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flogenos · 1 year ago

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I should have addressed this as well, thank you. I specifically focused on the effects of lockdown because it seems OP was minimizing the effects it had. At the same time, you're right in that COVID itself is a massive factor. That said, the main thing I was talking about is how socioeconomics are one of the real roots of this, and I believe that due to the healthcare divide in this country, that point about class I alluded to also applies here.

Unfortunately, education is seen by too many lawmakers as childcare for a working population. When it is seen in that way, we incentivize sending children to school at all costs, and sweep under the rug how negatively that can affect them if the school is not a safe place to be, and urge to return to the status quo as quickly as possible to keep the economy churning.

I'm trying to read your response in good faith, but I don't like how you worded "I find it interesting how little the effects of Long COVID...is being discussed in these kinds of conversations." We talk about this almost every single weekly staff meeting at my school. So since we agree COVID is a problem, and you are demonstrating you want to talk about all of the factors, the rest of this is not an argument, it's just adding more information that you can take or leave.

Like, it's complicated. It's not COVID bad VS Lockdown Bad here. It's everything is bad at once. There was not a good choice. As individual educators, we did the best we could at our individual schools, and that wasn't enough because it was bigger than us. We didn't have the facts yet, we were dealing with communities and school boards making impossible, contradictory demands, and we had to make educated guesses. We were wrong about a lot of it.

We should absoLUTELY not be unmasked in school, but it has gotten so fucking politically charged that there's nothing we can do. It's impossible for us to require masks when we serve all children, because conservatives on school boards will literally fire us.

What we need is legislative action top down, starting with the US departments of education and health making a decision on it instead of pretending it isn't happening. This is urgently needed now. We need to go back to giving COVID money to schools so schools can afford PPE, sanitizing, and air filtration upgrades. We need to go back to doing a lot of things.

And at the same time, doing periodic lockdowns, as important and necessary as they are, WILL permanently delay education of students further. So where is the trade-off? I don't know, I'm a choir teacher! I teach middle schoolers how to sing. But I think that line has to be somewhere. We can't keep status quo, but we also can't go fully distance learning forever, because we will end up with a LARGE fraction of our population being pushed through with no education at all, which as explained, is what happens when we full lockdown. That is, unless we completely rework our economic model and go back to either 1., having larger, multigenerational families where grandparents are able to do a majority of childcare, or 2., going back to the early mid-century nuclear family with one parent at home for full time childcare.

Education, with all of its flaws on national, state, and local levels, is still one of the most important parts of our functioning society. Our education system traumatizes, harms, and negatively affects many people, absolutely. We need a lot of sweeping changes, and all of those need a LOT of money that schools aren't getting. Schools would be able to solve this if we had... 2-10× our current budgets? Probably? Depending on district. Otherwise, the alternative to our current system is a large portion of adults not just missing higher level skills, but not knowing how to spell "president," or knowing their odds and evens, or even how to draw a stick figures.

Like I said, this is bigger than what educators themselves can do, even if the biggest education unions banded together on this. So instead, we're working on talking about how isolation and long COVID effect every single student in every single school for a generation.

Something I'm not even talking about is the trauma of a cultural shift in parents without education, resources, or time to actually parent. Because of these things, so so so many parents have thrown their hands up and said "I don't care! I can't do this!" and stop being parents. And now that students are back in schools, this has affected how parents parent.

Because so much labor was expected of them at home during lockdown, many are burnt out and don't want to help raise their children at all anymore. When talking to these parents, Every teacher I know has heard numerous times "I don't care, you're the teacher, you fix it" for major things.

I'm not even talking about the worst situation, which isn't just neglect, it was abuse. And without a school, these kids had no escape and no lifeline. No teacher to notice scars and bruises for over a year.

Lockdown was important. We need to do more to prevent further spread of COVID. And it's also fucked our society pretty bad.

I assume that in the next decade, COVID lockdown will be the prototypical "explanation" for why gen alpha is the way they are, whatever that happens to be. If the stereotype is that they're all a bunch of weird introverts, that will be due to lockdown stunting their social skills. If they're all a bunch of gregarious outgoing types that will be due to lockdown giving them a stronger yearning for socialization they were deprived of in youth.

Probably the discourse will be both of these at the same time, with people fighting with each other based solely on their impression of the last three teenagers they spoke to.

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news4dzhozhar · 4 years ago

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**I know that money is still tight but please consider donating to this amazing organization, ANERA. I made the charity the beneficiary on a work life insurance policy because I believe that strongly in their mission. Right now Palestine is in the most desperate need so that is what donations collected will be going towards. Please consider a donation even if it's only $10-15. Unlike many charities, their overhead costs are minimal so more of your money will actually go to those in need....not "administrative" fees (you can check their standing on the charity transparency watchdog website GuideStar)

Anera is deeply concerned about the escalating attacks and loss of life in Jerusalem, Gaza and throughout Palestine and Israel, including threatened moves to evict Palestinian families from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem, and the rising numbers of injured, dead and homeless in Gaza.

Anera's emergency response will ensure that Palestinian healthcare facilities and the Gaza Central Blood Bank Society have sufficient access to emergency medical supplies, PPE to protect health care officials from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and the necessary medicines to treat chronic conditions.

With your support, we are responding to the urgent needs of the most vulnerable communities impacted by the ongoing violence.

#anera #Palestine #gazaunderfire #massacre in gaza #gaza under attack #Israeli war crimes #genocide #apartheid

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dxmedstudent · 3 years ago

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Why does the DailyMail hate GPs?

I wrote a really long answer when you first sent this ask - unfortunately the internet ate it, and I felt too tired to immediately re-type it. The short answer is this: The Daily Mail relies on generating outrage to exist. It hates pretty much everyone and hops between demonising various groups in order to generate controversy. The demonisation of doctors isn't new - during the junior doctor contract strikes a few years back some parts of the media were very quick to paint us as shirkers who didn't realise what they'd signed up for. But it's not only us - one minute it's GPs, the next it's teachers. The long answer is that general practice is short on staff, much in the same way that the rest of the NHS could be better staffed. It's also the middle of a pandemic. It simply wasn't possible (and still isn't) for GPs to see patients for 10 minutes face to face AND take reasonable hygeine precautions to minimise the risks of covid. So telephone appointments were brought into both hospital clinics and GP clinics as a way to try to keep patients and clinicians safe. At the start of the pandemic, GPs had no PPE, and it simply wasn't safe for patients or staff for most people to be seen face to face. GPs were also brought into other roles - for example, working in covid assessment hubs, and then into vaccinating when the vaccines got rolled out. Many continued to give phone consultations through the pandemic, seeing patients face to face when possible and directing patients to ED when necessary. Telephone triage isn't' popular with the media at present - but it's actually not new. Back when I did GP work in FY2, our practice already had telephone triage. Because some patients just need a quick conversation about their prescription, some do need to be seen today, some really should be seen elsewhere e.g. ED, and some would be happy to be seen slightly later as long as they are reassured it doesn't sound worrying. It can work well. and there's evidence to say that plenty of people do prefer telephone triage - as long as they can get a face to face appointment when there are concerns that need addressing. Most GPs have been working more than ever before, just not in the way that most people are familiar with. The technical number of appointments hasn't gone down - there's evidence that GPs are fitting in more appointments than before.

The media loves to present GPs as part time shirkers - in part because a large chunk of them are women, and there's a long history of eminent males bemoaning the 'feminisation' of medicine. But most GPs are part time because of the way the system works. See, GPs are only paid for the 'sessions' i.e. morning or afternoon clinics that they spend with patients. Now, a large chunk of their work involves reading letters from specialists and actioning their recommendations, or writing referrals to different services, or checking the results of the tests they've sent, and making sure the patient is informed. This admin is vital to patient care, and takes a LOT of time, but they are not currently paid to have any such time scheduled. So pretty much all GPs have to go part time in order to fit in time to actually DO vital admin that directly benefits patients. For free. In reality this means even most doctors working 'part time' end up working full time hours, just doing lots of unpaid work to make sure their patients are cared for. Yes, some people work less hours, and some need to in order to balance it out with child care or care for others. But if you do less sessions you get paid less - it's not like people get paid to not work. And whilst there may be some GPs that earn a good amount of money, that's usually because they may have other commitments outside of their GP role. It would be hard to comment on individual GP practices - I'm sure that it's much harder to get face to face appointments in some places than others. It's important for people to seek urgent advice if they or a loved one feel very unwell or are getting worse, particularly if they can't get a GP appointment in a reasonable timeframe. However, during the pandemic, a lot of people were afraid to seek help - or presented late/when they were very unwell because they were afraid of catching covid in a healthcare setting, or being a burden. The reality is that the pandemic will have a knock-on effect due to all the people who either couldn't get care because clinics or procedures/investigations were cancelled or weren't able to/were too afraid to seek help during the pandemic. But in reality it's a lot more complicated than 'GPs are lazy'.

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what-is-your-plan-today · 4 years ago

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A WEEK IN BRITAIN...

1. Boris Johnson announced a new 3 Tier lockdown system, with the lowest Tier being “medium”, like at McDonalds

2. As part of the announcement, the Chief Medical Officer reassuringly said the plan wouldn’t work

3. The govt said “in all cases, we are following the science”

4. It was revealed the SAGE science committee told the govt to lockdown weeks ago, but that bit of science wasn’t followed very far

5. SAGE went on to say the govt’s “world-beating” £12bn Test and Trace system was having only “a marginal impact on transmission rates”

6. Dido Harding, head of Seemingly Everything, said Test and Trace would be “local by default” and be “highly efficient”

7. She then handed £12bn to Serco, which is highly efficiently charging us £7360 per day for consultants. To trace Covid infections. Which they aren’t doing

8. Serco’s CEO is the brother of an ex-Tory MP. His partner is a Tory donor. Serco’s ex-head of PR is now a Tory Health Minister

9. If you feel all this is a bit corrupt, you can complain to the govt’s Anti-Corruption Champion, John Penrose, who is married to Dido Harding

10. Meanwhile an investigation by the Good Law Project found PPE suppliers owned by Tory donors or associates were paid 30% more per item than similar businesses globally. I'm talling you: John Penrose. He’s your fella. He’ll get to the bottom of it, fo shizzle

11. And only 34 days since the announcement of Boris Johnson’s "brainchild", the £100bn Operation Moonshot, it was quietly scrapped, along with (apparently) Boris Johnson’s brain and around 28% of his children

12. A Tory MP said Boris Johnson’s “personal skillset this doesn't play to this. He's not a details, manager type. He's a picture painter”. On the side of wine-boxes, mostly.

13. Another said “I think it's obvious this is a government happier picking fights than governing”

14. Another said Boris Johnson “prefers to get on with dog-walking” and “let’s Dominic do the work”

15. Chastened by reports local authorities were given only 5 minutes notice of previous lockdowns, this time the govt gave them ... 7 minutes notice of the meeting to discuss it

16. Except some MPs didn't even get that, and were only invited after the meeting had started

17. And the govt invited the MP for Sunderland, who had to inform them she was only of 3 Sunderland MPs. The govt was “surprised to be informed” of this

18. The dep Chief Medical Officer said the infection rate in the north “never dropped” meaning the relaxation of lockdown was at the expense of lives oop north

19. Then the govt said they would “devolve more decision-making” and “give more financial aid to local authorities”

20. But the aid is conditional on the "devolved" local authority doing what the govt wants, which is quite a novel a definition of "devolved"

21. So, following criticism, the govt briefed the press that it was going to consult more with regional govts

22. Literally 2 hours later, the govt briefed the press that Manchester was moving into Tier 3 restrictions. The Mayor of Manchester was not consulted (or even informed) about a decision he must implement, and which affects the largest city-region outside London.

23. A Tory MP, anxious about the lockdown affecting businesses over the party season, asked the PM “what can you tell us about Christmas”. Boris Johnson replied, “it’s a religious festival that’s been celebrated 2020 years”, which I’m sure helps us all

24. Matt Hancock insisted we all follow the science and adhere to the 10pm pub curfew that scientists say makes absolutely no improvement on infection rates

25. Then Matt Hancock broke that curfew, in a House of Commons bar

26. And then Matt Hancock said “The drinks are on me but Public Health England are in charge of payment methodology so I will not be paying anything”

27. In August, Public Health England was scrapped by [checks notes ] Matt Hancock

28. But prior to that, Tories imposed budget cuts of 5% to 10% on Public Health England for each of the previous 7 years

29. Unsurprisingly, it was reported that hospitals in the north of England would run out of beds within 7 days

30. The govt said "Hospital Trusts should consider cancelling all non-urgent treatments"

31. The govt then refused to drop fines it imposes on Hospital Trusts which cancel non-urgent treatments

32. So Matt Hancock announced the reopening of Nightingale Hospitals, which were closed last time because nobody could send patients to them, due to them not being staffed

33. They still aren’t staffed: Matt Hancock's' "urgent boost to nursing training" doesn’t start until 2021

34. Fortunately, the govt began a campaign to get ballerinas to retrain, and then scrapped the campaign 24 hours later

35. In June, Boris Johnson announced an "urgent" £1.57bn Arts Rescue Plan

36. A mere 127 days later, it "urgently" got around to paying out some of that money

37. And then Lord West reassuringly said, “we need to deal with migrants in a concentrated place, a camp or whatever”. He didn’t mention whether Arbeit Macht Frei, but it’s still only Thursday, and who can tell what the remainder of the week will bring?

38. Speaking of dates: 15th Oct, the absolute, immoveable deadline for trade talks that mighty, fearsome Boris Johnson laid down to the cowed and quivering EU

39. Talks continue tomorrow. Because obviously, duuur

40. The Road Haulage Assoc pointed out we have only 1,668 of the 33,000 EU Haulage Permits we need on 1 Jan

41. Software to control our borders won’t be ready until 4 months after 1 Jan

42. And the govt is “still in the planning stage” of the “Kent Passports” we need on 1 Jan

43. And construction of Kent's “world’s largest lorry park” is behind schedule, so probably not ready on 1 Jan

44. Fortunately the govt is well-prepared, and plans to install 1000s of Portaloos in Kent, the garden of England, to be used by lorry drivers trapped in 2-day queues

45. And our food standards will still be fine, as Tory MP Nadhim Zahawi tweeted “Our manifesto was clear. We will not compromise our animal welfare and food standards”

46. He then voted to compromise our animal welfare and food standards, as did the rest of the Tory Party

47. And then govt used an obscure rule to deny MPs a vote on whether to allow chlorinated chicken

48. Meanwhile, 20 years after North Sea Cod became so overfished the WWF declared it “economically extinct”, Tory MPs voted to reduce protections designed to let fish stocks recover

49. So, after Brexit, our current plan is to accept tariffs that will destroy our manufacturing sector, and border delays that will destroy farming exports and imperil food supplies, and destroy the farming sector ... all so we can go and catch a fish that doesn’t exist

50. But at least we’ve now "got back control", and therefore we can level up the playing field by implementing the govt's landmark “digital tax” policy on giants such as Amazon

51. This week it was announced Amazon will be exempt from the digital tax

52. Speaking of tax exemptions, it was revealed Dominic Cummings has had a £30,000 council tax bill “written off” because he built the house illegally, so it doesn’t count as a real house, or summat. Sorry, my hurricane-force sarcasm briefly turned me more northern.

53. And on the subject of extreme dodgy dealing, let me direct your attention to Robert Jenrick, who set up the £3.6bn “Towns Fund” for the 101 most deprived town, and then gave the maximum grant of £25m to his own constituency, which is the 270th most deprived town

54. His explanation was that he, Jenrick, did not make the decision. It was made by a colleague, Jake Berry.

55. Jake Berry also got money for his constituency. By a dazzling coincidence, that decision was made by – you guessed it – Robert Jenrick

56. Finally: at a meeting led by Liam Fox, the TaxPayers Alliance (insanity-pushers to the Tory Party) advocated cutting pensions immediately because half of old people “won't be around to vote against you in the next election”, and the other half “will have forgotten by then”

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princessanneftw · 5 years ago

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Livestream the summer solstice: my big survival plan for English Heritage

The charity is set to lose as much as £70 million this year, but its chairman, Princess Anne’s husband, Tim Laurence, won’t be beaten, he tells Richard Morrison of The Times.

Watching the sun rise at Stonehenge on the summer solstice, seeing those ancient stones perfectly aligned to the first rays of dawn; that has to be one of the world’s most magical heritage experiences. In any normal year more than 20,000 people, not all of them card-carrying druids, would gather to see it.

There’s nothing normal, though, about this year. On June 21 the 4,500-year-old monument will be deserted — by government decree. Instead, English Heritage (EH) will live-stream sunrise at Stonehenge. In the words of Tim Laurence, EH’s chairman, it will be a “self-isolating solstice”. And he’s doing his best to put a brave face on it. “For once the stones will be totally peaceful,” he says. “And nobody has to get up at 3am and get very cold.”

True, but if any one event symbolised how much coronavirus has wrecked Britain’s cultural calendar, this “self-isolating solstice” is surely it. That must be particularly painful for Laurence. Just turned 65, he had a highly successful career in the Royal Navy, where he ended up as a vice-admiral. And by the royal family’s eventful standards he enjoys a remarkably untroubled private life as Princess Anne’s husband. He took on EH in 2015 with instructions from government to wean it off public subsidy (which is being tapered down from £15.6 million a year in 2016 to nothing by 2023) and turn it into a self-supporting charity. And until two months ago he seemed to be steering his sprawling new ship very well.

“We’d had five terrific years,” he says. “We now have over a million members. Last year we had 6.4 million visits to our 420-odd sites. And from starting off in a negative financial position when we took the charity on, we had built up a financial reserve. So we were able to invest in some brilliant projects. We spent £3.6 million restoring Iron Bridge in Shropshire, which now looks fantastic and is secure for another century — despite all the terrible flooding on the Severn — and £5 million to build the new bridge to Tintagel Castle in Cornwall, which provides a much better visitor experience.”

Then the pandemic struck. Along with every other heritage organisation, EH closed all its staffed properties on March 19 (though 200 free-to-roam landscapes remained open). “We have to put this into perspective,” Laurence says. “Our problems are very significant, but as nothing compared to the challenge facing the health and care sectors.” Nevertheless, the result of what Laurence calls “putting everything into mothballs” has been, he admits, “a very serious loss of income”. He won’t put a figure on it, claiming with reason that the situation is too fluid, but even if all of EH’s recovery plans go well the charity seems set to lose between £50 million and £70 million this year. And if coronavirus refuses to be subdued, the outcome could be far worse.

In the context of the £200 million loss apparently run up by the National Trust in the past two months, EH’s problems might seem minor. Unlike the National Trust, however, EH doesn’t have £1.3 billion of reserves stashed away for a rainy day.

It didn’t help that lockdown started just before Easter, the precise moment when many heritage attractions traditionally open for the summer. EH has lost not only millions of paying visitors, but also the revenue they generate in its shops and tearooms. Laurence also decided to offer a three-month extension of subscriptions to the million-plus supporters, who are paying £63 a year for individual membership, or £109 a year for a family. “We wanted to thank them for staying with us,” he explains, “and to recognise that they aren’t getting as much value as normal out of their membership.” Probably a necessary public-relations move, especially in view of the reported mass exodus of members from the National Trust, but it put another big dent in EH’s revenues.

Those members haven’t been entirely deprived of EH’s services. Like many cultural organisations, EH has had a big surge in online visitors during lockdown. “Things like Victorian cookery lessons from Audley End [near Saffron Walden in Essex] or dance lessons for VE Day are getting massive attention this year,” Laurence says. So, he hopes, will an 80th-anniversary online commemoration of Dunkirk, designed to retell the story of the evacuation via a daily Twitter feed. That will provide a virtual experience for the thousands who would otherwise have visited Dover Castle, one of EH’s most popular sites, from where D-Day was masterminded.

Yet even the most vivid online experience can’t compensate for the visceral excitement of a physical visit to a dramatic historic site such as ghostly Witley Court in Worcestershire or the gaunt remains of Whitby Abbey. What if EH couldn’t reopen this year? Will there be another extension of membership? “I’d like to think that won’t happen,” Laurence replies. “We have a tentative date for reopening from government, and all our focus now is on getting things going again, rather than fearing the worst.”

That tentative date is July 4, but EH will take things slowly. “Our plan is to open a relatively small number of our staffed sites then, focusing on those that have lots of outdoor space,” Laurence says. “Stonehenge, for instance. The key is making sure that people feel safe, and we are putting in a huge amount of work — in close conjunction with other heritage bodies — to devise procedures to keep staff and visitors totally protected.”

One-way systems for visitors and PPE for staff? “Yes, and limiting visitor numbers, probably by having pre-booked time slots,” Laurence says. “I know it’s a bit of a bore for people, but I think visitors will appreciate the certainty of knowing they can get in. Then it’s about enabling social distancing to be maintained, and very high standards of hygiene wherever people have to touch things.”

Laurence won’t put a date on when a second wave of reopenings might happen. “The thing about the government’s guidance that I am most in tune with is the step-by-step approach,” he says. “We have to see what works and change it if it doesn’t.”

Is he convinced, though, that the public is ready to come back? Recent research suggests a high degree of fear about returning to any cultural activity. “Not everyone thinks the same way,” Laurence says. “What’s clear is that visiting places where there’s a degree of freedom and open air will be much more attractive than enclosed spaces at first. Of course we have a lot of enclosed spaces as well, so we have to find ways of overturning people’s reluctance to enter them.”

Even if people do flock back, however, EH is still left with an enormous black hole in its finances. The government is advancing funds that EH would be due to receive later this year, and there are discussions about bringing forward next year’s grant as well. These, however, are small sums (£8.8 million next year) compared with a possible £70 million loss. Will Laurence be asking for an additional bailout?

“It seems likely that we will be operating under [social distancing] limitations through the whole of this year and possibly next,” he says. “In that case, inevitably, our visitor income will be reduced. If we can’t get the income, we won’t be able to do all the conservation work and projects we’ve put on hold for the moment. Therefore we will have to ask government for more support.”

And an extra two or three years to be added on to EH’s planned transition from quango to independent trust? “That is also a discussion we need to have,” he says.

Could philanthropy help EH through its troubles? In the past five years Laurence has had some success at attracting private money, notably bagging a £2.5 million donation from Julia and Hans Rausing to help to build the Tintagel bridge. The trouble is that, as Laurence points out, “almost everyone who has got money to spare at the moment is thinking first about supporting health charities and care homes”. The Rausings’ recent decision to give nearly £20 million to charities tackling the pandemic is an obvious case in point. Nevertheless, if EH is to get back on track as an independent charity, it needs those big donors on board as well as the subscriptions of its million members.

Laurence spent his final navy years in charge of the Defence Estate, responsible for nearly 2,000 historically important buildings and monuments, so he was well aware of the challenges of conserving old buildings before joining EH. Even so, he admits he was a “slightly strange choice” to be its chairman. “I’m not an academic, not a historian, not an archaeologist,” he says. “Yet in some ways I represent a lot of our members. I’m a fascinated amateur. I absolutely love the history of this country. I love the sites we look after, and the story each tells.”

Tells to whom, though? The biggest challenge facing the whole heritage sector is arguably an urgent need to widen its demographic appeal. Can Laurence, in many ways the ultimate establishment insider, relate to that? Can he recognise that EH, like the National Trust, has an image problem? The perception that it’s a club for white middle-class people?

“There’s an element of truth in that,” he admits. “We are putting a great deal of effort into appealing more to — I hate using these categories — BAME [black and minority ethnic] people, who represent something like 14 per cent of the UK’s population. We have made a very strong statement by recruiting two outstanding representatives of those communities to our trustee board: David Olusoga [the historian] and Kunle Olulode [director of Voice4Change England]. They are helping our gradual transition towards being more appealing to non-white people. The important point is that we reflect not just the bricks-and-mortar history of England, but waves of immigration into this country over thousands of years. We have a story to tell to everybody.”

EH’s online output can be accessed through english-heritage.org.uk

#tim laurence #timothy laurence #dunkirk #english heritage #british royal family #brf

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feminist-space · 5 years ago

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"Yesterday, a letter published by the New England Journal of Medicine highlighted the extraordinary measures that had to be taken to secure the delivery into Massachusetts of equipment that had been bought and paid for. The NEJM, which featured the letter in its COVID-19 Notes series, is far from a platform of partisan alarm or hysteria — it is among the most sober and high-minded professional journals in the country. It’s worth reading the correspondence, written by an executive running a small health system, at some length:

"Our supply-chain group has worked around the clock to secure gowns, gloves, face masks, goggles, face shields, and N95 respirators. These employees have adapted to a new normal, exploring every lead, no matter how unusual. Deals, some bizarre and convoluted, and many involving large sums of money, have dissolved at the last minute when we were outbid or outmuscled, sometimes by the federal government. Then we got lucky, but getting the supplies was not easy.

A lead came from an acquaintance of a friend of a team member. After several hours of vetting, we grew confident of the broker’s professional pedigree and the potential to secure a large shipment of three-ply face masks and N95 respirators. The latter were KN95 respirators, N95s that were made in China. We received samples to confirm that they could be successfully fit-tested. Despite having cleared this hurdle, we remained concerned that the samples might not be representative of the bulk of the products that we would be buying. Having acquired the requisite funds — more than five times the amount we would normally pay for a similar shipment, but still less than what was being requested by other brokers — we set the plan in motion. Three members of the supply-chain team and a fit tester were flown to a small airport near an industrial warehouse in the mid-Atlantic region. I arrived by car to make the final call on whether to execute the deal. Two semi-trailer trucks, cleverly marked as food-service vehicles, met us at the warehouse. When fully loaded, the trucks would take two distinct routes back to Massachusetts to minimize the chances that their contents would be detained or redirected.

Hours before our planned departure, we were told to expect only a quarter of our original order. We went anyway, since we desperately needed any supplies we could get. Upon arrival, we were jubilant to see pallets of KN95 respirators and face masks being unloaded. We opened several boxes, examined their contents, and hoped that this random sample would be representative of the entire shipment. Before we could send the funds by wire transfer, two Federal Bureau of Investigation agents arrived, showed their badges, and started questioning me. No, this shipment was not headed for resale or the black market. The agents checked my credentials, and I tried to convince them that the shipment of PPE was bound for hospitals. After receiving my assurances and hearing about our health system’s urgent needs, the agents let the boxes of equipment be released and loaded into the trucks. But I was soon shocked to learn that the Department of Homeland Security was still considering redirecting our PPE. Only some quick calls leading to intervention by our congressional representative prevented its seizure. I remained nervous and worried on the long drive back, feelings that did not abate until midnight, when I received the call that the PPE shipment was secured at our warehouse."

In this instance, the executive managed to secure the supplies, but what is most horrifying about his account is that this experience was not all that surprising to him — he expected interference from federal officials, and did everything he could (including staging the shipment in food-service trucks to avoid detection) to get around that interference.

Those measures do not seem unusual, horrifyingly enough. Last month, 3 million masks ordered by the state of Massachusetts were seized by the federal government. Last week, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that the governor of Illinois, J.B. Pritzker, was arranging secret chartered flights of supplies as a way of outmaneuvering federal interference. “The governor has clearly outlined the challenges this administration has faced as we’ve worked around the clock to purchase PPE for our health-care workers and first responders,” a spokesperson for the governor told the paper. “The supply chain has been likened to the Wild West, and once you have purchased supplies, ensuring they get to the state is another Herculean feat,” he continued. “These flights are carrying millions of masks and gloves our workers need. They’re scheduled to land in Illinois in the coming weeks and the state is working to ensure these much-needed supplies are protected and ready for distribution around the state.” A source “knowledgeable about the flights” told the paper that the governor didn’t want to be more open about the shipments “because we’ve heard reports of Trump trying to take PPE in China and when it gets to the United States.”

This is not just the federal government telling states they are on their own, as it has done repeatedly over the last few weeks — a sign that the president, often thought to harbor authoritarian impulses, will invariably choose to unburden himself of responsibility even when seizing it would offer remarkable new powers, and itself an moral outrage demonstrating incredible political sadism, given that states lack the resources of the federal government to pay for this stuff. That’s in part because, in many cases, states are legally barred from deficit spending, which means in times of crisis, especially those producing huge budget shortfalls through collapsing tax revenue, they are functionally unable to respond at all. In such situations, the federal government is designed to serve as a backstop, but over and over again throughout this crisis, the White House has said states will get little to no help — that they are entirely on their own. (The federal medical stockpile isn’t meant for the states, as Jared Kushner has said, as though the country is anything more than its states.)

On top of that outrage, the Feds are bidding against states who are trying to buy their own supplies, and refusing to interfere in those auctions between states, which have driven prices up by ten times or more. But while you might think that was as bad as federal management of this crisis could be, it is not. This new outrage is deeper: Even those states that are trying to manage their own resources, buying equipment themselves with incredibly scarce resources to aid in a time of crisis, are being stopped, and those resources seized on the way to delivery.

You could call this piracy. You could call it sanctions. The federal government is choking supply chains to states like it chokes supply chains to Iran and North Korea. These blockades aren’t as complete as those surrounding sanctioned regimes, of course, and some amount of the disruption may be honest confusion in a time of crisis. But the disruption is being brought about by federal interference, and unlike the kind of disruptions you’d want to engineer against antagonistic states, the purpose seems completely unclear — indeed the policy is inexplicable and indefensible.

Which may be one reason why no explanation has been given. We don’t know where these supplies are going. We don’t know on what grounds they are being seized, or threatened with seizure. What business do the DHS and FEMA have with ventilators and PPE purchases by governors and local hospitals? “This is like a story out of the last days of the Soviet Union,” David Frum wrote on Twitter, of the NEJM letter. “This is what it means to be a failed state,” wrote the essayist Umair Haque, echoing him. In the absence of an explanation, it is hard to come to any conclusion other than that this is simply mafia government, exerting control for the sake of control, not in spite of but because of the crisis-led demand, and squeezing the American people, as they die in hospital beds and attend — with inadequate protection — to the sick and scared."

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/hospitals-face-a-white-house-blockade-for-coronavirus-ppe.html

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little-earthquakes-rp · 5 years ago

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TW: Real Life, Death, Covid 19

Wow...so much to say since I’ve been quiet for so long.

First, and most importantly, I’d like to thank everyone who shared a well wish or kind word at my mother’s passing. It really meant a lot to me how instantly supported I felt here. You all are incredible and have such kind souls–months later I’m still so touched by it.

So much has happened over the few couple of months. Shortly, after my mother passed Stay at Home orders went into effect for our state. Very sadly we had to cancel my mother’s funeral and memorial. Which has left this strange sad suspension and lack of closure for me. I’m trying every day to process and am doing my best but it is very hard.

For those of you that don’t know I’d worked in healthcare for over 18 years. I managed to bumble into emergency and urgent care services fresh out of high school and never really left; even after I had a degree in a totally unrelated field. I’d had become too comfortable; however, that changed when the pandemic struck. It became apparent immediately we weren’t prepared and lack of PPE left me leaving my shifts scared to go home to my daughter and husband. Every day I walked into the clinic there would be a new policy made out of necessity instead of safety. I was expected to service potential Covid 19 patients with only a level 3 mask (typical toss away mask) and gloves. I say potential because we weren’t even a testing sight but yet we still allowed symptomatic patients to be seen due the strict guidelines at the time. I was absolutely at my wits end and after a discussion with my husband I decided to leave.

Since than I’ve slid into being a stay at home mom(a title I never thought I’d have). While I do enjoy being so immersed in my daughters life it’s been a difficult shift. At the very least it came a good time as my father has needed me to manage his financial affairs which was something my mother had always done. So I’ve been swept up into that and preparing to sell the family home we grew up in.

Do you make it this far? Were you struck down by the doom and gloom? Nothing a stiff old fashion won’t fix.

So, needless to say I’m at this strange space. Weighing my options I’ve been looking into a side hustle–something to maximize time with Elowen but still have a little bit of money coming in. Currently, I’m living off my savings and dread the day I have to ask for anything. I honestly do not know how to be financially dependent on anyone. My cousin and I have come up with the idea of a starting a blog and have already began the process of getting it up and running. Which is ultimately, what I’m leading up to in here. The blog will include weekly articles and other services. Given the necessity of it I will likely be on hiatus for a while here. Sadly, it feels like I’ve been hiatus already and I should've announced something months ago, but I kept hoping things would change. I appreciate your time and you can always message or find me here if I’m needed.

Thank you!

#about eliza #tw:real life #tw: covid 19 #tw:death #OOC//From The Choirgirl Hotel

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theliberaltony · 4 years ago

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

America is a little matryoshka doll of panic right now; pop open each layer to reveal a new, worrying scenario. For months the country was focused on reopening the economy, which had its own complicated set of problems. But only recently has a broader swath of America tuned into the mess nestled inside it, one that parents have been sitting with for months: what to do with the kids.

There has been no federal plan to help American parents with child care, and they continue to wonder whether schools will really open their doors come the new school year. That lack of action is in direct contrast to other crises that have struck America recently. After the financial crash of 2008, there was a bailout and a stimulus plan. After the protests against police over the last few months, officials in cities and states responded with promises of better actions in the future but also, immediate policy implementation: New York state repealed a law that had shielded police personnel files, while the Minneapolis City Council voted to begin a process that could eventually lead to the dissolution of the city police as it’s now known.

But on child care and school, a specific, urgent response has been missing, or at least one that acknowledges our new reality. President Trump threatened to withhold federal funding for education if schools didn’t open back up, counter to schools’ insistence they need more money to provide a safe education amid the pandemic. While the CARES Act, an omnibus COVID-19 relief bill signed into law in late March, gave extra stimulus funding to families with children, schools and child care businesses so they could remain afloat, a Democratic-backed bill to give a $50 billion bailout of the child care industry has gotten little attention. Teachers around the country have voiced doubt that necessary safety measures for in-school teaching will be sufficient, and Los Angeles Unified School District, one of the country’s largest school systems, has decided not to reopen classrooms when schools go back in session in August. Some worry that while distance learning is safer, socially different children and those without stable internet connections or computers — who are already at the margins in normal times — will fall irrevocably behind.

There is no cohesive solution to America’s child care problem. But the relative inattention to this crisis, one that’s so foundational to a functioning society, the economy and family units across the country, is revealing. It shows that for all the changes that have happened in American life — more female elected officials, a MeToo movement and a workforce that is around 47 percent female — our power dynamics remain fundamentally skewed. We are failing to collectively understand what our most critical and pressing problems actually are.

“Care in general has always been seen as a sideline issue,” Vicki Shabo of the left-leaning think tank New America said. “A nice-to-have and not something that’s necessary, and not something that’s central for adults to be productive in the economy.” Of course, now we’re seeing how much of a misunderstanding that is. In a country where most men and women work even when they have children, having child care is inextricably linked to economic productivity — and not having it often hurts women most. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data from 2015 found that in households with children under 6, women spent an hour a day doing child care, compared to the 25 minutes of care provided by men. It’s easy to extrapolate this trend for pandemic times: American women will bear the brunt of the school and child care crisis.

Yet, child care in particular hasn’t often found itself at the forefront of political debate. Experts and activists I talked to for this story all used the same framing to talk about why: an American narrative that child care problems are individuals’ problems, not society’s.

“If you think about child care traditionally before the pandemic, you probably didn’t think about it too much before you had kids,” Melissa Boteach, vice president of income security and child care at the National Women’s Law Center, said. “Then you have kids, you’re in the most stressful and resource-strapped part of your life: You’re operating on three hours of sleep a night, you’re financially squeezed, because at the very time you’re taking off of work, you have diapers and wipes and formula and whatever else. You’re in this total daze of early motherhood. That’s probably not the time when you say, ‘You know what, I’m going to call my member of Congress.’ You’re feeling it like a personal issue.”

Child care isn’t necessarily seen as a macroeconomic issue or a driver of labor force participation or GDP, Shabo said. And because of that, she said, it often takes a backseat to economic issues like wages when lobbying efforts happen. This is not to say that child care issues don’t get attention — in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, which featured several female candidates, child care plans took a more front and center role in the campaign than they had in the past. One leading candidate, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, co-authored a 2004 book, “The Two-Income Trap,” which was about the ways the rising incomes of households with two full-time employed adults belied the heavy costs of essentials like child care. Warren thought child care costs were among the reasons the American middle class was in an economic crisis.

“Our workplaces were built for white men,” said Danielle Atkinson, the founder and director of Mothering Justice, a Detroit-area advocacy group for working families. The fact that parents are left to fend for themselves from birth to kindergarten and then during the after-school, pre-dinner hours, is an American tradition that seems to assume a readily available, at-home caregiver. (Atkinson pointed out the inextricable role black women have played in American child care; enslaved women often took care of white children.) The nuclear family with a stay-at-home parent (usually a mother) is an ideal that persists, or at the very least lingers in American life: only 18 percent of Americans in a 2018 Pew Research Survey thought it was ideal for both parents to work full time.

“This conversation about school is really a conversation about work,” Atkinson said. “The conversation about returning to school is not based on health. It’s about returning those workers to working and not looking after their children, so those children have to be somewhere.” Essential workers in particular are being forced to make difficult choices about their children’s care — many essential-worker jobs are lower wage — and many child care providers are in strapped situations. The work of child care providers, Atkinson said, is often undervalued — their median annual wage in 2017 was a little more than $22,000 annually, which is just above the federal government’s poverty line for a family of three — and as Boteach pointed out, those workers could continue to risk greater infection rates as schools and work open back up. She highlighted the plan put forth by Senate Democrats, the Child Care Is Essential Act — which would provide a bailout to the suffering industry and additional money for those providers to buy personal protective equipment — and cited an estimate that the U.S. child care industry would need a $9.6 billion injection monthly to survive the pandemic.

It’s more likely the next governmental nod to parents and their school-age children will come in the next iteration of the omnibus coronavirus relief package. Congressional Democrats have proposed $350 billion in funds for schools and universities to purchase PPE and clean their facilities. Republicans agree about more funds, though it’s not clear what their proposed number is — some have argued that since many schools will be operating on a partly virtual basis, less federal funding is needed.

The moral tussling that many parents have been doing — go back to work and risk potential COVID-19 infection at day care or school — will likely continue to be subjected to partisan politics. Trump and his Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos have been the loudest voices in recent days about sending children back to school at all costs, much to the chagrin of teachers, many of whom feel ill-prepared for the safety precautions necessary for in-person pandemic teaching. Ultimately, though, it is parents who are forced to make a choice. Atkinson, a mother of six, told me she would be keeping her children home in the fall.

For those who focus on child care, the pandemic has perversely presented an opportunity to advance the cause of greater access to guaranteed services. “This pandemic has created greater alignment of experience, potentially, between white middle class folks who saw this as an individual issue that they were struggling with and outraged by but hadn’t really taken action on and the longtime, long-standing lived experience of lower wage folks and people of color who have struggled for decades with the unaffordability of child care and the lack of care options to meet their work schedules,” Shabo said.

Atkinson said she also hoped the individualism narrative would be shattered by the current crisis. “We want to lift the veil away and help women, especially white women, know that you’ve been lied to. You were sold a bunch of lies: ‘if you just work harder, if you just slay sexism, you’ll be OK.’ But really, it’s a tool to divide,” she said.

The pandemic has shattered norms and paradigms ever since it arrived in the U.S. — our expectations of child care is no exception. What some politicians and activists had long sought to do to no avail — place working parents and their child care crisis on the center stage of American politics — the virus has done in a matter of months.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Clare Malone

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 5 years ago

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The White House Has Erected A Blockade Stopping States and Hospitals From Getting Coronavirus PPE

By David Wallace-Wells

Whenever you start to think that the federal government under Donald Trump has hit a moral bottom, it finds a new way to shock and horrify.

Over the last few weeks, it has started to appear as though, in addition to abandoning the states to their own devices in a time of national emergency, the federal government has effectively erected a blockade — like that which the Union used to choke off the supply chains of the Confederacy during the Civil War — to prevent delivery of critical medical equipment to states desperately in need. At the very least, federal authorities have made governors and hospital executives all around the country operate in fear that shipments of necessary supplies will be seized along the way. In a time of pandemic, having evacuated federal responsibility, the White House is functionally waging a war against state leadership and the initiative of local hospitals to secure what they need to provide sufficient treatment.

Yesterday, a letter published by the New England Journal of Medicine highlighted the extraordinary measures that had to be taken to secure the delivery into Massachusetts of equipment that had been bought and paid for. The NEJM, which featured the letter in its COVID-19 Notes series, is far from a platform of partisan alarm or hysteria — it is among the most sober and high-minded professional journals in the country. It’s worth reading the correspondence, written by an executive running a small health system, at some length:

“Our supply-chain group has worked around the clock to secure gowns, gloves, face masks, goggles, face shields, and N95 respirators. These employees have adapted to a new normal, exploring every lead, no matter how unusual. Deals, some bizarre and convoluted, and many involving large sums of money, have dissolved at the last minute when we were outbid or outmuscled, sometimes by the federal government. Then we got lucky, but getting the supplies was not easy.

#COVID 19 #pandemic #the plague #political #articles

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fulcrum-agent · 5 years ago

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In a letter published in the New England Journal of Medicine as part of its ongoing Covid-19 Notes series, the chief executive of a Massachusetts hospital accuses the federal government of running an effective PPE blockade that’s prevented the delivery of critical equipment to states in need. Emphasis ours: Our supply-chain group has worked around the clock to secure gowns, gloves, face masks, goggles, face shields, and N95 respirators. These employees have adapted to a new normal, exploring every lead, no matter how unusual. Deals, some bizarre and convoluted, and many involving large sums of money, have dissolved at the last minute when we were outbid or outmuscled, sometimes by the federal government. Then we got lucky, but getting the supplies was not easy. A lead came from an acquaintance of a friend of a team member. After several hours of vetting, we grew confident of the broker’s professional pedigree and the potential to secure a large shipment of three-ply face masks and N95 respirators. The latter were KN95 respirators, N95s that were made in China. We received samples to confirm that they could be successfully fit-tested. Despite having cleared this hurdle, we remained concerned that the samples might not be representative of the bulk of the products that we would be buying. Having acquired the requisite funds – more than five times the amount we would normally pay for a similar shipment, but still less than what was being requested by other brokers – we set the plan in motion. Three members of the supply-chain team and a fit tester were flown to a small airport near an industrial warehouse in the mid-Atlantic region. I arrived by car to make the final call on whether to execute the deal. Two semi-trailer trucks, cleverly marked as food-service vehicles, met us at the warehouse. When fully loaded, the trucks would take two distinct routes back to Massachusetts to minimize the chances that their contents would be detained or redirected. Hours before our planned departure, we were told to expect only a quarter of our original order. We went anyway, since we desperately needed any supplies we could get. Upon arrival, we were jubilant to see pallets of KN95 respirators and face masks being unloaded. We opened several boxes, examined their contents, and hoped that this random sample would be representative of the entire shipment. Before we could send the funds by wire transfer, two Federal Bureau of Investigation agents arrived, showed their badges, and started questioning me. No, this shipment was not headed for resale or the black market. The agents checked my credentials, and I tried to convince them that the shipment of PPE was bound for hospitals. After receiving my assurances and hearing about our health system’s urgent needs, the agents let the boxes of equipment be released and loaded into the trucks. But I was soon shocked to learn that the Department of Homeland Security was still considering redirecting our PPE. Only some quick calls leading to intervention by our congressional representative prevented its seizure. I remained nervous and worried on the long drive back, feelings that did not abate until midnight, when I received the call that the PPE shipment was secured at our warehouse.

Holy cow, this is shitty.

#this is bullshit #what the actual fuck #covid-19 #coronavirus #fuck the usa

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diaryofaclinicalscientist-blog · 5 years ago

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Couldn’t sleep, wrote a thing

22/03/2020

I’m writing a diary about what’s happening because I want to get it out of my head...Maybe getting the thoughts down on paper will help with that. Let’s start with who I am and what I do.

I’m 27 and I am a clinical scientist working in a private lab in a private hospital in Queensland. I’ve done a bachelor’s degree in biomedical science, and a master’s degree. I’ve been in the medical workforce since mid 2014.

This year, the world is dealing with a very contagious, very dangerous respiratory virus (COVID-19) that’s spreading globally at a frankly terrifying rate. Everywhere you look, from the news, to social media, to any sort of communication with friends or loved ones, people are talking about the virus. People are scared. In my hometown, people have been panic-buying and hoarding supplies and food over these last few weeks. It’s been pretty bad - there was a mass panic buying up toilet paper, of all things. Now, we’re having a difficult time finding hand soap, any kind of alcohol sanitizer, gloves, masks...My wife and I didn’t run out and buy stuff, and now I’m worried that maybe we should have.

At work, we’ve got half a box of surgical face masks and a handful of gowns. No eye protection to speak of, which is worrying as it can spread through contact with your eyes too. The last few weeks we’ve been talking about what our response was going to be to this thing - we’re a small private lab and our work is, for the most part, a non-essential medical service. Should we shut down completely? Do we see only urgent patients? How do we screen them? Up until now, we’ve been asking patients if they’ve been travelling overseas in the last month, or if they have any symptoms or have been in contact with anyone who’s in quarantine. Those questions aren’t enough anymore. The virus is in the local population, and it’s spreading. People are asymptomatic for around 14 days, but still contagious. I might even have it as I write this, and I wouldn’t even know.

I’m worried about losing my job. If we have to shut down for an extended time with things as they are now, they won’t be able to keep the place viable for long at all. We don’t make a huge amount of money, and I understand that my bosses would need to shut down. I’m not angry about that, I’m just scared. We have a mortgage, and I would like to come out the other side of this with my house. More importantly, I’d like to come out of this with my health, and my family’s health. My wife is at even more risk than I am, working in a public hospital department that can’t exactly close. They’re going to get quieter, but they’re an essential service. Eventually, the hospital is going to run out of PPE and they’re going to ask her to test patients without adequate protection. I don’t want her to say yes because she’s the only one still earning money. Her health isn’t worth that. She’s smart, and I think she knows that but I also know how much pressure would be on her if we lost my income and I don’t want her to sacrifice her well being for that.

We’re both being very cautious about hygiene and going so far as to even wipe down everything we buy from the shops with disinfectant before putting it away. Both of us see patients who are very much at risk through all this, and if we spread it to our work, people will die. I don’t want that to happen. We’ve made sure we have enough food to last us two weeks if one of us does get exposed. We don’t have a ridiculous surplus by any means, but we have enough to survive. We’ve also decided to wear masks whenever we leave the house for groceries and the like. Of course, like the majority of people here we don’t have any proper masks because the greedy few have exhausted supplies. We asked my mum to make us some out of cotton, which is only about 50% as effective as a proper surgical mask but it’s something. It won’t stop us from contracting the disease, but it will make sure we stop spreading it around. I feel completely powerless in this crisis, but I can at least make sure that the chain of infection stops with me.

I’m worried about the rest of my family, too: my parents are old enough to be in the “at risk” category. I’ve been trying to tell them what I learn from the doctors at work and different medical sources, but I feel like I’m being dismissed. I keep getting told “well, all we can do is be sensible and pray”. I don’t think they’re taking it as seriously as they should, and I’m scared for them. My sisters both have kids in school, and they’ve not yet taken them out of school. I’ve tried to tell them both that the schools are a fantastic way to invite this thing into their homes via their kids being asymptomatic carriers, but they tell me that the people in charge wouldn’t be making the decision to keep the schools open if it wasn’t the right thing to do.

That’s the biggest issue I have with this - how our government is handling it. Virtually every country a few steps ahead of ours has closed its schools and declared lock downs, but rather than see the writing on the wall and take the proactive steps to get ahead of the spread and save lives, they’ve elected to keep schools running and tell people to wash their hands and just keep their distance from each other. The health minister literally said tonight that young people had to be careful as they could be carriers of the virus, and that social distancing is paramount in our response to this. His very next sentence was that he was recommending schools to stay open. How can anyone take this seriously, when clearly it’s life as normal for kids? How is that fair to the teachers, who’re being treated as a free medical quarantine?

I understand that there’s economic considerations that go way over my head, but if it gets as bad here as it is in China and Italy then the economy won’t be standing anyway. Tonight, they announced the decision to close entertainment venues and force all restaurants and cafes to take-away only. They’ve made only reactive decisions in a time when proactive leadership will save lives.

My wife is worried about her grandmother. She lost her other grandmother just recently, and we made the very difficult decision not to fly interstate for the funeral as risk of infection was rising and it wasn’t smart for us to expose ourselves to anything we didn’t absolutely have to. Now, she faces the very harsh reality that she may never get to see her sole living grandparent again. She’s not the only one - I know that in Italy right now people, especially elderly people, are dying in hospitals alone with no family allowed in to see them. They will be cremated with the thousands of other victims, and will get no funeral. Their families will have no chance to say goodbye. It’s going to get that bad here, if something isn’t done.

Tomorrow morning, I find out if my work will continue. Part of me hopes that if anything, it’ll be a very reduced capacity and that our patients stay safe at home. Another part of me worries that it won’t continue. There are talks about an “all hands on deck” approach where they’ll put the call out to anyone with any medical background to help in any way they can. If I get laid off, I’d love nothing more than to hunker down at home safe and isolated and ride this out. What I’m scared of is being asked to help, to get back out there, to do more. I’m scared because I know I’ll say yes. If I have the ability to help, I have the responsibility to help.

#australia #covid-19 #coronavirus #diary #healthcare

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hudsonespie · 4 years ago

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How Cruise Lines are Preparing for a Post-Pandemic World

It’s no surprise or secret that the coronavirus pandemic has dealt a major economic blow to cruise ship lines. Some of the earliest, most gripping stories of COVID-19’s spread outside of China involved quarantined cruise ships searching for safe harbor in the viral storm. After some initial scrambling to bring home everyone already at sea, most cruise ships have been in port and empty of passengers, awaiting word that it’s safe to sail again.

Miami is the home port for many of the cruise lines in the Western Hemisphere, especially those sailing to the Caribbean and South and Central America. It’s also the headquarters of Horizon Air Freight’s cruise ship division and home to our dedicated cruise industry warehouse facilities, which include refrigerated and frozen storage for the millions of pounds of food we move to cruise ships in a typical year. (It’s one of the more specialized of our more than 30 consolidation centers positioned strategically around the globe.) But as we write this, Miami is also a hotspot of coronavirus cases, so we don’t anticipate cruise operations will restart there anytime soon.

“They really need to get the whole state under control before Miami-based cruise lines start thinking about cruising again,” says Alex Durante, Horizon’s director of global sales.

Indeed, just a few weeks ago, the CDC announced it was extending its No Sail Order until September 30, so, at least for U.S.-embarking cruise ships, the wait continues.

That doesn’t mean that nothing is happening aboard their ships. We’ve been shipping a lot of food to feed onboard crew members who were temporarily banned from disembarking due to quarantine regulations. We’ve also shipped a high volume of personal protective equipment (PPE) to protect onboard crews, and, in one recent case, we shipped thousands of pounds of PPE to an entire shipyard to protect workers renovating a cruise ship in dry dock. Masks, gloves, face shields, hand sanitizer, disinfecting aerosol sprays: we’ve been getting it all delivered on-board to cruise ships around the world, even in remote ports, to keep their people safe and healthy as they prepare for what’s next.

Of necessity, we’ve developed some rapid expertise in hand sanitizers and disinfectants, then passed that along to the cruise lines we serve. Sanitizers and disinfectants with high levels of alcohol are classified as hazardous freight, making them more complicated and expensive to export. We’ve been recommending alternatives with lower levels of alcohol paired with other chemicals that help to fight germs and viruses.

“Buy non-hazardous,” says Durante, “and it’s a lot more cost-effective and efficient to get it to you.” It saves our customers money — they can see the savings on our automated financial reports — while still keeping everyone safe.

Smaller Adventure Lines Sailing Soon

Some of the boutique cruise lines we serve — especially those offering adventure cruises to remote areas — may start sailing again sooner than the larger lines, with embarkations from countries presently safe and open. (A few have already started.)

“If we’re shipping them ammunition to protect themselves from polar bears,” says Durante, “the barriers to reentry are probably lower.”

These smaller lines can keep all their passengers together during excursions, and it’s easier to test and screen everyone in the controlled, manageable environments they’re able to provide.

“If they’re cruising to Antarctica, French Polynesia, Greenland, or other safe areas,” says Durante, “they’re likely opening sooner.”

A Longer Wait for Large Cruise Lines

For the larger cruise lines, however, and for any lines sailing to or from countries still under heavy restrictions, the wait continues. In the meantime, most are already planning ahead for a post-pandemic world.

There are still a lot of unknowns. Will cruise lines screen passengers before they board? If so, we may be shipping them a lot of forehead thermometers and test kits. We know we’ll be shipping more gloves, masks, and sanitizers for the foreseeable future. Will buffets be replaced with table service dining? If so, that may impact the food and service equipment we’re shipping.

“Whenever the CDC and the governing bodies in other countries give the green light to start sailing again,” says Durante, “we have the infrastructure in place to support them. Whatever they need, our global team of marine logistics experts will get it to them, when and where they need it.”

From Keeping an Overhaul On-Schedule to Shipping Food All Over the World

Horizon first started supporting cruise ships several years ago when we handled some emergency overnight deliveries from Germany to the Bahamas to keep a major ship overhaul on schedule. The supplier knew Horizon due to previous urgent shipments we handed for them and recommended us to the cruise line as the forwarder who could get the parts there on-time.

“The shipowner was very happy,” says Durante, “and he asked, ‘Who did these emergencies? I never expected we’d see those parts on time.’”

The same cruise line’s logistics department then asked Durante if Horizon could help with their food deliveries. They were shipping 7,000 pounds of food per week from California to French Polynesia. “They wanted to buy wholesale in the U.S. instead of paying a fortune in port,” says Durante, “but the shipments were causing them a tremendous amount of trouble.”

Horizon and our Los Angeles partner put together an arrangement with a refrigerated and frozen warehouse in California, then set up weekly consolidated delivery schedules of food and beverages from various West Coast vendors. More than three years later, we’re still shipping 7,000-10,000 pounds of food via air for them each week.

That initial opportunity led Horizon to launch our cruise ship division, with a dedicated team and facilities initially assembled by Durante. From our new state-of-the-art refrigerated and frozen warehouse facilities in Miami and L.A., to providing up-to-the-minute statuses of every single purchase order electronically, our services were immediately in high demand. We started shipping food to cruise ships all over the world: millions of pounds of it each year.

“We went from spare parts,” says Durante, “to shipping high-end wine, lobsters, ice cream, and porterhouse steaks. Anything and everything the guests wanted, we made the necessary logistics arrangements to get it to them.”

That eventually led to keeping cruise ships supplied with everything else they needed, from engine parts to watches and pearl necklaces for their onboard jewelry stores, with all deliveries timed to their global fleets schedule.

Unlike other commercial maritime industries, the cruise industry needs two very distinct kinds of support from a maritime logistics company.

The technical division of a cruise line is very much like the technical division of a container ship company, a fishing fleet, or any of the other maritime sectors Horizon serves. We get them the parts and supplies they need to keep their ships running safe, able, and on-time.

Then there’s the hotel or hospitality division, which has far more in common with a hotel in a major urban center than a tanker ship or offshore rig. For cruise ship hospitality divisions, in addition to food and beverage items, we ship a lot of toiletries and cleaning chemicals, promotional merchandise such as mugs and T-shirts, key cards, and equipment and supplies for onboard entertainment.

“If you can ship perishable food,” says Durante, “and are able to successfully and consistently navigate through the complexity of what these shipments entail, then all the rest is easy.”

Sailing to See the World Again

At Horizon, we work every day with people who spend their lives traveling through the awe-inspiring beauty of the open seas while experiencing the many cultures and countries of this wide world. Most people don’t have such opportunities in their daily lives, but cruise ships can give them that experience, that adventure.

This is a challenging time for cruise lines and for the world, but throughout Horizon’s 50 years in business, we’ve seen the commercial shipping industry rise to many such challenges before. We’ll get through this one together and emerge stronger than ever.

We look forward, for many reasons, to the day when the pandemic is brought under control. And we look forward to the time when cruise ships can get back to what they do best: give people adventures, vacations, and entertainment at sea. Whenever the time is right, we’ll be there to support them.

This article is sponsored by Horizon Air Freight. Horizon keeps fleets shipshape and on-schedule with global marine logistics by air, land, and sea. Critical marine spares, supplies, and equipment from any vendor worldwide: consolidated, expedited, delivered door to deck. Whatever you need, wherever you need it, we’ll get it there on time and on budget. With more than 50 years of experience, we keep more than 3,000 ships safe, able, and sailing. To learn more or to request a quote, call 800-221-6028 or visit haf.com.

from Storage Containers https://maritime-executive.com/article/how-cruise-lines-are-preparing-for-a-post-pandemic-world via http://www.rssmix.com/

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sparklive07-blog · 5 years ago

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NGOs Provide Healing A Touch In COVID-19 Afflicted India

The COVID-19 outbreak, and the subsequent lockdown, have propelled India into an unprecedented humanitarian and health crisis. The government, both at the central and the state level, is trying to mitigate the disastrous impact of the lockdown on the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people, but the challenge is unique. By initial estimates, 12.2 crore Indians have lost their jobs since the lockdown began, and the domino effect of it has yet to develop.

In such trying times, some NGOs have risen to the challenge, and have intervened on an urgent basis to provide relief to a large number of distressed people despite having numerous difficulties – financial and logistical.

One such NGO is the Pardada–Pardadi Education Society (PPES) which has done exemplary work with limited resources in Uttar Pradesh.

Reaching Out to 1.5 lakh People in Distress

Speaking exclusively to Spark.Live, the CEO of PPES, Ms. Renuka said, ‘After the outbreak of COVID-19, we first decided to understand the need of the community. For that, we immediately started an SMS service and a toll-free calling service so that anybody who has any kind of need – related to ration, intervention in case they are facing oppression at home, or not getting services from the government – could call us.’

It was quickly realized, that livelihood opportunities needed to be created – particularly for women – as in a time of crisis, women are especially vulnerable. With that goal in mind, the existing production center of the foundation, named iVillage in Anupshahar, started to produce face masks by employing 200 women. Within this short period, they have produced 1.7 lakh face masks.

However, with most people losing their jobs, the immediate concern was to provide relief by distributing ration. Ms. Renuka added, ‘We identified the most vulnerable families and our volunteers started to distribute ration. We also provided our school building in Anupshahar as a quarantine center because the village lacks the quality infrastructure to house people.’

So far, with targeted intervention in 120 villages in and around Anupshahar, almost 1.5 lakh lives have been touched by the tireless volunteers of PPES.

The Road Ahead

Ms. Renuka concedes that the future is fraught with bigger challenges.

For someone closely working with women and girls of the region, Ms. Renuka realizes that vanishing means of livelihood have a more sordid impact on women – their health, education, and physical well-being become the immediate casualty. Subsequently, she has directed her NGO’s resources to help such women. ‘As an organization, we have always believed that development can only be achieved if women and girls are economically and socially empowered. Even during this time, that remains a big goal. We need to make all women economically independent. So, our immediate aim now is to raise funds for the 5000 women who are associated with our self-help group and give them a revolving sum of at least Rs 20,000.’

The ripple effect of this can be enormous.

It has been reported that illegal money lenders in villages are thriving in COVID–19 afflicted India, charging steep interest rates. Ms. Renuka says that a direct cash transfer of Rs 20,000 can save many families from falling into this vicious circle of a debt trap.

PPES has also readied a mobile health clinic that can reach remote villages and are exploring possibilities to deploy it once necessary permissions are obtained from the authorities.

Striking an optimistic note, Ms. Renuka said, ‘The world is going through difficult times and the long term impact of this is unknown, however, we here at PPES are very positive that together, we can push through this and see a new dawn.’

How Can You Help?

Organizations such as PPES are doing extraordinary work under extremely difficult circumstances. Their work can transform lakhs of Indian lives which are currently under duress.

They are seeking to raise funds for their various programs and direct cash transfers. If you wish to donate, a link to their donation page is provided below. All donations made to PPES are tax-deductible under Section 80G of the I-T Act.

Also, the self-help group of PPES is making face masks that are washable, cheap, and the entire proceeds raised from the sales go to the vulnerable communities supported by the NGO. If you are an individual or a corporate organization looking to procure masks, you can place a bulk order with them.

#Spark.Live #Covid-19 #partnership #ngo

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ladystylestores · 5 years ago

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She’s on the frontline of a rape epidemic. The pandemic has made her work more dangerous

Lagos, Nigeria — At the start of each day, Dr. Anita Kemi DaSilva-Ibru and her team put on gloves, facemasks and other personal protective equipment to see their patients.

They’re not treating people for Covid-19, but they are on the frontline of the pandemic, working at the Women at Risk International Foundation (WARIF), a rape crisis center in Lagos, Nigeria.

Wearing protective gear is the new reality for crisis center workers, like DaSilva-Ibru.

“We change these kits each time we see a survivor as we are mindful of the risk of transmission of the virus between the survivor and us and the cross-contamination between a survivor and the next,” she told CNN.

US-trained gynecologist DaSilva-Ibru has spent most of her career treating hundreds of sexual violence victims but it was the growing scale of the crisis in Nigeria that prompted her to set up WARIF in 2016.

The clinic in Yaba, a suburb of Lagos, provides medical treatment, legal assistance therapy and space for rape victims and survivors of sexual abuse to get back on their feet.

One in four Nigerian girls has been the victim of sexual violence, according to UN estimates but DaSilva-Ibru says the numbers are higher as many cases go unreported due to the stigma attached.

In recent weeks, two high profile cases of gender-based violence have brought Nigerian women out onto the streets demanding change.

Uwaila Vera Omozuwa, a 22-year-old microbiology student, was found half-naked in a pool of blood in a local church where she had gone to study after the Covid-19 lockdown left universities across the country shut.

“Rape is an epidemic in this country.”

Dr. Anita Kemi DaSilva-Ibru, Women at Risk International Foundation

Her family said her attackers raped her and the student died while being treated at the hospital. A few days later, another student, Barakat Bello, was allegedly raped and killed during a robbery at her home, according to human rights group Amnesty International.

“Rape is an epidemic in this country,” DaSilva-Ibru told CNN.

She says her work with survivors of sexual violence has become more critical during the outbreak, with restrictions to curb the virus from spreading fueling a surge in calls.

It’s a story echoed in other parts of the region, as authorities grapple with a growing number of Covid-19 cases and the impact restrictions are having on women.

Related: A transport ban in Uganda means women are trapped at home with their abusers

DaSilva-Ibru said she initially closed the center after authorities locked down the city in March, she had to reconsider the decision as the organization became inundated with SOS messages from sexual violence victims and their guardians.

Staff operating the 24-hour helpline at the center also reported a 64% increase in calls during this period, according to DaSilva-Ibru.

“Our phones were ringing. Women were calling and desperately asking how we can help them, these were women in fear of their lives, as many have now been forced into quarantine with their abusers, in an already volatile environment,” DaSilva-Ibru told CNN.

For the center to re-open, DaSilva-Ibru said she had to source PPE, face masks and other protective gear personally and when that was not enough, the center launched an online appeal for funds from donors to buy the equipment at no cost to survivors, she said.

“We carry out forensic examinations on survivors and our frontline health workers who triage and examine patients are in close proximity to the survivors. As much as we need to carry out our duties, we also need to ensure our workers are adequately protected,” DaSilva-Ibru told CNN.

The challenges Ibru faces to keep the center open, doesn’t compare to what sexual violence victims have experienced as a result of this pandemic, she said.

DaSilva-Ibru recalls a woman who told staff at the center that her male friend had raped her in her home during the lockdown.

“The first day we re-opened, we attended to women who had walked many miles in spite of the mandatory lockdown to get to the center. These are women who had been terrorized in their homes,” she added.

“She (a survivor) had repeatedly been calling (the center) to find out how she could get help. She feared she might have contracted HIV and wanted to be tested,” Ibru said.

Speaking to CNN, the woman, who didn’t want to use her name to protect her identity, said a co-worker raped her after he came to her apartment unannounced in April.

The young banker said she had previously rebuffed his attempts to visit, but on that Sunday afternoon in April, he showed up at her doorstep.

“He’s a friend, not a stranger, so I opened the door for him. I was still asking him what was so urgent that made him leave his home. He said he wanted to check up on me and I told him he could have done that over the phone,” she told CNN.

But a few minutes into his visit, the conversation became uncomfortable between them.

“He kept coming towards me, and when I told him to stop, he put his hand over my mouth and pinned me on the floor,” she said.

She says he apologized after raping her and hurriedly left her house.

The survivor told CNN she did not make a police complaint because she was worried about the stigma and strain that the rape might have on her parents.

A friend she confided in told her to reach out to the Lagos Domestic and Sexual Violence Response Team who put survivors in touch with treatment centers for help.

After several calls to the centers on their website, she was referred to WARIF.

When she went to the clinic, she says staff ran some tests and placed her on Post Exposure Prophylaxis, a HIV prevention treatment for possible exposure.

“Sometimes I get really angry, and sometimes I feel numb,” she said, reflecting on the assault.

She says she was sick every night for 28 days because of the drugs.

“…even though the doctor prepared me for the side effect, it has not been easy,” she told CNN.

Gender-based violence is a problem in many countries, but the coronavirus pandemic has worsened the situation.

The UN says the raft of measures deployed by governments to fight the pandemic have led to economic hardship, stress, and fear — conditions that lead to violence against women and girls.

Equality Now Regional Coordinator in Africa Judy Gitau told CNN that the wave of unemployment and school closures has put victims in a precarious situation.

She recalls a similar situation in Sierra Leone during the 2014 Ebola outbreak when teenage pregnancies spiked in the country

The government enforced strict stay-at-home orders that closed businesses and schools across the West African nation to curb the spread of the virus, she said.

The restrictions made schoolgirls vulnerable to abuse as some were assaulted in their homes by relatives, and at the same time, a majority of girls from low-income families were coerced to exchange sex for money for food, Gitau said.

“Many of them wound up pregnant but the evidence became available when people were plugging back to life as they knew it as a normal society,” she said.

Gitau says authorities must know that perpetrators often take advantage of the strict measures to abuse victims without arousing much suspicion.

As state resources are being re-focused to tackle the spread of coronavirus, law enforcement agencies should also respond quickly to reports of abuse and create shelters for victims in need of immediate rescue, she said.

But placing women in shelters, especially in countries battling an outbreak, comes with the additional burden of proof, according to DaSilva-Ibru who said shelters in Lagos city are asking survivors to take coronavirus tests before they can be admitted to prevent infection in their facilities.

“Violence against women and girls is one of the most pervasive forms of a human rights violation and should be recognized by all countries.”

Dr. Anita Kemi DaSilva-Ibru, Women at Risk International Foundation

Authorities in Lagos designated gender-based violence services essential in May as it eased lockdown into curfews to allow service providers to get to work more smoothly, DaSilva-Ibru said.

The police force says it has now deployed more officers to its stations across the country to respond to the “increasing challenges of sexual assaults and domestic/gender-based violence linked with the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.” And last week, governors across the country resolved to declare a state of emergency on rape, according to the Nigerian Governor’s Forum (NGF).

Related: Nigerian women are taking to the streets in protests against rape and sexual violence

It’s the first time federal and state authorities are coming out with a united voice to condemn gender violence, DaSilva-Ibru said and it validates the outcry of women in the country and the scale of the problem in Nigeria, she added.

“Violence against women and girls is one of the most pervasive forms of a human rights violation and should be recognized by all countries,” DaSilva-Ibru said.

“In Nigeria, it has become a national crisis that needs urgent attention. I am pleased that this has been recognized.”

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progressiveparty · 5 years ago

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Doctor writes how FBI and DHS almost grabbed the medical masks his hospital was buying

The New England Journal of Medicine has begun a new series called “Covid-19 Notes,” which is focusing on the innovative responses to the dealing with the coronavirus. On Friday, the journal published a letter about acquiring N95 masks written by Dr. Andrew W. Artenstein, M.D., of the Baystate Health in Springfield, Massachusetts. Here’s an excerpt from the letter: As a chief physician executive, I rarely get involved in my health system’s supply-chain activities. The Covid-19 pandemic has changed that. Protecting our caregivers is essential so that these talented professionals can safely provide compassionate care to our patients. Yet we continue to be stymied by a lack of personal protective equipment (PPE), and the cavalry does not appear to be coming. Our supply-chain group has worked around the clock to secure gowns, gloves, face masks, goggles, face shields, and N95 respirators. These employees have adapted to a new normal, exploring every lead, no matter how unusual. Deals, some bizarre and convoluted, and many involving large sums of money, have dissolved at the last minute when we were outbid or outmuscled, sometimes by the federal government. Then we got lucky, but getting the supplies was not easy. Hours before our planned departure, we were told to expect only a quarter of our original order. We went anyway, since we desperately needed any supplies we could get. Upon arrival, we were jubilant to see pallets of KN95 respirators and face masks being unloaded. We opened several boxes, examined their contents, and hoped that this random sample would be representative of the entire shipment. Before we could send the funds by wire transfer, two Federal Bureau of Investigation agents arrived, showed their badges, and started questioning me. No, this shipment was not headed for resale or the black market. The agents checked my credentials, and I tried to convince them that the shipment of PPE was bound for hospitals. After receiving my assurances and hearing about our health system’s urgent needs, the agents let the boxes of equipment be released and loaded into the trucks. But I was soon shocked to learn that the Department of Homeland Security was still considering redirecting our PPE. Only some quick calls leading to intervention by our congressional representative prevented its seizure. I remained nervous and worried on the long drive back, feelings that did not abate until midnight, when I received the call that the PPE shipment was secured at our warehouse. It would be nice to have federal leadership that doesn’t make acquiring essential medical equipment seem more like buying a heroin shipment. This Piece Originally Appeared in www.dailykos.com Read the full article

#black #congress #coronavirus #pandemic

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