Tuesday, May 19, 2020

COVID-19 data sharing with law enforcement sparks concern


 In this April 1, 2020, file photo, a Camden County police officer wears a protective mask as she waits to direct people to a COVID-19 testing facility in view of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge in Camden, N.J. Public health officials in at least two-thirds of U.S. states are sharing the addresses of people who have the coronavirus with first responders. Supporters say the measure is designed to protect those on the front line, but it's sparked concerns of profiling in minority communities already mistrustful of law enforcement. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — More than 11 million people have been tested in the U.S. for COVID-19, all with the assurance that their private medical information would remain protected and undisclosed.

Yet, public officials in at least two-thirds of states are sharing the addresses of people who tested positive with first responders — from police officers to firefighters to EMTs. An Associated Press review found that at least 10 of those states also share the patients’ names.

First responders argue the information is vital to helping them take extra precautions to avoid contracting and spreading the coronavirus.


But civil liberty and community activists have expressed concerns of potential profiling in African-American and Hispanic communities that already have an uneasy relationship with law enforcement. Some envision the data being forwarded to immigration officials.

“The information could actually have a chilling effect that keeps those already distrustful of the government from taking the COVID-19 test and possibly accelerate the spread of the disease,” the Tennessee Black Caucus said in a statement.

Sharing the information does not violate medical privacy laws, according to guidance issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. But many members of minority communities are employed in industries that require them to show up to work every day, making them more susceptible to the virus — and most in need of the test.

In Tennessee, the issue has sparked criticism from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers, who only became aware of the data sharing earlier this month.

The process is simple: State and local health departments keep track of who has received a test in their region and then provide the information to dispatch centers. The AP review shows that happens in at least 35 states that share the addresses of those who tested positive.

At least 10 states go further and also share the names: Colorado, Iowa, Louisiana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota and Tennessee. Wisconsin did so briefly but stopped earlier this month. There have been 287,481 positive cases in those states, mostly in New Jersey.

“We should question why the information needs to be provided to law enforcement, whether there is that danger of misuse,” said Thomas Saenz, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
He said law enforcement agencies should provide assurances that the information won’t be turned over to the federal government, noting the Trump administration’s demands that local governments cooperate with immigration authorities.

Law enforcement officials say they have long been entrusted with confidential information — such as social security numbers and criminal history. The COVID-19 information is just a continuation of that trend.

According to the national Fraternal Order of Police, more than 100 police officers in the United States have died from the coronavirus. Hundreds more have tested positive, resulting in staffing crunches.

“Many agencies before having this information had officers down, and now they’ve been able to keep that to a minimum,” said Maggi Duncan, executive director of the Tennessee Association of Chiefs of Police.

Critics wonder why first responders don’t just take precautions with everyone, given that so many people with the virus are asymptomatic or present mild symptoms. Wearing protective equipment only in those cases of confirmed illness is unlikely to guarantee their protection, they argue.
In this March 19, 2020 file photo State Rep. G.A. Hardaway, D-Memphis, wears a mask during House floor proceedings in Nashville, Tenn., amid the coronavirus pandemic. Sharing information about people who have tested positive or been exposed to COVID-19 with first responders does not violate medical privacy laws, under guidance issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. That has not quelled skepticism about how the data is used. “Tell us how it’s working for you, then tell us how well it’s been working; don’t just tell us you need it for your job,” said Hardway, a Memphis Democrat who chairs the Tennessee Black Caucus. (AP Photo/Jonathan Mattise, file

In Ohio, Health Director Dr. Amy Acton issued an April 24 order requiring local health departments to provide emergency dispatchers with names and addresses of people who tested positive for the coronavirus. Yet the order also stated that first responders should assume anyone they come into contact with may have COVID-19.

That portion of the order puzzles the American Civil Liberties Union. “If that is a best or recommended practice, then why the need or desire to share this specific information with first responders?” said Gary Daniels, chief lobbyist for the ACLU’s Ohio chapter.

Duncan said having the information beforehand is valuable because it allows officers “to do their jobs better and safer.”

To use the data, officers aren’t handed a physical list of COVID-19 patients. Instead, addresses and names are flagged in computer systems so that dispatchers can relay to officers responding to a call. In most states using the information, first responders also must agree they won’t use the data to refuse a call.

In some states, the information is erased after a certain period of time.

In Tennessee, the data is purged within a month, or when the patient is no longer being monitored by the health department, according to health officials and agreements the AP reviewed. In Ohio’s Franklin County, which includes the state capital, health officials reported 914 confirmed and probable cases to dispatch agencies in May and April, but removed those names after patients spent 14 days in isolation, said spokeswoman Mitzi Kline.

In this Feb. 27, 2020 file photo Ohio Department of Health Director Amy Acton speaks during a news conference at the MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, left, watches. Under pressure from law enforcement, Tennessee's top health officials quietly agreed in April to release the names and addresses of those who had been treated or exposed to COVID-19 to police departments and sheriff's offices. Acton issued an order April 24 requiring local health departments to provide emergency dispatchers the names and addresses of people within their jurisdictions who tested positive. The order required dispatchers to treat the data as “protected health information” and to remove it from the system once a person has recovered from the illness, although the order is unclear on how dispatching agencies would learn of this follow-up information. (AP Photo/Tony Dejak, file)


Some are not convinced. The Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition called sharing the medical information “deeply concerning,” warning that doing so may undermine the trust governments have been trying to build with immigrants and communities of color.

“Tell us how it’s working for you, then tell us how well it’s been working. Don’t just tell us you need it for your job,” said state Rep. G.A. Hardway, a Memphis Democrat who chairs the legislative black caucus.

The data remains highly sought after by law enforcement. In Pennsylvania, two police unions sued to force local health officials to disclose both patient names and addresses. The lawsuit is still pending.

Still, there have been cases of misuse.

New Hampshire health officials agreed to start sharing names and addresses in mid-March, but some first responders also informed local leaders of positive cases. State health department spokesman Jake Leon said that was a misunderstanding and has been stopped.

“We have not experienced additional issues,” Leon said.

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Associated Press writers Andrew Welsh-Huggins in Columbus, Ohio; Nomaan Merchant in Houston; Holly Ramer in Concord, New Hampshire; Mark Scolforo in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Todd Richmond in Madison, Wisconsin; and Lindsay Whitehurst in Salt Lake City contributed to this report.

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‘This is war’: Virus charges beyond Latin American hot spots

People infected with COVID-19 disease wait for an available bed, outside a public hospital in Lima, Peru, Thursday, April 30, 2020. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

QUITO, Ecuador (AP) — Beyond the hot spots of Brazil and Mexico, the coronavirus is threatening to overwhelm Latin American cities large and small in an alarming sign that the pandemic may be only at the start of its destructive march through the region.

More than 90% of intensive care beds were full last week in Chile’s capital, Santiago, whose main cemetery dug 1,000 emergency graves to prepare for a wave of deaths.

In Lima, Peru, patients took up 80% of intensive care beds as of Friday. Peru has the world’s 12th-highest number of confirmed cases, with more than 90,000.

“We’re in bad shape,” said Pilar Mazzetti, head of the Peruvian government’s COVID-19 task force. “This is war.”

In some cities, doctors say patients are dying because of a lack of ventilators or because they couldn’t get to a hospital fast enough. With intensive care units swamped, officials plan to move patients from capitals like Lima and Santiago to hospitals in smaller cities that aren’t as busy — running the risk of spreading the disease further.

Latin American countries halted international flights and rolled out social distancing guidelines around the same time as the U.S. and Europe, delaying the arrival of large-scale infection, said Dr. Marcos Espinal, director of communicable diseases at the Pan American Health Organization.

“Latin America was the last wave,” said Espinal, who previously worked at the World Health Organization.

He warned that authorities need to maintain anti-virus restrictions even as the U.S. and Europe reopen. Some of the hardest-hit cities, like Lima and Santiago, imposed strict, early lockdowns. But officials have struggled to enforce them, whether among the wealthy who are used to flouting regulations or lower-income people who depend on day labor or selling things on the street to feed their families.

Latin America is the world’s most unequal region, a reality that Espinal said made it difficult to balance health and economic growth, with millions facing increased poverty during quarantines, curfews and shutdowns.

A month after swamping the Ecuadorian coastal city of Guayaquil in one of the first serious blows to Latin America, COVID-19 is sickening thousands in the capital of Quito, where 80% of intensive care beds were occupied as of Friday.

“In terms of intensive care, we’re stripped bare,” city health secretary Lenín Mantilla said.

Quito has more than 2,400 confirmed infections, and Health Minister Juan Carlos Zevallos said he expected the peak to come toward the end of June. He assured citizens that the city was prepared and would avoid the fate of Guayaquil, where hundreds died at home, left in living rooms for days before overworked coroners could retrieve the bodies. Those who perished in hospitals in coastal cities were put in chilled shipping containers that served as makeshift morgues.

The number of deaths in Quito jumped alarmingly over the weekend, from 114 to 209, and doctors said they dreaded the coming days.

“I have a 26-year-old woman next to me who walked in. Three hours later, she’s suffocating because we don’t have a respirator available,″ said an intensive care doctor, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to speak to the media. “I think we’re getting to the point that you saw in Europe, where people died for lack of respirators.”

Ecuador has banned most private car trips and imposed a 2 p.m. to 5 a.m. daily quarantine, but thousands of people can be seen buying from street vendors across the capital.

The worst-hit country in Latin America remains Brazil, which is third in the world for reported infections — at more than 250,000 — even with limited testing. More than 85 percent of intensive care beds are full in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo.

Now, other countries are surging. Chile has imposed new restrictions in Santiago after cases doubled over the past week, to more than 34,000 in the country of 18 million people.

Under the new restrictions, people will have to receive a police permit to leave home, with violators fined the equivalent of thousands of dollars. Essential workers are exempted.

“We’re on very, very thin ice,” said Claudio Castillo, a professor of public policy and health at the University of Santiago.

In Colombia’s Amazon region, cases have shot up in recent weeks, from 105 at the start of the month to 1,006 on Monday. The infections are concentrated in Leticia, a city on the Amazon river that borders both Brazil and Peru.

Locals believe it’s related to the increase in cases in Brazil’s Amazon. Even though Colombia’s president has militarized the border, many still cross. Residents often work in one country and live in the other.

Leticia relies on two poorly equipped hospitals, which have about a half-dozen respirators between them. Authorities recently began transporting seriously ill patients to Bogota after a failure at a hospital oxygen plant. Officials said Monday that they will open hotels in Leticia to take in people with less severe coronavirus cases.

Health workers also complain of limited access to testing and say they are overworked to the point of collapse.

In Mexico, intensive care occupancy is below 50 percent in most cities, although deaths have begun to overwhelm funeral homes and crematoriums in the Mexico City borough of Iztapalapa.

Meanwhile, in Quito, a growing number of people say they know someone who died of what was likely COVID-19, although many are not tested.

Marcelo López, who delivers food, said his 35-year-old cousin gargled with honey and ginger because he believed it would protect him from the virus. Unemployed, his cousin delayed going to a hospital this month even after feeling sick.

“When he finally acted, it was too late — he was seriously ill,” López said. “There were no ventilators in the hospital, and he died.”

___

Weissenstein reported from Havana. Contributing to this report were María Verza and Carlos Rodríguez in Mexico City; Christine Armario in Bogota, Colombia; Joshua Goodman in Miami; Franklin Briceño in Lima, Peru; Eva Vergara in Santiago, Chile; and David Biller in Rio de Janeiro.
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Indigenous infections grew amid slow Brazil agency response
AP NEWS

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Locals walk after the funeral of Chief Messias Martins Moreira, 53, of the Kokama ethnic group, who died of Covid-19, at Parque das Tribos in Manaus, Amazonas state, Brazil, Thursday, May 14, 2020. (AP Photo/Edmar Barros)
SAO PAULO (AP) — As COVID-19 reached remote indigenous lands in Brazil’s Amazon, the government agency responsible for protecting native people brushed off calls for action, focusing instead on waging ideological battles, according to agents from the institution itself and others.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s repeated promotion of developing the vast Amazon has for months prompted indigenous activists, celebrities and agents on the ground to sound the alarm. In the face of a spreading pandemic, they warn inaction is enough to wipe out many indigenous people.

The Associated Press spoke to four agents who work with indigenous peoples in the farthest reaches of Brazil’s Amazon, and they were unanimous in their conclusion: The national Indian foundation, known as FUNAI, is hardly doing anything to coordinate a response to a crisis that could decimate ethnic groups.


There’s not enough protective equipment for agents who enter indigenous territories or meet with native people in cities. Necessities like kerosene and gasoline are in short supply. Food deliveries only began last week — a month after indigenous people were instructed to remain in their villages — and remain vastly insufficient.

Since the pandemic’s onset, there has been fear about the vulnerability of native people who live far from urban health facilities and whose communal lifestyles render them susceptible to swift transmission.
A girl wearing a mask walks holding hands with an adult after the funeral of Chief Messias Martins Moreira, 53, of the Kokama ethnic group, who died of Covid-19, at Parque das Tribos in Manaus, Amazonas state, Brazil, Thursday, May 14, 2020. (AP Photo/Edmar Barros)
At least 88 indigenous people have already died of COVID-19 in the Amazon, according to a tally by the Brazilian indigenous organization APIB that includes health ministry figures and information from local leaders. The count is likely higher, because hospitals often don’t use patients’ indigenous names when admitting them.

As native people started succumbing to the coronavirus, FUNAI’s focus was elsewhere, according to Antônio Carlos Bigonha, who heads the public prosecution office responsible for indigenous affairs. He said the Indian agency’s response has been “delinquent, lax, insufficient,” reflective of Bolsonaro’s open support of assimilation.

“The environment of COVID-19 is so grave, because integration alone is bad, but in the context of a pandemic is genocide,” Bigonha said in a telephone interview.

CIMI, a Catholic group that defends indigenous rights, condemned FUNAI’s policies for failing to safeguard native peoples. FUNAI fired back, attacking what it called “socialist public policies” implemented since 2003 by the leftist Workers’ Party that it maintained made indigenous people dependent on welfare.
Mourners embrace during the funeral of Chief Messias Martins Moreira, 53, of the Kokama ethnic group, who died of Covid-19, at Parque das Tribos settlement in Manaus, Amazonas state, Brazil, Thursday, May 14, 2020. (AP Photo/Edmar Barros)

“This isn’t ... a socialist plot,” said Bigonha. “It’s just an interpretation of historical facts: We adopted integrationist policy at the start of the 20th century and it almost did away with the indigenous people.”

Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado, famous for his work with indigenous tribes, drafted a manifesto warning of imminent threat to native peoples and calling on Brazil’s government to take action to protect them. It drew 245,000 signatories, including Paul McCartney, Meryl Streep, film director Pedro Almodóvar and model Gisele Bündchen.

FUNAI’s response was swift: It returned photographs Salgado had taken of the Korubo people in the isolated Javari Valley, near the Peruvian border, along with a statement recommending Salgado auction them to buy food, personal hygiene products and cleaning goods for indigenous people.

FUNAI told the AP in an e-mailed response that it adopted “all the measures within its reach” in the fight against the pandemic. It said it has distributed 45,000 food kits and more than 200,000 personal protection items nationwide, without breaking it down by region, and that another 40,000 food kits were coming soon.

Agents on the ground, including three employed by FUNAI, told a different story. They spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity for fears of retribution after several officials in the Bolsonaro administration were fired or reassigned after talking to reporters.

There’s no leadership from above and requests sent to FUNAI headquarters in Brasilia go unanswered for weeks, they said.
Graves of people who died in the past 30 days fill a new section of the Nossa Senhora Aparecida cemetery, amid the new coronavirus pandemic in Manaus, Brazil, Monday, May 11, 2020. The new section was opened last month to cope with a sudden surge in deaths. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)


Cemetery workers place coffins in a common grave during a funeral at the Nossa Senhora Aparecida cemetery, amid the new coronavirus pandemic in Manaus, Brazil, Wednesday, May 13, 2020. The new section of the cemetery was opened last month to cope with a surge in deaths. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)


Cemetery workers place crosses over a common grave after burying five people at the Nossa Senhora Aparecida cemetery amid the new coronavirus pandemic in Manaus, Brazil, Wednesday, May 13, 2020. The new section of the cemetery was opened last month to cope with a surge in deaths. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

 The Upper Solimoes region near Brazil’s border with Colombia has one of Brazil’s highest COVID-19 mortality rates. The only hospital with ventilators, a military facility in Tabatinga, on the border, has only 13 of the lung machines, the health ministry said.

To contain the virus, since mid-March FUNAI agents have told indigenous groups they should prevent anyone from entering their territories and block roads and rivers near their communities.

But as long as there aren’t enough food kits delivered, the tribes won’t stay on their lands, the agents said. Little agriculture is possible when rivers flood the Upper Solimoes and Upper Negro regions, and the vast majority sell or trade what they fish and hunt.


Health workers prepare to move 89-year-old COVID-19 patient Sildomar Castelo Branco into an aircraft as he is transferred from Santo Antonio do Içá to a hospital in Manaus, Brazil, Tuesday, May 19, 2020. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)


Nurse Janete Vieira puts on her protective equipment as she prepares to airlift COVID-19 patients from Santo Antonio do Içá to a hospital in Manaus, Brazil, Tuesday, May 19, 2020. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)


In the Upper Solimoes, home to some 76,000 indigenous people, only six of the 350 ethnic groups received 1,300 food kits through last week, according to an agent involved in the operation. That has further damaged FUNAI’s credibility, the agent said.

FUNAI’s Rio Negro regional coordinator, Auri de Oliveira, said the chief problem wasn’t shortage of food, but indigenous people traveling to nearby cities to receive emergency coronavirus cash aid from the government. He said the food kit delays were due to “normal bureaucracy” and they have started arriving.

“The food kits will help maintain indigenous people in the villages,” he wrote in a text message. “We will see if they come to town again, because there will be a new cycle of welfare payments.”

While some food aid is arriving it’s not enough: One tribal leader in the Upper Solimoes region said by phone Friday his village received food kits for only 90 of its more than 700 families.

Brazil’s health ministry said in a statement that the hard-hit cities of Tabatinga and São Gabriel da Cachoeira received some help on Monday. A hospital in Tabatinga got another 10 ventilators and 15,000 masks, among other items. Another unit in Sao Gabriel da Cachoeira received eight ventilators and 11 health-care professionals are coming from Brasilia.

Brazil’s shortcomings in fighting the pandemic in the Amazon are worrying its neighbors. Colombian President Ivan Duque deployed the military to its border with Brazil after a surge of COVID-19 cases. About 8,000 indigenous people live near the Colombian border town of Leticia, where cases have shot up in recent weeks.

Peru sealed its border with Brazil in March. On the Brazilian side, one agent reported the coronavirus has reached the Javari Valley, the remote region featured in the photographs FUNAI returned to Salgado, showing the Korubo people posing with spears, canoeing on a river and carrying a slain tapir through the jungle.

The Javari Valley is home to the biggest concentration of isolated indigenous peoples in the world, including 10 groups, according to FUNAI. Hospitals near Javari’s isolated tribes are overcrowded, said one FUNAI agent, who offered a stark warning: If the virus hits harder, collapse will be quick.

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Biller reported from Rio de Janeiro.
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Outbreak on edge of Navajo Nation overwhelms rural hospital


1 of 9In this photo taken May 8, 2020, medical staff from Rehoboth McKinley Christian Hospital including Chief Medical Officer Val Wangler, center, hold a protest over working conditions and depleted staff in Gallup, N.M. Many nurses and doctors say staffing at the hospital was inadequate because of hospital CEO David Conejo's move to cut back on nurses in the first week of March to offset declining hospital revenues after elective surgeries were suspended. They voiced their discontent at the recent protest calling for his resignation. (AP Photo/Morgan Lee)

GALLUP, N.M. (AP) — On the eve of New Mexico’s shutdown of bars and restaurants to stem the spread of the coronavirus, the city of Gallup came alive for one last night of revelry.

Before the night was out in the desert oasis on the fringes of the Navajo Nation, 98 people were detained for public intoxication and sent to sober up at a detox center. Several homeless people also sought refuge in the same cinder block building, which doubles as a shelter. Somewhere in the mix, lurked the virus.

The outbreak seeded at the Na’Nizhoozhi Center would combine with the small, local hospital’s ill-fated staffing decisions and its well-intentioned but potentially overambitious treatment plans to create a perfect storm that has overwhelmed doctors and nurses and paralyzed this community in the state’s hard-hit northwest.

In all, 22 people infected with the coronavirus were transferred from the detox center to Rehoboth McKinley Christian Hospital, the only acute care medical center for the general public within 110 miles (180 kilometers) of Gallup.

“They were putting multiple cots in one room to accommodate them,” said pulmonologist Rajiv Patel, who helped lead the hospital’s initial response.

To care for that influx, any available doctor was pressed into service, including those who normally don’t handle critically ill patients, Patel said.

“That’s right when we overloaded,” said hospital CEO David Conejo. “Now we’ve got too many patients, and too few (staff) to help.”

In this May 7, 2020, photo signs hang on doors at the Na'Nizhoozhi Center detox facility in Gallup, N.M. A night of revelry before bars and restaurants shut in New Mexico appears to have led to an outbreak in the detox center and homeless shelter on the fringes of the Navajo Nation. (AP Photo/Morgan Lee)

Rehoboth’s eight intensive care beds are full, and now it has to transfer all coronavirus patients with severe breathing problems away from the facility and the adjacent Gallup Indian Medical Center, which attends exclusively to the Native American community.

Of about 500 medical and support staff, at least 32 hospital workers have become infected, and doctors and nurses say that they all live with the fear of spreading the virus to their colleagues and relatives.

Conejo blames Patel for the fact that the hospital became overwhelmed, saying the doctor took on more COVID-19 patients than the staff could handle because of his ambition but also good intentions.

But Patel — who arrived at Rehoboth in March from an Army reserve stint in Kuwait — said the hospital simply didn’t have enough staff with the experience to provide the right care and struggled to train more quickly. Patel has since left to work at Flagstaff Medical Center in Arizona.
In this photo taken May 8, 2020, medical staff from Rehoboth McKinley Christian Hospital hold a protest over working conditions and depleted staff in Gallup, N.M. Many nurses and doctors say staffing at the hospital was inadequate because of hospital CEO David Conejo's move to cut back on nurses in the first week of March to offset declining hospital revenues after elective surgeries were suspended. They voiced their discontent at the recent protest calling for his resignation. (AP Photo/Morgan Lee)
In this May 8, 2020, photo, medical staff from Rehoboth McKinley Christian Hospital including Caleb Lauber, center, hold a protest over working conditions and depleted staff in Gallup, N.M. Many nurses and doctors say staffing at the hospital was inadequate because of hospital CEO David Conejo's move to cut back on nurses in the first week of March to offset declining hospital revenues after elective surgeries were suspended. They voiced their discontent at the recent protest calling for his resignation. (AP Photo/Morgan Lee)
 May 8, 2020, photo, medical staff from Rehoboth McKinley Christian Hospital including physician Neil Jackson, right, hold a protest over working conditions and depleted staff in Gallup, N.M. Many nurses and doctors say staffing at the hospital was inadequate because of hospital CEO David Conejo's move to cut back on nurses in the first week of March to offset declining hospital revenues after elective surgeries were suspended. They voiced their discontent at the recent protest calling for his resignation. (AP Photo/Morgan Lee)
In this May 8, 2020, photo, New Mexico state Sen. George Munoz, D-Gallup, joins medical staff from Rehoboth McKinley Christian Hospital in a protest over working conditions and depleted staff in Gallup, N.M. (AP Photo/Morgan Lee)

Twice, the doctor said, alarms went off during the night on breathing machines — only to be misinterpreted by overnight staff. Within two days of those missteps, he and colleagues decided that severely ill coronavirus patients would have to go elsewhere — a heart-wrenching decision that meant sick people would be treated far from family and one that underscored the consequences of not having adequate care in the region.

“It was an easy decision because it was the right thing to do for patients,” said Patel, whose wife is Navajo. “It was very saddening for me personally because my heart and soul are completely invested in the health situation on the reservation.”

Many nurses and doctors, meanwhile, say staffing at the hospital was inadequate because of Conejo’s move to cut back on nurses in the first week of March to offset declining hospital revenues after elective surgeries were suspended. They voiced their discontent at a recent protest calling for his resignation.

“We knew it was coming to McKinley County, there wasn’t any ifs, ands or buts. I was directed that I had to let go of 17 agency nurses,” said Felicia Adams, chief nursing officer who has recovered from COVID-19. “We want to take care of our patients, we don’t want to have to send them away.”

Conejo defended his oversight, noting that he deferred to the hospital’s board of trustees and a team of nurses and physicians on final decisions. He also said the hospital couldn’t afford not to cut staff in March and that the facility wanted to reduce overall employment to qualify for small-business assistance. But Adams and others believe Conejo put profits ahead of care.

Physician Caleb Lauber said that, as experienced contract nurses were let go in March, unfamiliar responsibilities were thrust upon other nurses given only on-the-fly training.

New Mexico’s state auditor is seeking more information about the county-owned hospital’s finances from its private operators. State health officials and philanthropists, meanwhile, are recruiting more than a dozen volunteer medical professionals and have hired a new critical care physician for the hospital.

While much of New Mexico is showing signs of emerging from the initial wave of the pandemic, stubbornly high rates of infection and death persist in the state’s northwest corner — including in the Navajo Nation that extends into Arizona and Utah. More than half of New Mexico’s roughly 6,200 confirmed infections are in Native Americans.

For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness and lead to death.

As the Navajo have suffered in this pandemic, so, too has Gallup, whose fate has long been tied to the neighboring Navajo Nation. In normal times, the city’s population of 22,000 can quickly quadruple in size since it is a crucial source of supplies and water for faraway Navajo households, many of which lack full plumbing.

The city is also a destination for many of the most marginalized Navajo, those who have left home and ended up on Gallup’s streets, often as they grapple with alcohol addiction. Officials suspect that the coronavirus whipped through the homeless population, and some passed through the Na’Nizhoozhi Center, putting the liquor-tax funded shelter and detox center at the heart of the city’s outbreak.
In this May 7, 2020, photo, medical staff from Rehoboth McKinley Christian Hospital put on protective equipment as they work at a drive-thru coronavirus testing site outside the hospital in Gallup, N.M. Of about 500 medical and support staff, at least 32 hospital workers have become infected, and doctors and nurses say that they all live with the fear of spreading the virus to their colleagues and relatives. (AP Photo/Morgan Lee)
In this May 7, 2020, file photo, Certified Medical Assistant Shaniya Wood, left, and physician Caleb Lauber, right, test one of over 100 homeless patients who were being isolated in motels for the coronavirus in Gallup, N.M. Some 140 people are participating in the impromptu system, and officials hope it will interrupt a treadmill of infections among Gallup’s homeless population. (AP Photo/Morgan Lee, File)

The city and its rural outskirts account for about 32% of COVID-19 infections statewide, with 79 related deaths as of Tuesday.

To stem the spread, Gallup was subject to an extreme 10-day lockdown this month — cutting the city off from many of those who depend on it for supplies. Authorities have now set up free water stations and deliveries — to avoid the risk of transmission posed by coin-operated water stations, where hand after hand scooped out returned change.

Now, the Na’Nizhoozhi Center is also part of the response as it steers destitute people infected by the coronavirus toward isolation in rooms at four otherwise unoccupied motel buildings. Some 140 people are currently participating in the impromptu system, and officials hope it will interrupt a treadmill of infections among Gallup’s homeless population.

But the virus has also taken its toll on the center. In addition to the 22 residents who became infected, several staff have been sickened by the virus and some simply stopped showing up, said Kevin Foley, executive director of the center. Six jobs now are open at a rate of $10 and hour, with just one application, he said.

He yearns for a Hollywood ending.

“I wish that all those people would come over in those space suits and just clean the place for good,” he said, “but it’s not like that.”

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Associated Press writer Felicia Fonseca contributed to this report from Flagstaff, Arizona

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J&J to stop selling talc-based baby powder in US, Canada
AP NEWS

 In this April 15, 2011, file photo, a bottle of Johnson's baby powder is displayed. Johnson & Johnson is ending production of its iconic talc-based Johnson’s Baby Powder, which has been embroiled in thousands of lawsuits claiming it caused cancer. The world’s biggest maker of health care products said Tuesday, May 19, 2020 that the discontinuation only affects the U.S. and Canada, where demand has been declining. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)

FAIRLESS HILLS, Pa. (AP) — Johnson & Johnson is ending sales of its iconic talc-based Johnson’s Baby Powder in the U.S. and Canada, where demand has dwindled amid thousands of lawsuits claiming it has caused cancer.

The world’s biggest maker of health care products said Tuesday the talc-based powder will still be sold outside the U.S. and Canada.

“Demand for talc-based Johnson’s Baby Powder in North America has been declining due in large part to changes in consumer habits and fueled by misinformation around the safety of the product and a constant barrage of litigation advertising,” the company said.


J&J faces about 19,400 cases alleging its talcum powder caused users to develop ovarian cancer, through use for feminine hygiene, or mesothelioma, a cancer that strikes the lungs and other organs.

Of the cases that have been tried, J&J has had 12 wins, 15 losses and seven mistrials. All of the losses have either been overturned on appeal or are still being appealed.

The company insists, and the overwhelming majority of medical research on talc indicates, that the talc baby powder is safe and doesn’t cause cancer.

“Whether or not the powder actually causes cancer, people became hesitant to use the product,” Erik Gordon, a professor at University of Michigan’s business school, said in an email.

J&J spokeswoman Kimberly Montagnino said the company doesn’t plan to settle any of the lawsuits and “will continue to vigorously defend” the product.

The New Brunswick, New Jersey, company said the baby powder decision came as it moves to discontinue about 100 consumer health products. It said its aim is to prioritize products in high demand during the coronavirus outbreak and allow for social distancing in its manufacturing and distribution facilities.

J&J will still sell its less-popular cornstarch-based baby powder in North America.
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Me and we: Individual rights, common good and coronavirus
By TED ANTHONY May 18, 2020

In this May 15, 2020, file photo, a couple salute the United States Air Force Thunderbirds who fly over downtown Los Angeles to honor frontline COVID-19 responders at Griffith Park in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, File)

We, the people. But individual rights. The common good. But don’t tread on me. Form a more perfect union and promote the general welfare. But secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.

From the moment the American republic was born right up until today, this has been its hallmark: Me and we — different flavors of freedom that compete but overlap — living together, but often at odds.

The history of the United States and the colonies that formed it has been a 413-year balancing act across an assortment of topics, priorities, passions and ambitions. Now, in the coronavirus era, that tug of war — is it about individuals, or the communities to which they belong? — is showing itself in fresh, high-stakes ways.

On Friday, protesters massed at the foot of the Pennsylvania Capitol steps — most of them maskless — for the second time in a month to decry Gov. Tom Wolf and demand he “reopen” the state faster. It is one of many states where a vocal minority has criticized virus-related shutdowns for trampling individual rights.

“He who is brave is free,” read a sign carried by one Pennsylvania protester. “Selfish and proud,” said another, referring to the governor’s statement that politicians advocating immediate reopening were “selfish.” “My body my choice,” said a sign at a rally in Texas, coopting an abortion-rights slogan to oppose mandatory mask rules.

“The pandemic is presenting this classic individual liberty-common good equation. And the ethos of different parts of the country about this is very, very different. And it’s pulling the country in all these different directions,” says Colin Woodard, author of “American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good.”

Though polls show a majority of Americans still support some level of shutdown, the cries to reopen have grown in the past few weeks as job losses continue to mount. In Pennsylvania and across the country, the demonstrators’ chorus has generally been: Don’t tell me how to live my life when I need to get out of my house and preserve my livelihood.

“They’re being told to stay home, wait it out. And that’s a really weird democratic message to get. And the only way to do it is to say, ‘I trust the government,’” says Elspeth Wilson, an assistant professor of government at Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania.

While the catalyst is an unprecedented pandemic, the collision of individual rights and the common good is as old as the republic itself: Where does one American’s right to move around in public without a mask end, and another American’s right to not be infected with a potentially fatal virus begin?

In this May 4, 2020, file photo, a man wears a mask as he waits in line outside the Warrensburg License Office in Warrensburg, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File)

“This is economic paralysis by analysis for some people. And they’re afraid,” says Steven Benko, an ethicist at Meredith College in North Carolina. “They feel devalued.”

Americans have long romanticized those who reject the system and take matters into their own hands — the outlaw, the cowboy, the rebel. Many American leaders have wrestled to reconcile that with “common good” principles that are generally needed to govern.

“Reagan did that better than anyone. He was the cowboy selling the shared American vision. That’s quite a contradiction,” Benko says.

Ronald Reagan’s crowning metaphor — the United States as the “city upon a hill” — was borrowed from the Puritans, whose traditions shaped the American ethos, including the compact that created the New World’s first English government. But Puritanism also asserted that hard work, a form of moral righteousness, heralded success and salvation.

Over time, and with other ingredients added as more groups came to American shores, a vague sense of shame became attached to the inability to be an individualist: If you couldn’t get along on your own, in the eyes of some, you were less of an American.

But is that kind of “rugged individualism,” as it came to be known, applicable in a 21st-century virus scenario where everything from food shopping to health care to package delivery requires a web of intricate, precise networks that form a common good?

Overlaid on this debate, too, is what some call an ignored truth: Individualism tends to favor groups that are in power, economically or socially. In short, doing what one wants is a lot easier when you have the means (health care, money, privilege) to deal with the impact it causes.
In this May 16, 2020, file photo, protesters holds a sign during a rally calling for the state to reopen the economy outside the Thompson Center in downtown Chicago. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File)


That’s particularly relevant when the direct impact of one’s individualism — in the form of virus-laden droplets — can ripple out to others.

“We fail to recognize how interdependent we really are,” says Lenette Azzi-Lessing, a clinical professor of social work at Boston University who studies economic disparity.

“The pandemic and dealing with it successfully does require cooperation. It also requires shared sacrifice. And that’s a very bitter pill for many Americans to swallow,” she says. “The pandemic is revealing that our fates are intertwined, that the person in front of us in line on the grocery store, if he or she doesn’t have access to good health care, that that’s going to have an effect on our health.”


In this May 14, 2020, file photo, a protester carries a sign during a rally against Michigan's coronavirus stay-at-home order at the State Capitol in Lansing, Mich. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File)
U.S. history has sometimes revealed that in times of upheaval — the Great Depression, World War II, even the founding of the nation itself — common good becomes a dominant American gene for a time. Will that happen here? Or is the fragmentation of politics and economics and social media too powerful to allow that?

“The status quo is individualism. And then when we get to these crisis periods, it changes,” says Anthony DiMaggio, a political scientist at Lehigh University who is researching groups that advocate reopening. ”All these rules go out the window and people are willing to jettison all these ways of looking at the world.”

So is it, as Ayn Rand once told an interviewer, that “each man must live as an end in himself, and follow his own rational self-interest?” Or is it more like Woody Guthrie, paraphrasing Tom Joad in “The Grapes of Wrath”: “Everybody might be just one big soul — well, it looks that way to me.”

More likely, in a nation stitched together by a high-wire act of political compromise, it’s somewhere in between — a new path that Americans must chart so they can continue their four-century experiment through unprecedented times. Yet again.



IN UNION WE TRUST
 In this May 12, 2020, file photo, members of the Culinary union prepare before a car caravan rally in Las Vegas. The union is asking for casino companies to make their full safety guidelines and reopening plans public. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)
Ted Anthony, director of digital innovation for The Associated Press, has been writing about American culture since 1990. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/anthonyted.





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Bram Stoker’s "Dracula." A Study on the Human Mind and Paranoid Behaviour


Andres Romero-Jodar
17 Pages
https://tinyurl.com/yd452nf2









The Victorian fin-de-siècle experienced the growth of scientific naturalism, and witnessed the birth and development of sciences such as modern psychology, supported by the scientific efforts to unravel the processes of the human mind. Nevertheless, the 1890s were also notable for the participation of educated people in Spiritualism and other occult activities, their interest in folklore of all sorts and the writing of a great corpus of fantasy literature. The aim of this essay is to offer a reading of Bram Stoker’s "Dracula" as an example of the dialogue established between science, literature and the study of the supernatural in Victorian England. The novel, as part of the fin-de-siècle scientific period, can be interpreted as a conscious inquiry into the functioning of the mind and, most especially, into the aetiology of paranoid behaviour. Thus, Stoker’s text becomes a testimony of a mental disorder known as folie à deux, or shared madness

A ‘Crisis of Victorianism’: Sexuality and Discourses of Degeneration in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Parasite.

Rhys T Briggs
 https://tinyurl.com/ycbql58d
17 Pages












Discourses of degeneration were ubiquitous during the latter half of the nineteenth-century, thus approaching Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) and Conan Doyle’s The Parasite (1894) as an historical text is not to read them in isolation as a neutral report of the sociological climate of late Victorian Britain, but as part of a dialogue. Spencer (1992) notes, ‘Dracula is not an isolated phenomenon, but is part of a literary/cultural discourse’ (p.198). As part of this discourse Stoker’s Dracula can bring to light elements of the dialectic between the bulwarks of Victorian society and the attack of the New at the fin de siècle. Luckhurst in his introduction to Dracula (2011) states, ‘historical distance reveals the book to be an uncanny echo-box of its place and time’ (p.xix).Taking into less consideration Bram Stoker’s position as a representative of late-Victorian ‘Man’, and reading Dracula as a representative late-Victorian text presents, as such, a text that is particularly revealing in its focus on Victorian sexual dynamics

"The Victorian's Vampire: Stoker's Dracula as the Monstrous Embodiment of Deformity, Disease, and Crime"


Ashley Szanter
13 Pages


 https://tinyurl.com/y99wx3fs








"Vampire in Literature, Culture, and Film" Panel. Popular Culture/American Culture Association National Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana - April 2015. 


Wooden Stakes and Canine Teeth; The Battle of the Sexes in Bram Stoker’s Dracula



Kristin F Jørgensen
12 Pages
https://tinyurl.com/yaofyg5p











“‘Some Longing and at the Same Time Some Deadly Fear’: Victorian Masochism in Dracula.”


Gabriel Rieger

2006, Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 17(1): 49-59.
17 Pages
https://tiunyrl.com/y7gzqfa4



Consuming Appetites and the Modern Vampire

Suyin Olguin

Sally Brooke Cameron
Published 2015
23 Pages
https://www.academia.edu/33262042/Consuming_Appetites_and_the_Modern_Vampire










This article looks at food and the role of appetitive consumption in modern representations of the vampire. Most critics have read vampire as embodying Victorian fears surrounding fin-de-siècle desire and sexual decadence. We instead want to shift the discussion to food and eating rituals. Using Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula as a bridge text, ―Consuming Appetites and the Modern Vampire‖ compares the British tradition, which advocates disciplined appetites as defense against Dracula's demonic invasion, with modern American texts, which celebrate the vampire as a reflection of its own culture of excess consumption. The vampire is marked as Other precisely by his inability to control his appetite, and the disciplined appetite is essential insofar as it differentiates between the human and vampiric Other. It is this legacy of appetitive excess which continues to inform our modern interpretations of the vampire, whether this figure is a direct inheritor of Dracula or a more sympathetic, even domesticated, vampire.
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