Category Archives: Social Distancing

Virus testing in the US is dropping, even as deaths mount

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Deferred Healthcare, Denial, Economic Crisis, Economic Recovery, Economic Stimulus, Employee Furlough, Employee Hiring Freeze, Employee Layoffs, Employee Pay Cuts, Employer-Based Health Insurance, Expert, Expert Opinion, Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Health Insurance Coverage Adequacy, High Deductible Health Plans, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Leadership Decentralized, Misinformation, Misinterpret, Mislead, Misleading, Mistake, Mistrust, Mixed Message, Mortality, National Strategy, Out of Network, Out of Pocket Expenses, Pandemic, Preexisting Conditions, Public Health, Public Perception, Public Safety, Public Trust, Quarantine, School Reopening, Scientists, Social Distancing, Underinsured, Unemployment, Unemployment Insurance, Uninsured • Leave a comment

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Virus testing in the US is dropping, even as deaths mount

U.S. testing for the coronavirus is dropping even as infections remain high and the death toll rises by more than 1,000 a day, a worrisome trend that officials attribute largely to Americans getting discouraged over having to wait hours to get a test and days or weeks to learn the results.

An Associated Press analysis found that the number of tests per day slid 3.6% over the past two weeks to 750,000, with the count falling in 22 states. That includes places like Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri and Iowa where the percentage of positive tests is high and continuing to climb, an indicator that the virus is still spreading uncontrolled.

Amid the crisis, some health experts are calling for the introduction of a different type of test that would yield results in a matter of minutes and would be cheap and simple enough for millions of Americans to test themselves — but would also be less accurate.

“There’s a sense of desperation that we need to do something else,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, director of Harvard’s Global Health Institute.

Widespread testing is considered essential to managing the outbreak as the U.S. approaches a mammoth 5 million confirmed infections and more than 157,000 deaths out of over 700,000 worldwide.

Testing demand is expected to surge again this fall, when schools reopen and flu season hits, most likely outstripping supplies and leading to new delays and bottlenecks.

Some of the decline in testing over the past few weeks was expected after backlogged commercial labs urged doctors to concentrate on their highest-risk patients. But some health and government officials are seeing growing public frustration and waning demand.

In Iowa, state officials are reporting less interest in testing, despite ample supplies. The state’s daily testing rate peaked in mid-July but has declined 20% in the last two weeks.

“We have the capacity. Iowans just need to test,” Gov. Kim Reynolds said last week.

Jessica Moore of rural Newberry, South Carolina, said that after a private lab lost her COVID-19 test results in mid-July, she had to get re-tested at a pop-up site organized by the state.

Moore and her husband arrived early on a Saturday morning at the site, a community center, where they waited for two hours for her test. Moore watched in the rear-view mirror as people drove up, saw the long line of cars, and then turned around and left.

“If people have something to do on a Saturday and they want to get tested, they’re not going to wait for two hours in the South Carolina heat for a test, especially if they’re not symptomatic,” Moore said.

Before traveling from Florida to Delaware last month, Laura DuBose Schumacher signed up to go to a drive-up testing site in Orlando with her husband. They were given a one-hour window in which to arrive.

They got there at the start of the window, but after 50 minutes it looked as if the wait would be another hour. Others who had gone through the line told them that they wouldn’t get their results until five days later, a Monday, at the earliest. They were planning to travel the next day, so they gave up.

“Monday would have been pointless, so we left the line,” Schumacher said.

The number of confirmed infections in the U.S. has topped 4.7 million, with new cases running at nearly 60,000 a day on average, down from more than 70,000 in the second half of July.

U.S. testing is built primarily on highly sensitive molecular tests that detect the genetic code of the coronavirus. Although the test is considered the gold standard for accuracy, experts increasingly say the country’s overburdened lab system is incapable of keeping pace with the outbreak and producing results within two or three days, the time frame crucial to isolating patients and containing the virus.

“They’re doing as good a job as they possibly can do, but the current system will not allow them to keep up with the demand,” said Mara Aspinall of Arizona State University’s College of Health Solutions.

Testing delays have led researchers at Harvard and elsewhere to propose a new approach using so-called antigen tests — rapid technology already used to screen for flu, strep throat and other common infections. Instead of detecting the virus itself, such tests look for viral proteins, or antigens, which are generally considered a less accurate measure of infection.

A number of companies are studying COVID-19 antigen tests in which you spit on a specially coated strip of paper, and if you are infected, it changes color. Experts say the speed and widespread availability of such tests would more than make up for their lower precision.

While no such tests for the coronavirus are on the U.S. market, experts say the technology is simple and the hurdles are more regulatory than technical. The Harvard researchers say production could quickly be scaled into the millions.

A proposal from the Harvard researchers calls for the federal government to distribute $1 saliva-based antigen tests to all Americans so that they can test themselves regularly, perhaps even daily.

Even with accuracy as low as 50%, researchers estimate the paper strip tests would uncover five times more COVID-19 cases than the current laboratory-based approach, which federal officials estimate catches just 1 in 10 infections.

But the approach faces resistance in Washington, where federal regulators have required at least 80% accuracy for new COVID-19 tests.

To date, the Food and Drug Administration has allowed only two COVID-19 antigen tests to enter the market. Those tests require a nasal swab supervised by a health professional and can only be run on specialized machines found at hospitals, doctor’s offices, nursing homes and clinics.

Also, because of the risk of false negatives, doctors may need to confirm a negative result with a genetic test when patients have possible symptoms of COVID-19.

On Tuesday, the governors of Maryland, Virginia, Louisiana and three other states announced an agreement with the Rockefeller Foundation to purchase more than 3 million of the FDA-cleared antigen tests, underscoring the growing interest in the technology.

When asked about introducing cheaper, paper-based tests, the government’s “testing czar,” Adm. Brett Giroir, warned that their accuracy could fall as low as 20% to 30%.

“I don’t think that would do a service to the American public of having something that is wrong seven out of 10 times,” Giroir said last week. “I think that could be catastrophic.”

___

This story has been corrected to show that Iowa’s daily testing rate has declined 20%, not 40%.

 

 

 

The Misguided Rush to Throw the School Doors Open

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Economic Crisis, Economic Recovery, Evidence-based Leadership, Evidence-Based Plan, Evidence-Based Policy, False Hope, False Narrative, Guinea Pigs, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Leadership Decentralized, Misinformation, Misinterpret, Mislead, Misleading, Mistake, Mistrust, Mixed Message, Mortality, National Strategy, Pandemic, Public Health, Public Safety, Public Schools, Public Trust, Quarantine, School Reopening, Scientists, Social Distancing, Threat, Threats, Wishful Thinking • Leave a comment

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With the COVID-19 pandemic raging across much of America, a return to full-scale classroom instruction poses too grave a risk to students, teachers, school staff, parents and their communities.

Across the country, many of the public schools that are scheduled to open their doors within the next few weeks are still in limbo as to whether they should open on time and how they should operate — with full-scale in-person classroom instruction, with online learning only, or with some hybrid of the two. But the right call is becoming clearer by the day: It’s too soon to bring students and teachers back into the classroom.

Most communities are not ready to reopen their schools for traditional classes because neither government leaders nor the public have done nearly enough to curb the spread of the coronavirus or make the necessary preparations that would be required to operate schools safely.

Tens of thousands of new cases of COVID-19 are being reported every day and the death toll is averaging more than a thousand daily, with Sun Belt states seeing most of the biggest surges. It’s becoming ever clearer that this grim tally will continue until an effective vaccine is available. Until then, the possibility that students, their parents, teachers and school staff could become infected with the coronavirus and spread it widely to their communities should gravely concern every public official. The danger is hardly speculative: Schools that are among the earliest to reopen are already seeing positive cases.

The arguments that students learn better in a classroom setting, that they are suffering psychologically from social isolation, and that school closures have been particularly hard on working families are all legitimate. But are we really prepared to further risk the health of our children and of our communities by putting them in an environment where most of the practices to curb the virus will be difficult, if not impossible, to consistently follow?

And the danger to school staff members if they are forced to return to work should not be underestimated. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 25 percent of teachers are at risk of serious illness if they become infected with COVID-19, either because of their age — 65 or older — or their underlying health conditions.

The rush to reopen fully for in-person instruction has been driven in part by President Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, whose demands have been accompanied with threats of losing federal funds. Those demands appear to run afoul of guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention a few weeks ago: Among other things, the CDC counseled going with small, socially distanced class sizes, emphasizing hand hygiene and respiratory etiquette, and requiring cloth face coverings — common-sense precautions the president said were too strict and many school officials say will be difficult to implement.

The political pressure has been so intense that the CDC issued a new set of “resources and tools” for school reopening, with CDC Director Robert Redfield saying that “the goal line is to get the majority of these students back to face-to-face learning,” a stance that was seen by many as a capitulation after the president criticized the earlier guidelines. Clearly this is not what most Americans expect of our top health officials. The public must feel confident that decisions to reopen schools are based on the best scientific evidence available and the professional advice of educators.

Despite the threats and pressure, many school officials are still doing the right thing by listening to local health experts and deciding for themselves when and how best to reopen. I see this in my own state of Georgia, where, according to a recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution article on how Georgia schools plan to start the school year, most school official are delaying opening and say that when they do open they plan to implement a hybrid approach to instruction. “Teachers will check in virtually — via some video conferencing software allowing them to see the dozens of children they would normally engage with through rows or groups of desks,” the newspaper reported.

The larger school districts in metropolitan Atlanta recently reversed themselves from offering parents an option to send their children to school traditionally or attend virtually, opting to go all-virtual because of the spikes in the virus. Other schools in the state plan to meet on campus a few days a week and do virtual learning on other days. Then there are superintendents who plan to prioritize on-campus learning but restrict it to students with special learning needs, such as those who have autism. Many of these options are complex and carry with them implications difficult to foresee, but they all prioritize the health of students.

The ultimate decider of when schools will fully reopen will undoubtedly be parents, at least those who have the freedom and budgets to stay home and monitor their children’s academic progress and assist with their homework. As a caring society, we must ensure that the option to telework is given to as many parents as possible, so that the decision to send one’s children to school and possibly expose them to the coronavirus is not based on family income and social status.

We are still in an existential fight with the coronavirus, and we do not know precisely how or when this battle will end. We do know the virus is apolitical and knows no local or state boundaries. There are no quick or easy solutions. One can only pray that public officials learned something from reopening our economy too soon. We do not want this to happen again by prematurely reopening schools.

Much of what our children lose in a semester or two of distance learning can be made up in time, but a lost life is forever.

 

 

 

 

A Mississippi town welcomed students back to school last week. Now 116 are home in quarantine.

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Asymptomatic Transmission, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Evidence-based Leadership, Evidence-Based Plan, Evidence-Based Policy, False Hope, False Narrative, Guinea Pigs, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Leadership Decentralized, Misinformation, Misinterpret, Mislead, Misleading, Mistake, Mistrust, Mixed Message, Mortality, National Strategy, Pandemic, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), Public Health, Public Safety, Quarantine, School Reopening, Scientists, Social Distancing, Wishful Thinking • Leave a comment

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Over 100 students quarantined in Mississippi school district after ...

Last week, schools in Corinth, Miss., welcomed back hundreds of students. By Friday, one high-schooler tested positive for the novel coronavirus. By early this week, the count rose to six students and one staff member infected. Now, 116 students have been sent home to quarantine, a spokeswoman for the school district confirmed.

Despite the quick fallout, the district’s superintendent said he has no plans to change course.

As districts around the country debate the merits of in-person classes vs. remote learning amid an escalating novel coronavirus pandemic, the Corinth School District’s early experience shows how quickly positive tests can lead to larger quarantines.

Other districts that have welcomed teachers or students back have faced similar challenges. After teachers returned to plan lessons in Georgia’s largest district, 260 district employees were barred from reentering schools because of either testing positive for the coronavirus or being in close contact with someone who had. In southeast Kansas, six school administrators tested positive after attending a three-day retreat. And within hours of opening, a school in Greenfield, Ind., was informed by the health department that a student had the virus.

Some health officials in the Trump administration, which has pushed for schools to fully reopen, are now urging communities with high rates of the virus to rethink in-person classes. On Sunday, Deborah Birx, the White House’s top coronavirus coordinator, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that in hard-hit areas, “we are asking people to distance-learn at this moment so we can get this epidemic under control.”

Mississippi has been among the hardest-hit states in the South and could overtake Florida as the top state for cases per capita, according to researchers at Harvard University. The state has had more than 63,000 coronavirus cases and more than 1,800 deaths to date.

On Tuesday, Gov. Tate Reeves (R) said in a Facebook post that he would delay school opening for seventh to 12th grades in hot spots. The governor also mandated masks in schools and ordered a two-week mask requirement for public gatherings.

In Corinth, the school district gave families an option of either sending their children to school buildings or doing distance learning from home.

“We made the decision that even though we had seen a spike in those numbers, that schools needed to reopen and at the same time, schools need to remain open,” Childress said in the Facebook Live broadcast.

According to the district’s reopening plan, students and teachers are screened daily, with their temperatures taken upon arrival at school and checked for symptoms including coughing, difficulty breathing, and loss of taste and smell. Childress said that the district will start midday temperature checks.

When the schools learned of positive coronavirus cases, they used contact tracing and notified students who had been “within 6 feet of an infected person for 15 minutes or more,” said a memo posted Wednesday on Facebook informing the community of the cases. Seating charts helped the school determine who needed to quarantine, Childress said in the Facebook Live broadcast.

Those students will have to self-quarantine for 14 days and continue school online.

Despite the positive tests and quarantines, Childress said he remained optimistic about the school district’s plans. He encouraged the families to wear masks, and he urged everyone with children in quarantine to stay home until getting their test results.

“We’ve had a good start of school,” Childress said. “We’re going to have some more positive cases. We know that. We know it will happen. We’re going to have to deal with it, and I can assure that we will deal with it and when we impose quarantines on students and staff, we are doing that for a reason.”

 

 

 

 

For 20th straight week, more than 1 million Americans filed jobless claims even as enhanced benefits expired

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Economic Crisis, Economic Recovery, Economic Stimulus, Employee Furlough, Employee Hiring Freeze, Employee Layoffs, Employee Pay Cuts, Employer-Based Health Insurance, Health Insurance Coverage Adequacy, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Job, Job Loss, Job Market, Job Search, Job Security, Leadership Decentralized, Mortality, National Strategy, Pandemic, Paycheck Protection Program, Public Health, Public Safety, Quarantine, Social Distancing, Uncertainty, Underinsured, Unemployment, Unemployment Insurance, Uninsured • Leave a comment

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Stocks fall as weekly unemployment claims show a 'slowing' pace of ...

1.2 million Americans sought the benefits last week, down slightly from the week before.

The number of newly filed unemployed insurance claims dropped last week after two straight weeks of rising, but it remains well above historic pre-pandemic levels, according to Labor Department data.

It marked the 20th straight week that more than 1 million Americans filed jobless claims.

A total of 1.19 million people filed new claims last week, down from 1.43 million the week previously. The numbers of new claimants have come down from their peak in March of more than six million, but they are still well above the pre-pandemic record of 695,000 from 1982.

Another 656,000 new claims were filed for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, the benefits offered to gig and self-employed workers.

The number of people continuing traditional unemployment claims, from the week ending July 25, was 16.1 million, down about 844,000 from the week prior. (The statistic lags by a week.) When including the PUA, more than 32.1 million Americans are currently receiving some form of unemployment benefits.

“It is promising that the initial unemployment numbers have ticked down,” said AnnElizabeth Konkel, an economist at Indeed Hiring Lab. “But we aren’t out of the woods yet. The claims are still much higher than the pre-covid era, so it’s still pointing to a lot of economic pain.”

The numbers come during what many economists say is an inflection point for the country’s economy.

Congress continues to wrangle over an extension to the extra $600 a week in unemployment benefits that many laid off workers say have helped stabilize their finances — and stave off a deeper crisis from an economy hollowed by evictions, mortgage and credit card defaults, and plunging consumer demand. Those benefits expired last week.

Funds from the Paycheck Protection Program, the $660 billion federal aid program that was meant to help small businesses keep workers on the payroll, are in the process of running out, as well. And the coronavirus’ frightening march since mid-June has added to uncertainty about when — or even if — the country can expect a return in the near future to what was considered a normal way of life and doing business not that long ago.

There are many indications that workers are getting laid off for a second time in just a few short months. In California, for example, which has one of the highest rates of workers on unemployment insurance, an analysis by the University of California, Los Angeles, and the California Employment Development Department found that more than half — 57 percent — of initial unemployment claims filed during the week ending July 25th were from workers re-opening older claims, a large majority of which had been filed early in the crisis.

The unemployment rate for July, as well as the number of jobs added or lost, will be released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, from a survey taken early in the month. Many economists expect the country’s unemployment rate to drop from the 11.1 percent it was at in June; but due to the survey’s lag, many caution that the release will not register more recent economic developments that have emerged in recent weeks as the the pandemic has caught up with the country’s economic rebound.

Companies announcing layoffs in the last week include: NBCUniversal, John Deere, Fujitsu Network Communications, and hotel and tourism based businesses like retailer DFS Group and Wyndham Vacation Ownership.

 

 

 

 

Fauci says family has faced threats, harassment amid pandemic

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Blame, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Core Values, Coronavirus, Courage, Credibility, Crisis, Crisis Management, Economic Crisis, Economic Recovery, Economy Reopening, Ethics, Evidence-based Leadership, Evidence-Based Plan, Evidence-Based Policy, False Hope, False Narrative, Family, Fear, Honesty, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Integrity, Intimidation, Leadership Decentralized, Misinformation, Misinterpret, Mislead, Misleading, Mistake, Mistrust, Mixed Message, Mortality, National Strategy, Pandemic, Partisanship, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), Principle, Public Health, Public Opinion, Public Perception, Public Safety, Public Trust, Quarantine, Scapegoat, Scientists, Social Distancing, Transparency, Trust, Truth • Leave a comment

Fauci says family has faced threats, harassment amid pandemic

Fauci says family has faced threats, harassment amid pandemic ...

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said he and his family are getting death threats because people don’t like what he says about COVID-19.

“Getting death threats for me, and my family, and harassing my daughters, to the point where I have to get security is just — I mean, it’s amazing,” Fauci said during an interview with CNN’s Sanjay Gupta on Wednesday.

“I wouldn’t have imagined in my wildest dreams that people who object to things that are pure public health principles, are so set against it and don’t like what you and I say, namely in the world of science, that they actually threaten you.”

He noted that crises like COVID-19 has brought out the best of people but also the worst of people.

Fauci’s notoriety has been elevated by COVID-19, as he is often on TV offering a blunt portrayal of the state of the pandemic in the U.S.

Fauci, 79, is one of the world’s most respected infectious disease experts, having advised six presidents on HIV/AIDS, Ebola, Zika and other health crises. He has earned a reputation for being blunt and willing to correct the president.

Fauci has had a security detail since at least April.

Fauci also reflected on what he says is a degree of “anti-science” sentiment in the U.S. that is making it difficult to get people to do things to slow the spread of COVID-19 like wearing masks.

“There is a degree of anti-science feeling in this country, and I think it is not just related to science. It’s almost related to authority and a mistrust in authority that spills over,” he told Gupta.

“Because in some respects, scientists, because they’re trying to present data, may be looked upon as being an authoritative figure, and the pushing back on authority, the pushing back on government is the same as pushing back on science.”

He said the scientific community should be more transparent and reach out to people to underscore the importance of science and evidence-based policy.

“I know when I say that if we follow these five or six principles, we can open up we don’t have to stay shut…There are some people that just don’t believe me or don’t pay attention to that. And that’s unfortunate because that is the way out of this,” he said.

President Trump has repeatedly undermined Fauci, questioning the White House coronavirus task force member on Twitter and in interviews with the media.

Over the weekend, Trump tweeted out a video of a portion of Fauci’s testimony explaining why the U.S. has recorded more cases than European cases and called it “wrong.” Trump has falsely claimed several times that the U.S. has more cases because it is doing more testing.

Trump has also retweeted multiple messages that question Fauci’s expertise, including one last week that said he had “misled the American public.”

 

Consultant Rues ‘Big Mistake’ That Led to Family’s COVID Infections

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, False Hope, False Narrative, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Misinformation, Misinterpret, Mislead, Misleading, Mistrust, Mixed Message, Mortality, Pandemic, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), Public Health, Public Safety, Quarantine, School Reopening, Social Distancing, Wishful Thinking • Leave a comment

California GOP Consultant Rues ‘Big Mistake’ That Led to Family’s COVID Infections

California GOP Consultant Rues 'Big Mistake' That Led to Family's ...

The tweet Richard Costigan posted July 23 was bluntly honest: “We tried our best to limit exposure to #COVID19 but we slipped up somewhere.”

Costigan tweeted while waiting anxiously in the parking lot of a hospital outside Sacramento. The veteran Republican political consultant had just dropped his wife, Gloria, off at the emergency room. He wasn’t allowed to go in with her.

His thoughts traveled back to the small family gathering they had attended in Georgia nearly two weeks before with their 23-year-old daughter, Emma, and 17-year-old son, Andrew. They had planned it so carefully. Nobody wanted to get Gloria’s 88-year-old mother sick.

But here they were, Costigan’s wife battling for breath in the ER, and Costigan sitting in his car coughing.

The family’s journey since then has been one of sleeplessness, pain and worry about the future. And it’s one that Costigan, who worked as deputy chief of staff for Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, is taking to social media and his 4,400 Twitter followers.

Looking back, Costigan, 54, doesn’t think he and Gloria, 53, contracted the virus on their separate flights to Georgia, where the family owns a home. The flights were nearly empty and the passengers and crew wore masks, he said.

In Georgia, the family continued its regimen of social distancing and wore masks whenever they left the house — protocols they had followed for months at home in California. And when they gathered with their relatives on that sunny Saturday in July, they were careful to space the chairs 6 feet apart in the backyard.

But they didn’t wear masks, he said, and family members went in and out of the house to grab drinks and use the restroom. “We thought we’d done everything right, and we screwed up,” Costigan said in a July 29 phone interview. “We made a big mistake.”

Now seven of the 10 family members who attended that backyard gathering are sick. Emma and Andrew don’t have any symptoms but haven’t been tested. Exactly who introduced COVID-19 to the group is unclear. No one showed signs of sickness at the time. The first person to become sick was Gloria’s sister, then her niece — then her mom.

Gloria Costigan became sick after they returned to Sacramento, spent a night in the hospital, needed an oxygen machine at home and developed COVID-related pneumonia. By Saturday, however, she no longer needed supplemental oxygen.

Costigan’s reputation as a straight shooter, respected and liked by both Democrats and Republicans, could help change minds about the virus, said Barbara O’Connor, emeritus director of the Institute for the Study of Politics and Media at California State University-Sacramento.

“I think that Richard is being very honest about what’s going on,” said O’Connor, who has known Costigan for decades. “It’s not political. It’s really human.”

Lawmakers who have responded on Twitter with messages of support include state Controller Betty Yee, and state Sens. Richard Bloom and Steve Glazer, all Democrats. Sen. Richard Pan (D-Sacramento), a physician who chairs the Senate Health Committee, has texted well wishes to Costigan.

For his followers, Costigan’s chronicles of the virus remain grim.

“I can’t go very far without needing to lay down,” he wrote in a July 25 tweet. “Been sleeping constantly last two days and the joint pain is intense.”

In another tweet two days later, the symptoms were the same:

Gloria’s 88-year-old mom is at home with a cough, he said.

Costigan talked to California Healthline about his family’s disease odyssey and what he hopes people will take away from his COVID-19 Twitter chronicles. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: You have tweeted in such detail about the horrible symptoms you experienced. How do you feel now?

My ribs just hurt with the coughing and the fatigue, and my joints hurt. I have the sweats and vivid dreams. I sleep on the floor because it’s more comfortable than the bed.

This thing just hits like a ton of bricks. It’s also the nervousness of it. How long is it going to last? Who are we going to expose to it? I just don’t know what the end game is.

Q: What is it like at your house now?

I wear a mask inside, Gloria wears a mask inside, and Andrew wears a mask. Gloria is sleeping in Emma’s old bedroom, I’m in our bedroom, and Andrew stays upstairs. When I’m hacking, you can see the spit come out. I’m worried about getting pneumonia. That’s something I’m worried about giving to my kid. It’s not just COVID.

Our daughter can only stand on our front porch. She delivers food to us. She puts it by the door, rings the bell and stands 6 feet back.

Q: You suspect you got COVID from the family gathering in Georgia. How do you trace it to that event?

When we looked at everybody that was at the gathering, we were trying to figure it out. It started with my sister-in-law getting sick. Out of 10 of us, seven of us are sick.

We never thought of our family being the one to harm us. Sometimes, you can’t control your anger. You want to be mad at someone. Gloria and I just decided we’re not going to blame anyone. We just don’t know who had it.

Q: How has this experience been so far for you and your family?

It’s been a bizarre week. I went to Kaiser Thursday night. You drop your significant other off. You can’t go in. Off they go to the tented area and I wait in the parking lot. She is admitted. Her oxygen levels are low. She gets a CT, she gets a shot in her stomach for possible blood clots. She gets out Friday and they send oxygen tanks to your house. … She’s in her early 50s and doesn’t have any health issues [otherwise].

Saturday, my son is doubling over in pain. I end up in the ER with my son, and I start coughing. I’m getting the side eye from everyone. Thankfully, he had a kidney stone.

Q: What kind of precautions have you and your family taken these past few months?

We hadn’t been anywhere for months. It was: Stay home. Work from home. No school.

Going to the store was extremely stressful. You go to the store, mask up, glove up, you bleach your shoes when you come home, spray down your car, wash your hands, use a towel to dry your hands, the towel goes straight into the washing machine.

Our son got frustrated with us because we wouldn’t let him see his friends. He saw photos of friends of his partying at Folsom Lake. We were the hardcore parents.

Q: In posts on social media, you are asking people to wear a mask. Why do you think it’s become a political issue?

I’ve been taking flak from friends of mine because I’ve been posting “wear a mask.” Wearing a mask — somehow it has become a freedom issue. It’s not a grand conspiracy. Wearing a mask is a simple thing to do to prevent someone else from getting sick. I do not understand how this has turned into a political issue. The government has a role to play. This is a health care crisis.

Q: How do you move forward in this pandemic?

We’re locking down. Nobody is coming into our circle. I don’t want it again. To see my wife this way is hard.

I want folks to realize this thing is non-discriminatory. It doesn’t matter who you are.

 

 

 

 

Survey finds nearly one-third of rehired workers laid off again

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, ACA, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Economic Crisis, Economic Recovery, Economic Stimulus, Economy Reopening, Employee Furlough, Employee Hiring Freeze, Employee Layoffs, Employee Pay Cuts, Employee Protections, Employer-Based Health Insurance, Essential Health Benefits, Health Insurance Coverage Adequacy, Job, Job Loss, Job Market, Job Search, Job Security, Leadership Decentralized, National Strategy, Out of Control, Out of Pocket Expenses, Pandemic, Preexisting Conditions, Public Good, Public Health, Public Perception, Public Safety, Quarantine, Social Distancing, Underinsured, Unemployment, Unemployment Insurance, Uninsured • Leave a comment

Survey finds nearly one-third of rehired workers laid off again

Survey finds nearly one-third of rehired workers laid off again

Nearly a third of the laid off workers who were able to go back to their previous jobs have been laid off again, according to a Cornell survey released Tuesday.

The survey was conducted by RIWI from July 23 to Aug. 1, as a slew of states experiencing major COVID-19 outbreaks slammed the breaks on their economic reopenings and reimposed social distancing restrictions.

Danielle Goldfarb, head of global research at RIWI, said it was a sign that a second wave of layoffs was well underway.

“Official and private sectors jobs data have not yet picked up the significant share of American workers that have already been re-laid off,” said Goldfarb.

“Since the impact is actually worse in states that have not seen COVID surges, these data indicate a systemic problem and a much deeper recession than the mainstream data suggest,” she said.

The survey found that about 37 percent of people who were not self-employed were laid off after the pandemic struck in March, but over half (57 percent) had been called back to work since then.

But of those, 31 percent had been laid off again and another 26 percent had been told there was a possibility they would lose their jobs.

A deeper dive into the data, however, suggested that the second round of layoffs may be less about the resurgence of the virus than the loss of aid. It found only small differences in “healthier” states, those not experiencing a surge, than in places with new outbreaks.

One possible reason for the additional layoffs are problems with businesses that had remained afloat with the help of forgivable loans from the federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).

The funds, which started rolling out the door in April, were supposed to be enough to cover eight weeks of salary and expenses.

“The RIWI dataset output clearly shows that a substantial portion of the job growth experienced in May and June resulted from anomalies associated with PPP requirements, as opposed to underlying economic strength,” said Daniel Alpert, a senior fellow and adjunct professor of macroeconomics at Cornell Law School.

Congress has made scant progress in negotiating a new COVID-19 response bill which is expected to include an extension of the PPP and may allow businesses to apply for a second loan.

The survey was completed by 6,383 respondents, though some questions had smaller samples because they were only applicable to some people.

The margins of error for the survey questions ran from plus or minus 1.5 percent to plus or minus 3.9 percent.

 

 

 

 

Pandemic reveals flaws of unemployment insurance programs

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Bankruptcy, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Economic Crisis, Economic Recovery, Economic Stimulus, Economy Reopening, Employee Furlough, Employee Hiring Freeze, Employee Layoffs, Employee Pay Cuts, Employee Protections, Employer-Based Health Insurance, Evidence-based Leadership, Evidence-Based Plan, Evidence-Based Policy, Financial Pressure, Financial Viability, Financially Distressed, Health Insurance Coverage Adequacy, Job, Job Loss, Job Market, Job Search, Job Security, Out of Pocket Expenses, Pandemic, Public Health, Public Safety, Recession, Social Distancing, Underinsured, Unemployment, Unemployment Insurance, Uninsured • Leave a comment

Pandemic reveals flaws of unemployment insurance programs

Pandemic reveals flaws of unemployment insurance programs

The lapse of enhanced jobless benefits amid a record-breaking crush of applications is exposing the flaws and shortcomings of how the U.S. provides unemployment insurance.

The economic toll of the coronavirus pandemic has torn holes in a federal safety net woven by individual systems for every state plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. More than 30.2 million Americans were on some form of unemployment insurance as of mid-July, with the Labor Department reporting a growing number of new applications in subsequent weeks.

Friday’s expiration of a $600 weekly add-on to state benefits plunged those vulnerable Americans into financial peril.

Congressional Democrats and Trump administration officials are now deadlocked over negotiations for a broader coronavirus relief package that’s expected to include some form of federal unemployment benefits.

But short-staffed unemployment offices across the U.S. grappling with outdated technology and unprecedented demand would face challenges from implementing a scaled-down or more complicated approach to the weekly payments.

Economists and labor market experts also warn that any solution that emerges from the negotiations would take weeks, if not months, to get up and running, risking a potentially catastrophic fiscal cliff for tens of millions of U.S. households.

“You ought to be able to deliver the program that’s on the books,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office and a White House economist under former President George W. Bush.

“The states, collectively, seem to have not kept up the systems and we now have a big problem because of that,” he added.

The unprecedented size and speed of the pandemic-driven economic collapse has posed a brutal challenge for state unemployment agencies. After 10 years of steady economic expansion, the labor market quickly went from the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years to the highest level of joblessness since the Great Depression.

New claims for unemployment benefits were averaging roughly 200,000 nationwide a week before the pandemic — a manageable level for state agencies that had largely been neglected during the longest stretch of growth in modern U.S. history. But the coronavirus lockdowns spurred 3.3 million new claims between March 15 and March 22, a then-record that would be doubled the following week. Before the COVID-19 outbreak, the previous record was 695,000 from the first week of October 1982.

A little more than four months after the pandemic hit, state agencies are now processing roughly 2 million new claims a week for both unemployment insurance and Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), a program designed to cover those who don’t qualify for typical benefits.

“On some level, you can’t really blame states for not being prepared for that level of onslaught,” said Michele Evermore, senior policy analyst at the National Employment Law Project.

“Usually, you see the recession starting up and state agencies say ‘You know, this looks like a recession here, so let’s start to staff up.’ This came on all at once, so we’ve had these neglected, antiquated systems and then there’s all these other stressors.”

The U.S. economy has been in recession since February, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Processing the massive surge of unemployment claims on shoddy technology would have been hard enough for states. Adding enhanced benefits and PUA claims to the mix strained state agencies even more.

“It took time to upgrade those systems. It took time to hire and train new staff who could deal with the volumes of the calls, and all in a pandemic, when face-to-face contact and training and being together in office were not possible,” said Julia Pollak, labor economist at job recruitment and posting company ZipRecuriter.

“So it’s easy to see in hindsight why it all fell apart.”

Enhanced unemployment benefits are among the biggest obstacles to reaching a deal on what’s likely to be the last coronavirus relief package before the election. While President Trump and Republicans are divided over how and whether to extend the federal boost, Democrats are largely united behind extending the benefits and reducing them gradually along a curve tied to the unemployment rate.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has called for including such a mechanism, known as an automatic stabilizers, in the coronavirus package being negotiated.

Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), vice chair of the Joint Economic Committee, introduced a separate bill designed to tackle economic downturns beyond the coronavirus recession. His measure would establish a six-tier system for reducing the federal benefit in line with a state’s unemployment rate.

The approach was endorsed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who oversaw the central bank’s response to the Great Recession, and his successor, Janet Yellen.

“Every time you get close to a cliff and there’s a political battle and political price to be paid, probably by both sides, rather than just saying ‘This is what’s needed,’ let’s kick it in,” Beyer said in an interview.

“We talked to economists all across the country and virtually everyone we talked to said this makes the most sense.”

But Republican lawmakers and right-leaning economists have pushed back on efforts to codify mandatory spending and make decisions now about what will be needed to mitigate future crises.

“It’s hard for me to understand why it’s appropriate now to anticipate the economic conditions in the future and tie the hands of future elected representatives of Congress,” Holtz-Eakin said.

“It forked out $2.3 trillion in [the CARES Act] across the board in ways that got to small businesses, to households, to the employed, the unemployed. If you’re going to have one in 100-year events, that’s how you deal with them,” he added.

Republicans have instead proposed replacing the flat $600 weekly boost with a percentage of the worker’s pre-pandemic earnings in addition to what is prescribed by each state. While the wage-replacement is more tailored, Evermore warned that making the necessary calculations for each claimant could overwhelm an already teetering system.

“If you told states that they had to do a percentage replacement — oh, my gosh, that’s a recipe for crashing everything,” she said.

“It’s just not how the system is set up to work.”

 

 

 

 

40% of Americans still putting off care

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Chronic Care Management, Chronic Conditions, Chronic Diseases, Clinical Testing, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Deferred Healthcare, Economic Crisis, Economy Reopening, Employer-Based Health Insurance, Evidence-based Leadership, Evidence-Based Plan, Evidence-Based Policy, False Hope, False Narrative, Health Insurance Coverage Adequacy, Health Policy, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Leadership Decentralized, Misinformation, Misinterpret, Mislead, Misleading, Mistake, Mistrust, Mixed Message, Mortality, National Strategy, Out of Control, Out of Pocket Expenses, Pandemic, Preexisting Conditions, Public Health, Public Perception, Public Safety, Public Trust, Quarantine, Social Distancing, Underinsured, Unemployment, Unemployment Insurance, Uninformed • Leave a comment

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40% of Americans continue to put off medical care - Axios

Roughly 40% of Americans have postponed getting medical care due to the coronavirus outbreak. That number has stayed around 40% in all 12 weeks of the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey.

Why it matters: Hospitals and doctors started rescheduling surgeries and other appointments as early as mid-May, and many patient volumes are mostly back to pre-pandemic numbers, Axios’ Bob Herman writes.

  • But this data suggests there is still a major backlog of Americans who need care — a phenomenon that existed well before the pandemic.

 

 

 

 

Admininstration believes Coronavirus is “under control”

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Credibility, Crisis, Crisis Management, Economic Crisis, Economic Recovery, Evidence-based Leadership, Evidence-Based Plan, Evidence-Based Policy, Expert, Expert Opinion, False Hope, False Narrative, Health Insurance Coverage Adequacy, Health Policy, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Leadership Cares, Leadership Culture, Leadership Decentralized, Leadership Messaging, Leadership Political, Leadership Trust, Leadership Vision, Misinformation, Misinterpret, Mislead, Misleading, Mistake, Mistrust, Mixed Message, Mortality, National Strategy, Out of Control, Out of Pocket Expenses, Pandemic, Preexisting Conditions, Public Good, Public Health, Public Perception, Public Safety, Public Trust, Quarantine, School Reopening, Scientists, Social Distancing, Uncertainty, Underinsured, Unemployment, Unemployment Insurance, Uninsured, Wishful Thinking • Leave a comment

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Daily confirmed COVID-19 cases, rolling 3-day average - Our World ...

President Trump said in an interview with “Axios on HBO” that he thinks the coronavirus is as well-controlled in the U.S. as it can be, despite dramatic surges in new infections over the course of the summer and more than 150,000 American deaths.

  • “They are dying, that’s true. And you have — it is what it is. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t doing everything we can. It’s under control as much as you can control it. This is a horrible plague,” he told Axios’ Jonathan Swan.

Reality check: The U.S. is averaging roughly 65,000 new cases and 1,000 deaths per day, Axios’ Sam Baker writes. The virus has already killed nearly 150,000 Americans, and it spread largely unchecked through almost the entire country throughout June and July.

The big picture: In the interview, which took place last Tuesday, Trump returned to familiar themes and areas where the U.S. really has made significant progress. He cited the dramatic increase in ventilator production, the ramp-up in testing and treatment that has reduced the overall fatality rate from the virus.

  • Yes, but: He painted a far rosier picture of the pandemic than most data would support.

On testing, Trump said, “You know there are those that say you can test too much” — a view that no experts have advocated.

  • The U.S. is experiencing long turnaround times for coronavirus testing, as Trump acknowledged, because of the high demand for testing. But that is largely a function of the country’s high caseload and the number of people at risk of infection.

He also returned to his mantra that “because we’ve done more tests, we have more cases.”

  • The cases the U.S. has, we would have had with or without testing. We know we have them because of testing, but the massive outbreak here would be a massive outbreak whether we chose to know about it (through testing) or ignore it by not testing.