Category Archives: Social Distancing

Jay Powell warns US recovery could take until end of 2021

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https://www.ft.com/content/2ed602f1-ed11-4221-8d0b-ef85018c96ea

Fed Makes Second Emergency Rate Cut to Zero Due To Coronavirus ...

Fed chair says economy may not fully bounce back until virus vaccine is available.

Federal Reserve chair Jay Powell has warned that a full US economic recovery may take until the end of next year and require the development of a Covid-19 vaccine.

“For the economy to fully recover, people will have to be fully confident. And that may have to await the arrival of a vaccine,” Mr Powell told CBS News on Sunday. A full revival would happen, he said, but “it may take a while . . . it could stretch through the end of next year, we really don’t know”.

He added: “Assuming there is not a second wave of the coronavirus, I think you will see the economy recover steadily through the second half of this year.”

Mr Powell told CBS it was likely there would be a “couple more months” of net job losses, with the unemployment rate climbing to as high as 20-25 per cent. But he said it was “good news” that the “overwhelming” majority of those claiming unemployment benefits report themselves as having been laid off temporarily, meaning they are expecting to go back to their old jobs.

Oil prices and stocks in Asia rose on Monday despite the gloomy outlook. West Texas Intermediate, the US crude benchmark, climbed 4.4 per cent to take it above $30 a barrel for the first time in two months. Brent crude, the international benchmark, rose 3.6 per cent to $33.67 a barrel. Japan’s Topix was up 0.4 per cent and China’s CSI 300 index of Shanghai- and Shenzhen-listed stocks added 0.6 per cent.

Donald Trump, US president, said last week that he hoped to have a vaccine ready by the end of 2020. But public health experts, including Anthony Fauci, the head of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Rick Bright, the recently ousted head of the US Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, have warned that the process is likely to take longer.

Dr Fauci, a high-profile member of Mr Trump’s coronavirus task force, has said he expects the search for a vaccine to take at least a year to 18 months. But Dr Bright has said that was too optimistic.

Some world leaders have also raised doubts about the immediate prospects for a vaccine. Giuseppe Conte, prime minister of Italy, said at the weekend that his country could “not afford” to wait for a vaccine, while Boris Johnson, UK prime minister, warned that a vaccine “might not come to fruition” at all.

Mr Powell said that while lawmakers had “done a great deal and done it very quickly”, Congress and the Fed may need to do more “to avoid longer-run damage to the economy”.

The Fed chair said fiscal policies that “help businesses avoid avoidable insolvencies and that do the same for individuals” would position the US economy for a strong recovery post-crisis.

Mr Powell also reiterated his position against using negative interest rates, something Mr Trump has called for. The Fed chair told CBS that the Federal Open Market Committee had eschewed negative interest rates after the last financial crisis in favour of “other tools” such as forward guidance and quantitative easing.

The US Congress has already approved nearly $3tn of economic relief measures intended to support struggling businesses and individuals, but there is growing consensus in Washington that more fiscal stimulus will be needed — even if Democrats and Republicans are divided over how to dole out federal funds.

Late on Friday, the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives passed Nancy Pelosi’s plan for $3tn in new stimulus spending.

Mr Trump has repeatedly called for the next stimulus to include a cut to payroll taxes — deductions for entitlements such as social security and Medicare. Last week, Larry Kudlow, the top White House economic adviser, suggested that lower corporate taxes and looser business regulation should be part of any future relief package.

The Trump administration has taken a more bullish stance on the US economic recovery than Mr Powell, with White House officials repeatedly insisting that the economy will bounce back before the end of the year.

Mr Powell told CBS it was a “reasonable expectation that there will be growth in the second half of the year” but “we won’t get back to where we were by the end of the year”.

 

 

 

 

 

AFL-CIO sues feds over coronavirus workplace safety

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, District Court of Appeals, Employee Protections, Essential Workers, Health Policy, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Job, Job Security, Labor Union, Lawsuit, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Pandemic, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), Public Health, Public Safety, Quarantine, Social Distancing, Worker Protection, Worker Rights, Workflow Environment • Leave a comment

https://www.axios.com/afl-cio-sues-feds-over-coronavirus-workplace-safety-6de76122-2c75-4f84-92e5-21048c08b44b.html

AFL-CIO sues feds over coronavirus workplace safety - Axios

With states reopening for business and millions of people heading back to work, the nation’s largest labor organization is demanding the federal government do more to protect workers from contracting the coronavirus on the job.

What’s happening: The AFL-CIO, a collection of 55 unions representing 12.5 million workers, says it is suing the federal agency in charge of workplace safety to compel them to create a set of emergency temporary standards for infectious diseases.

Driving the news: The lawsuit against the U.S. Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is expected to be filed on Monday in the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C.

  • Citing an urgent threat to “essential” workers and those being called back to work as government-imposed lockdowns are lifted, the AFL-CIO is asking the court to force OSHA to act within 30 days.
  • It wants a rule that would require each employer to evaluate its workplace for the risk of airborne disease transmission and to develop a comprehensive infection control plan that could include social distancing measures, masks and other personal protective equipment and employee training.

The agency has issued guidance, in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to protect workers in multiple industries — including dentist offices, nursing homes, manufacturing, meat processing, airlines and retail.

  • But the unions complain these are only recommendations, not requirements, and that mandatory rules should be imposed.
  • OSHA has been considering an infectious disease standard for more than a decade, they note, and has drafted a proposed standard.

U.S. Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, in a letter to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, said employers are already taking steps to protect workers, and that OSHA’s industry-tailored guidelines provide more flexibility than a formal rule for all employers.

Yes, but: OSHA has received more than 3,800 safety complaints related to COVID-19 as of May 4, but it had already close to about 2,200 of them without issuing a single citation, according to the AFL-CIO.

What they’re saying: “It’s truly a sad day in America when working people must sue the organization tasked with protecting our health and safety,” Trumka said.

  • “But we’ve been left no choice. Millions are infected and nearly 90,000 have died, so it’s beyond urgent that action is taken to protect workers who risk our lives daily to respond to this public health emergency.
  • “If the Trump administration refuses to act, we must compel them to.”
  • OSHA could not immediately be reached for comment on the lawsuit.

 

 

 

 

Most states still aren’t doing enough coronavirus testing

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Economic Crisis, Economy Reopening, Health Policy, Infection Control, Infectious Virus, Leadership Decentralized, Mortality, Pandemic, Public Health, Public Safety, Quarantine, Social Distancing • Leave a comment

https://www.axios.com/coronavirus-testing-states-still-behind-629973cb-d8ad-4f36-a6fa-d59959fe84a3.html

 

Most states still aren't doing enough coronavirus testing - Axios

 

Most states still aren’t doing enough coronavirus testing, especially those that have suffered from larger outbreaks, according to recent testing targets calculated by the Harvard Global Health Institute.

Between the lines: It’s much harder to contain the virus once a lot of people have it — which is why we needed strong social distancing in the first place. But knowing who is infected is the foundation of containment going forward, and most states are still behind.

The big picture: Nationally, the U.S. needs to be doing about 900,000 tests a day, according to the Harvard estimate, which was released earlier this month.

  • But not all states need to be doing the same amount of tests. The goal Harvard suggested for each state — the number of tests they should have done on May 15 — was calculated based on the size of its outbreak as of early May.
  • That means that New York needs to be doing a much larger number of tests each day than Wyoming, even after accounting for the states’ huge population discrepancy.

Why it matters: Most states have already begun reopening to some extent, even without key public health tools — like testing and contact tracing — fully built up.

  • That increases the chance that the virus will spread undetected as people begin interacting with one another again.
  • And these premature measures may just increase the number of tests a state needs, especially because the estimates were based on the assumption states would remain closed until May 15.
  • “The moment you relax, the number of cases will start climbing. And therefore, the number of tests you need to keep your society, your state from having large outbreaks will also start climbing,” Harvard’s Ashish Jha warned.

 

If the White House is struggling, how will ordinary businesses fare? 

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Economic Crisis, Economy, Economy Reopening, Emergency Preparedness, Employee Benefits, Employee Furlough, Employee Hiring Freeze, Employee Layoffs, Employee Pay Cuts, Employee Protections, Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Health Policy, Infection Control, Infectious Virus, Job, Job Market, Job Search, Job Security, Leadership Decentralized, Mortality, Pandemic, Public Health, Public Safety, Quarantine, Social Distancing • 1 Comment

https://mailchi.mp/f4f55b3dcfb3/the-weekly-gist-may-15-2020?e=d1e747d2d8

The RAOI Advisory Opinion: A Transformative Moment or a Bump in ...

In a week that saw reopening activity pick up across the country, drawing even more attention to the need for sufficient testing to give employers and workers confidence in returning to work, a new study from researchers at New York University (NYU) suggested that a widely-hailed rapid testing machine from Abbott Labs may be unreliable.

The Abbott ID NOW COVID-19 test produced false negatives a third of the time using nasopharyngeal swabs, and 48 percent of the time with less-invasive “dry nasal swabs”, according to the study, which has not yet undergone peer review. The five-minute, point-of-care test received emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in late March and has been touted as a “great test” by President Trump, whose White House relies on it to test the President and those around him.

On Thursday, the FDA issued a warning about the potential for false negative results using the Abbott test. The company disputes the findings and sent a list of questions to the NYU researchers for clarification. Meanwhile, two White House staffers—an aide to the President and the Vice President’s press secretary—tested positive for coronavirus, causing the White House to mandate masks for all employees starting this week.

The uncertainty around test results, and the ensuing concern about safety at the White House, provides a foretaste of the difficult road ahead for thousands of employers nationwide as stay-at-home orders are lifted, and companies consider when and how to reopen workplaces.

If the White House is struggling, how will ordinary businesses fare?

US coronavirus update: 1.46M cases, 87K+ confirmed deaths, 10.2M total tests conducted.

 

 

 

 

Putting a pillar of the community in jeopardy

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Cash, Cash Reserves, Community, Community Hospital, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Economic Crisis, Economy, Economy Reopening, Elective Procedures, Elective Surgery, Employee Benefits, Employee Furlough, Employee Hiring Freeze, Employee Layoffs, Employee Pay Cuts, Employee Protections, Financially Distressed, Health Policy, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Leadership, Pandemic, Public Health, Public Safety, Quarantine, Social Distancing • Leave a comment

https://mailchi.mp/f4f55b3dcfb3/the-weekly-gist-may-15-2020?e=d1e747d2d8

Pillars of the Community - New York Improv Teams

It’s easy to become numb to the numbers we’re bombarded with on a daily basis—case counts, deaths, financial losses, unemployment claims, bailout funding. An article from the Washington Post this week put a very human face on how the coronavirus crisis is playing out on the ground, profiling the experience of 115-bed Griffin Hospital in Derby, CT.

We first got to know Griffin, and its CEO Patrick Charmel, years ago in the course of work for our former employer. It’s a remarkable, fiercely independent organization—recognized as the flagship hospital of the “Planetree” patient-centered care model, and a decade-long fixture on Fortune’s list of Top 100 Best Companies to Work For. But the COVID-19 wave hit Griffin hard, as it did much of Connecticut.

With the high cost of caring for COVID patients, and lost revenue from cancelled procedures, Griffin has had to make hard decisions about furloughing and redeploying staff—incredibly difficult for a small facility that has been a pillar of the community for a century. Charmel has been able to secure some relief in the form of advance payment from Medicare, but his efforts to lobby for a share of the state’s allocation of CARES Act grant funding for hospitals proved unsuccessful, and so the future of the hospital—or at least its continued viability as an independent organization—is in jeopardy.

In the words of Griffin’s chief financial officer, “This could be devastating for us.” As the recovery begins, and questions begin to be asked about the billions of dollars of “bailouts” paid to “greedy hospitals”—an easy narrative for the media to latch onto—it’s worth remembering what’s happening to Griffin Hospital, and to hundreds of other similar organizations across the country.

Countless communities rely on these hospitals, and their survival is worth safeguarding.

 

 

 

Consumers trust providers but aren’t hearing from them

Posted on by • Posted in Communication, Consumer Confidence, Consumerism, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Health Policy, Infection Control, Infectious Virus, Pandemic, Physician, Public Health, Public Safety, Quarantine, Social Distancing, Trust, Truth • Leave a comment

https://mailchi.mp/f4f55b3dcfb3/the-weekly-gist-may-15-2020?e=d1e747d2d8

Last week, we reported that consumer healthcare confidence is down—it’s unclear when people will feel safe enough to return to reopened care sites. Recent polling data provided by our friends at Public Opinion Strategies, and detailed in the graphic below, shows that direct provider communication is crucial to reengaging patients and rebuilding their trust in seeking care.

The majority of Americans receive health-related information from news media outlets, but only 18 percent say they regularly hear it from their doctors or providers—yet 66 percent of Americans view doctors and providers as highly trusted sources of information. Consumers are looking to providers to demonstrate and communicate a commitment to safe operations that are as “COVID-free” as possible.

In particular, many patients would feel safe returning to a healthcare facility if their doctor assured them it’s safe to go. Health systems are taking myriad steps to provide COVID-safe care—staggering appointments, eliminating waiting rooms, screening temperatures upon arrival, providing masks, enhancing sterilization and testing at-risk patients—more communication about the specifics of their efforts, directly to patients, will be vital to restoring consumer confidence. (See more survey data gathered by Public Opinion Strategies here.)

 

 

 

 

Trump faces criticism over lack of national plan on coronavirus

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Accountability, Blame, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Economic Crisis, Economic Stimulus, Economy, Economy Reopening, Emergency Preparedness, Failure, False Hope, Health Policy, Infection Control, Infectious Virus, Leadership Decentralized, Mistake, Mortality, National Strategy, Pandemic, Partisanship, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), Public Health, Public Safety, Quarantine, Scientists, Social Distancing, Supply Chain, Uncertainty, Ventilators, Wishful Thinking • Leave a comment

Trump faces criticism over lack of national plan on coronavirus

COVID-19 National Health Plan – Primary Care – Central Patient ...

The Trump administration is facing intense criticism for the lack of a national plan to handle the coronavirus pandemic as some states begin to reopen.

Public health experts, business leaders and current administration officials say the scattershot approach puts states at risk and leaves the U.S. vulnerable to a potentially open-ended wave of infections this fall.

The White House has in recent days sought to cast itself as in control of the pandemic response, with President Trump touring a distribution center to tout the availability of personal protective equipment and press secretary Kayleigh McEnany detailing for the first time that the administration did have its own pandemic preparedness plan.

Still, the White House lacks a national testing strategy that experts say will be key to preventing future outbreaks and has largely left states to their own devices on how to loosen restrictions meant to slow the spread of the virus. Trump this week even suggested widespread testing may be “overrated” as he encouraged states to reopen businesses.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Thursday night issued long-awaited guidance intended to aid restaurants, bars and workplaces as they allow employees and customers to return, but they appeared watered down compared to previously leaked versions.

Some experts said the lack of clear federal guidance on reopening could hamper the economic recovery. 

“A necessary condition for a healthy economy is a healthy population. This kind of piecemeal reopening with everyone using different criteria for opening, we’re taking a big risk,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics.

The lack of coherent direction from the White House was driven home this week by damaging testimony by a former top U.S. vaccine official who claims he was ousted from his post improperly.

“We don’t have a single point of leadership right now for this response, and we don’t have a master plan for this response. So those two things are absolutely critical,” said Rick Bright, who led the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority until he was demoted in late April.

The U.S. faces the “darkest winter in modern history” if it does not develop a more coordinated national response, Bright said. “Our window of opportunity is closing.”

From the start, the White House has let states chart their own responses to the pandemic.

The administration did not issue a nationwide stay-at-home order, resulting in a hodgepodge of state orders at different times, with varying levels of restrictions.

Facing a widespread shortage, states were left to procure their own personal protective equipment, ventilators and testing supplies. Trump resisted using federal authority to force companies to manufacture and sell equipment to the U.S. government.

Without clear federal guidance, state officials were competing against each other and the federal government, turning the medical supply chain into a free-for-all as they sought scarce and expensive supplies from private vendors on the commercial market.

“The fact that we had questions about our ability to have enough mechanical ventilators, and you had states basically bidding against each other, trying to secure personal protective equipment …  it shouldn’t be happening during a pandemic,” said Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security.

Internally, the administration struggled to mount a unified front as various agencies jockeyed for control. Multiple agencies have been providing contradictory instructions.

At first, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar led the White House coronavirus task force.

Roughly a month, later he was replaced by Vice President Pence. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was later tasked with leading the response to get supplies to states, while senior White House adviser Jared Kushner led what has been dubbed a “shadow task force” to engage the private sector. Now, FEMA is reportedly winding down its role, and turning its mission back over to HHS.

The CDC has been largely absent throughout the pandemic. Director Robert Redfield has drawn the ire of President Trump as well as outside experts, and he has been seen infrequently at White House briefings.

“I think seeing the nation’s public health agency hobbled at a time like this and looking over its shoulder at its political bosses is something I hoped I would never see, and I’ve been working with the CDC for over 30 years,” said Lawrence Gostin, a professor of public health at Georgetown University.

“I think that people will die because the public health agency has lost its visibility and its credibility and that it’s being politically interfered with,” he added.

The administration recently has taken some steps to improve on the initial response to the pandemic.

Ventilator production has increased, and the U.S. is no longer seeing a shortage of the devices. 

Testing has improved dramatically as well, though experts think the U.S. needs to be testing thousands of more people per day before the country can reopen.

The administration also unveiled plans to expand the Strategic National Stockpile’s supply of gowns, respirators, testing supplies and other equipment, after running out of supplies early in the pandemic.

Adalja said the administration’s positive steps are coming way too late. 

“It’s May 15, we should have been in this position January 15,” he said.

McEnany on Friday for the first time detailed the White House’s preparedness plan that replaced the Obama-era pandemic playbook, an acknowledgement that Trump’s predecessor did leave a road map, despite claims to the contrary from some of the president’s allies.

She did not give many specifics on the previously unknown plan. Instead, McEnany declared the Trump administration’s handling of the virus had been “one of the best responses we’ve seen in our country’s history.”

Yet as states look to reopen businesses and get people back to work, the White House is taking a back seat as governors set their own guidelines for easing stay-at-home orders and restrictions on social activities.

The White House in April issued a three-step plan for states to reopen their economies, but it has largely been ignored by states and by the president.

Dozens of governors have begun easing restrictions on businesses and social activities without meeting the White House guidelines. Trump has been urging them to move even faster, backing anti-lockdown protesters in Michigan, Virginia, Minnesota and Pennsylvania.

Even scaled-down guidance from federal agencies is critical for providing a road map for state and local leaders, and for businesses considering how best to resume operations, said Neil Bradley, chief policy officer with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

“We need guidance because it helps instill confidence about the right types of approaches to take, but when you begin to move away from guidance and into either regulations or very strict approach, then that’s increasingly going to be unworkable in lots of different locations,” Bradley said.

 

 

 

Seven weeks into coronavirus lockdowns, Fed has a new, darker message

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Bankruptcy, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Economic Crisis, Economic Stimulus, Economy, Economy Reopening, Employee Furlough, Employee Hiring Freeze, Employee Layoffs, Employee Pay Cuts, Employee Protections, Employer-Based Health Insurance, Financially Distressed, Health Policy, Infection Control, Infectious Virus, Job, Job Market, Job Search, Job Security, Pandemic, Public Health, Public Safety, Quarantine, Social Distancing, Uncertainty • Leave a comment

https://www.yahoo.com/news/seven-weeks-coronavirus-lockdowns-fed-182614531.html

Seven weeks into coronavirus lockdowns, Fed has a new, darker ...

One Thursday morning seven weeks ago, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell made a rare appearance on NBC’s “Today Show” to offer a reassuring message to Americans dealing with economic fallout from measures to contain the coronavirus outbreak.

There is “nothing fundamentally wrong with our economy,” Powell told viewers, while pointing out the U.S. central bank’s outsized ability to take on lending risk and provide a financial “bridge” over the temporary economic weakness the country was experiencing.

Speaking after the Fed cut interest rates to near zero and rolled out a plan to backstop credit for small- and mid-sized companies, Powell emphasized the first order of business was to get the virus under control.

“The sooner we get through this period and get the virus under control, the sooner the recovery can come,” said Powell, echoing remarks made the day before by Anthony Fauci, a top U.S. health official helping to coordinate the federal government’s response to the coronavirus crisis.

At the time, Powell said he expected economic activity would resume in the second half of the year, and maybe even enjoy a “good rebound.”

But on Wednesday, he offered a much more sober outlook.

In an interview webcast by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Powell warned of an “extended period” of weak economic growth, tied to uncertainty about how well the virus could be controlled in the United States. “There is a sense, growing sense I think, that the recovery may come more slowly than we would like,” he said.

Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was similarly somber when he told lawmakers earlier this week that the country was by no means in “total control” of the outbreak.

“There is a real risk that you will trigger an outbreak that you may not be able to control and, in fact, paradoxically, will set you back, not only leading to some suffering and death that could be avoided, but could even set you back on the road to try to get economic recovery,” Fauci said.

The pandemic has killed more than 83,000 people in the United States so far, and many epidemiological models now point to a death toll that will surpass 100,000 in a matter of weeks.

Overall new cases of the virus continue to climb as well, as states end lockdowns and reopen local economies without the widespread, uniform testing and contact tracing policies that helped stamp out initial outbreaks in South Korea and Germany.

UNCERTAIN FUTURE

Powell’s remarks on Wednesday mirrored warnings this week from a clutch of regional Fed presidents who outlined the country’s uncertain future.

U.S. central bank officials, and especially the Fed chief, historically choose their words carefully, to avoid alarming or exciting investors or causing swings in financial markets, making their universally dour outlook more remarkable.

St. Louis Fed President James Bullard said the situation could lead to a new Great Depression, with millions of so-far temporary job losses becoming permanent, and businesses failing “on a grand scale.”

“We have to get better at this and get more risk-based with our health policy,” Bullard said.

The U.S. economy can return to growth in the second half of the year, Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester said on Tuesday, with more testing and contact tracing. If that happens, she said, “as some of the stay-at-home restrictions are lifted, the economy will begin to grow again in the second half of this year and unemployment will begin to move down.”

However, a more pessimistic scenario, in which a surge in infections requires businesses to shut down again or the crisis leads to more bankruptcies or instability in the banking sector, is “almost as likely,” she said.

 

 

 

 

Amid reports of White House clashes with CDC, experts raise alarms about lack of coronavirus screening at airports

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Economic Crisis, Economy, Economy Reopening, Health Policy, Infection Control, Infectious Virus, Mortality, Pandemic, Public Health, Public Safety, Quarantine, Scientists, Social Distancing • Leave a comment

https://www.yahoo.com/news/coronavirus-screening-airports-144105500.html

Terminal 1 at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. (Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

As the nation begins to reopen amid the coronavirus pandemic, some people are looking to the skies — and experts don’t necessarily like what they see, arguing there are not enough safeguards in place to protect passengers and crew. 

While air travel has fallen sharply due to the virus, the airports are open and planes are flying both domestically and internationally. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued travel guidelines encouraging air passengers to wear face coverings, “keep 6 feet of physical distance from others” and only board planes for essential travel. However, these guidelines are merely suggestions. 

There is no requirement for masks, and there have been multiple reports of crowded conditions in airports and on planes, which have left passengers alarmed. The Transportation Security Administration, which screens passengers and luggage at airports, has also experienced over 560 confirmed cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, and six deaths from the illness.

Despite these concerns, there are currently no coronavirus screening procedures for domestic air travelers, and a congressional investigation has also raised questions about the level of screening being conducted for international passengers. Speaking in the Oval Office on April 28, President Trump told reporters his administration is working on implementing a procedure for temperature checks and COVID-19 tests for air travelers.

“We’re also setting up a system where we do some testing, and we’re working with the airlines on that,” Trump said.

According to a May 6 government document reviewed by Yahoo News, the CDC was “developing a tool for predicting risk of importation of COVID-19 among international travelers” and meeting with the White House National Security Council “to discuss strategies for screening arriving international passengers from countries with substantial COVID-19 transmission.”

However, there have been reports of discord between the CDC and the White House. On May 9, USA Today reported CDC officials were overruled by the White House after they raised concerns about a potential plan to establish temperature checks at the airports. While some COVID-19 patients do have high fevers, many do not and others are entirely asymptomatic. 

USA Today’s report included an email Dr. Martin Cetron, the CDC’s director of global mitigation and quarantine, sent to officials with the Department of Homeland Security criticizing the temperature checks as “a poorly designed control and detention strategy.” 

Cetron, the CDC and DHS did not respond to requests for comment. The White House did not respond to questions about the reported disagreements from the CDC or whether the Trump administration believes temperature checks are an adequate screening measure for airports.

Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, the chairman of the House oversight subcommittee on economic and consumer policy, has investigated coronavirus screening procedures at airports. Earlier this week, the Illinois Democrat told Yahoo News he was concerned by the report that the White House is pursuing a temperature screening plan over the objections of CDC officials. 

“The White House has been ignoring and sidelining America’s public health experts at the CDC, instead relying on nonexpert political appointees to make public health decisions,” Krishnamoorthi said. “I am troubled by reports that officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention could raise this public health concern and be essentially overruled by presidential aides. The desire to lure Americans back into traveling by making them feel like they are safe cannot outweigh the need to actually keep this country safe.”

Krishnamoorthi has previously raised concerns about what he described as “lax” screening procedures for international travelers coming into the United States from coronavirus hot spots in March as the pandemic exploded around the globe. Trump has repeatedly pointed to restrictions he imposed on travelers from China — where the virus originated — on Jan. 31 as evidence of his strong efforts to curb its spread in the United States.

However, the restrictions on China contained exemptions that allowed over 400,000 people to subsequently travel from that country to the United States. And on May 7, Krishnamoorthi’s subcommittee released the results of an investigation that focused on two other early coronavirus hot spots — Italy and South Korea. Krishnamoorthi said he believes Trump has focused on “rhetoric and bluster rather than actually effective screenings.”

“Just from what we found with Italy and South Korea, there was no border closing. There was no screening. Unfortunately, the lack of screening probably had some very serious consequences at a time when cases were exponentially rising in the United States.”

Krishnamoorthi’s investigation, which included extensive briefings from officials, found that the White House National Security Council’s Policy Coordination Committees decided in March to rely on South Korean and Italian officials to screen passengers in those countries who were headed to the United States. The probe further found the U.S. had “limited” oversight for those screenings in Italy and that only 69 passengers were prevented from coming to the U.S. from those two countries in March. Once they arrived, the investigation found passengers entering from the two countries did not receive additional health screenings.

“Potentially thousands and thousands of people came across without screenings” from what were two of the leading coronavirus hot spots at the time, Krishnamoorthi told Yahoo News. “It doesn’t take a lot to believe that folks came over and seeded further outbreaks here in this country.”

Jonathan Ullyot, a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council, responded to questions about Krishnamoorthi’s investigation with a statement touting the government’s steps to screen international arrivals earlier this year.

“The reality is that the United States government took early and decisive action to mitigate the risk from global hot spots, including China, Iran, South Korea, and the Schengen area of Europe,” Ullyot wrote. “After restricting travel from China on January 31 … the security directive put forth by the administration required enhanced medical screenings for all passengers before they departed on flights to the United States from Northern Italy and South Korea.”

According to Ullyot, the screenings in Italy and South Korea “included checking the passenger’s temperature, visual observations to detect signs of illness, and questionnaires.” While Ullyot did not dispute Krishnamoorthi’s contention that the U.S. relied on officials in those countries to conduct the screenings and that few passengers were denied boarding, he said “U.S. mission staff visited airports” in both countries to “observe these screening procedures.”

A senior Trump administration official, who requested not to be named, said all international arrivals to the United States are subject to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) screenings that are following CDC guidelines. The official explained that those guidelines require CBP officers to refer travelers “to the CDC, DHS contract medical screeners, or local health authorities for health screening” if they are exhibiting symptoms or have traveled from countries that have experienced major outbreaks.

According to the official, the CBP has “established processes to identify travelers who have traveled to the United States directly or indirectly from areas that are experiencing COVID-19 outbreaks.”

Domestic air passengers, however, are treated differently.

“With regard to domestic travel, there’s not more screening beyond what TSA normally does,” Krishnamoorthi said. 

He said that lack of screening for domestic travelers is particularly worrisome as areas of the country are beginning to lift lockdown restrictions. He suggested this could lead to a situation where business people “go back and start traveling” and then “transport these cases everywhere.”

“We have to look at the science of it more closely, and we have to develop a more precise way of screening,” Krishnamoorthi said.

Randy Babbitt, a former administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, said the lack of new screening procedures is not as much of a problem right now since “nobody’s flying.” However, he said it will become a pressing issue as the country reopens and airports become more crowded.

“People are going to start flying and as it ramps back up, that becomes a different question,” Babbitt told Yahoo News.

Babbitt further explained that one difficulty with establishing comprehensive procedures for airports is that so many different government agencies are involved in air travel. However, he pointed to proposals generated by Stonebriar Strategy Group Thought Leadership Initiative, a nonprofit consultancy, as a realistic potential road map.

Howard Thrall, the president and senior partner of the group, said the organization is comprised of multiple retired consultants and executives who have worked in the industry. According to Thrall, a  veteran executive who has worked for multiple aviation and aerospace companies, the group came together because they were “totally amazed” a coronavirus airport screening system has not yet been established. 

“This is really a pro bono exercise for a bunch of old graybeards,” Thrall said.

The Stonebriar Strategy Group’s proposal calls for screening perimeters to be established outside airports, where rapid COVID-19 tests, questionnaires and temperature checks could be administered to travelers and workers. Setting up a screening perimeter would mean that even if passengers ended up in close proximity during boarding or on planes, they could have a higher degree of confidence those around them were not contagious.

Along with addressing safety concerns, Thrall said implementing these screenings could help the economy since aviation is a substantial part of the nation’s gross domestic product and boosting consumer confidence is crucial to returning the industry to normal levels. He pointed to the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, when the TSA was formed and security screening procedures were transformed, as evidence that airport procedures can quickly be revamped.

The Stonebriar Strategy Group’s detailed proposal estimated it would cost approximately $6.8 million per airport, per year, to establish coronavirus screening perimeters. With approximately 5,000 public airports in the country, that would mean a total cost of about $34 billion.

However, Thrall argued that cost is realistic relative to the urgent need and the trillions of dollars the government is spending to address the coronavirus. 

“That’s why we wrote it up. It wasn’t happening and it could happen. This is not a big deal,” Thrall said. “I mean, it’s not going to be free by any means, but this is very, very manageable.”

 

 

 

The pandemic broke America

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The coronavirus pandemic broke America - Axios

Eight weeks into this nation’s greatest crisis since World War II, we seem no closer to a national strategy to reopen the nation, rebuild the economy and defeat the coronavirus.

Why it matters: America’s ongoing cultural wars over everything have weakened our ability to respond to this pandemic. We may be our worst enemy.

  • The response is being hobbled by the same trends that have impacted so much of our lives: growing income inequality, the rise of misinformation, lack of trust in institutions, the rural/urban divide and hyper-partisanship.
  • We’re not even seeing the same threat from the virus. Democrats are far more likely than Republicans to be worried about getting seriously ill, while Republicans — including the president — are more likely to think the death counts are too high.

Without even a basic agreement on the danger of the pandemic and its toll, here’s how we see the national response unfold:

  • The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the crown jewel of the globe’s public health infrastructure, has been sidelined, its recommendations dismissed by the White House.
  • President Trump declares the U.S. has “prevailed on testing” at a time when health experts say we still need far more daily tests before the country can reopen safely.
  • Distribution of the promising coronavirus drug remdesivir was initially botched because of miscommunication between government agencies.
  • More than two thirds of Americans say it’s unlikely they would use a cell phone-based contact tracing program established by the federal government, a key component of a testing regime to control the virus.
  • The second phase of a program to aid small businesses isn’t fully allocated because firms are either concerned about its changing rules, confused about how to access it, or find the structure won’t help them stay in business.
  • With the unemployment rate at a post-Depression record last month, and expected to go higher, there is no meaningful discussion between the parties in Congress on aid to the out-of-work.
  • States and local governments are facing billions in losses without a strategy for assistance.
  • The virus is literally inside the White House. Aides have tested positive for coronavirus, leading to quarantines for some of the nation’s top public health officials and a new daily testing regime for White House staff and reporters who enter the West Wing.
  • The No. 1 book on Amazon for a time was a book by an anti-vaxxer whose conspiracy-minded video about the pandemic spread widely across social media, leading to takedowns by platforms like YouTube and Facebook.

The other side: There’s better news at the state level. “Governors collectively have been winning widespread praise from the public for their handling of the coronavirus outbreak,” the Washington Post reports.

Between the lines: Nationwide, 71% of Americans approve of the job their governor is doing, according to the Post. For Trump, the figure is 43%.

  • And former presidents we often expect to help rally the nation in trying times are scarce.
  • George W. Bush released a video, in which his face barely appeared, calling for unity in the fight against the virus. Barack Obama was recorded in leaked remarks to former staffers calling Trump’s coronavirus response “an absolute chaotic disaster.” Trump attacked both of them on Twitter.

The bottom line: An existential threat — like war or natural disaster — usually brings people together to set a course of action in response. Somehow, we’ve let this one drive us apart.