India's 1.3 billion people head into lockdown

3/25/2020

With just hours' notice, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi ordered a three-week lockdown of the country's 1.3 billion population, sending people scrambling to prepare for 21 days with limited access to services. He acknowledged the lockdown would be "very difficult time" for those in poverty. Many laborers have started long treks home — on foot. 

But the government's directives have been confusing. Breaking the lockdown could lead to a year in prison. And though essential services, such as grocery stores, are allowed to remain open, police have reportedly violently cracked down on seemingly sanctioned businesses. India's health system ranks poorly, and an outbreak of coronavirus in densely popluated slums could prove devastating.   

More: India’s coronavirus lockdown and its looming crisis, explained

And: Sanitary workers risk their lives despite spread of coronavirus

Emergency releases' from prison reduce risk of virus spread, criminal justice expert says

Prisoners are at high risk for contracting the coronavirus. To protect them, prison management and governments must lessen prison populations by releasing people, says the executive director of Penal Reform International.

COVID-19: The latest from The World
March 25, 2020 · By The World staff
Producer Amulya Shankar

LISTEN TO AUDIO



Relatives of prisoners react outside La Modelo prison after a

 riot by prisoners demanding government health measures 

against the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) 

in Bogotá, Colombia, on March 22, 2020.
Credit:Leonardo Munoz/Reuters

As people across the globe enter self-isolation, what's happening to people who were already in lockdown before the coronavirus pandemic?

Hundreds of thousands of people are in prison across the world. And without many resources, medical and otherwise, prisoners are at high risk for contracting the coronavirus.

Governments in Germany, Iran, Canada, the United States and elsewhere are releasing prisoners with health conditions or who are serving time for low-level offenses in order to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Last weekend, a prison riot in Colombia's capital, Bogotá, left 23 prisoners dead and 83 injured, the justice minister said on Sunday, as detainees protested sanitary conditions amid the outbreak.

Florian Irminger is the executive director of Penal Reform International. He spoke to The World's host Marco Werman about how governments can protect prisoners as the coronavirus spreads.

Marco Werman: What factors can put prison populations at risk?

Florian Irminger: Overcrowding means proximity. So, what we hear in the media and what we hear from WHO about social distancing, prisoners cannot usually do that. They cannot keep a distance with others. But it's also a matter of hygiene in prisons, in general. Often, those are places that are rather dirty, filthy, where you'd have less access to health care systems and where you don't really have the opportunity to wash your hands and kind of keep hygienic as recommended.

What countries’ prison systems are you most worried about in terms of the coronavirus spreading?


That is actually a difficult one. In many sub-Saharan African countries, there is a general lack of protection of prisoners whenever they have any kind of disease. So, there are big risks there. And then Latin America is famous for high overcrowding rates and also for prison management often being deficient. A country like the Philippines, which has a 460% rate of overcrowding — that means for 100 beds you have 460 prisoners — that obviously, creates a huge risk.

There are also other prisons where you have high-security measures, high-performing prisons like in the United States of America, where risks might be more associated to security and riots of prisoners because of restriction of contact with the outside world, with family relatives and limitation of movements, no rehabilitation programs anymore. They're in the hands of the state. And so, this kind of lockdown of the prison can also create security risks in very well-managed prisons. We have seen that in Italy with riots that actually resulted in multiple people dead, including prison staff.

So, what is the answer for officials if the coronavirus is already found to be in a prison? What is the proper response?


If the coronavirus is already in a prison, the affected person needs to be brought into a medical facility and be taken care of there. Potentially, affected people need to be isolated in a humane way. What we see around the world happening right now is prisons going in lockdown. And that's extremely dangerous because if you lock down a prison, you create conditions in which distress is higher within the prison. A lockdown means prison staff stay in just like the prisoners, too. And then you have risks of ill-treatment and torture; deaths increase. And lockdown also means less access for monitoring bodies, which obviously, means in that prison, anything can be happening and we won't know about it. So, lockdown, in general, should really only be an ultimate measure if there is a high rate of infection in the prison. The most efficient way of reducing risks is emergency releases.

Right. So, Iran released 70,000 prisoners this month to stop the spread of the coronavirus. 

You would say that's the right move?

In the case of Iran, the problem is we don't really know whom they released, why they released them, but we also don't know why they were even detained in the first place. And very often, you see that people are detained for very low offenses or nonviolent offenses. In general, reducing the prison population is one positive measure. They can reduce the number of people in pretrial [detention]. They can release vulnerable groups. In the United States, there are so many people over 60 that sit in prisons, who have been sitting for so long, and we should be looking at early release for those populations.

When there is a crisis, the prisoners are really at the losing end. We don't see prisons as an integral part of the society. But right now is a moment when prison management, criminal justice authorities and governments have to be looking at whom they can release.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. Reuters contributed reporting.

Internet restrictions make it virtually impossible for Kashmiris to get COVID-19 info

#KASHMIR IS #INDIA'S #GAZA #FREEKASHMIR

While daily life in the US and elsewhere can feel like a deluge of COVID-19 news and updates, most people in Kashmir haven’t been able to access basic information on the internet about how they can protect themselves.

LISTEN TO THE STORY HERE

The World March 24, 2020 · By Lydia Emmanouilidou


Kashmiri journalists display laptops and placards during a 
protest demanding restoration of internet service, in 
Srinagar, Nov. 12, 2019.Credit: Danish Ismail/Reuters

When Masrat Zahra, a 26-year-old photographer, looks outside her window, she sees a scene familiar to many around the world these days.

“Almost every shop is shut. Streets are empty, deserted. You will hardly see any person on the road,” she said.

But there’s a key difference in how Zahra and millions of others living in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir — a territory that’s part of a larger, disputed region between India and Pakistan — are living through the coronavirus pandemic: excruciatingly slow and sometimes nonexistent internet.

“Our basic rights have been denied. The internet is a basic right, [and] we are without that. So, we are living a very hard life right now.” Masrat Zahra, photographer

“Our basic rights have been denied. The internet is a basic right, [and] we are without that. So, we are living a very hard life right now,” Zahra said.

Kashmir’s internet woes began on Aug. 5, 2019, when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist party revoked Kashmir’s special semi-autonomous status and imposed a communications blackout, among other restrictions. Since then, the government has restored some access to the internet, but has restricted speed to 2G (second-generation technology) in the Kashmir region, making it virtually impossible for people there to keep up with crucial information about the pandemic.

While daily life in the US and elsewhere can feel like a deluge of COVID-19 news and updates, Zahra says that most people in Kashmir haven’t been able to access basic information on how they can protect themselves.

“We are not able to download guidelines that are put up by world bodies. Like [on] how to wash your hands. So, it’s really hard for the people of Kashmir to be in 2G,” Zahra said, adding that it’s been difficult to keep up with the latest figures about the spread of the virus or messages from local officials.

“We cannot do anything. People are really frustrated. There is anxiety everywhere,” she said.

Officials in Kashmir have put up posters and taken other measures to convey information to the public offline. But many in Kashmir say those methods are not as effective and don’t reach as many people.

The work of filling in the information gaps left wide open by the internet restrictions is falling to people like Mehak Zubair, a host for the breakfast show on Radio Mirchi in Kashmir.

Her show, which typically offers a mix of happy stories, local celebrity guests and occasionally news, is sounding very different these days.

“My entire show is now about coronavirus. And I do a four-hour-long show. Because the internet's speed is very, very slow — excruciatingly slow — we have to make sure that we do not leave out anything. We have to make sure that we give out information as much as we can.”Mehak Zubair, breakfast show host, Radio Mirchi

“My entire show is now about coronavirus. And I do a four-hour-long show,” she said. “Because the internet's speed is very, very slow — excruciatingly slow — we have to make sure that we do not leave out anything. We have to make sure that we give out information as much as we can.”

But she often finds herself in the same conundrum as others in Kashmir — having trouble opening the latest communications and directives from local government officials and communicating the latest information through social media.

“I don't know how to do it without the internet … I genuinely don't,” she said.

In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, other news outlets in Kashmir, including television stations and newspapers, have also stepped up their coronavirus coverage. But the situation is not ideal, Zubair said. People might miss a broadcast or neglect to read an important story. “But social media, your phone is in your hand 24/7,” Zubair said.

“When you don't have the correct information, what happens is misinformation. A lot of rumors surface because a lot of information that is out there cannot properly reach people,” she said, adding that some people are not even aware that their local government is taking measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, leading some to panic.

The internet restrictions are affecting many other parts of life in Kashmir.

Those isolating themselves in their homes haven’t been able to video chat and get in touch with family and friends who live in other parts of Kashmir, or outside of the region.

And the more than 1 million students staying home since schools in the region closed nearly two weeks ago are now left with few options.

“We are taking measures to teach students, but online classes are not possible for us and we are suffering very badly.”Javid Hussain, education department, regional Kashmiri government

“We are taking measures to teach students, but online classes are not possible for us and we are suffering very badly,” said Javid Hussain, who works for the education department of the regional Kashmiri government.

Since students can’t access online materials, Hussain said all they can do right now is tell students what books to read.

He and other officials have also been trying really hard to get in touch with India’s central government — to urge them to lift the restrictions. But he said they’re not getting any information.

“They have not even given us time when the restrictions will be lifted,” Hussain said.

Indian government officials did not respond to a request for comment from The World.

People in Kashmir are not the only ones dealing with government-imposed internet restrictions during this pandemic. They’re happening in Ethiopia, Myanmar and Bangladesh, according to the advocacy group Access Now.

Many are calling on these governments to restore internet access because the slower the internet, they say, the slower the response to the pandemic.

Iconic distilleries turn to hand sanitizer production around the world


March 24, 2020 · By The World staff


Listen to the story.
Click the audio player above to hear more from Andrew Mackenzie at Verdant Distillery in Dundee, Scotland.


Heritage Distilling CEO and Co-Founder Justin Stiefel holds a bottle of Brown Sugar Bourbon and the hand and surface sanitizer they have begun to make in its place at Heritage Distilling during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Gig Harbor, Washington, March 22, 2020. Credit:Lindsey Wasson/Reuters

Many places around the world are synonymous with their alcoholic beverage of choice — German beer, Kentucky bourbon, London dry gin. Now, many producers are adding hand sanitizer to their production line.

Alcohol distilleries around the world have shifted production to the now highly-valued commodity as health professionals have pushed increased hygiene practices in the face of the spreading COVID-19 pandemic. A reminder: Alcohol-based hand sanitizers are good in a pinch, but the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still recommends using soap and water as a first choice.

Verdant Distillery in Dundee, Scotland, is one of a number of craft distilleries in Scotland that switched production from gin to hand sanitizer last week in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak.

“When we started with this idea, we thought we would produce 100 liters and that would go to local surgeries, care homes or the like. ... And then the floodgates opened."Andrew Mackenzie, owner, Verdant Distillery, Dundee, Scotland

“When we started with this idea, we thought we would produce 100 liters and that would go to local surgeries, care homes or the like," said distillery owner Andrew Mackenzie. “And then the floodgates opened. Emails were coming in from every source you can think of. I got an email ... from the Netherlands asking me if I could provide five, 40-foot containers full of sanitizer. And so there is just such a huge demand for it everywhere.”

Demand for Verdant's original product, on the other hand, has been put on hold due to the pandemic. “The gin market at the moment for us is pretty much zero,” Mackenzie said.

But one of the initial problems Mackenzie and others have faced is regulations and taxes.

Verdant Distillery was initially still liable for the nearly $30 duty on the alcohol used to make the hand sanitizer. That issue was resolved Monday night, Mackenzie said.

In the US, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau said it would waive permits for distilleries to make hand sanitizers according to the World Health Organization standards. The Food and Drug Administration issued similar guidance, saying in response to the emergency and unprecedented demand, it would not take action against companies that are making hand sanitizers without being recognized as drug manufacturers.

Elsewhere in the world locally and globally recognizable brands are doing their part to supply the demand for sanitizers.

The latest craft products coming out of Greenhook Gin and St. Agrestis in Brooklyn, New York, are artisanal hand sanitizers. Manufacturers have been barred from on-site sales, so the companies have partnered on delivering their product after the State Liquor Authority relaxed rules on alcohol to-go.

Quarantine Survival Kit 🚫🦠🚫

Tomorrow we rest but we start back up on Monday delivering our products and @StAgrestis products to your doorstep. All orders come with a free hand sanitizer. Link in to order in our… https://t.co/pb3FE8LMLg— Greenhook Ginsmiths (@GreenhookGin) March 21, 2020

In Uganda, Waragi — domestic alcohol akin to moonshine — has its own reputation of potency. Manufacturers have agreed to use the industry's nearly 2 million gallons of ethanol and alcohol to make affordable sanitizers, while the government will waive VAT and excise duty.

Ugandan Waragi manufacturers have agreed to convert 7.3million litres of Ethanol into hand sanitizers. On change govt is to give them a tax waiver. #COVID-19 #Monitorupdates #Ntvnews @DailyMonitor pic.twitter.com/M2So7ITvxg— Dorothy Nakaweesi (@DNakaweesi) March 23, 2020

Latvijas Balzams, maker of Riga Black Balsams — a strong herbal bitter liqueur often informally used as a cold remedy — is also turning production to hand and surface disinfectants to meet demand in Latvia and the Baltic Sea region.

The maker of the famous Rīga Black Balzams starts producing disinfectant. People always said it was healthy! https://t.co/1QTFzpl1mU— Latvian public media (@LSM_eng) March 20, 2020

In Cataño, Puerto Rico, Bacardi rum producers are working with Olein Refinery to crank out more than 1.7 million units of hand sanitizer.

By Caribbean News Global contributor

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – The Bacardi Corporation distillery in Cataño, Puerto Rico, where more than 80 percent of the company’s rums are produced, has partnered with Puerto Rico based manufacturer Olein Refinery https://t.co/c7d1egOAfq pic.twitter.com/8VfgkKcm5O— CaribbeanNewsGlobal (@GlobalCaribbean) March 23, 2020

Brazil's subsidiary of beer and liquor giant Anheuser Busch InBev, will deliver sanitizers to public hospitals in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Brasília.

The company will use one of its Brazil beer breweries to produce half a million sanitizer bottles for public hospitals to fight the spread of coronavirus. https://t.co/hdPDSKrueq— WJTV 12 News (@WJTV) March 22, 2020

And in France, LVMH Group, whose portfolio includes brands like Louis Vuitton, Dior and Givenchy, has turned its perfume production into hydroalcoholic gel manufacturing. LVMH is also using its global supply chain to help France acquire 40 million surgical masks via an industrial supplier in China.

#LVMHjoinsforces and says a special THANK YOU to all those involved in the manufacturing of #HydroalcoholicGel, in particular to its exceptional production teams from @Guerlain, #DiorParfums and @ParfumsGivenchy showing great solidarity and engagement for the common good. pic.twitter.com/i5pPkh1H5s— LVMH (@LVMH) March 19, 2020

---30---

SEE
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https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/03/new-yorks-solution-to-hand-sanitizer.html

For this young Latina voter, pandemic highlights the need for 'Medicare for All'


March 24, 2020 · By Martha Dalton

Leticia Arcila, a 19-year-old voter in Atlanta, Georgia, said 

health care is her top priority in a presidential candidate.
Credit:Courtesy of Leticia Arcila

This story is part of "Every 30 Seconds," a collaborative public media reporting project tracing the young Latino electorate leading up to the 2020 presidential election and beyond.

Leticia Arcila was looking forward to casting her vote for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in Georgia’s Democratic presidential primary on March 24. As a home health aide who does not have health insurance herself, Sanders’ "Medicare for All" plan sounded appealing.

Then the coronavirus outbreak hit, and Georgia delayed its primary to May 19. For Arcila, the need for a health care plan that covers everyone — including immigrants like her parents — never seemed so important.

Arcila is a 19-year-old, first-generation Mexican American. Born in Chicago and raised in Florida, she and her family have spent the last five years in Atlanta, where Arcila graduated from high school.

Since turning 18 and becoming eligible to vote, Arcila has voted in two local elections. This November will be the first time she will get to vote in a presidential race.

In Georgia, voters like Arcila who are young and Latino are rising in number. The state recently implemented automatic voter registration, which has boosted the number of registered young voters. More than a million Latinos live in Georgia, making it the state with the 10th-highest Hispanic population in the US.

“I’ve wanted Bernie to win since Hillary Clinton versus Trump” in 2016, Arcila said.

Related: Every 30 seconds, a young Latino in the US turns 18. Their votes count more than ever.

No one could have predicted a global pandemic when the 2020 presidential election season began. Still, health care issues were always a big reason Arcila supports Sanders.

“From my perspective as someone who just came into the adult life in the US, I think about, ‘How am I going to afford this? How am I going to afford that? How am I going to get insurance that is going to cover anything in case anything ever happens?”Leticia Arcila, 19-year-old voter

“When he speaks about health care, I look at it personally,” she said. “From my perspective as someone who just came into the adult life in the US, I think about, ‘How am I going to afford this? How am I going to afford that? How am I going to get insurance that is going to cover anything in case anything ever happens?'”

The spread of coronavirus has only magnified those concerns. 

Life without health insurance

Arcila doesn’t have health insurance. She was reminded of how disconcerting that can be a few weeks ago when she had an accident at work. Arcila is a home health care worker who takes care of an elderly woman in her house.

“I was giving her food and I had a cup of hot tea in the other room, which is where we usually stay,” she said. “They have a rug underneath the bed and I slipped on it, and I tore a ligament in my knee.”

She wound up in the emergency room, where she got an X-ray and some naproxen to relieve her pain. Arcila saw a doctor, who told her to follow up with an orthopedist. When she went to check out, a receptionist handed her a bill for $1,300 and asked Arcila how she would like to pay. Arcila said she was stunned.

“I [asked her], ‘OK, is there any way I can make payments?’ Then she [said], ‘OK, well, you could, but we also have a 75% discount [for] people who don't have insurance,’” Arcila said.

The discount brought Arcila’s bill down to $350. She was able to pay, and because the accident happened at work, her employer reimbursed her.

Related: The top issue for one Arizona first-time voter? Health care.
Still, the experience reinforced her support for Sanders. She said she wants the US to switch to a Medicare for All plan.

Arcila is not just worried about herself. She has three younger siblings who are on her parents’ Medicaid plan. One of her sisters has epilepsy. But when they all turn 18, they won’t be eligible anymore.

“...I don't want to have to worry about my sisters when they're older, or my brother going, when he's older, and thinking about the same exact things.”Leticia Arcila, 19-year-old voter

“I'm an American citizen," she said. "I don't want to have to worry about my sisters when they're older, or my brother going, when he's older, and thinking about the same exact things.”

The family connection

In addition to Medicare for All, Sanders also says he’ll place a moratorium on deportations.

That’s important to Arcila because although she is a US citizen, her parents are undocumented. Both of them have applied for US permanent residency.

“My family is from Mexico, Morelia, Michoacán, and yeah, they're undocumented, and we're currently going through the documentation process,” she said. “So, we're pretty excited about that — nervous and excited. It’s a mixture of both.”

Some of the family recently drove to Florida to attend her parents’ recent residency hearing in court. Arcila said attorneys questioned her parents for a few hours, but the judge didn’t rule on the case.

The family’s attorney thinks the hearing went well, but she isn’t sure how long it will take the court to make a decision.

There's a lot at stake. If her parents are deported, Arcila could take custody of her younger siblings, including her sister with epilepsy. She said it would be too much for her mother to handle if her parents have to return to Mexico.

“She wouldn't be able to afford my sister's treatment,” Arcila said. Her sister sees a neurologist and a therapist, and also receives special care at school. In Mexico, those resources would be out of reach.
A president fit for a pandemic

Bernie Sanders now trails his Democratic rival, former Vice President Joe Biden. Sanders has said he is "reassessing" his campaign, raising questions on whether he will drop out soon.

Still, Arcila said she still supports Sanders 100%.

She thinks his health care plan could make a difference in times like these, when so many people are worried about the health and economic impacts of COVID-19. Arcila is worried, too. She said she’s meticulous about social distancing because the elderly woman she cares for is in a vulnerable group. So, is her mother, who has diabetes.

If a bill on Medicare for All was passed, she said, "I think that would be such a big relief for everyone.”

Pandemic threatens stability, demands ‘coordinated global action,’ says Susan Rice

POMPEO CALLS IT THE WUHAN VIRUS, TRUMP CALLS IT THE CHINESE VIRUS

COVID-19: The latest from The World

March 19, 2020 · By The World staf

Listen to the story.



US President Donald Trump takes questions 
during the coronavirus response daily briefing 
at the White House in Washington, DC, March 19, 2020.
Credit: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters


With major world powers retreating to their own corners to combat the coronavirus outbreak, prospects for multilateral diplomacy seem dim, especially as US President Donald Trump ratchets up his rhetoric against China over the coronavirus.

Trump's tougher language marked an escalation in a bitter war of words between the world's top two economies that has widened to include the global pandemic and media freedoms.

"I don't know if you'd say China's to blame," Trump said. "Certainly we didn't get an early run on it. It would have been helpful if we had known about it earlier. But it comes from China, and it's not a question about that - nobody's questioning that."

COVID-19: The latest from The World

But Susan Rice, national security advisor during President Barack Obama’s second term and former US ambassador to the UN, says pointing the finger doesn't help deal with a global problem.

"The reality is that a pandemic, by definition, is a global phenomenon and as we have seen, can arise in any one far corner of the world and spread to another. And putting up walls, halting commerce, halting travel can potentially slow the spread," Rice said. "But as we're seeing here in the United States, as the president brags about his brilliance in stopping flights from China, it hasn't, in fact, prevented the widespread outbreak here in the United States. And so because it is a global phenomenon, it ultimately is going to require global action to tamp it down."

Rice spoke with The World’s host Marco Werman about the risk of a worrisome breakdown in US-China relations.

Marco Werman: Even the EU, though, which we thought was a unified body, has retreated into its own kind of traditional nation states. What alternatives do you see right now? Because ultimately, in a crisis with limited resources, it isn't each nation's government responsible for protecting only its people?


Susan Rice: Yes, of course it is. But the reality is that while we might focus internally in the short term, unless we are able to cooperate globally in the medium to long term, we may shut [coronavirus] down in China or shut it down, you know, in South Korea, but if it springs up in Africa or springs up in India, it's just going to start another global wave.

Related: Russia is trying to spread a viral disinformation campaign

You were UN ambassador. Isn't that where this kind of sharing should be taking place right now?


It's certainly one venue where it might be taking place. It's remarkable to me that, in contrast to 2014, when we were dealing with the Ebola epidemic — which obviously was a different sort of a disease, but one that had the world quite rightly scared and costs tens of lives in West Africa — we used the United Nations under President Obama. We convened a summit with the UN secretary general at the United Nations and brought countries together to spur their collective response. It was a collective action.

In the past, the United Nations Security Council has convened around disease threats, including the HIV AIDS threat back in 2000. So it's not unheard of or unprecedented for that to happen. And yet, when you have a leadership in Washington and in the White House that seems to disdain collective action, even disparage cooperation with our allies, what seems to be the last thing that would occur to them is to use institutions like the United Nations or to draw on the capacity of the World Health Organization — which has its failings, but in this case, seemingly well outperform the United States government in its ability to help countries respond.

Related: US still ‘doing poorly’ on coronavirus testing, Harvard epidemiologist says

So the two big players on the global scene right now, the US and China, are sounding increasingly hostile towards one another — not a good thing to happen in the middle of this pandemic. Ambassador Rice, do you think Beijing and Washington are experiencing some kind of seismic change here, or do the two governments need each other too much for that to happen?


Well, I think this is a moment of dangerous friction and mutual recrimination that, frankly, needs to stop. And for the president of the United States and those around him to race bait and brand this "Chinese virus" or a "Wuhan flu" or other offensive terms like that is completely inappropriate and unhelpful and unacceptable. It is the case that the virus originated in China. It's also the case that the 2009 H1N1 flu virus, which was extremely deadly globaly, originated in North America, as did, I understand, the so-called Spanish flu back in 1918. So there is no advantage in recrimination about where it began. The issue is how do we deal with it?

And we have reasons to be critical with how China dealt with it in the early stages. No doubt. But people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. The administration's response to the coronavirus in this country, it's delay, it's denial, it's deception, and now it's utter incompetence to deal with critical things like testing, like getting medical supplies, personal protective equipment, ventilators and the like urgently out to those hospitals that need them — I mean, I could go on. I think the American people are well aware this has been a bungled, botched response. And rather than throwing stones at China and China, throwing stones at the United States, and it's been two ways, we all need to focus on the imperative of dealing with this crisis, the health crisis and the economic crisis. And realize that over the long run we're not going to deal with either in isolation.

Related: Experts concerned Mexico not taking enough COVID-19 precautions

So what happens? What are the risks of this blame game continues? Economically, what are the what are the repercussions, do you think?


Well, for better or for worse, are two economies are the largest in the world. They're deeply intertwined. Our supply chains are intertwined. Our technologies are intertwined. And as much as some on both sides may have a fantasy of decoupling our economies, I don't do believe that that's feasible. It's certainly not desirable because at the end of the day, that will leave us in competition for smaller slices of a global pie. And each of us will be poorer as a result. So we've got to get through this crisis. We've got to minimize the vitriol and the hostile rhetoric on both sides.

Related: How ‘war’ with coronavirus could lead to lasting government overreach

Finally, ambassador, President Trump has called himself a "war-time" president. Trump says a lot of things, but using the label wartime president, why does that matter?


I'm not particularly interested in how he wants to market himself. I'm interested in whether he's going to finally step up and lead decisively, dispassionately, responsibly, credibly, and get to the American people the medical and economic relief that we need to get through this crisis together.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Reuters contributed reporting. Follow The World's COVID-19 coverage here.

Trump's China tariffs hampered US coronavirus preparedness, expert says



March 23, 2020 · Analysis by The World staff


LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW

The fight against the novel coronavirus is also a race for medical supplies: masks, ventilators, lifesaving medical equipment. A lot of that equipment comes from China. In the United States, there's a shortage of supplies and that's partly due to a trade policy of Washington's own making — tariffs imposed on Chinese imports by the Trump White House.

The Trump administration on Friday said it was soliciting public comments on lifting additional tariffs on Chinese imports that could help the United States battle the coronavirus pandemic, showing some flexibility in its trade war against Beijing.

Related: Pandemic threatens stability, demands ‘coordinated global action,’ says Susan Rice

The US Trade Representative (USTR) has in recent weeks granted "Section 301" tariff exclusions for certain medical products from China, including medical masks, examination gloves and antiseptic wipes.

But as it battles to try to keep the US economy from collapsing amid quarantine orders and halted commerce, the Trump administration so far has been resistant to broader removals of tariffs imposed over the past 20 months on some $370 billion worth of Chinese imports annually, despite calls from the industry that this would be an instant tax cut worth tens of billions of dollars.

US President Donald Trump considers his trade pressure on China among the biggest achievements of his presidency and a top argument for reelection in November.

Chad Bown is senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He spoke with The World's Marco Werman about the impacts of the Trump administration's trade policies on supplies of medical equipment in the US.

Marco Werman: President Trump began his trade war with China in early 2018, and these tariffs hit many medical products and pretty hard. So we can't redo the past two years, Chad. But in theory, would we have less of a shortage of medical equipment if we never had these tariffs in the first place?


Chad Bown: I think the answer to that is clearly yes. There's a number of products that the Trump administration — when they were deciding what to impose tariffs on and what not to impose tariffs on over the last two years — they went out to the public and asked, you know, hey, what do you think of us imposing tariffs on these products? And the American medical community, in a lot of instances, came and said — try to avoid these. And in many instances, the Trump administration didn't. And so you end up with 25% tariffs on things like oxygen concentrators and thermometers and disposable medical headgear. You have 10% tariffs on a lot of protective clothing, or 15% tariffs even, and I think [that] made it difficult for buyers, American hospitals, to prepare for a pandemic like we're seeing today.

Related: Trump invokes Defense Production Act, but execution is unclear, former DHS adviser says

We should point out that the Trump administration did announce — quietly announced — earlier this month that some of these tariffs on medical supplies would be temporarily reduced to deal with the coronavirus when it charges onto American shores. Now it is here. So was that too little, too late?


Well, I think it was definitely a step in the right direction. We want to get rid of these tariffs and make it easier for American hospitals to be able to get access to whatever supplies they need from wherever they might need them. But I also think that it is a bit of a mea culpa by the administration, sort of recognizing that they have made it more difficult for the American medical community to be prepared for a pandemic that might arise. And so I think it's a step in the right direction. They, for what it's worth, put out another call at the end of the last week saying, "Hey, if there are other products that we haven't yet taken off of our tariff list, that you do actually need to buy from China, let us know and we'll consider removing them." But again, time is ticking by here. And that could take weeks. And hospitals and doctors and nurses — they need this stuff right now. And it seems to be a lot to ask them to go through this bureaucratic process, to ask for some tariffs to be removed when they really should be focusing their time and energy and efforts on other things.

Related: How the US-Canada border closure will disrupt life in this Canada border town

Trump and critics of past trade policies say the US had become too dependent on China, and the crisis we're in now is an example of that dependency. Do you think that's a fair criticism?


Well, I think to deal with an epidemic and a pandemic like what we're facing right now, and the shortages of the supplies, you do need to have a diverse source of supply of these things. You know, you'd want to be producing some of these in the United States — which we are. You want to have supplies coming in from other countries around the world as well, not be entirely reliant on China. I think in this case, the United States was buying a fair amount of this equipment from China, but not only from China. We import a lot of this stuff from Mexico as well. So I don't necessarily think that we were too reliant on China. But I do think you do need to have a diverse source of supplies for these sorts of critical equipment.

Well, you kind of put your finger on it, Chad. Time is of the essence. So what does the US need to do right now? Play nice with China, make more medical supplies here or turn to other countries like Mexico? I mean, they rank second in medical equipment, bought by the US.

Yeah, I think we need to do all of the above. I think no one knows how this is going to play out over the long-term. And I think that we need to be prepared for the worst-case scenario. The Trump administration, it needs to be thinking of creative ways to incentivize American production. We also though, I think, do need to make nice with China and decide that, well, some of the priorities that we were worried about six months ago or a year ago in fighting the trade war — maybe we need to put some of those on the backburner. And this is really actually much, much more important. This is about life and death. We need to get these supplies from wherever we can get them — as quickly as we can get them.

Related: As Spaniards flee cities, the countryside fears coronavirus

Given the trade war and the antagonism there — not to mention the nasty rhetoric coming out of the White House right now about the coronavirus — I mean, do you think playing nice with China is even an option?


I don't know. You know, I always hope that things can change. I'm an optimist by nature. It has not been the approach of the administration so far. You know, when everything was going fine, the economy was going fine and everybody was healthy, maybe it didn't need to be considered all that much. But now I think times really, really are quite different. And a new approach is needed.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Reuters contributed reporting. Follow The World's COVID-19 coverage here.

A core ambition of The World has always been to help make international news relevant to readers. The rapid spread of COVID-19 is an important reminder that global events are often indifferent to borders. Our distinctive edge is a reporting team, led by Marco Werman, that bypasses pundits to get to the source of what’s happening now, so our listeners can stay informed in a fast-changing world.

Coronavirus slowdown starts to rival Fed's doomsday bank stress test scenario

By Pete Schroeder 3/25/2020

The unfolding market shock and economic crisis wrought by the coronavirus disruption is shaping up to be a nightmare for the Federal Reserve – literally.

© Carlo Allegri / Reuters Manhattan

Over the past month, rapidly deteriorating economic and financial conditions have begun to rival the central bank's doomsday scenario against which it will test big banks' resilience during their annual "stress test" exams next month.

Of the 16 dire domestic indicators the Fed dreamt up for this year's test, including plunging stock markets, record low Treasury yields, slumping economic growth and mass unemployment, five have been breached while others are skirting close.

The meltdown, which at one point wiped roughly $6 trillion off U.S. stock markets and clogged up short-term funding markets, is so bad that some bankers have privately grumbled that the Fed should follow its peers in Europe and the United Kingdom and scrap the tests altogether this year.

On Tuesday evening, though, the central bank moved to squash that idea, reminding banks that they will still be required to submit their stress test capital plans on April 6 as scheduled.

"They need to understand where the banks are heading into this," said Tim Clark, a former senior Fed official who helped build the stress tests after the last crisis.

"The Fed needs to understand where the major pockets of vulnerability are in the system," Clark said.

Since the 2008 financial crisis, the Fed has put large banks through their paces each year by testing a snapshot of their balance sheets against a hypothetical market shock.

A central plank of the Fed's post-crisis safety and soundness regime, the tests dictate how much capital and liquidity a bank needs to go about its daily business in the eye of a storm. As the country's economic expansion continued over the past decade, the tests have gotten progressively harsher. But for the first time, reality may be worse than fantasy.

Related video: Former Fed Chair Bernanke says coronavirus impact is not comparable to Great Depression (provided by CNBC)

VIDEO Former Fed Chair Bernanke: 

Virus impact isn't comparable to Great Depression

MARKET DISTRESS

In this year's tests for example, the stock market would shed more than 25% of its value, the U.S. economy would shrink by nearly 10% in one quarter, and the unemployment rate would nearly triple to 10% in 2021.

So far in 2020, the Dow Jones Total Stock Market Index, which the Fed uses as its stress test gauge, has already lost 25% of its value since the beginning of the year, even accounting for an 11% surge on Wednesday.

Goldman Sachs projected on Friday, meanwhile that the U.S. economy would shrink by 24% in the second quarter, and St. Louis Federal Reserve President James Bullard warned the jobless rate could hit 30% before the pandemic pain passes.

That's not all. The yield on 10-year Treasury notes, a key safe-haven asset, has fallen twice as hard as the Fed envisioned, hitting a record low of 0.39% this month. It now overs around 0.8%, slightly above the 0.7% Fed's floor.

Wall Street's fear gauge, the VIX, tops 70 in the Fed’s doomsday scenario. It hit 85 earlier this month.

But this is not a cause for panic, according to Clark, who is now a banking adviser for Better Markets, an advocacy group that urges for tougher financial rules.

For one thing, 10 years of stress tests have helped push banks to more than double their common equity capital to roughly $800 billion, Fed data shows, meaning no banks failed the tests last year.

In addition, the exams don't merely ensure the banks could survive a crisis, but that they could continue to operate normally, dishing out dividends and making share buybacks.

The Fed's scenarios also envision a steep recession over 2-3 quarters, followed by a gradual recovery, whereas the present economic slump is expected to be much sharper and, hopefully, short-lived.

"They’re trying to make sure the banks have capital to withstand a variety of bad scenarios," Clark said.

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America’s Hospitals Have Never Experienced Anything Like This
If they run out of space, where will all the sick people go

SARAH ZHANG  3/25/2020

PAUL CAMPBELL / GETTY / THE ATLANTIC
Editor's Note: The Atlantic is making vital coverage of the coronavirus available to all readers. Find the collection here.

When COVID-19 first started showing up at the UC San Francisco Medical Center in February, the hospital set up triage tents, canceled elective surgeries, and created a whole new ICU in the now-empty surgery-recovery area. But what if all of that isn’t enough? If a surge of coronavirus cases overwhelms the hospital in the coming weeks, the remaining options become more and more drastic: putting beds in a waiting room and then in hallways outside the ER, and then—if necessary—a gymnasium across the street.

“Nobody wants to go there,” Jeanne Noble, an emergency-care physician at UCSF, says. “We will not be providing the level of care we’re all comfortable and used to providing.”

Hospitals all over the country are, like UCSF, preparing for the worst. If social distancing fails to sufficiently slow the spread of the coronavirus, which causes the disease COVID-19, hospitals in the United States could be overburdened, as they were in Wuhan and northern Italy—both of which have more hospital beds per capita than the U.S. “Our hospitals will be stressed in ways they’ve probably never experienced,” says Eric Toner, an emergency physician and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

In coronavirus hot spots, state and local governments have stepped in with unprecedented efforts to add thousands of hospital beds—all over the country, and all at once. A county in Washington State has leased a motel and erected a tent hospital on a soccer field as part of a push to create 3,000 hospital beds. California is reopening closed hospitals. New York is turning a major convention center in Manhattan into four 250-bed field hospitals. After requests from state leaders, Navy hospital ships that have 1,000 beds each will also deploy to Los Angeles and New York City.

An American hospital today is fairly good at keeping critically ill COVID-19 patients alive—until it runs out of space: Building more hospital beds is crucial to saving lives in the coming weeks and months. But no one alive has ever dealt with a pandemic of this scale. Although the country can draw on experience in responding to natural disasters and world wars, the coronavirus poses an entirely new challenge for modern medicine.

[ Read: The biggest worry for doctors fighting the pandemic ]

In the U.S., hospitals already operate near capacity, meaning they have few free beds even in ordinary times. The first priority will be saving these beds for the most seriously ill coronavirus patients. “I don’t think you can realistically put people who need critical care anyplace outside of the hospital,” Toner says. That means discharging patients who can be discharged, canceling elective surgeries, and finding alternative sites for noncoronavirus patients. The Navy hospital ships, which were designed for trauma wounds rather than infectious diseases, are best suited for this purpose.

Hospitals could also fit two patients into rooms that currently hold one. “Many hospitals have gone from dual occupancy to single occupancy in recent years,” Stephen Cantrill, an emergency physician in Denver, told me. “I can start double-bunking patients.” And as at UCSF, hospitals can convert areas like outpatient clinics, hallways, and classrooms into space for more beds.

The next step would require the government to add beds outside hospitals—such as in hotels, college dormitories, and convention centers. Individual hotel and dorm rooms can make it difficult for health-care workers to monitor the condition of every patient, says Randy Kearns, a professor of health-care management at the University of New Orleans, so they’re usually best suited for patients who have mild cases but need a place to stay because they can’t self-isolate at home. Because of the dire lack of beds for patients who are most critically ill, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has made plans to retrofit hotel and dorm rooms into “ICU-like” facilities with a nurse’s station in the hallway. These retrofitted rooms would be “negative pressure,” meaning they allow air in but not out to prevent pathogens from leaving the room.

If the outbreak gets even worse, the U.S. will need to take care of patients that are seriously ill outside the hospital, too. The military, FEMA, and even state emergency responders are experienced in setting up tent hospitals that can provide high levels of care, including surgery, in disasters or mass-casualty events. But they are not set up for a virus that can spread through the air. “In mobile hospitals, very rarely do you have a lot of negative-pressure rooms,” Lew Stringer, a former senior medical adviser to FEMA, says. The facilities are not usually designed with stringent infection-control measures in mind.

Besides the risk of transmission, many coronavirus patients are in hospitals because they need supplemental oxygen, which Toner says could be especially tricky to deliver in a field hospital. Typically, hospitals store their oxygen in tanks, which are connected through the building to patient rooms. The tanks are big. They are potential fire hazards. And they might require yards and yards of tubing to connect them to patients who need oxygen. Building modern field hospitals for a highly contagious disease is “not something that’s ever been done before,” Toner says. “We’ll have to figure it out.” These field hospitals will also need more of all the standard equipment: beds, IV lines, and personal protective gear for hospital staff.

[ Read: We’re failing our doctors ]

But regardless of where the beds end up, there may not be enough health-care workers to take care of the patients in them. “The question is how would we staff all these areas,” Noble says. The hospital is figuring out how to train doctors who don’t usually work in emergency care—for example, surgeons whose elective procedures were canceled. State and local authorities are also asking recently retired health-care workers to come back to work, but that’s a tough ask, because older people are also the most at-risk for COVID-19.

If things get really bad—if seriously sick patients are put in field hospitals and staff are stretched thin—care in the middle of a pandemic will suffer as a result. Health-care workers will have to conserve protective equipment for themselves and save ventilators for patients most likely to recover.

A decade ago, Cantrill was on a national committee that created the guidelines for hospitals trying to make it through a crisis. They debated, in the abstract, about how to ration scarce resources that could mean the difference between life and death. Now, for the first time in his career, those guidelines are about to get real. “You’d hoped it never gets here,” he told me, “but I think that’s where we are.”



SARAH ZHANG is a staff writer at The Atlantic

Grocery stores are the coronavirus tipping point

Olga Khazan THE ATLANTIC 3/24/2020

SOCIAL DISTANCING FAIL

© Sarah Blesene​r / The New York Times

One of the last bastions of normal American life could not escape the outbreak.

For a couple of weeks now, grocery stores have been one of the only respites from cabin fever. Despite all the lockdowns and social-distancing measures across America, people still need food. In the most restrictive states, the grocery store has become about the last place you can go where life is lived more or less as it previously was.

Except now, not even grocery stores can keep up the facade of normalcy. As many health experts have feared, last week, reports began to trickle in of grocery-store workers coming down with COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. A Trader Joe’s employee in Seattle tested positive. So did a King Soopers employee in Denver, along with two Fred Meyer employees: one in Monroe, Washington, and one in Portland, Oregon. A worker at the Columbus Circle and Bryant Park Whole Foods locations in New York, through which thousands of people filter every day, tested positive as well.

So far, the virus does not appear to be extremely widespread among grocery workers. Nationally, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, which represents the employees of some grocery stores, told me only six of its members are known to have tested positive for the coronavirus. But many more might have the virus and have not been tested. Until this past week, it was possible to at least wishfully imagine that grocery stores were somehow immune to the virus. Now the risk has become even more apparent: Yes, people can get COVID-19 at the grocery store.

Read: How you should get food during the pandemic

The primary concern for shoppers is other people, not food. Though shoppers might worry about infecting themselves by handling the same apple or Cheerios box as someone else, health experts say transmission through food or its wrapping is largely avoidable. Research suggests that the virus can exist on cardboard food packaging for a day, and on plastic for several days, but it becomes less infectious over these periods. “My recommendation is just to wash your hands after you handle external packaging,” Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University, says. “High-touch” objects such as shopping-cart handles are a bigger concern, but many stores have provided sanitizing wipes for those.

Coughing humans, meanwhile, can be harder to escape. This is a manageable risk for shoppers who can go to the store at odd hours and use the self-checkout. But at a high risk of infection are the cashiers themselves, who stand just a few feet from hundreds of customers a day. They might pick up the virus through food and money the customer touches. And “if the customer coughs or sneezes near an employee while in line, the likelihood of transmitting the virus through respiratory droplets is also high,” says Brandon Brown, a professor at UC Riverside who has studied infectious diseases.

In this way, the pandemic has put grocery-store stockers and cashiers in an impossible situation. The country can’t simply shut down grocery stores. Along with pharmacies, they’re an important lifeline for homebound Americans. But even essential shopping can endanger low-paid workers who are not trained in pandemic preparedness and have little choice but to show up for work.

To try to mitigate this threat, workers at various grocery stores have asked for face masks, says Hilary Thesmar of the Food Industry Association, or FMI, a trade group of grocery stores. FMI requested masks for workers from the federal government, she says, but it hasn’t been able to procure them, because there’s a national shortage and the priority is health-care workers. Marc Perrone, the president of the UFCW, says the union is pushing for the government to consider grocery-store workers on par with first responders, which might give them access to masks and gloves.

Even then, wearing masks and gloves might violate a store’s rules. A Trader Joe’s employee in New York, who requested anonymity, said workers at their store have been told they are not allowed to wear gloves at the registers. “They don’t want to alter the appearance of normalcy,” the worker told me through a Twitter account associated with a Trader Joe’s workers’ collective. (A spokesperson for Trader Joe’s denied this, saying in an email, “While the CDC does not recommend use of gloves in a retail setting, our Crew Members may choose to wear them.”)

In general, grocery stores have been ramping up their efforts at disease control. They’ve had workers wash their hands more frequently, use hand sanitizer, and clean surfaces more aggressively. A few have added sneeze guards at registers. Some have also offered workers who get the coronavirus paid sick leave, at least through April. Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Kroger, Stop & Shop, and Target all offer two weeks of paid time off for workers who test positive for COVID-19 or are placed into quarantine.

However, some employees say these policies fall short of the protections workers truly need. At the same time Whole Foods announced it would provide paid sick leave, the company also made headlines for suggesting that hourly employees donate their paid time off to one another. Like some other stores, Whole Foods granted hourly employees an extra $2 an hour through April, but some told me this was too small of a pay bump for risking their health. And it can be difficult seeing reports of white-collar employees having the luxury of staying home with pay indefinitely.

I spoke with one Whole Foods employee in Atlanta, who is in quarantine after coming down with a sore throat and fever. (He also requested anonymity to avoid retaliation for speaking with the press.) Though he thinks he will get paid for all 14 days doctors advised him to stay home, he still feels guilty for not being able to help out. The culture of retail, he says, is “if you feel good enough to work, you need to work. We all know what it feels like when there’s not enough people there.” He said his store has been so busy and understaffed that it’s been hard to make time to clean and sanitize. The last day he worked, about a week ago, he was able to wash his hands only a few times during his shift.

In an email response to employees’ accounts, Whole Foods said, “We have implemented enhanced daily cleanliness and sanitation protocols across all stores and facilities,” and “we are operating under social distancing guidelines in our stores and facilities, ensuring that interaction among team members and between team members and customers can happen at a safe distance.” The company also pointed out that it is doubling workers’ overtime pay through May 3.

Though grocery stores might be able to do more to protect staffers, they are never going to be 100 percent safe from the coronavirus. People can transmit the virus while they’re largely asymptomatic. There simply isn’t six feet of space between everyone in the average crowded market, and the infections popping up in grocery stores prove it. But grocery shopping is so comforting and instinctual, people don’t always realize just how much they’re exposing the grocery workers they rely on. Before he went into quarantine, the Atlanta Whole Foods worker I interviewed overheard a customer walk into the store and say into his phone, “I’m pretty sure I have it; I’m going to the doctor now. I just have to stop at Whole Foods first.”

Olga Khazan is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Weird: The Power of Being an Outsider in an Insider World.