It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Thursday, October 22, 2020
EPA union buys subscription after agency canceled contract with news outlet dedicated to covering it
The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) largest union is independently subscribing to one of the largest environmental publications, E&E News, after the agency abruptly canceled its subscription in July.
The announcement came from the American Federal of Government Employees Council, which said employees saw the cancelation “as anti-transparency, anti-science, and part of a years-long campaign by the Trump administration to discredit critical journalism as 'fake news' and stymie coverage of the union’s work to support employees following a bruising contract negotiation process.”
EPA had subscribed to E&E since 1998, offering all employees access to the news service which covers the agency and related government offices alongside a wide variety of environmental issues.
The deal will only provide E&E access to AFGE’s 7,500 members, about half of the agency’s workforce.
EPA did not respond to request for comment Thursday but had said in July it was canceling the subscription effective immediately due to the cost.
“Over the next two years, EPA would have spent $382,425 to receive" various E&E newsletters, Associate Deputy Administrator Doug Benevento wrote in an email at the time, which the agency adding that the money would be spent "in other higher priority areas."
THIRD WORLD USA
Eviction crisis sparked by pandemic disproportionately hits minorities
The eviction crisis exacerbated by the pandemic is hitting minorities much harder than other Americans, and experts are concerned the problem will only get worse in the coming months as the coronavirus recession drags on.
A review of more than 8,000 eviction cases by the Center for Public Integrity found that almost two-thirds of the tenants lived in areas with above average minority representation with a median household income below $42,000. The thousands of evictions filed spanned late March to early July, primarily in Florida and Georgia.
Residents on the brink include people like Bishop Donald Harper, who was making nearly $5,000 a month as a chef for Universal's Cabana Bay Beach Resort in Orlando, Fla., before the pandemic hit. Harper, 55, was soon furloughed.
Now, almost eight months into the pandemic, unemployment benefits from the state of Florida are his only source of income. But, at just $275 a week — the max amount offered by the Sunshine State — Harper doesn’t come close to what he was making pre-pandemic.
The extra $600 a week in unemployment benefits given to Americans through the CARES Act, signed in late March, was effective for a time, and it helped Harper, who is Cuban and Trinidadian, to pay rent on his apartment. But that program expired at the end of July, briefly supplemented now by a $300 a week benefit authorized by President Trump as Congress remains deeply divided over another coronavirus relief package.
In the meantime, for Harper and millions of other Americans who have lost their job because of the pandemic, rent is still due.
“What do you do with [$1,100] a month, when everything is due?” Harper, whose rent is $1,900 a month, said to The Hill.
The Princeton Eviction Lab, which tracks evictions across 17 cities in the country, has recorded more than 60,000 evictions during the pandemic, with more than 1,500 coming over the past week.
An August study by the Aspen Institute projected that anywhere from 30 million to 40 million Americans could be at risk of being evicted if nothing changes by Dec. 31, when the moratorium from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) expires.
At the end of September, the National Council of State Housing Agencies released a report that says the debt that renters nationwide will collectively owe by the end of the year could be as high as $34 billion.
During most of the pandemic, the federal government has had in place an eviction moratorium, first through the CARES Act and then through a policy implemented by the CDC. That policy is slated to expire at the end of the year, and experts say the jury is still out on how effective the moratorium between now and the end of year will be.
“[A moratorium’s] effectiveness really depends on how comprehensive it is,” said Alieza Durana, who works for the Princeton Eviction Lab. “Normally, a moratorium can affect three different stages of the eviction process. The first relates to the filing of an eviction. ... The second part of the process relates to the court process itself, and the third relates to the enforcement of the eviction process is usually local law enforcement, such as a sheriff that will go to do a lockout or to remove [a tenant’s] belongings.”
“The most effective way to prevent people from being forcibly removed,” Durana added, “is to either ban all three or to, at the very least, prevent filings, because even the threat of an eviction hanging over a family can negatively impact their physical and mental well-being.”
However, critics have called the CDC’s guidance vague, noting that it largely puts the onus on tenants in guarding against evictions. It also doesn’t provide any additional money for rent relief for tenants or landlords.
Complicating matters is the fact that states often have different tenant laws, meaning the order was interpreted in different ways in courts around the country until the CDC issued a clarifying document that effectively weakened the guidance’s power.
The moratorium is not “intended to prevent landlords from starting eviction proceedings, provided that the actual eviction of a covered person for non-payment of rent does NOT take place during the period of the Order,” the document reads.
The moratorium also doesn’t stop the landlords from charging interest or fees on the back rent.
“It's not a solution. It's not even a band-aid on the problem,” said Dianne Enriquez, co-director of community dignity campaigns at the Center for Popular Democracy. “It's just creating a myth that families are protected when they're really not.”
New research details effect of 'Black tax' on African American homeownership BY ARIS FOLLEY - 10/22/20
Black Americans are paying more than white Americans to own a home, making it harder for Black households to accumulate housing wealth at the same rate as their white counterparts, according to new research from MIT.
In a study published earlier this month, MIT researchers found that Black Americans pay $743 more annually than white Americans when it comes to mortgage interest payments, $550 more per year in mortgage insurance premiums and $390 more each year in property taxes — totaling more than $13,000 over the life of the loan.
The study — authored by Ed Golding, executive director of the MIT Golub Center; Michelle Aronowitz, former deputy general counsel for enforcement and fair housing at the Department of Housing and Urban Development; and Jung Hyun Choi, a researcher with the Housing Finance Policy Center at the Urban Institute — found that the inequities totaled to $67,320 in lost retirement savings for Black homeowners.
Citing income data from the National Association of Real Estate Brokers (NAREB), the country’s oldest minority trade association, the study said it found an income gap of $25,800 between Black and white Americans to be “exacerbated by this ‘Black tax’ on homeownership.”
The elimination of those additional costs, the study said, would cut in half the roughly $130,000 gap in liquid retirement savings between white and Black families.
The study also found that African Americans paid higher interest rates due to a lack of refinance opportunities, a problem researchers said results in Black homeowners paying "approximately another $475 per year more than white homeowners, which results in a loss of retirement savings of nearly $20,000."
Golding told The Hill that, for a variety of reasons, Black families don’t refinance or can’t refinance as easily or as quickly as white families.
“So, when the [Federal Reserve] lowers rates, people refinance to lower their mortgage rate. But more Black families are stuck at the old higher rates and our data shows that,” he said, while noting that African American families have a higher unemployment rate, meaning “they're more likely to be in that group that can't refinance.”
While the study notes that the inequities can be “traced to the long history of slavery, segregation, and race discrimination,” it also points to “current policy choices that maintain the disparities” and suggests reforms.
Some of the policy recommendations include forming a “government supported insurance program that makes mortgage payments in the event of unemployment or disability" and including “tax credits for first time homeowners, which could be used as a down payment to reduce the effect of risk-based pricing and the need for mortgage insurance.”
The MIT study builds on previous research from the real estate website Redfin in June that found the homeownership rate for Black families stood at less than 45 percent nationwide, compared to the 73 percent rate for white families.
And an analysis published over the summer — authored by economists Troup Howard, an assistant professor of finance at the University of Utah, and Carlos Avenancio-León, assistant professor of finance at Indiana University — found that Black and Hispanic residents bore a 10-13 percent “higher property tax burden than white residents" in the nation.
When discussing the homeownership gap in an interview this week, Antoine Thompson, executive director of NAREB, which works to promote democracy in housing, said the impact of racist practices in the country that have shut Black Americans out of housing, dating back to slavery, is still being felt today.
Thompson said the suggestion made in the MIT study to pool risk among borrowers in lieu of risk-based pricing was “a great idea,” and one that has been discussed before.
He also pointed to the Great Recession as to why some Black Americans could be reluctant to get a refinance.
For many Black Americans who lost their homes, Thompson said, “their first loan was good, but then someone went after them and encouraged them to refinance and then they no longer had a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage … and once they hit a cliff they couldn't recover.”
The MIT study pointed to capital standards that it noted have “the effect of placing the burden of staving off a repeat of the 2008 Great Recession on black homeowners, even though black homeowners were primarily the victims of the crisis, not its cause.”
Thompson said that going forward, the widening or narrowing of the racial homeownership gap will depend largely on "how we come out of COVID in terms of making sure that more African Americans get a forbearance that need it.”
Another key factor, he said, is employment and whether the country will be able to “break this trend of African Americans going back to work slower” than white Americans, citing data that shows white workers have been making job gains at faster rates than Black workers during the pandemic
Intercept bureau chief on Bolivian election: Right-wing government 'reminded everybody how important it was to have socialists in power'
10/20/2020
The presumptive victory in Bolivia's presidential election by Luis Arce shows the enduring strength of socialist parties and politicians in that country, the Washington, D.C., bureau chief of The Intercept said Tuesday on Hill.TV.
“People who were in their 20s there basically never knew anything other than Morales being in leadership,” the Intercept's Ryan Grim said, referring to the former Bolivian leader Evo Morales, who was forced out of office last year.
“But one year of right wing government reminded everybody how important it was to have socialists in power. The right wing government had no mandate when they came in,” Grim said.
Arce is an ally of Morales, who was also a mentor of new new Bolivian leader.
While the vote is still being counted in the race, the main centrist candidate has conceded, all but completely assuring a victory for Arce, the Socialist candidate.
Grims credited Arce's victory to the previous government doing more “looting the Treasury than actually governing.” He also said the current government was criticized over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
Poland's top court ruled Thursday that a law permitting abortion of fetuses with congenital disabilities is unconstitutional.
The country's Constitutional Court ruled the ban will be effective immediately, outlawing abortions in cases where congenital disabilities are discovered and further limiting abortion access, The Associated Press reported.
Poland, a predominantly Catholic country, already maintains one of the strictest abortion laws in Europe.
The ruling was in response to motions from right-wing lawmakers who argued terminating a pregnancy when congenital disabilities are detected in the fetus was in violation of the Polish Constitution protecting every individual's life.
Julia Przylebska, the court’s president and a supporter of the right-wing government, first announced the verdict Thursday, The Washington Post reported.
The law being challenged was first introduced in 1993 and allowed for abortions when a woman's life or health was endangered or if they are a victim of rape or another illegal act.
Two judges on the 13-member court did not support the majority ruling.
Before the ruling, abortion rights groups demonstrated in protests and human rights organizations argued against further restricting abortion rights.
Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatović posted on social media the ruling Thursday was a "sad day for women’s rights."
“Removing the basis for almost all legal abortions in #Poland amounts to a ban & violates #HumanRights,” she penned on Twitter. “Today’s ruling of the Constitutional Court means underground/abroad abortions for those who can afford & even greater ordeal for all others. A sad day for #WomensRights.”
Some Polish lawmakers considered a bill earlier this year to implement nearly a full ban on abortions. However, it postponed a final vote on the proposal brought by a Catholic group, the Post reported.
Sanctuary city policies did not result in crime increase: study BY JUSTINE COLEMAN - 10/21/20
Sanctuary city policies have not resulted in an increase in crime in communities that have imposed them, according to a Stanford University study published this week.
Researcher David Hausman concluded that evidence does not support the argument, voiced by the Trump administration, that sanctuary cities, which limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities, threaten residents' public safety
Hausman studied violent crime and property crime statistics across more than 200 sanctuary jurisdictions between 2010 and 2015, a time period when many of the sanctuary policies in the country were instituted to protect immigrants living in the country illegally.
He determined that the policies helped decrease deportations of nonviolent offenders. But deportations of violent offenders continued at the same rate, which Hausman said was because many sanctuary policies do not take much action to prevent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from intervening in those cases.
Overall, deportations reduced by about one-third in places with sanctuary policies, and immigrants arrested but not convicted of a crime were about 50 percent less likely to get deported.
“There’s no evidence sanctuary policies harm public safety, and there’s no evidence those policies increase crime,” Hausman, who previously worked with the American Civil Liberties Union that has challenged the administration’s immigration policies, told the Post.
“I think it’s disappointing that the government and this administration rely on anecdotes when there is data,” he added. “The government itself keeps the data I rely on, and if the administration had looked at its own data, it would know these claims are not true.”
ICE officers have the authority to make arrests anywhere in the country, but jurisdictions with sanctuary policies usually do not assist them by detaining suspects for federal authorities to pick up.
The agency sent a statement to The Hill that did not directly address Hausman’s findings but cited instances of crimes linked to immigrants who were previously let go.
“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) maintains that cooperation with local law enforcement is essential to protecting public safety, and the agency aims to work cooperatively with local jurisdictions to ensure that criminal aliens are not released into U.S. communities to commit additional crimes,” an ICE spokesperson said. “There are numerous examples where an individual without legal status was arrested by state or local law enforcement and released into the community to reoffend while an ICE detainer was in place.”
In recent weeks, ICE has focused on sanctuary jurisdictions through Operation Rise, making more than 300 arrests, according to the Post.
Local officials who pass sanctuary policies assert that the policies make immigrants more likely to report crimes instead of avoiding police out of a fear they could face deportation.
The sad secrets of Glasgow's abandoned mental hospital Hidden away in a secluded rural spot north of Glasgow, Lennox Castle Hospital is an abandoned building with a very interesting history.
The ruins of Lennox Castle Hospital hide a sad and traumatic history. Picture: Ron Shephard/Wikimedia Commons
The castle itself was built in the 1830s, but in early 20th century, the space was converted into what would later become a truly infamous psychiatric hospital.
Lennox Castle Hospital was eventually closed in 2002, leaving the institution’s sad and difficult history to be forgotten, just like its crumbling, abandoned former home.
In 1925, plans were drawn up by Glasgow Council for a new ‘Mental Deficiency Institution’, and the Lennox Castle Hospital complex was opened a few years later, in 1936. When it opened, Lennox was hailed as being way ahead of its time, and was the largest and best equipped hospital of its kind in Britain
The hospital cost over £1 million to build, and had space for 1,200 patients. There were separate dormitories for male and female patients, each one holding around 60 people in two wards.
Patients also had access to two communal dining halls (with seating for 600 people in each) and a central Assembly Hall, which housed a stage, equipment for cinema shows, and recreational facilities.
Despite a promising start, conditions at Lennox Castle Hospital soon began to deteriorate. The hospital was vastly overcrowded, understaffed and underfunded. Vulnerable patients were left to fend for themselves in the large wards.
Friends and family of patients generally reported that staff tried their best, despite the lack of resources, but conditions in the hospital were described as “wretched and dehumanising”. Conditions were so bad by the 1980s that Doctor Alasdair Sim (the hospital’s Medical Director at the time), said he had never worked in a “worse pit”, and that he was “sick to the stomach about the plight of these poor people”.
A 1989 study by the British Medical Journal found that a quarter of patients at Lennox Castle Hospital were dangerously underweight and malnourished. Some claim that there was more than neglect going on at Lennox Castle Hospital.
Former patients recall being given unnecessarily cruel punishments for small offences. Incidents included being struck with a baseball bat and being made to run laps barefoot around the castle, just for forgetting to address a staff member as “sir”. In more recent years, comparisons have been drawn between Lennox and cult TV series, American Horror Story: Asylum, thanks to the allegations of abuse, neglect and terrible conditions. Those who attempted to run away would be caught and locked up in isolation for up to six weeks, drugged with heavy doses of medication, and refused contact with visitors.
Patients who didn’t need drugs were given them, as a way of ensuring they remained calm and didn’t cause trouble in the overcrowded conditions. In reality, only around 10 per cent of the hospital’s residents genuinely required anti-psychotic drugs.
There are several reports of patients dying or being seriously injured due to the lack of care at Lennox Castle Hospital. One man was found set alight in the bathroom in the middle of the night and died the following day. Another was seriously injured when a nurse threw a scalding cup of tea on him, while a heart attack (brought on by severe distress while being physically restrained) resulted in another patient’s death.
After decades of keeping patients shut away from the outside world, Lennox Castle Hospital finally closed in 2002.
The last few remaining patients were reintegrated back into the local community, or transferred to more modern psychiatric units, before the hospital was abandoned.
Since then, the eerie site has lain empty, and the buildings have rapidly deteriorated. The formerly grand Lennox Castle is now a crumbling shell. The area remains empty, aside from occasional urban explorers looking to catch a glimpse of the former hospital.
Although several plans have been put forward to restore the castle and build new housing on the grounds, none have been successful so far.
In 2007, Celtic Football Club built a new training facility on the grounds of Lennox Castle. It’s likely that many of the players and staff come and go without having any idea about what went on at the former hospital, less than half a mile away from their state of the art training ground.
LONGEVITY HACKS SCIENCE REVEALS THE PERFECT TIME TO DRINK COFFEE FOR A HEALTHY METABOLISM
South_agency/DigitalVision Vectors/Getty Images
"Knowing this can have important health benefits for us all."
IT'S A VICIOUS CYCLE: Stay up late into the night and revive yourself upon waking with a cup of strong coffee. While the caffeine may perk you up, it could also have a negative effect on your metabolism, new research suggests.
According to the new study, published in the journal British Journal of Nutrition, a single bad night's sleep isn't likely to acutely impair metabolism. Having coffee before breakfast the next day can.
In the experiment, participants who drank strong, black coffee after a disrupted night's sleep, and followed that up with a sugary drink had impaired blood sugar control — a marker for metabolic dysfunction.
"It may be better to wait until after breakfast to have coffee following a bad night of sleep — rather than before breakfast in order to balance the stimulating effects of the coffee with their potential to disrupt glucose metabolism," study co-author Harry Smith, a researcher at the Centre for Nutrition, Exercise & Metabolism at the University of Bath, tells Inverse.
Moderate coffee drinking is linked to health benefits like lower risk of heart disease, certain cancers, and neurological conditions, so the findings "don’t mean that coffee can’t be part of a healthy balanced lifestyle," Smith adds.
What the research does say is that it may be worth considering when to down your java.
COFFEE EXPERIMENT — To determine how broken sleep and morning coffee influence metabolic function, researchers recruited 29 healthy men and women. The group participated in three overnight experiments in random order: Participants had a normal night's sleep (approximately eight hours) and consumed a sugary drink upon waking in the morning. Participants experienced a disrupted night's sleep (where the researchers woke them every hour for five minutes using specially designed texting prompts) and then upon waking were given the same sugary drink. Participants experienced the same sleep disruption but were first given a strong black coffee (including approximately 300 milligrams of caffeine) 30 minutes before consuming the sugary drink.
At the start of the study, researchers measured participants' height, weight, and waist circumference along with health metrics like sleep quality, mood, and appetite. After completing each condition, researchers took samples of the participants' blood after drinking the sugary drink. The drink was designed to mirror the calories of a typical breakfast.
THE HEALTH IMPACTS OF A CUP OF JOE — The scientists found that one night of broken sleep did not affect people's insulin sensitivity or glucose tolerance —two markers of metabolic health — the next day, compared to a full night of sleep.
The study may be reassuring for those who occasionally miss out on their full eight hours of rest. But those who regularly lose out on snoozing time aren't out of the woods, metabolically speaking.
"More severe acute sleep disruption and/or chronic sleep disruption have been associated with impaired glucose metabolism and increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease," Smith notes.
The results may throw a wrench in the morning routines of avid coffee drinkers.
In the study, consuming strong, black coffee after broken sleep substantially increased the blood glucose response to breakfast by around 50 percent. This shift doesn't necessarily put someone at risk for diabetes or other metabolic disorders, but the scientists say it could influence health if the spike occurs habitually.
"Single occasions of elevated blood glucose responses such as in the study can be predictive of cardiometabolic events in the future, and this response repeated over a long period of time certainly could have an impact on health such as reduced insulin sensitivity," Smith explains. Still, other factors such as physical activity need to be considered when predicting long-term outcomes.
SHIFTING COFFEE ROUTINES — Taken together, these findings suggest drinking coffee after a bad night's sleep can make you feel alert, but may limit your body's ability to tolerate the sugar in your breakfast.
That's because the caffeine contained in coffee beans has a negative effect on sensors in the muscle that help take glucose out of the blood, therefore resulting in this higher blood glucose response, Smith explains. Caffeine also stimulates a greater release of lipids into the blood which also negatively impacts our muscles' ability to take glucose out of the blood.
"If this scenario of caffeinated coffee before breakfast is continued over a prolonged period it is possible that this may have longer-term health implications, however, it is also likely that our body clock may adjust to the morning spike in blood glucose," Smith says.
More, larger randomized clinical trials are needed to hammer out exactly how coffee routines impact daily metabolic function. But for now, these findings suggest people should consume their bean juice after breakfast, not before, to support a healthy metabolism.
"We know that nearly half of us will wake in the morning and, before doing anything else, drink coffee - intuitively the more tired we feel, the stronger the coffee," study co-author James Betts, co-director of the Centre for Nutrition, Exercise and Metabolism at the University of Bath, said in a related statement. "This study is important and has far-reaching health implications as up until now we have had limited knowledge about what this is doing to our bodies, in particular for our metabolic and blood sugar control."
Coffee is the world's most popular beverage, so drinking morning coffee at the perfect time is useful information for billions of individuals.
"Put simply, our blood sugar control is impaired when the first thing our bodies come into contact with is coffee especially after a night of disrupted sleep. We might improve this by eating first and then drinking coffee later if we feel we still feel we need it. Knowing this can have important health benefits for us all."
Coronavirus survives on skin for nine hours: Study
The study backs World Health Organisation guidance for regular and thorough hand washing to limit transmission of the virus.
PHOTO: EPA-EFE
PUBLISHED OCT 19, 2020,
TOKYO • The coronavirus remains active on human skin for nine hours, Japanese researchers have found, in a discovery they said showed the need for frequent hand washing to combat the Covid-19 pandemic.
By comparison, the pathogen that causes the flu survives on human skin for about 1.8 hours, according to the study published this month in the Clinical Infectious Diseases journal.
"The nine-hour survival of Sars-CoV-2 (the virus that causes Covid-19) on human skin may increase the risk of contact transmission in comparison with IAV (influenza A virus), thus accelerating the pandemic," said the study.
The research team tested skin collected from autopsy specimens, about one day after death.
Both the coronavirus and the flu virus are inactivated within 15 seconds by applying ethanol, which is used in hand sanitiser.
Deborah Birx is nowhere to be found at the White House these days.
Though she retains the title of coordinator of the White House coronavirus response, Birx has not attended any of President Trump's press briefings on the pandemic since he started them anew in late July, nor was she at a recent event to tout the administration's advances in testing.
Instead, Birx has been on the road, visiting 36 states and 27 different colleges and universities since the end of June to meet with state, local and university leaders to advise on best practices for containing the coronavirus and to gather information on what's been working in each place.
Olivia Troye, a former coronavirus task force adviser who worked with Birx and is now a Trump critic, said White House officials grew irritated by Birx's detailed and data-heavy presentations in the early summer that showed emerging hot spots and difficulties getting the virus under control. Some officials rolled their eyes as Birx delivered a message that clashed with the administration's preferred narrative that things were improving, Troye said.
The frustration preceded a push to get Birx out on the road to meet with state and local leaders, multiple officials familiar with the discussions said. She last appeared publicly alongside Trump in an early August Oval Office meeting with Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R).
"It’s convenient because they don’t want her at the White House and don’t want her at the podium,” Troye said. “But in many ways it probably ended up being better for her."
Administration officials and those who have met with Birx recently say she remains a vital resource and argue that she may be more comfortable being away from Washington, D.C., where she had to navigate the politics of the White House. She often drew criticism for praising Trump publicly while attempting privately to impress upon others the seriousness of the situation.
But her absence is a sign of how Trump has spurned the same doctors who were the face of the coronavirus response in the early months of the pandemic in favor of advisers who align with his views.
She has joined the likes of Anthony Fauci, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield, and Surgeon General Jerome Adams as fixtures of White House briefings from February to April who have since been relegated to the background, while Scott Atlas, who is not an epidemiologist and has pushed the controversial herd immunity theory, has gained the president's ear.
Unlike Fauci, Birx no longer appears on Sunday morning shows or cable news. Those appearances proved problematic at times for Birx, as she would often be pressed to contradict or call out the president's latest misleading or questionable comments about the pandemic.
“She navigates the political atmosphere much better than a lot of the doctors at times, but it’s exhausting, and I’ve certainly seen it firsthand, and I’ve certainly seen it weigh on her,” said Troye, who left the White House in July.
The White House coronavirus task force provides tailored recommendations to governors and health commissioners, and Birx’s travel has been a key component of understanding their problems and offering guidance, an administration official said.
“Dr. Birx continues to lead the Task Force and travel the country working hand-in-hand with Governors and local health officials to ensure we are defeating this virus at the local level with federal support,” White House deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews said in a statement.
Birx did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Vice President Pence tapped Birx in late February to coordinate the White House coronavirus response when there were just 60 known COVID-19 cases in the United States. Birx was appointed by former President Obama in 2014 as an ambassador-at-large to lead the country’s global efforts to combat HIV/AIDS.
She became a fixture at press briefings early in the coronavirus pandemic. Her scarves spawned parody Instagram accounts, and she and Fauci emerged as authoritative voices at the White House. But as Trump and others in the building pushed for states to lift restrictions and insisted the country was rounding the turn on the pandemic, Birx appeared less frequently.
Since then, cases have spiked around the United States. The country recorded more than 60,000 new infections on Thursday. Officials in Wisconsin, Montana and other states have raised concerns that their hospital systems could soon be overwhelmed.
Those who know Birx or who have met with her in recent weeks have universally praised her professionalism and helpfulness. They say she is simply looking for ways to be most effective in an administration where the president has repeatedly contradicted and ridiculed his own top health officials.
"It is really, I would say, close to impossible to do anything reasonable with this White House. And she tried initially inside, and now what I think she's trying is she's trying outside," said Carlos del Rio, an infectious disease expert at Emory University who has worked with Birx through her role in the State Department.
"I think she’s trying to figure out how can she do the best in, quite frankly, a very complicated environment," he added.
Birx has recently visited states such as Alabama, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina and Texas. Birx told one university president she met with that she’d traveled more than 16,000 miles over the last few months.
Birx typically meets with college and university leadership during those stops and occasionally with governors and local officials. Each visit tends to include press briefings with local media. She discusses the importance of masks and physical distancing, and she has urged students to be mindful of the risks when they return home for Thanksgiving and interact with family.
“It was a very buttoned-up visit, I would say,” said Max Reiss, communications director for Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont (D). “It had a very clear public health focus the entire visit. She met with the governor one-on-one. She met with the heads of the [University of Connecticut] system one-on-one.”
Birx last week visited Stony Brook University in New York to meet with school leaders, researchers and students. She also met with leaders of the university’s hospital, which was inundated in the early months of the pandemic.
Stony Brook President Maurie McInnis said Birx was interested in how the school had maintained such a low case load during the fall semester and had gotten widespread compliance from students to wear masks.
“We were all really just both enormously appreciative and learned so much from her visit, and I think it sharpened our thinking about winter and the important messaging that we are going to need to follow,” McInnis said.
Even hundreds of miles away, though, it’s impossible for Birx to completely separate herself from the latest White House controversies.
During a recent trip to New Jersey, Birx danced around a question about the president attending a fundraiser the same day he tested positive for COVID-19. In Connecticut, local media asked her about Trump’s claim that Americans shouldn’t be afraid of the virus. And during her stop at Stony Brook, reporters asked what Birx made of Trump’s treatment when he had the virus, McInnis said.
“At the press briefing, she got several questions from reporters [about Trump], and she very deftly did not answer them,” McInnis said. “She was very focused on her message, which is the public health message, what we all need to be doing to be safe and keep coronavirus at low levels.”
