Plague as art: Over the centuries, many kinds of stories
By HILLEL ITALIE March 22, 2020

This combination of photos shows, from left, "The End of October," by Lawrence Wright, "The Red Lotus," by Chris Bohjalian and "Afterland" by Lauren Beukes. Novels coming out now and written before the coronavirus pandemic use plagues to explore everything from gender roles to our own failure to anticipate the worst. (Knopf, from left, Doubleday, Mulholland Books via AP)


NEW YORK (AP) — Lauren Beukes, a script and fiction writer, is drawn to narratives that allow her to probe themes of gender and power. For her upcoming novel, “Afterland,” she imagined a plot twist in which a disease wipes out virtually the entire male population.

“I wanted to explore what a world without men would look like and how it wouldn’t necessarily be a better place with everyone making friendship bracelets and growing communal gardens and walking at night,” says Beukes, who began her book years before the current coronavirus pandemic.

Lawrence Wright, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist, says his new novel was inspired by a question the filmmaker Ridley Scott asked him years ago after reading Cormac McCarthy’s dystopian “The Road”: How could social order break down so completely when we’re struck by sudden disaster? His upcoming thriller “The End of October” describes, uncannily, a global pandemic originating in Asia. He had meant his new book as a cautionary tale.


“Our society has grown blind about dealing with natural hazards because we were so worried about terrorism. Hurricane Harvey caused far more damage than a terrorist attack,” says Wright, known for his nonfiction book “The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11.”

Plagues have been with us for at least as long as people have been able to record them. But among those who create art, their meaning has changed profoundly according to the time and the teller.

Once regarded as divine punishment, they have served as parables of greed, tyranny and scientific hubris. They have underscored narratives of escapism, vulnerability and save-the-world heroism. They have been treated as catalysts for what we never imagined becoming — and for confirmation of what we were all along.

—For the ancient Greek historian Thucydides, the plague that devastated Athens affirmed his view that prayers were “useless” and his dire belief that laws and codes of honor were easily abandoned.

—Edgar Allan Poe condemned a heartless prince and his foolish belief that he was immune from disease in “The Masque of the Red Death.”

—In Stephen King’s “The Stand,” biowarfare and a careless military are central villains.

—Stephen Soderbergh rejected any political interpretation of his film “Contagion,” saying that the virus in it “was just a virus.” Yet he told The Guardian in 2011 that he did want to “convey the feeling” he sensed worldwide “that the fabric of society really is stretched thin.”


This combination of photos shows the cover of the novel "Afterland," left, and a portrait of author Lauren Beukes. Novels coming out now and written before the coronavirus pandemic use plagues to explore everything from gender roles to our own failure to anticipate the worst. (Mulholland Books, left, and Tabitha Guy via AP)

In some eras, little imagination was needed to picture the worst — and hope for the best. Tony Kushner’s epic play “Angels in America” was a defining chronicle of the wreckage of AIDS. The Black Plague of the Middle Ages inspired both terrifying art of ravaged bodies and dancing skeletons and images of Saint Sebastian and Saint Roch intended to console.

“Saint Sebastian had survived being shot with arrows, and Saint Roch was believed to have survived an episode of the plague, so you often see them appearing in art,” says C. Griffith Mann, who curates the Department of Medieval Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

A classic work of literature from the Middle Ages, Boccaccio’s “The Decameron,” reads in some ways as a guide to social distancing and self-isolation. Seven young women and three young men escape from the plague in Florence and live together in a villa, where they entertain each other by telling stories.

“I think Boccaccio anticipated what we would/could do in the time of the plague: We need to escape from our ‘real’ world in which our misery has no explicable cause, no identifiable beginning, and no end in sight,” says Wayne A. Rebhorn, who chairs the English department at the University of Texas at Austin.

“Many of the stories include stories within them — stories used by characters to get out of jams, persuade others to do their bidding, and, at the simplest level, entertain those who read or listen to them. If the plague shows just how desperate and fragile human life can be, stories offer a way to cope with that desperation.”

This combination of photos shows a portrait of Lawrence Wright, left, and the cover of his novel "The End of October." Novels coming out now and written before the coronavirus pandemic use plagues to explore everything from gender roles to our own failure to anticipate the worst. (Kenny Braun, left, and Knopf via AP)

Plague books can be a way of tracking other changes in society. The 1665 plague in London was the basis for Daniel Defoe’s “A Journal of the Plague Year,” which was published decades later and was noted for its detailed account of the city’s ordeal. Defoe scholar and Auburn University professor Paula Backscheider notes that his book came out at a time when the Renaissance had challenged religious beliefs, and that for the author the London plague was a way of looking beyond religious reasons for human suffering.

“He is grippingly driven to try to decide if the plague is the will of God,” Backscheider says, “or if there are scientific explanations that would explain how it started and spread, how people could protect themselves from it, and how it might be treated humanely and effectively.”

In the 20th century, Albert Camus’ “The Plague” was widely seen as a parable for the Nazi occupation of France and the eventual liberation — and as a statement on the randomness of fate. Katherine Anne Porter’s “Pale Horse, Pale Rider” was inspired by the flu epidemic of 1918-1919 that killed millions at the same time that World War I, which killed millions more, was ending. She published the short novel in 1939, as a new world war began.

“Her illness is grounded in a real influenza pandemic, but because her illness is associated with the war (it ends with the Armistice), it symbolizes the spiritual malaise of the 20th century,” says Dorothy Unrue, a Porter scholar who edited a volume of her work for the Library of America.

(Doubleday, left, and Victoria Blewer via AP)

Chris Bohjalian’s new novel, “The Red Lotus,” has just been published. The author looks for stories about “heartbreak and dread” and thought of a pandemic — an idea he developed after reading an article about mice carrying viruses resistant to treatment. In his book, rats are the carriers of diseases, although people are the real villains.

“I don’t view the possible pandemic in the novel as a metaphor,” he says. “(But) a pathogen doesn’t attack a human with conscious malice. But humans? We are all too conscious of the carnage we can inflict on one another.”

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Follow AP National Writer Hillel Italie on Twitter at @hitalie.

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Follow AP coverage of the virus outbreak at https://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak

Virus coordinator Birx is Trump’s data-whisperer

By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR and AAMER MADHALAN



FILE - In this March 20, 2020, file photo President Donald Trump listens as White House coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx speaks during a coronavirus task force briefing at the White House in Washington. Birx has emerged as one of the most important voices in the administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, spelling out the implications of the virus in personal terms while attempting to reassure Americans that it is centering its response to the pandemic with a data-driven mindset. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)


WASHINGTON (AP) — For many in the public health and political worlds, Dr. Deborah Birx is the sober scientist advising an unpredictable president. She’s the data whisperer who will help steer President Donald Trump as he ponders how quickly to restart an economy that’s ground to a halt in the coronavirus pandemic.

Others worry that Birx, who stepped away from her job as the U.S. global AIDS coordinator to help lead the White House coronavirus response, may be offering Trump cover to follow some of his worst instincts as he considers whether to have people packing the pews by Easter Sunday.


In coming days, immunologist Birx will be front and center in that debate along with the U.S. government’s foremost infection disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, as well as Vice President Mike Pence. Birx will bring to the discussion what she fondly refers to as her sheet music — data on testing, mortality, demographics and much more.

“What the president has asked us to do is to assemble all the data and give him our best medical recommendation based on all the data,” Birx told reporters. “This is consistent with our mandate to really use every piece of information that we can in order to give the president our opinion that’s backed up by data.”

But will Trump listen?

The president has sent mixed messages on that. He plans to meet with the two doctors and Pence on Monday to review the latest data on the spread of the disease. His administration’s original 15-day guidelines promoting social distancing expire Tuesday.

Over a matter of weeks, Trump has veered from playing down the virus threat to warning Americans it could be summer before the pandemic is under control. And in more recent days, he’s talked eagerly about having parts of the country raring back by Easter in two weeks.

As the president’s message has vacillated, Birx has emerged as one of the most important voices laying out the administration’s pandemic response. She has a way of spelling out the implications of the virus to Americans in personal terms while offering reassurances that the administration is approaching the pandemic with a data-driven mindset.

For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia, and death.

Former Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who helped shepherd Birx’s ambassadorial nomination through the Senate in the Obama administration, said it’s like Birx and Fauci have become a tag team for science in the midst of calamity.

“I can’t imagine how complicated it is to have a boss –- if you will — who insists on saying things on a regular basis that are just not true and aren’t based on any science,” Sebelius said.


In her public comments, Birx has taken pains to avoid publicly contradicting Trump when he’s offered some decidedly unscientific riffs, unlike Fauci, a professional mentor, who has been known to push back pointedly.

Instead, her messaging has toggled between providing digestible interpretations of what the data is saying about the spread of the virus and offering relatable pleas to the American public to practice social distancing to help stem the disease.

In recent days, Birx has received praise from Trump backers and pushback from some fellow scientists after she minimized what she called “very scary” statistical modeling by some infectious disease experts.

One study, published this month by Harvard University epidemiologists, found that the need to maintain social distancing remains crucial in the weeks ahead to prevent the American healthcare system from becoming overwhelmed by new cases.

“The scenario Dr. Birx is ‘assuring’ us about is one in which we somehow escape Italy’s problem of overloaded healthcare system despite the fact that social distancing is not really happening in large parts of the US,” Marc Lipsitch, a co-author of the study, wrote on Twitter.

Birx also has drawn criticism for asserting that there are still beds in intensive care units and a “significant” number of ventilators available in hospitals around New York City -- the area hardest hit by virus. That message doesn’t jibe with the dire warnings of city hospital workers, who in recent days have said they’re ill-equipped and in danger of being overwhelmed by patients stricken with the virus.

Birx’s friends and colleagues say she is one of the adults in the room who is providing the president with clear-headed advice and giving Americans the information they need to stay safe.

“She’s a tough cookie,” said Michael Weinstein, who heads the AIDS Healthcare Foundation and got to know Birx professionally after she was named the global AIDS coordinator in 2014. “She’s 100% about the data.”

In the sea of men in dark suits who have been appearing with Trump for daily briefings, the 63-year-old mother of two with a fondness for colorful scarves stands out. Her seemingly endless scarf collection was even fodder for comedian Paula Poundstone recently on the NPR quiz show “Wait Wait...Don’t tell me!”

Birx’s resume is impressive: She is a U.S. Army physician and recognized AIDS researcher who rose to the rank of colonel, head of the global AIDS program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and a rare Obama administration holdover as the State Department’s ambassador-at-large leading a U.S. taxpayer-funded worldwide campaign to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Birx has also developed a reputation as a tough boss. Some who fall under her watch at the global effort known as PEPFAR have complained that the leadership of her office has been“dictatorial” and “autocratic,” according to a State Department Office of Inspector General audit released earlier this year.

“She has somewhat of a reputation of being a hard task-master,” said John Auerbach, head of the nonprofit Trust for America’s Health.. “She is incredibly hard-working, someone who was driven and would drive other people to work really hard and to do their best work.”

Birx has also been perhaps the most outspoken in calling for Americans to be mindful in how they are interacting with others. And she’s made the case in personal terms.

The doctor says she’s avoided visiting with her young grandchildren as she practices social distancing, and she’s spoken in admiring tones of her two millennial daughters when making the case that younger Americans’ actions will play a key role in determining how quickly the country can contain the virus.

She also has spoken of her grandmother living with a lifetime of guilt, because she caught the flu at school as a girl and, in turn, infected her mother — one of an estimated 50 million people worldwide who died in the 1918 influenza epidemic.

“She never forgot that she was the child that was in school that innocently bought that flu home,” Birx said of her grandmother.

Birx, who declined to be interviewed for this article, told a Christian TV network popular with Trump’s evangelical base that she’s confident that the president is, like her, a student of data.

“He’s been so attentive to the scientific literature and the details and the data,” Birx told CBN. “I think his ability to analyze and integrate data that comes out of his long history in business has really been a real benefit during these discussions about medical issues because in the end, data is data.”


SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/03/she-drank-kool-aid-viewers-baffled-as-dr.html

#FRACKQUAKE
5 earthquakes rattle West Texas; largest is magnitude 

March 26, 2020

EL PASO, Texas (AP) — A series of five earthquakes centered near the same remote area of West Texas rattled the region on Thursday.

The temblors registered between 3.0 and 5.0 Thursday starting around 4 a.m., according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The epicenter was about 25 miles (40 kilometers) west of Mentone in Loving County on the border with New Mexico. The largest was a magnitude 5.0 about six hours later.

That quake could be felt as far as 150 miles (245 kilometers) away in El Paso, Texas and neighboring Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

“It felt like a truck going by, then you could hear a crack in the walls,” said Verta Sparks, a deputy clerk at the Loving County Sheriff’s Department. She said the department hadn’t gotten any calls for service.

No major damage or injuries were immediately reported in the sparsely populated area. Loving County has only about 100 residents but is full of truck traffic serving the oil drilling industry in the surrounding Permian Basin.

Geologists say thousands of earthquakes recorded in recent years have been linked to the underground injection of wastewater from oil and gas production.

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In Egypt, transgender activist fights battle on many fronts


By MAGGIE MICHAEL and MARIAM FAM 3/27/2020

CAIRO (AP) — Malak el-Kashif left home on her birthday seven years ago. Walking into an uncertain future, she was underdressed for the weather and armed with little— except for some makeup, a few women’s accessories and 50 Egyptian pounds (at the time about six American dollars).

“I was afraid but I didn’t hesitate,” she said. “There weren’t any other solutions.”

That night, el-Kashif was a 13-year-old boy named Abdel-Rahman. She has since emerged as perhaps Egypt’s most outspoken transgender woman activist.

It’s a label that in a largely conservative and patriarchal society has meant battling a war on multiple fronts.

“When you declare you are different, you should get ready for war. A big war,” she said. “The society will stomp on you and treat you like you are the enemy.”

The dresser of Malak el-Kashif in her bedroom, in Cairo, Egypt. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)

She has been ostracized by her family and scorned by some who accuse her of tampering with God’s creation. She has been attacked by others scandalized by her activism for LGBTQ rights. Legally, she still holds a male’s identity card.

None of this has deterred her from publicly advocating for transgenders’ rights. She appeared on a television show in a blonde wig--which she now sees as a cringe-worthy fashion faux pas. On her Facebook page, she has campaigned for transgenders, chronicled her transition and posted photos with a rainbow background. She rails against homophobia, sexual harassment, bullying and the patriarchy.

“If I wanted to hide, then I would have hidden and just stayed at my parents’ and not become a trans and saved myself all of this. ... It’s just not me, not Malak,” she said. “Malak is someone else.”

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Officially transitioning in Egypt can be complex. It involves medical tests, psychological treatment for two years and approvals by medical specialists and religious authorities. Success is far from assured.

Osama Abdel-Hay, head of the doctors’ syndicate’s “gender correction” committee, said a cleric used to sit on the committee alongside medical specialists. He stopped attending meetings and the committee’s work was disrupted for years, he said. “He wasn’t supportive of the decisions of the committee,” he said, refusing to elaborate.

Malak el-Kashif shows her tattoo and scars on her shoulder from a suicide attempt, in her bedroom, in Cairo, Egypt. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)

Abdel-Hay said he didn’t recall how many approvals were given to transgenders. His assistant scribbled on a piece of paper summing up the committee’s work between 2014 and 2017: 87 approvals for “physical” reasons but zero for “gender identity disorder.” Thirty-one were left unresolved.

Now, under a new system, the medical committee sends the cases it approves to Al-Azhar’s Islamic Research Academy. Out of three cases sent to the religious scholars, two were rejected. The approved one cited a fertility disorder.

“I think they are sensitive to changing the sex because they don’t want to change the creation of God,” he said, referring to the religious establishment in Egypt. The syndicate that oversees the committee doesn’t want to clash with Al-Azhar over this issue, he said, but added, “if there was no religious opinion in the process, approvals would have been faster.”

Abdel-Hady Zarei, who heads the fatwa committee at Al-Azhar, said there cannot be one religious opinion for the cases. Instead, each must be studied by a group of religious scholars who hear from medical specialists. Decisions are made on a case-by-case basis, he said, adding the issue “is put in the hands of the medical specialists because they are the experts.”

Malak el-Kashif shows her identification card that has not been changed after her transition, in Cairo, Egypt. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)

The surgery must provide a benefit or prevent a harm, he said. There may be a consensus “one case will lead to a correction” while another “is just a tendency or desire toward the other gender.”

Nazeer Ayad, secretary-general of the Islamic Research Academy, told The Associated Press that sex “change or correction” is only allowed in “exceptional cases,” like when the sex cannot be determined as either male or female.

“It’s a medical issue,” he said. “The academy and the sharia scholars make their decision based on what the doctors say.”

El-Kashif said she never received a response to her case. She was diagnosed with “gender identity disorder,” she said. The term was replaced in the American Psychiatric Association’s diagnostic guide by “gender dysphoria” — a conflict between assigned gender at birth and the one a person identifies with, which may lead to significant distress.

An approval would have allowed her to have the surgeries at a public hospital, paving the way for changing her ID.

She argued the decision should be purely medical.

“When you get sick, do you see a doctor or a sheikh? A doctor,” she said. “When a woman is giving birth does she go to the hospital or to the mosque? The hospital.”

Malak el-Kashif sits in her room in Cairo, Egypt. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty
Malak el-Kashif stands on her balcony as the sun sets, in Cairo, Egypt. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)


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El-Kashif grew up in a religious, traditional household where she memorized parts of the Quran. At a home where “a man is a man and a woman is a woman,” she enjoyed more freedom as a boy than her sisters or the girls in her neighborhood.

The advantages did not matter. After playing with two girlfriends, making dresses for dolls, the then 9-year-old declared to her mother: “I am not a boy. I am a girl.” She was banished to her room. When her father arrived, he beat her, she said.

The worst part came next. She called it “my struggle with the mirror” phase. Years of asking Who am I? If I am a boy then why do I think this way? If I am a girl then why do I look the way I do?

“This was the hardest phase ever, even harder than confronting society, harder than prison,” she said. “It was a huge fight that no one could protect me from.”

Malak el-Kashif puts on makeup in her bedroom, in Cairo, Egypt. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)

Compounding her dilemma, she didn’t have the vocabulary to explain her situation. That changed when her sister said the actress in a movie she was watching was transgender. She started researching.

She experimented with makeup and set up fake identities online. On her birthday, she received an ultimatum: follow the rules or leave. “I picked the tougher option.”

El-Kashif’s mother declined comment for this story.

Sometimes, el-Kashif slept in a park or stayed up all night. For money, she swept up hair at a salon or mopped staircases.

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El-Kashif’s battles are etched on her slender body. The scars peeking underneath her top are from the time she threw herself from the fifth floor. The ones on her arm are a reminder of cutting herself with razors more times than she can count.

Then there are the invisible wounds that chronicle a life of hardship and defiance.

There’s the day she went out in a black wig and pink shoes. She said her father and brother found her and tore her clothes off her body as they took her home. There is the fear she will die alone and the feeling that when her mother looked at her, she saw not her child but a “freak.”

Malak el-Kashif smokes a cigarette in the balcony of her apartment in Cairo, Egypt. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)

In a moment of reconciliation, el-Kashif posted a picture of silver socks and a pink watch on Facebook. “My mother brought these to me and said she felt she gave birth to me all over again. ... I am very happy, the happiest person on earth,” she wrote. The relationship is complicated with ups and downs.

El-Kashif punctuates her recounting of painful life events with jokes and sarcastic comments. As she talks, she smokes heavily, fidgets or plays with her hair--which she had colored red and often wears a lipstick shade to match.

“She is traumatized. This is (what happens) when you topple the temple,” said Mozn Hassan, a leading feminist activist and a friend of el-Kashif’s. “These people, that Malak is one example of, experience multilayers of violence and exclusion all the time.”

Reda al-Danbouki, executive director of the Women’s Center for Guidance and Legal Awareness, said “most trans people (here) prefer to remain silent so they can retain even a small part of their rights. They don’t want a confrontation with society on top of what happens with their families.” El-Kashif “has shocked the patriarchy.”

Malak el-Kashif poses for a photograph on a street in Cairo, Egypt. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)

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El-Kashif’s activism extends beyond advocating for the LGBTQ community. She was arrested last year after she called for protests following a fatal train crash because of what she saw as government negligence. She was imprisoned in a men’s prison. The arrest, her third, sparked an outcry as activists and rights groups feared for her safety, especially due to her gender identity. She said she was held in solitary confinement.

Hassan said pressure mounted on authorities at the time to isolate her from male prisoners to spare her possible violence.

After her release, el-Kashif filed a lawsuit demanding special places for holding transgenders in prisons and police stations.

Now, she lives in a sparsely furnished rental. One of the drawings in her room shows bare legs, one shackled by an iron ball. A note taped to the mirror carries a grim reminder: “Quit the chemistry. Otherwise, it will do to you what it did before,” a reference to abuse of anti-depressants.

Day-to-day life can be hard. On a trip to a bank, an employee said he would have to call the police to witness any transaction because her ID showed a teenage boy.

Shortly before her birthday last year, el-Kashif posted a picture of herself online writing that she had completed her gender transition surgeries.

Malak el-Kashif, reflected in the rear view mirror of a car, looks at her mobile phone, in Cairo, Egypt. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)

“Today is the day I defeated society,” she wrote. “From this day on, there’s only Malak.”

She was flooded with thousands of messages. Some congratulated her; many insulted her.

The comments ranged from “pray to God to heal you” or “you have lost in this life and the afterlife” to “If you were my son, I would have set you on fire.”

But other encounters have left her feeling like she’s making a difference.

One mother approached her at a hospital and said she sought medical help for her daughter after hearing el-Kashif’s story. Another time, a transgender man stopped her to let her know that “To me, you are resistance.”

Malak el-Kashif walks in downtown Cairo, Egypt. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)

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Fam reported from Winter Park, Fla.

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support from the Lilly Endowment through the Religion News Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Garment workers going unpaid as fashion labels cancel orders


1 of 3
FILE - In this Feb. 13, 2014 file photo, Bangladeshi garment workers arrive for work early morning in Dhaka, Bangladesh. A survey of factory owners in Bangladesh has found that major fashion retailers that are closing shops and laying off workers in Europe and the U.S. also are canceling their sometimes already completed orders, as workers often go unpaid. A report released Friday, March 27, 2020, by Mark Anner, director of the Center of Global Rights, found the coronavirus crisis has resulted in millions of factory workers being sent home without the wages or severance they are owed. About 4.1 million people work in apparel factories in Bangladesh, the world's No. 2 garment exporter after China. (AP Photo/A.M. Ahad, File)


DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — A survey of factory owners in Bangladesh found that major fashion retailers that are closing shops and laying off workers in Europe and the U.S. are also canceling their sometimes already completed orders, as workers often go unpaid.

A report released Friday by Mark Anner, director of Pennsylvania State University’s Center for Global Workers’ Rights, says the coronavirus crisis has resulted in millions of factory workers, mostly women from rural areas, being sent home without the wages or severance pay they are owed.

About 4.1 million people work in apparel factories in Bangladesh, the world’s No. 2 garment exporter after China. The South Asian country is just beginning to feel the direct impact of the pandemic. But the shocks to its export markets have been cascading into its economy for weeks.


The disruptions from the virus outbreak are straining a fragile supply chain in which big buyers have been squeezing their suppliers for years. The government, having offered huge tax incentives to entice manufacturers and buyers to move to Bangladesh, has scant resources to help protect workers.

More than 1 million garment workers in Bangladesh already have lost their jobs or have been furloughed because of order cancellations and the failure of buyers to pay for canceled shipments. Nearly 60% of the 316 factories that responded to the survey by the Center for Global Workers’ Rights and the Worker Rights Consortium, a Washington, D.C.-based labor rights organization, said they had already closed down most of their production.

About 6% of factories have had all orders canceled due to the outbreak, while nearly 46% said they have lost a big share of their orders.

The survey, conducted March 21-25, included nearly 200 large suppliers with more than 750 workers that mainly make garments for European markets.

It found nearly all buyers refused to contribute to wages for those workers, and more than 70% of those furloughed were sent home without pay. Of the workers who were fired, less than 20% were given severance pay, the survey found.

Anner and other labor experts say the big fashion retailers are resorting to “force majeure” clauses in their contracts — usually used in case of natural disasters or war — to justify not paying manufacturers that have already paid for fabric and other materials and labor to make the orders. Earlier, suppliers were being penalized for late deliveries resulting from difficulties obtaining fabric or other materials due to factory shutdowns and other disruptions caused by the virus outbreak that originated in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.

Factory owners are unlikely to fight back out of fear they might lose future business once the crisis passes.

The virus outbreak “is showing us just how extreme that power imbalance is,” Anner said. “It’s just an absolute disaster.”

The damage is not limited to the garments sector. The International Labor Organization has estimated that 25 million jobs may be lost due to the virus outbreak.

Bangladesh, a nation of 160 million, is deploying soldiers and police to enforce a nationwide 10-day shutdown to slow the spread of the coronavirus in the densely populated country. But in an indication of the importance of the garment sector, which provides 80% of the country’s export earnings, those factories have been deemed an essential industry.

Kalpona Akter, executive director of the Bangladesh Center for Workers Solidarity group, blasted buyers for canceling orders. “The workers are panicked,” she told The Associated Press

“We have a cruel reality here. Simply, they will go hungry, their families will suffer, their children, their parents will suffer for lack of food, medicine. The global brands will lose a fraction of their profit, the owners will also lose their share, but the workers will be left without food and medicine,” Akter said.

The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association said that as of Friday orders worth about $2.7 billion had been canceled or suspended, directly affecting nearly 2 million workers.

In a video message, its president, Rubana Huq, urged global buyers including H&M and Wal-Mart to not cancel orders and to accept those already finished or under production.

“We will have 4.1 million workers literally going hungry if we don’t all step up to a commitment to the welfare of the workers,” Huq said.

“One thing is very clear, our foremost responsibility was towards our workers. We are a manufacturing country, our reality and your reality is totally different, but it is not a time to point out differences, it’s a time through which we need to work together,” she said.

Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Wednesday announced a 50 billion taka (over $600 million) support package for export-oriented manufacturers, mainly apparel makers, to help pay workers. But factory owners say it will only provide about one month’s salary.

“We appreciate the announcement of the prime minister. This is a very good gesture, but I want to say very humbly that it’s very tiny, very small,” said S.M. Khaled, managing director of Snowtex Group.

Khaled said his main factory, which employs nearly 10,000 workers, is still running but might have to stop if more orders are canceled.

“Our buyers are suspending orders, the workers are confused, the owners are confused, this is really a very bad time,” he said.

“We have imported fabrics and other necessary products for making garments. Now there is a huge backlog,” Khaled said. “How will we survive?”

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AP Asia Business Editor Kurtenbach reported from Bangkok.

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Report: www.workersrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Abandoned-Penn-State-WRC-Report-March-27-2020.pdf

Condom shortage looms after coronavirus lockdown shuts world's top producer

THEYARE MADE OF LATEX HENCE THE SLANG NAME RUBBERS

MALAYSIA WAS THE HUB OF THE RUBBER INDUSTRY POST WWII

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - A global shortage of condoms is looming, the world’s biggest producer said, after a coronavirus lockdown forced it to shut down production.


Malaysia’s Karex Bhd (KARE.KL) makes one in every five condoms globally. It has not produced a single condom from its three Malaysian factories for more than a week due to a lockdown imposed by the government to halt the spread of the virus.


That’s already a shortfall of 100 million condoms, normally marketed internationally by brands such as Durex, supplied to state healthcare systems such as Britain’s NHS or distributed by aid programs such as the UN Population Fund.

The company was given permission to restart production on Friday, but with only 50% of its workforce, under a special exemption for critical industries.


“It will take time to jumpstart factories and we will struggle to keep up with demand at half capacity,” Chief Executive Goh Miah Kiat told Reuters.

“We are going to see a global shortage of condoms everywhere, which is going to be scary,” he said. “My concern is that for a lot of humanitarian programs deep down in Africa, the shortage will not just be two weeks or a month. That shortage can run into months.”

Malaysia is Southeast Asia’s worst affected country, with 2,161 coronavirus infections and 26 deaths. The lockdown is due to remain in place at least until April 14.


FILE PHOTO: A worker performs a test on condoms at Malaysia's Karex condom factory in Pontian, 320 km (200 miles) southeast of Kuala Lumpur November 7, 2012. Malaysia's Karex Industries is the world's largest condom maker by volume. Picture taken November 7, 2012. REUTERS/Bazuki Muhammad/File Photo

The other major condom-producing countries are China, where the coronavirus originated and led to widespread factory shutdowns, and India and Thailand, which are seeing infections spiking only now.

Makers of other critical items like medical gloves have also faced hiccups in their operations in Malaysia.

In emailed comments, a spokesman for Durex said operations are continuing as normal and the company was not experiencing any supply shortages. “For our consumers, many of whom will be unable to access shops, our Durex online stores remain open for business.”

“The good thing is that the demand for condoms is still very strong because like it or not, it’s still an essential to have,” Goh said. “Given that at this point in time people are probably not planning to have children. It’s not the time, with so much uncertainty.”

AMERIKA THIRD WORLD NATION

At some U.S. hospitals, drugs, catheters, oxygen tanks run low

NEW YORK (Reuters) - It’s not just protective facemasks that are in short supply: health workers in U.S. hospitals are reporting dwindling stocks of drugs, catheters and other medical miscellany vital for caring for a surge in patients stricken by the coronavirus outbreak.
Marney Gruber, a doctor who works in emergency rooms around New York City, said a number of commonly used medications are in short supply, and at least one hospital had run out of central line kits, which are used to administer drugs to patients in intensive care.

“Never ever before have I heard of that being an issue,” Gruber said in an interview on Friday. “These are staples in emergency medicine and ICUs. These are your bread and butter, truly, your very basic essentials.”

Hospitals have quickly begun to strain under the surge as the city has become the global epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic. At least 366 people have died in the city from the virus this month, and more than 4,700 people have been hospitalized.

The drugs running low include midazolam and fentanyl, both of which can be used to sedate patients whose lungs have been damaged by the new virus and need a mechanical ventilator to function, Gruber said.

The hospitals are also short on Levophed, which treats low blood pressure and heart problems, and Albuterol inhalers, which normally treat asthma but appear to help those suffering from COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the virus.

In addition to ventilators, some hospitals are running out of oxygen tanks, Gruber said. Patients normally only use the tanks when being transported from one part of the hospital to another, but with wall-mounted oxygen units all taken, doctors have been hooking COVID-19 patients up to the tanks in intensive care unit rooms.

PLEADING FOR CLOROX WIPES

Shortages of vital protective equipment for health workers, including N95 respirator masks that fit tightly over the nose and mouth, have been widely reported in recent weeks, caused in part by poor stockpiling efforts and by disruptions in global supply chains.

But vanishing supplies of other medical resources are alarming nurses and doctors in hospitals around the country.

Dr. Kent Collin, the medical director at the emergency department of the St. Joseph Mercy Chelsea Hospital in Chelsea, Michigan, sent an email to a neighborhood mailing list soliciting donations of disinfecting wipes, which he said he could pick up from doorsteps.

“If anyone would be willing to part with your Clorox wipes, any help would be appreciated,” he wrote. “Costco is completely out at this time or else I would not have bothered you guys.”

Mary MacDonald, a nurse at the Ascension Providence Hospital in Novi, Michigan, said tearfully in a video uploaded to Facebook that she was seeing her workplace run out of fentanyl and propofol, another drug used to sedate patients on ventilators, as well as the basic painkiller acetaminophen, commonly known as Tylenol.

“This is truly scary and nobody’s taking it seriously,” she said.

A spokesman for the hospital did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the hospital told the Detroit News in a statement that it was “taking proactive steps with our distributor and suppliers to ensure access to supplies.”

Simpler necessities are running short, too. In New Jersey, Dr. Lisa, who asked to be identified by her first name because she was not authorized to speak with journalists, recalled a kind offer from her aunt to make face masks after reading about the shortages.

Dr. Lisa told her the masks she needs cannot be made, but she could use more scrub caps to protect her hair.

“Well, we can make that,” she recalled her aunt saying. “We know how to sew. Send me a pattern.”

Within five minutes, her aunt had recruited other relatives to pitch in, and they mailed out 10 homemade scrub hats for her and her co-workers.

“That’s the beauty that you see in people,” Dr. Lisa said.

Haiti hospital chief kidnapped amid coronavirus emergency

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - The director of one of Haiti’s top hospitals was kidnapped on Friday, prompting staff to refuse to take in new patients in protest as the impoverished country battles an outbreak of the novel coronavirus amid a spike in gang violence.


Medical staff display signs after the director of the hospital, surgeon Jerry Bitar, was kidnapped, as Haiti battles an outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) amid a spike in gang violence, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti March 27, 2020. REUTERS/Jeanty Junior Augustin

Dr. Jerry Bitar, a surgeon, was kidnapped shortly after leaving for work at Hospital Bernard Mevs from his home in an upmarket neighborhood of the capital, hospital staff told Reuters.

Kidnappings for ransom have sharply increased this year amid a political and economic crisis in Haiti, which according to the World Bank is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Police confirmed 15 kidnapping cases in January alone. Gangs appear to strike indiscriminately, with victims ranging from Haitian schoolchildren, lawmakers and businessmen to foreign aid workers.

A crowd gathered outside the facility in solidarity with Bitar, who runs the hospital together with his twin brother, while staff chanted in unison calls for his release. Haitian media outlets also pleaded for bandits to free Bitar.

“In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, it is abnormal to take the hospital’s doctor,” said Jean Wilguens Charles, a local resident whose friends have received treatment at the hospital. “We demand his liberation without conditions.”

Medical assistant Claude Devil said the hospital usually attended all Haitians, including those who had no money to pay for services, but would not take in new patients while still attempting to look after existing ones as best possible.


“There are several patients waiting to be operated but we cannot work without the doctors’ order,” he said.

The relevant authorities are following the case, a Health Ministry spokesman said.

The Bernard Mevs hospital is a trauma and critical care center and is not treating coronavirus cases currently, but could need to if the disease spreads substantially in the country, where healthcare services and sanitation infrastructure are inadequate.

According to a 2019 study by the Research and Education consortium for Acute Care in Haiti (REACH), Haiti has only 64 ventilators for a population of around 11 million, which makes it especially vulnerable to an outbreak of the highly contagious coronavirus, which causes the respiratory illness COVID-19.

“This is a serious concern, especially given the relatively high proportion of the population considered to be at an elevated risk,” the Center for Economic and Policy Research wrote in a paper published on Friday, co-authored by its analysts Jake Johnston and Kira Paulemon.

Haitian authorities have so far confirmed eight cases of the coronavirus. President Jovenel Moise last week declared a state of emergency, ordering schools, factories, and places of worship shut to prevent the spread of the virus, closing the country’s borders to people and imposing a curfew.


But the streets continue to buzz as many in the country, where more than half the population lives under the poverty line, ignore recommendations to stay at home or practice social distancing. Many do not have access to sources of news.

Even with the best intentions, tricky access to clean water makes it difficult for Haitians to frequently wash their hands, the hygiene mantra that health experts are preaching as a top defense against the spread of the coronavirus.


Reporting by Andre Paultre in Port-au-Prince; Writing by Sarah Marsh; Editing by Leslie Adler
Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Doctor working with Amazon tribe tests positive for coronavirus

BRASILIA (Reuters) - A doctor working with the largest tribe in the Amazon has tested positive for the coronavirus, Brazil’s Health Ministry said on Friday, ringing alarm bells that the epidemic could spread to vulnerable and remote indigenous communities with devastating effect.


FILE PHOTO: Twenty-year-old Regiane Doroteo Guerreiro (front R), a Tikuna indigenous woman and a representative queen of amateur soccer team Wotchimaucu, sits with relatives at a Tikuna community before attending the opening ceremony of the "Peladao Verde" championship in Manaus September 17, 2011. REUTERS/Ricardo Moraes/File Photo

The doctor, who has not been named, had returned from vacation on March 18 to work with the Tikunas, a tribe of more than 30,000 people who live in the upper Amazon near the borders with Colombia and Peru.

He developed a fever later that day and went into isolation, testing positive for the respiratory disease COVID-19 a week later, the ministry said.

Eight tribe members he treated on his first day back working for the indigenous health service Sesai have also been isolated in their homes and are being monitored, the ministry said.

The doctor’s infection is the first confirmed case of the virus directly present in an indigenous village. It raises fears of an outbreak that could be lethal for Brazil’s 850,000 indigenous people that have a history of decimation by diseases brought by Europeans, from smallpox and malaria to the flu.


Health experts say their way of life in communal hamlets under large thatched structures increases the risk of contagion if any single member contracts the new coronavirus. Social isolation is hard for tribes to practise.

The ministry said the doctor had no symptoms when he returned to work using a protective mask and gloves, but quarantined himself as soon as he developed a fever.

News website G1’s columnist Matheus Leitão reported that the doctor is Brazilian and may have caught the virus while vacationing in southern Brazil or on the boat ride up the Amazon to his work place at Santo Antônio do Içá.

So far, Sesai has reported four suspected cases of the coronavirus in indigenous communities, with only one in the Amazon.

But doctors fear the virus could spread fast among tribes whose immune systems often are already weakened by malnutrition, hepatitis B, tuberculosis and diabetes.


About a third of indigenous deaths in Brazil are caused by existing respiratory diseases.

The H1N1 epidemic in 2016 killed hundreds of indigenous people, mainly of the Guaraní tribe in the colder south of Brazil, where about half of them caught the bug.


Reporting by Anthony Boadle, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/03/mutual-aid-solidarity-and-humor-in.html

Nigeria needs $330 million for coronavirus battle, turns to private sector


ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigeria has appealed to private companies to make voluntary contributions towards the 120 billion naira ($330 million) the government says it needs to fight the coronavirus epidemic.


Two men with protective face mask walks past a poster at Wuse market, as the authorities try to limit the spread of coronavirus in Abuja, Nigeria March 27, 2020. REUTERS/Afolabi Sotunde

“So far, the federal government has made giant strides in the fight but it is clear that the private sector needs to step in and support efforts already being made,” Central Bank Governor Godwin Emefiele said.

The crash in oil prices, which have fallen by nearly two- thirds this year due in large part to a coronavirus-induced demand collapse, has seriously battered Nigeria’s finances.

Finance Minister Zainab Ahmed this week pledged 6.5 billion naira to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, and a further 10 billion naira for Lagos state, which has the bulk of the nation’s confirmed cases.


“To procure all needed equipment, material, and all infrastructure needed to fight this pandemic, over N120b need to be raised,” Emefiele said.

He has formed a coalition led by the Aliko Dangote Foundation and Access Bank that is already working to raise funds.

On Friday, Nigeria’s state oil company NNPC pledged $30 million, with the help of 33 oil companies, including international majors Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil and Nigerian companies Oando, Lekoil and Seplat.

NNPC said it would offer more in partnership with downstream companies. That assistance, offered by companies, includes 200 ambulances, test kits and laboratory equipment, NNPC said in a tweet.


Bank UBA Group, led by Tony Elumelu, on Thursday pledged 1 billion naira to Nigeria as part of a broader 5 billion naira coronavirus donation. Other prominent Nigerians, including Dangote and five others, would ensure their organizations also contribute 1 billion naira each, Emefiele said.

As of Friday, Nigeria had 65 coronavirus cases and one death.