number of confirmed state coronavirus cases, along with the fourth-highest death toll. And despite predictions that numbers would be falling by now after a month and a half of people staying at home, new case counts have instead remained stubbornly high.

The state’s struggle to combat the coronavirus reflects just what a tenacious adversary it really is. Even for a place that has a lot going for it, the toll has been severe — and it is growing by the day.

As of Friday, Massachusetts had more than 64,000 cases — behind only New York and New Jersey, its larger northeastern neighbors. New cases totaled 2,106, continuing a dismal streak lasting more than two weeks of at least 1,500 additional cases per day. Deaths hit 3,716, behind only New York, New Jersey and Michigan.

Even as many states began opening up their economies Friday — allowing restaurants, shopping malls and hair salons to do business — that remained a distant prospect in Massachusetts. Instead, Gov. Charlie Baker (R) on Friday was announcing new restrictions, including a requirement that people wear masks while in public.

“This is going to be a way of life,” Baker said. “No ifs, no ands, no buts, no doubts.”

The persistence with which people keep getting sick in Massachusetts has been matched in other hard-hit states. Rather than a precipitous decline, the number of new cases in places such as Illinois, California and the D.C. metro area has instead been leveling off slowly.

Experts say that is to be expected, even if it means a long road ahead.

“If social distancing is done well — and Massachusetts has done it pretty well — the effect is going to be to flatten the curve and spread it out over more time,” said David Hamer, professor of global health at Boston University and an infectious-disease physician at Boston Medical Center. “Instead of a peak, it’s a prolonged plateau. It’s going to be a gradual decline.”

Like other states, Massachusetts has avoided some of the most dire projections about how many people would fall ill. Its social distancing measures also have prevented hospitals from becoming overwhelmed.

But actually pushing down the rate — rather than treading water — will be tricky to pull off, because of the nature of who is getting sick.

More than half the state’s deaths have been people in long-term-care facilities, such as nursing homes. The elderly make up a slightly higher share of the Massachusetts population than the national average.

Essential workers — who have to commute to their jobs each day and often are in close quarters with others — also have been hit hard.

“Some people have been able to completely shelter at home. Their risk of getting anything is very low indeed,” said Jeffrey K. Griffiths, who teaches public health at Tufts University. “But there are other groups of people that man the gas stations, the grocery stores, the hospitals. They’re police and firefighters. They still have to go to work.”

And then there are the poor, for whom social distancing at home is particularly challenging.

Geralde Gabeau, an advocate for the state’s Haitian community, said she knows of immigrant families that are living 10 to a two-bedroom apartment and sharing a single bathroom.

“If one person gets infected, the likelihood of everyone being infected is very high,” she said. “There is no room for people to isolate.”

Gabeau said the immigrant assistance group she runs, Immigrants Family Services Institute-USA, has gone from helping 60 families to more than 300. “Our phone never stops,” she said.

And she hesitates before opening Facebook: “All you see is RIP,” she said. “Every single day, people are losing their grandparents. Yesterday we lost a young man, 34 years old. A family in Boston lost four people. The Haitian community is mourning like crazy.”

Immigrant groups say Massachusetts needs to do a better job circulating information about the coronavirus in multiple languages. Though much of the literature is translated into Spanish, that accounts for only about 40 percent of the state’s population that is not proficient in English. Gabeau said she has taken it upon herself to produce videos in Creole to help spread the truth about the virus for the Haitian community, which makes up a significant share of the state’s 1 million-plus foreign-born residents.

Massachusetts was among the earliest states to reckon with a coronavirus outbreak, recording its first case on Feb. 1. But Hamer said the virus was probably present far earlier, and it was far more widespread than anyone knew when Baker declared a state of emergency on March 10. With everyone cooped up indoors for the New England winter but without official mandates to socially distance, the virus had ample opportunity to spread.

Many of the cases from early March were traced back to a late-February conference hosted by a biotech company, Biogen.

Experts say that on the whole, the state has done well with its response. Baker is a Republican, while Democrats dominate the legislature. The two sides have worked cooperatively, with little partisan rancor.

“I would say that as a state we are doing this right,” said Maryanne Bombaugh, president of the Massachusetts Medical Society. “It’s a very positive example of how you can work together and make a difference for your people.”

Bombaugh cited in particular the prevalence of testing in Massachusetts, including of the asymptomatic, which she said accounts at least in part for the state’s relatively high infection levels. The state also is tracing those who come into close contact with people who have tested positive, a vital step in containing future outbreaks.

Unlike states that have been besieged by protests, there has been comparatively little pressure in Massachusetts to reopen before public health experts give the all clear. The state is among a coalition, led by New York, that is trying to coordinate reopenings across the Northeast rather than acting individually, as many states have done.

The state’s nonessential-business closure extends until at least May 18, with an advisory group due to report back to Baker by then on the best way to gradually reopen.

The governor on Friday said he was encouraged by a slight decrease in the percentage of coronavirus-positive patients requiring hospitalization. “Overall, this is a very good sign,” he said.

Yet testing is still below what epidemiologists would like to see before stay-at-home restrictions can be lifted. A sustained drop in positive results is another prerequisite. And although experts say it is probably coming, it will take some time to get there.

“The plateau is telling us that we’re getting there,” Griffiths said. “But if we were to open up again while we’re at that plateau, we would just see another sharp spike up.”

 

 

 

 

Cartoon – Just Two on the Front Lines Who Checkout Hundreds of People a Day

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Cartoon, Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Employee Benefits, Employee Hazard Pay, Employer-Based Health Insurance, Essential Businesses, Essential Workers, Front Lines, Health Insurance Coverage Adequacy, Healthcare Providers, Pandemic, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), Public Health, Public Safety, Sick Leave, Social Distancing, Worker Protection • Leave a comment

Slavery 21st Century

Romney calls for hazard pay for workers on the front line of the pandemic

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Economic Crisis, Economic Stimulus, Employee Hazard Pay, Employee Protections, Essential Businesses, Essential Workers, Health Policy, Infection Control, Infectious Virus, Pandemic, Unemployment, Unemployment Insurance • Leave a comment

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/romney-calls-for-hazard-pay-for-workers-on-the-front-line-of-the-pandemic/2020/05/01/837e7f60-8bc9-11ea-9759-6d20ba0f2c0e_story.html?fbclid=IwAR0F49gAgZIUilmAmMk4vfElLbG4EVAiFz94E6W41DkniFVs9MIn7XJITcI&utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook

Why Workers Are Asking for Hazard Pay

Sen. Mitt Romney is proposing a plan to better compensate health-care workers, grocery store employees and other essential personnel working through the coronavirus pandemic as the issue of hazard pay becomes a growing flash point in the next round of emergency relief negotiations.

Romney (R-Utah), the GOP’s 2012 presidential nominee, wants to boost the pay of qualifying essential workers by up to $12 per hour for the next three months, a bonus that could be as much as $1,920 a month.

“This is a proposal which I think is fiscally responsible but also recognizes the additional risk that people are taking,” Romney said in a phone interview with The Washington Post on Friday.

He noted that an essential worker who earns less than $22 per hour may ultimately be paid less than someone earning unemployment benefits that were bolstered by Congress in recent virus rescue packages.

“That’s not fair, number one,” Romney said. “And number two, it would create an anomaly, of course, for people to be taking additional risk of their health and have someone else not working making more than they are.”

The idea of hazard pay — additional compensation for those on the front lines of the pandemic — has broad conceptual support in Washington, yet neither lawmakers nor the Trump administration addressed the issue in the economic and health relief bill, totaling nearly $3 trillion, passed thus far.

President Trump has spoken in general terms about providing additional pay to critical medical personnel, and the White House has indicated that the administration is working with Congress on doing so. Senate Democrats have released a plan, dubbed the “Heroes Fund,” that provides up to $25,000 per person for a broad category of essential personnel including not just health-care employees but also food workers and delivery drivers.

Romney’s proposal covers a similarly broad swath of workers. The Labor Department and Congress would determine what industries would be deemed “essential,” but they would include at a minimum hospitals, food distributors and manufacturers. Employers would have to prove that workers would be in conditions that increased their exposure to the coronavirus to qualify for the bonus.

Three-quarters of that additional money would be paid for by the federal government in the form of a refundable payroll tax credit, and the rest would be picked up by their employer. That pay boost would last from May 1 through July 31 under Romney’s plan.

Someone earning $50,000 or less per year would receive an additional $12 per hour, with the hourly increase gradually phased out as salaries increase. The maximum qualifying salary would be $90,000.

Romney, a former Massachusetts governor with a lengthy business background, has spoken to other GOP senators and said that while opinions may differ, the concept of hazard pay could be gaining traction among Republicans.

“It strikes me that we’re open to considering a wide array of opportunities to help people that are serving the public,” Romney said. “And a number of individuals have expressed an openness to considering different ideas.”

 

 

 

Iowa tells workers to return to their jobs or lose unemployment benefits, despite warnings that reopening could lead to a 2nd wave of infections

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https://www.businessinsider.com/iowa-tells-workers-return-to-work-or-lose-unemployment-benefits-2020-4?fbclid=IwAR3OghoKRKsPt9JVz4TIsn_Qv5im_ZPaCmzPenmsEFgJR80YXbFJ2QWrxpE

Iowa tells workers to return to work or lose unemployment benefits ...

  • Iowa is preparing to partially reopen 77 counties on Friday.
  • The state said furloughed employees who refuse to return to work that they would lose their unemployment benefits — and Gov. Kim Reynolds said it could disqualify them from future unemployment benefits.
  • However, a group of experts advised the governor last week not to loosen restrictions and said the state has not reached its peak of infections and deaths.

As Iowa prepares to partially reopen on Friday, the state has told furloughed workers that they will lose their unemployment benefits if they refuse to return to work.

The Des Moines Register reported that businesses like restaurants, bars, retail stores, and fitness centers would be allowed to reopen at half capacity starting on May 1. Gov. Kim Reynolds said the 77 reopening counties either have no cases or are on a downward trend.

Iowa Workforce Development, a state agency that provides employment services for individual workers, said an employee’s refusal return to work out of fear would be considered a “voluntary quit” — which would mean they could no longer receive unemployment benefits. The announcement applies to workers across the state.

Ryan West, the deputy director of Iowa Workforce Development, told Radio Iowa that there were some exceptions, such as workers diagnosed with COVID-19.

The Iowa Workforce Development website prompts employers to fill out what it calls a Job Offer Decline Form for employees who refuse to return to work. The governor has said that opting not to go back to work could disqualify employees from future unemployment benefits.

Business Insider’s Andy Kiersz reported that 232,913 Iowans filed for unemployment between March 15 and April 18, which is 13.5% of the state’s labor force.

Last week, seven epidemiology and biostatistics professors from the University of Iowa advised the governor not to loosen social-distancing restrictions, KWWL reported. They wrote a research paper for the governor after they were commissioned by the Iowa Department of Public Health.

“We observe a huge range of possible outcomes, from relatively low fatalities to catastrophic loss of life,” the paper said.

The scientists said there was still “considerable uncertainty” over how many deaths the state may eventually have; the projections range from 150 to over 10,000 deaths.

“We have found evidence of a slowdown in infection and mortality rates due to social distancing policies, but not that a peak has been reached,” the paper said. The professors said that did not mean measures should be eased: “Therefore, prevention measures should remain in place. Without such measures being continued, a second wave of infections is likely.”

 

 

 

Schools are essential. Don’t rule them out.

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Schools are essential. Don’t rule them out.

Teach Your Children Well - Crosby Stills Nash and Young (Ukulele ...

It remains to be seen just how much President Trump’s extension of social distancing guidelines in the United States until April 30 defers the debate over when to safely restart the economy, allowing policymakers to focus on how to ramp up the testing and PPE availability to do so. When the time comes, they also need to contemplate the question asked by Aaron Carroll in the March 17th New York Times, “Is closing the schools a good idea?”

The question was not rhetorical. It cited the food insecurity addressed by school lunch and breakfast programs as well as the physical safety provided, particularly for homeless children. While New York City schools are providing 3 meals/day for children who need, child protective services in many regions are already seeing 50% declines in reporting of child abuse and neglect. With families stressed economically and confined to home without supervision, that is not good news since neglected or abused children are often only identified at school. In this week’s New Yorker Peter Hessler writes anecdotally about 2 suicides in youth attributed to the lockdown in China, matching that country’s total number of pediatric deaths thus far due to SARS-CoV-2 in the literature.

When we think of flattening the curve to protect the most vulnerable in society, our minds jump to the very old and the very young. Evidence from previous influenza pandemics supports our instincts. But SARS-CoV-2 appears different. Not only has critical illness in children in China and Italy been extremely rare, in both countries children make up only 1% all cases.

Even in New York state, where younger age groups seem to have been hit harder than in Italy, children still only represent 2% of cases. Finally, in a country like Iceland, which has tested a large proportion of its population, including many without any symptoms at all, children under 10 years old make up only 2% of the cases. It is these numbers that beg examination of one of Dr. Fauci’s hypotheses in the New England Journal of Medicine – that “children are less likely to become infected.”

The first SARS-CoV pandemic in 2002-2003 documented 135 pediatric cases, or only 1.7% of the 8098 reported worldwide to the World Health Organization (WHO) by the time it was declared contained, with no deaths and only 1 reported case of transmission of the virus from a pediatric patient. The WHO January 2020 Situation Update for the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), another coronavirus, shows children and adolescents to be similarly disproportionally unaffected. A Japanese study of transmission in close contacts of known positive coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) patients demonstrated a much lower attack rate amongst children than adults.

And according to the Report of the WHO-China Joint Mission on COVID-19, no one performing case tracing on the ground in China could “recall episodes in which transmission occurred from a child to an adult.”

Singapore has been lauded for its ability to mitigate the COVID-19 outbreak. Its rigorous implementation of control measures has included opening (and re-closing, next on April 8th) schools concurrently with other activities. Perhaps, as speculated by Dr. Dale Fisher, an infectious diseases specialist from Singapore who served as a member of the WHO-China Joint Mission, “children… don’t amplify the transmission. They are kind of bystanders while it goes on.”

If true, schools should be among the first US institutions re-opened, not the last. They are at least as essential as liquor stores and gun shops.

 

 

 

Immigrants on the front lines

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Immigrants on the front lines in the coronavirus fight - Axios

 

New data provided to Axios spells out just how outsized a role immigrants play on the high- and low-skilled ends of the economy keeping Americans alive and fed during the coronavirus crisis, Axios’ Stef Kight reports.

By the numbers: Immigrants make up an estimated 17% of the overall U.S. workforce. But the analysis by New American Economy (NAE) shows they’re more than one in four doctors, nearly half the nation’s taxi drivers and chauffeurs and a clear majority of farm workers.

  • Reporting to work in hospitals, restaurant kitchens, cabs or the fields — for jobs deemed “essential” by the government — many documented and undocumented workers are putting themselves at higher risk of COVID-19 infections.

Be smart: The share of immigrants in some health care roles are higher in states that have been hit hardest by the virus.

  • More than a third of California nurses are immigrants, as well as 29% of nurses in New York and New Jersey, according to NAE data.

Between the lines: A large percentage of farm workers, who help maintain food supplies, are unauthorized immigrants, as the New York Times reported.

  • Immigrants make up a small percentage of delivery workers nationwide, but one-third of delivery workers in New York are unauthorized immigrants, NAE director of quantitative research Andrew Lim told Axios.
  • The $2 trillion aid package does not include assistance for unauthorized immigrants.