Here are the 4 most stunning revelations about Jared Kushner’s ever-growing role in Trump’s coronavirus response

JARED IS RUNNING A PARALLEL CORONAVIRUS CRISIS TEAM MADE UP OF HIMSELF, THE GRAND POOBAH;THE  MINISTER OF EVERYTHING.
AND THAT'S ALL 
By Alex Henderson, AlterNet- Commentary 4/2/2020

As the worldwide death toll from the coronavirus pandemic surges past 48,500 (according to figures reported by John Hopkins University in Baltimore early Thursday morning, April 2) and the United States becomes #3 in deaths from COVID-19 (behind only Italy and Spain), President Donald Trump is trying to give the impression that he is being as proactive as possible. Gone are the days when Trump irresponsibly described the pandemic as a “hoax” and made the ludicrous claim that Democrats and Never Trump conservatives were exaggerating its dangers. And Trump’s efforts to appear proactive are asserting themselves not only with his coronavirus task force (which includes medical experts Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx), but also, with a separate coronavirus team led by White House Senior Adviser Jared Kushner (the president’s son-in-law).

Kushner’s activities during the pandemic are the focus of an in-depth article written by journalists Adam Cancryn and Dan Diamond and published in Politico this week. According to Cancryn and Diamond, “What started two-and-a-half weeks ago as an effort to utilize the private sector to fix early testing failures has become an all-encompassing portfolio for Kushner, who…. has taken charge of the most important challenges facing the federal government: expanding test access, ramping up industry production of needed medical supplies, and figuring out how to get those supplies to key locations.”

Here are some of the most important points from Politico and other media outlets about Kushner’s role in the Trump Administration’s response to coronavirus.

1. Kushner reportedly told Trump that Andrew Cuomo was exaggerating the need for ventilations in New York State — whereas Anthony Fauci agrees with Cuomo

In Democratic circles, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is being praised as “America’s governor” for his aggressive response to the pandemic. Cuomo has been warning that hospitals in his state, especially in New York City, are absolutely overwhelmed but will be even more overwhelmed in the weeks ahead. And according to Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman, Kushner reportedly told Trump that Cuomo is exaggerating the need for ventilators in New York State — a claim Trump has echoed.


On March 26, Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that New York didn’t need “40,000 or 30,000 ventilators.” But when CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Dr. Anthony Fauci if he had any reason to doubt Cuomo, the expert immunologist responded, “There are a lot of different calculations. My experience, I tend to believe Gov. Cuomo.”





2. There is a ‘limited vetting of private companies’ in Kushner’s operation

In their Politico article, Cancryn and Diamond explain that with Kushner’s coronavirus operation, “People around Kushner are fielding all manner of outside pitches, making it difficult for the group to stay focused. And there is limited vetting of private companies and executives’ financial interests, raising questions about the motivations and potential conflicts inherent in an operation that relies on an ill-defined and ever-expanding group of outside contributors.”

3. CREW fears a lack of transparency

Cancryn and Diamond, in their Politico piece, note that the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has expressed some concerns about Kushner’s coronavirus operation — including a lack of transparency, insufficient vetting of the private companies involved and possible conflicts of interest.

Jordan Libowitz, a CREW spokesperson, explained, “They’re not necessarily doing something nefarious, but if they were, this is what they would do to hide it.”

4. Kushner’s coronavirus authority now exceeds that of Health Secretary Alex Azar

Previously, Alex Azar (secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) led Trump’s coronavirus response. But Cancryn and Diamond point out that Kushner now has a more prominent role than Azar, noting, “Kushner’s team has stepped in to coordinate decision-making at agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services — and the scope of his authority now exceeds that of Health Secretary Alex Azar, the one-time leader of Trump’s coronavirus response.”

Opinion
Jared Kushner Is Going to Get Us All Killed

Trump’s son-in-law has no business running the coronavirus response.


By Michelle Goldberg

Opinion Columnist
April 2, 2020, 8:34 p.m. ET

Jared Kushner in March. He made his debut at the White House coronavirus briefing on Thursday. Credit...Pool photo by Evan Vucci

Reporting on the White House’s herky-jerky coronavirus response, Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman has a quotation from Jared Kushner that should make all Americans, and particularly all New Yorkers, dizzy with terror.

According to Sherman, when New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, said that the state would need 30,000 ventilators at the apex of the coronavirus outbreak, Kushner decided that Cuomo was being alarmist. “I have all this data about I.C.U. capacity,” Kushner reportedly said. “I’m doing my own projections, and I’ve gotten a lot smarter about this. New York doesn’t need all the ventilators.” (Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top expert on infectious diseases, has said he trusts Cuomo’s estimate.)

Even now, it’s hard to believe that someone with as little expertise as Kushner could be so arrogant, but he said something similar on Thursday, when he made his debut at the White House’s daily coronavirus briefing: “People who have requests for different products and supplies, a lot of them are doing it based on projections which are not the realistic projections.”

Kushner has succeeded at exactly three things in his life. He was born to the right parents, married well and learned how to influence his father-in-law. Most of his other endeavors — his biggest real estate deal, his foray into newspaper ownership, his attempt to broker a peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians — have been failures

Undeterred, he has now arrogated to himself a major role in fighting the epochal health crisis that’s brought America to its knees. “Behind the scenes, Kushner takes charge of coronavirus response,” said a Politico headline on Wednesday. This is dilettantism raised to the level of sociopathy.

The journalist Andrea Bernstein looked closely at Kushner’s business record for her recent book “American Oligarchs: The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power,” speaking to people on all sides of his real estate deals as well as those who worked with him at The New York Observer, the weekly newspaper he bought in 2006.

Kushner, Bernstein told me, “really sees himself as a disrupter.” Again and again, she said, people who’d dealt with Kushner told her that whatever he did, he “believed he could do it better than anybody else, and he had supreme confidence in his own abilities and his own judgment even when he didn’t know what he was talking about.”

It’s hard to overstate the extent to which this confidence is unearned. Kushner was a reportedly mediocre student whose billionaire father appears to have bought him a place at Harvard. Taking over the family real estate company after his father was sent to prison, Kushner paid $1.8 billion — a record, at the time — for a Manhattan skyscraper at the very top of the real estate market in 2007. The debt from that project became a crushing burden for the family business. (Kushner was able to restructure the debt in 2011, and in 2018 the project was bailed out by a Canadian asset management company with links to the government of Qatar.) He gutted the once-great New York Observer, then made a failed attempt to create a national network of local politics websites.

His forays into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — for which he boasted of reading a whole 25 books — have left the dream of a two-state solution on life support. Michael Koplow of the centrist Israel Policy Forum described Kushner’s plan for the Palestinian economy as “the Monty Python version of Israeli-Palestinian peace.”

Now, in our hour of existential horror, Kushner is making life-or-death decisions for all Americans, showing all the wisdom we’ve come to expect from him.

“Mr. Kushner’s early involvement with dealing with the virus was in advising the president that the media’s coverage exaggerated the threat,” reported The Times. It was apparently at Kushner’s urging that Trump announced, falsely, that Google was about to launch a website that would link Americans with coronavirus testing. (As The Atlantic reported, a health insurance company co-founded by Kushner’s brother — which Kushner once owned a stake in — tried to build such a site, before the project was “suddenly and mysteriously scrapped.”)

The president was reportedly furious over the website debacle, but Kushner’s authority hasn’t been curbed. Politico reported that Kushner, “alongside a kitchen cabinet of outside experts including his former roommate and a suite of McKinsey consultants, has taken charge of the most important challenges facing the federal government,” including the production and distribution of medical supplies and the expansion of testing. Kushner has embedded his own people in the Federal Emergency Management Agency; a senior official described them to The Times as “a ‘frat party’ that descended from a U.F.O. and invaded the federal government.”

Disaster response requires discipline and adherence to a clear chain of command, not the move-fast-and-break-things approach of start-up culture. Even if Kushner “were the most competent person in the world, which he clearly isn’t, introducing these kind of competing power centers into a crisis response structure is a guaranteed problem,” Jeremy Konyndyk, a former U.S.A.I.D. official who helped manage the response to the Ebola crisis during Barack Obama’s administration, told me. “So you could have Trump and Kushner and Pence and the governors all be the smartest people in the room, but if there are multiple competing power centers trying to drive this response, it’s still going to be chaos.”

Competing power centers are a motif of this administration, and its approach to the pandemic is no exception. As The Washington Post reported, Kushner’s team added “another layer of confusion and conflicting signals within the White House’s disjointed response to the crisis.” Nor does his operation appear to be internally coherent. “Projects are so decentralized that one team often has little idea what others are doing — outside of that they all report up to Kushner,” reported Politico.

On Thursday, Governor Cuomo said that New York will run out of ventilators in six days. Perhaps Kushner’s projections were incorrect. “I don’t think the federal government is in a position to provide ventilators to the extent the nation may need them,” Cuomo said. “Assume you are on your own in life.” If not in life, certainly in this administration.

RELATED
More from Opinion on Jared Kushner:
Opinion | Frank Bruni: Jared Kushner Fails Up, Again Nov. 26, 2019
Opinion | Ross Douthat: The Corruption Before Trump Oct. 1, 2019
Opinion | The Editorial Board: Questions For and About Jared Kushner March 6, 2019

Michelle Goldberg has been an Opinion columnist since 2017. She is the author of several books about politics, religion and women’s rights, and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2018 for reporting on workplace sexual harassment issues. 

Republican baffled at ‘how our government operates’ now that Jared Kushner has taken charge of Trump’s coronavirus response

April 2, 2020 By Sky Palma


Of all the Trump administration officials tasked with responding to the coronavirus, Jared Kushner has not appeared at any of President Trump’s press briefings. As POLITICO points out, Kushner’s push to utilize the private sector to fix early testing failures is creating concern among some health-agency officials who think Trump may be deferring to Kushner over more seasoned experts, despite the potential conflicts of interest that arise.

“Kushner has relied on select officials, including his one-time former roommate and current U.S. foreign investment czar Adam Boehler, and Brad Smith, the head of Medicare’s innovation center, to organize and manage key projects — bypassing the bureaucratic structures and internal rivalries that slowed progress in the response’s early months,” writes POLITICO’s Adam Cancryn and Dan Diamond.

The limited vetting of private companies and the financial interests of executives have raised concerns, but officials working alongside Kushner insist that all ethics are being taken into consideration. But the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) isn’t entirely convinced.

“They’re not necessarily doing something nefarious, but if they were, this is what they would do to hide it,” CREW spokesperson Jordan Libowitz told POLITICO.

Even some recruited to aid Kushner’s effort have expressed reservations.

“I don’t know how our government operates anymore,” one Republican close to the administration told POLITICO, adding that the sudden authority granted to private sector groups left them with their “eyebrow raised unbelievably high.”

Read the full report over at POLITICO.

The FDA Is Easing Its Ban On Blood Donations From Gay And Bisexual Men Because Of The Coronavirus Pandemic

“The COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented challenges to the US blood supply,” the FDA said Thursday.

Dominic Holden BuzzFeed News Reporter April 2, 2020

Guillaume Souvant / Getty Images

The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday eased its ban on blood donations from men who have sex with men, citing the “unprecedented challenges to the US blood supply” during the coronavirus pandemic.

The new rules allow blood donations from men who have abstained from sex with another man for more than three months; for the past several years, gay and bisexual men couldn’t donate if they’d had sex with a man in the previous year.

Various forms of the ban — which was first implemented in the 1980s as a total prohibition to keep HIV out of the blood supply — were slowly dialed back under the Obama administration, which said screening and tests increasingly ensured a safe blood supply. Even the one-year policy was widely decried as de facto ban for gay and bisexual male blood donors.

But on Thursday, Peter Marks, director of FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, explained the new rules were prudent given that blood “donor centers have experienced a dramatic reduction in donations due to the implementation of social distancing and the cancellation of blood drives.”

“Based on recently completed studies and epidemiologic data,” he added, “the FDA has concluded that current policies regarding certain donor eligibility criteria can be modified without compromising the safety of the blood supply.”

In the scramble to curb the coronavirus pandemic, some medical facilities have announced plans to collect blood plasma — a subset of whole blood that contains antibodies — from those who had overcome COVID-19 and transfuse it to patients who are still sick with the disease. Gay men, however, had complained they were unable to help in the potentially lifesaving program.

The FDA also scaled back other restrictions on blood donations, according to a statement:

For female donors who would have been deferred for having sex with a man who had sex with another man: the agency is changing the recommended deferral period from 12 months to 3 months.

For those with recent tattoos and piercings: the agency is changing the recommended deferral period from 12 months to 3 months.

For those who have traveled to malaria-endemic areas (and are residents of malaria non-endemic countries): the agency is changing the recommended deferral period from 12 months to 3 months.

Alphonso David, head of the LGBTQ advocacy group Human Rights Campaign, applauded the new rules but said, “more needs to be done.”

Democrat Scott Wiener, a member of the California Senate, said in a statement the policy was "still awful."

"The celibacy requirement still irrationally discriminates against gay and bisexual men by placing a celibacy requirement on them without placing that same requirement on sexually active straight people," he continued, adding that "modern HIV testing technology is so accurate and powerful that it will detect any HIV infection that occurred 10-14 days or longer before the donation."

Even the one-year rule had been blasted by lawmakers as being unscientific and needlessly biased. In 2016, several senators urged the Obama administration “to develop better blood donor deferral policies that are grounded in science, based on individual risk factors, don’t unfairly single out one group of individuals, and allow all healthy Americans to donate.”

It was not immediately clear if new rules would affect transgender people — for years, the FDA has enforced incoherent rules on transgender blood donors that effectively banned all transgender people from donating.

Dominic Holden is a political reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.

THE NEW LINE FROM THE TRUMP WHITE HOUSE IS THAT THEIR FAILURE TO PREPARE FOR THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC WAS THE CHINESE WERE AT FAULT......SERIOUSLY....DIDN'T LET THEM KNOW TILL JANUARY....NOT TRUE THEY LEARNED WHEN WE ALL DID DEC.17 WHEN CHINA ANNOUNCED THE WUHAN QUARANTINE. TRUMP ET AL IGNORED FURTHER WARNINGS FROM THEIR OWN INTELLIGENCE REPORTS IN JANUARY AND FEBRUARY UNTIL TRUMP ANNOUNCED THE FIRST CASE OF FIFTEEN THAT WOULD BE GONE LIKE A MIRACLE IN NO TIME IN LATE FEBRUARY.

Staff Said The Free Mask Kits At Jo-Ann Fabrics Are Just Scraps From The Clearance Bin

"It is at best a thinly veiled excuse to draw customers into the store so they buy more nonessential products,” said one Jo-Ann store manager.

Amber Jamieson BuzzFeed News Reporter April 2, 2020

Alex Menendez / AP

An employee in Florida shows off face masks that were created by volunteers with donated materials from Jo-Ann fabric store on March 27.

The journalists at BuzzFeed News are proud to bring you trustworthy and relevant reporting about the coronavirus. To help keep this news free, become a member and sign up for our newsletter, Outbreak Today.

Does a free homemade mask kit made from clearance bin scraps count as an essential item during the coronavirus pandemic?

Major fabric retailer Jo-Ann Fabrics and Crafts claims that the free mask kits it gives out to customers are critical for health care workers and, therefore, its stores across the country need to remain open.

But that argument is not convincing everyone — even Jo-Ann workers themselves, four of whom told BuzzFeed News their stores were supplying poor-quality fabrics and materials in what they viewed as a slapdash effort to remain open.

“We’re trying to keep it [to what the company has described as] the correct kind of fabric— high thread count, 100% cotton — but it's gotten to the point where we are just grabbing random bolts of fabric off the shelves, whatever fits," said one store manager near Seattle, who asked to remain anonymous, like all employees interviewed for this article, in order to protect their employment. "We burned through all our clearance fabric."

"It’s kind of crazy we’re still open to the public," said a Jo-Ann employee from a store in Portland, Oregon.

The company denied the mask kit program had ulterior motives. “While we are sensitive to our Team Members' perception in this uncertain and frightening time, this is in no way a ploy,” a Jo-Ann spokesperson told BuzzFeed News.


Alex Menendez / AP

Wearing masks to stop the spread of the coronavirus has become more commonplace in everyday settings, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is weighing changes to its recommendation that only those with the virus or in a health care setting should wear them. On Wednesday, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti recommended citizens “use homemade face coverings when they are in public and interacting with others,” such as a trip to the supermarket.

Homemade masks may help reduce spit or droplets from infected individuals, if made out of tightly woven cotton and used properly — such as washing hands before or after removal, washing masks after use, and maintaining social distancing. But homemade masks are not recommended for a health care environment, unless no other options are available.

Some officials aren’t convinced either by Jo-Ann’s argument that it is ultimately benefiting health care workers by remaining open.

On Monday, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel denied the craft company's request to classify its retail workers as "critical infrastructure workers." Instead, Nessel ordered the store to close as part of the state's stay-at-home order, which closes all nonessential businesses. On Wednesday, police in Grand Chute, Wisconsin, also closed a Jo-Ann retailer that had remained open a week after the state implemented a shutdown order banning nonessential business.

As the coronavirus pandemic unfolded, customers flocked to Jo-Ann stores to purchase sewing and craft projects for bored kids and people stuck at home to use during quarantine. But many in the crowded stores, where both customers and staff can skew older, were not adhering to social distancing.

Soon, employees and customers flooded Jo-Ann's social media with calls for the stores to close and move to online orders only, with delivery or curbside pickup. A Twitter account called "Jo-Ann Employee Confessions" posted updates of employees saying they feared coming to work and that cleaning supplies were inadequate.


Joann Employee Confessions@EmployeeJoann

Joann is willing to sacrifice their employees. #boycottJoann #closethedoors #healthoverwealth #peopleoverprofit #CoronaVillains03:48 AM - 27 Mar 2020

Jo-Ann’s management had insisted the company was an essential business, in part because they sell supplies to other small home businesses (such as fabric for Etsy sellers). But their most forceful argument was that they were offering supplies to make masks and gowns for essential health care workers, which have been in short supply across the country during the coronavirus crisis.

"The backlash from Jo-Ann’s not closing the store was so huge, they rolled out these masks,” said a manager from a Jo-Ann in the Bay Area, where the store was closed to the public after local authorities intervened following California's shelter-in-place order, but online orders were available for curbside pickup.

The company began offering free mask kits — with enough supplies to make five masks, supposedly to be donated to health care and other essential workers — which people could pick up in stores starting on March 16. On March 21, Jo-Ann’s social media accounts posted a video showing people how to sew a face mask.

"The timing was very fishy, it was when a lot of nonessential businesses were being forced to shut down," said the Jo-Ann staffer from Portland, Oregon.

For one Jo-Ann worker near Columbus, Ohio, the free mask kits announcement was enough for her to stop working, already frustrated at the “Black Friday–type crowds” in stores and the lack of staff and cleaning equipment. “That was kind of my moment when I decided to take a leave of absence,” she told BuzzFeed News. “We announced [the mask kits] and I saw how bad the crowds were, and I just realized Jo-Ann’s weren’t going to shut down throughout this, no matter what, and I had to put myself first.”

“It just felt like a ploy to get around the rules,” she added.


Alex Menendez / AP
A Jo-Ann fabric storefront open on March 27.

But a Jo-Ann spokesperson defended the company’s motives. “We have been and are providing essential materials for a real need," the spokesperson said. "Even the Mayor of Los Angeles yesterday told all residents they should create and wear handmade masks or face coverings in public. It is critical to reserve medical face masks for those who need them in the most dangerous situations.”’

In their statement to BuzzFeed News on Thursday, the Jo-Ann spokesperson broadened their previous focus on health care workers needing their masks to include “health care systems, at-risk organizations, and our communities.”

Both the World Health Organization and the CDC had initially advised ordinary citizens to avoid wearing masks to stop the spread of the coronavirus, as masks are limited and should be kept for health care workers. But as the CDC weighs changing that recommendation — and homemade masks become commonplace — Jo-Ann management argued they were offering a necessary service for health care workers, even if the effectiveness of a nonsurgical mask remains unclear.

“I feel like the public is grossly misinformed about how well the masks work and the purpose for them,” said the Seattle-area Jo-Ann manager.

The first cluster outbreak in the United States happened within an hour's drive of her store, which meant that demand for masks at the store has been particularly high. But she believes the masks are just a publicity stunt, in order to keep stores open and move the focus away from workers complaining about the danger to their health. “It is at best a thinly veiled excuse to draw customers into the store so they buy more nonessential products,” said the manager.

Partly, that's because the mask program was announced without warning to stores, where staff members quickly found themselves without the required materials to assemble the mask kits.

“Initially I volunteered to help make the kits for this — I was led to believe this was something to actually help," said the Seattle-area manager. "The supply was not keeping up with the gigantic demand — we ran out of supplies within three hours of the first day."

Her store ran out of the interface material that is supposed to serve as a filter in the mask "within an hour on the first day." The store was already out of elastic before the free mask program was announced. "We have been using stretchy jewelry cord and bias tape as ties," she said. "The guidelines the hospital have requested specifically asked for a certain kind of material because it needs to withstand bleaching and cleaning by the hospital, and as far as I'm aware, we don't have anything like that."

The coronavirus is spread via droplets, such as when people cough. A well-fitted cotton mask may prevent the spread of the virus if a sick person is wearing it, but other guidelines are also needed, such as washing hands before and after putting on a mask and removing it, and washing a mask in hot water and soap after use.

The four employees who spoke to BuzzFeed News all feared they were risking their health because of masks that were not even suitable for use.

"I have no idea why people are falling for this," said the Bay Area manager, who noted her store was out of elastic and none of the fabric is sanitized or washed. "It’s better than nothing — but put a T-shirt over your face, it’s going to be just as sufficient."

Mayor Garcetti noted that “research shows even a bandana tucked in can have an effect at slowing down droplets’ spread.” (There is likely some added benefit to wearing something that is more closely fitted to the face than a T-shirt or bandana.)


Fletcherjcm/Flickr/Creative Commons / Via Flickr: maryandjc

Continuing to have customers come in store — rather than just purchasing online or for curbside pickup — also increases the risk of spreading the disease, even if people are coming in partly to grab mask kits. “Staying open and having these wild crowds — we’re understaffed and not cleaning things — we’re just exacerbating the issue,” said the employee near Columbus. “It felt like we were making the problem we were trying to solve worse.”

The Bay Area manager said she's been told by customers that hospitals are rejecting the masks (personal protective equipment, or PPE, requirements and what donations are accepted often changes by individual facility). "Customers are calling us, telling us, 'No one wants these masks, what do I do with them?’” said the Bay Area manager.

A Jo-Ann spokesperson told BuzzFeed News that although the masks are “not medical grade,” they are being made per CDC guidelines and have been accepted by some hospitals. The spokesperson would not say how many masks had been donated to hospitals. Jo-Ann has launched a daily count showing how close the company is to its 100 million mask goal. As of Thursday, it's closing in on 20 million.

"The CDC has recently ruled home crafted masks as acceptable crisis response options when other supplies have been exhausted, and all masks collected will only go to those hospitals and healthcare systems that are accepting them at this time," said a Jo-Ann spokesperson in a statement.

But that might be an overstatement of CDC guidelines, which instead suggest homemade masks such as a bandana or scarf may be used as a “last resort” for health care workers when face masks are unavailable, and should not be considered proper PPE, as it’s unclear how effective they are at stopping the transmission of COVID-19 in a health care setting.

"While these items are not medical grade," the Jo-Ann spokesperson continued, "they have been created using fabric and materials recommended for medical settings, and we have provided donations of the completed masks to hospitals around the country who are in need, and have requested them."

A fabric mask won't be as protective as a surgical or N95 mask, and some hospitals are not accepting homemade fabric masks. “Caution should be exercised when considering this option,” warns the CDC.

If you're someone who is seeing the impact of the coronavirus firsthand, we’d like to hear from you. Reach out to us via one of our tip line channels.

In an FAQ on its site about how Jo-Ann is handling COVID-19, the company’s response is a question about how it is caring for its “own people in the midst of the pandemic" focuses on the mask program. "We’ve made provisions for employees who choose to take leave during the coronavirus crisis," reads the statement. "At the same time, we believe this program will give others the opportunity to contribute to their local communities by facilitating the production of gear for medical professionals and their patients in need."

When Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced a stay-at-home order on March 20, Jo-Ann gave its staff a letter they were to show authorities, arguing that the store supplied PPE to health care workers.

"Specifically, Jo-Ann provides custom cuts of fabric, elastic and clear vinyl that are later finished into gowns and face masks," it reads. "Hospital systems have begun reaching out directly to Jo-Ann to help provide these needed goods. Jo-Ann must be able to continue to supply these materials to customers who are making these finished goods and donating them to hospitals. Jo-Ann’s business is vital to the supply chain for both Illinois small businesses as well as its front line healthcare professionals.”

But Illinois — along with some other states with stay-at-home orders in place, including Maryland and New York — determined Jo-Ann was nonessential and must shut.

The letter from Michigan's attorney general on Monday specifically addresses the company's claim that it sells fabric for face masks and hospital scrubs, noting that these could continue via online orders:

Your letter dated March 24, 2020, indicates that Jo-Ann Fabrics remains open to the public based on the company’s belief that its on-site operations are necessary to sustain and protect lives because “hundreds of hospitals and thousands of generous volunteers are turning to Jo-Ann” for raw materials like custom cut fabric, marine vinyl, crafting foam, and other goods that are finished into face masks, face shields and hospital scrubs and gowns.

We appreciate the contributions that you have devoted to addressing the current crisis. Nevertheless, while certain products from your store may be used to craft personal protective equipment, the Governor’s Order carefully balances the danger to the public and to workers when on-site operations continue versus the need for those on-site operations to sustain and protect life.

Over half of Jo-Ann stores have closed to the public, but certain states and counties — including California and Pennsylvania — have allowed stores to remain open or allow curbside pickup for online purchases, even with stay-at-home orders in place.

The Portland employee argued that people could make masks using old T-shirts and pillowcases, rather than putting her and her colleagues at risk. "They could try and source materials at home before going out and exposing other people and themselves," she said.

The employees told BuzzFeed News the mask kits might just be a welcome distraction for customers in a scary uncertain time. "It’s more a craft project for people to feel safe," said the Bay Area manager.

The Seattle-area manager recently gave one mask pack to a thrilled customer whose son works as an EMT. "These masks gave them a sense of control over the situation and peace of mind, knowing they were helping out," she said. "That’s the only benefit I see to these mask kits. Not so much how effective they are against the disease, but the mental and emotional comfort it gives to the common person.”

But that doesn't help Jo-Ann workers who fear catching the virus because their store won't close to the public. "People coming in just for craft supplies — because you're bored, but your craft supplies aren't more important than our health," said the staffer from Portland.

"It’s such a clusterfuck," said the Bay Area manager. "I hope Jo-Ann survives this because I need a job. But the second the dust settles and we can start looking for another job, we’re gone, because their response to this is horrible."


 Amber Jamieson is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.

“Silent Carriers” Are Helping Spread The Coronavirus. Here’s What We Know About Them.

People with no COVID-19 symptoms may be spreading the disease — but big questions remain about how much they are driving the pandemic.

Stephanie M. LeeBuzzFeed News Reporter April 2, 2020

Nurphoto / Getty Images
People walk in a New York City park despite social distancing orders, March 26.

Fever, a dry cough, fatigue: By now, these have become the telltale signs of COVID-19. But can it be unwittingly spread by people with no symptoms?

In late January and early February, when the disease had begun to spread outside China, leading health officials, including the World Health Organization, told the public that transmission from asymptomatic people was likely “rare,” based on information available at the time. “In all the history of respiratory-borne viruses of any type, asymptomatic transmission has never been the driver of outbreaks,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on Jan. 28.

Those assessments were based on early data out of China, where the virus originated in late December. A few months later, as the coronavirus has afflicted more than 1 million people worldwide and killed 51,000 of them, scientists know a lot more about how the virus spreads. And an emerging body of data suggests that there are probably a significant number of infected people who don’t have symptoms but are likely to be transmitting the virus. Since they may not know that they’re sick, they may be taking fewer precautions than people with symptoms.

Researchers still don’t know how common these cases are or how much they are driving the pandemic. On Monday, the director of the CDC told NPR that the number of asymptomatic individuals “may be as many as 25%.”

Here’s what we know so far about these so-called silent carriers.

1. First, it’s important to keep in mind that “asymptomatic” is different from “presymptomatic.”

Being presymptomatic means you’ve been infected and don’t feel any symptoms at the time you get tested, but will develop them later on. In contrast, asymptomatic people never have any symptoms during the course of their infections at all.

That difference matters for the scientists who are racing to identify and count cases to study the spread of the virus. If you’re truly asymptomatic, you’re probably not going to get tested and would therefore never be counted by the health care system. But you may still be contributing to the virus’s spread.

Alternatively, suppose you are symptom-free when you test positive, only to later develop a fever and cough that you don’t report to your doctor. You might be mistakenly counted as asymptomatic rather than presymptomatic.

“Previously we had commonly used asymptomatic to include both groups so it's tough to break out of that thinking and lexicon,” Tara Smith, an epidemiologist at Kent State University, said by email. “But I think this pandemic has shown that there may be nuance between those who are not YET symptomatic and those who might NEVER show symptoms, and that seems to be important here.”

To Jeffrey Shaman, an infectious disease expert at Columbia University, the simpler and more important distinction is between “documented” versus “undocumented” cases — the latter being all infected people who aren’t diagnosed. Those could include a person who is very sick but “hates to go to the hospital or see a doctor and toughs it out at home,” he told BuzzFeed News.

It’s more likely that a lot of these undocumented COVID-19 cases have symptoms mild enough that they don’t feel the need to see a doctor, but are walking around in the world anyway, he said.

The slight differences in these terms matter. “They’re not all the same thing but are getting conflated,” Smith said.


Carl Court / Getty Images

2. Estimates for how many “silent carriers” there are vary. For asymptomatic cases, estimates range from 18% to 30% of all infections.

It’s tough to quantify the number of asymptomatic people, because they’re unlikely to seek testing on their own. But the coronavirus outbreak on the Diamond Princess cruise ship gave researchers a unique chance to study this — even if it was a nightmare for the 3,700 passengers and crew members trapped off the coast of Japan.

Held under quarantine over two weeks in February, many of the people on board were repeatedly tested and their symptoms, or lack thereof, were tracked. CDC researchers found that 46.5% of infected people did not have symptoms at the time of testing. Many eventually did develop symptoms, but statistical models suggest that 18% of infected cases remained asymptomatic.

One caveat is that the passengers were older than the general population. Elderly people are more likely to be severely affected or killed by COVID-19, while younger people are more likely to develop mild symptoms.

Because of the skewed demographics, Gerardo Chowell, a Georgia State University mathematical epidemiologist who led a study about asymptomatic cases aboard the Diamond Princess last month, thinks the true number of asymptomatic people in the world is around 30% or 40%. “We know there’s a substantial fraction of asymptomatic” cases, he told BuzzFeed News.

Other researchers have produced estimates in this ballpark. One recent report said 29%, but was based only on a group of two dozen people in China. Another reported 30% of COVID-19 patients may not have symptoms, based on screenings of 565 Japanese citizens evacuated out of Wuhan in February.

CDC director Robert Redfield offered up yet another percentage this week, telling NPR, “One of the [pieces of] information that we have pretty much confirmed now is that a significant number of individuals that are infected actually remain asymptomatic. That may be as many as 25%.” He did not cite what that figure was based on.

Part of why it has taken a while for scientists to realize the outsize role that people without symptoms may play in spreading the disease may be because of how the initial data out of China was reported.

As of Feb. 11, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention was reporting that of more than 72,000 reported cases in mainland China, about 1.2% were asymptomatic. The WHO–China joint report about the coronavirus, from mid-February, stated, “The proportion of truly asymptomatic infections is unclear but appears to be relatively rare and does not appear to be a major driver of transmission.”

But last week, the South China Morning Post reported that, according to confidential Chinese government data, more than 43,000 people in China had tested positive for the virus by the end of February “but had no immediate symptoms.” These people were not included in the government’s official tally, according to the news outlet, which suggested that these people could therefore be as high as one-third of those who test positive. Researchers told BuzzFeed News that this estimate seemed plausible.

Putting aside the presence or absence of symptoms, low testing rates, especially in the US, mean that we do not know about a large proportion of people with COVID-19.

Shaman, the Columbia infectious disease expert, thinks the proportion of undocumented cases — infected people who are not officially diagnosed — could be as high as 86% in some places, meaning that these “invisible” cases are driving the pandemic. That estimate, published last month, was based on projected activity in Wuhan in the weeks before China imposed strict travel restrictions to stem transmission.

Since the virus has spread beyond Wuhan, Shaman said, “We’re seeing increasing evidence that there’s a lot of virus out in the community, a lot of infections out there, much more so than are being confirmed.”

More precise numbers won’t be possible to determine without health-care systems that can treat and diagnose lots of patients — which may not exist in developing countries — and robust, widespread testing. The US was slow to start testing compared to countries like South Korea and still has not scaled it up to a level that public health experts say is necessary.

The most definitive testing would include running blood antibody tests on everybody, which could detect whether they ever had the virus even if they didn’t show symptoms. Singapore has been using these tests to trace infections, and the United Kingdom is preparing to roll them out as well.

TRUMP'S "INVISIBLE" ENEMY/SCOURGE/ETC.

IS ACTUALLY QUITE VISIBLE UNDER A MICROSCOPE

NIH
Colorized scanning electron micrograph of a cell (blue) infected with the coronavirus, isolated from a patient sample.

3. Presymptomatic people can transmit the virus for a few days before they have symptoms, studies suggest.

The virus’s incubation period — the time between getting infected and showing symptoms — is about five days. That’s similar to that of the coronavirus that caused SARS. (For COVID-19, virtually everyone who develops symptoms does so by day 12.)

The problem is that people seem to be unwittingly spreading the new virus before they have symptoms, research suggests, and this presymptomatic transmission is happening at a more rapid rate than it did with SARS. With COVID-19, such transmission may even be happening more frequently than transmission from those with symptoms, researchers from Japan said in a study in late February.

“This suggests that a substantial proportion of secondary transmission may occur prior to illness onset,” they wrote.

Other research also supports the idea that presymptomatic transmission can happen for a few days before symptoms kick in. On Wednesday, the CDC released data about such cases in Singapore from late January to mid-March. In these cases, a person gave the virus to someone before they themselves developed symptoms, with no evidence that the second person had been exposed to anyone else who was infected.

In cases where researchers were able to confirm the dates of exposure, transmission happened one to three days before the originally infected patient developed symptoms, according to the report.

Scientists are still figuring out exactly when someone crosses the threshold from being infected to being able to infect others. The CDC says that someone can transmit the virus up to 48 hours before symptoms develop.
4. We don’t know with certainty that asymptomatic people are spreading the virus — though they probably are.

Completely symptom-free people can still carry around substantial amounts of the virus, also known as a person’s “viral load,” evidence suggests.

For example, researchers in China recently reported on one coronavirus patient who never developed symptoms, but whose viral load was similar to that of 17 others who did have symptoms. This “suggests the transmission potential of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic patients,” according to a preliminary report in the New England Journal of Medicine last month. There have been other individual cases of asymptomatic transmission seeming to happen, as reported by researchers in China in February.

But it still hasn’t been definitively proven that these people are giving the virus to others. Proving that would mean checking asymptomatic people to see if they were actually excreting live virus, and therefore were infectious. Antibody tests, which can be done after an infection ends, would also confirm they were truly infected. Right now, “we really don’t know if people who are truly asymptomatic can transmit or not,” said Smith of Kent State University.
5. All of this reinforces the importance of staying home as much as you can (and, some say, of wearing a mask).

The possibility that people can unknowingly spread the virus has inspired a heated debate over whether everyone should be wearing masks in public — including homemade, nonmedical ones — to help avoid getting sick as well as to prevent infecting others. The CDC currently discourages healthy people from wearing them, but is reconsidering that guidance.

How well a mask wards off infection varies depending on the setting, use, and fabric, studies show. But Chowell, among other experts, is pro-mask all the time. “We all should be wearing some sort of mask whenever you go out and have to interact with other people,” he said.

Whether you cover your face or not, it’s still important to help prevent transmission by practicing socially distancing, which means staying 6 feet away from others in public, staying home as much as possible, and avoiding crowded places, according to public health experts and the CDC’s national guidelines. In a further attempt to reduce transmission, at least 30 states are issuing shelter-in-place orders that have closed schools, offices, parks, and nonessential businesses.

Until the virus is under control, we likely won’t fully understand what role non-diagnosed cases are playing in the outbreak.

“We know we have a problem,” said Juan Gutierrez, a mathematics professor who specializes in infectious disease modeling at the University of Texas at San Antonio. “We have a hint of what could be the size of the problem. And a story will emerge many months from now when we have widespread testing in the population and we can start ascertaining, ‘Who got affected?’ and then asking people, ‘did they ever get symptoms?’”

---30---

Stephanie M. Lee is a science reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in San Francisco.

Some Amazon Employees With Fevers Are Being Sent Home Without Pay

Amazon said employees who test positive for the coronavirus get two weeks paid leave, but those sent home with a fever should use paid time off if they have it or take unpaid leave if they don’t.

Caroline O'Donovan BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on April 2, 2020

Jeenah Moon / Reuters
Protesters at an Amazon building on Staten Island, March 30.

Atiya felt under the weather when she reported to work at Amazon’s JFK8 Staten Island facility on Wednesday. But her condition worsened during her shift, she told BuzzFeed News, and when she asked management to take her temperature it was 101.1 degrees.

Management immediately gave Atiya, who asked to be identified only by her first name for fear of losing her job, a mask and escorted her out of the facility. She said she was handed a piece of paper with information about COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, sent home, and told not to report back until she was fever-free for 72 hours. Since then, Atiya, who started working at Amazon a little over two weeks ago, said she hasn't heard from anyone at the company about whether she’ll continue to be paid while she stays home from work.

By Thursday, her fever was 102 degrees, and she said she’d spoken to a health care worker in Brooklyn who told her not to come for a coronavirus test but to stay home in quarantine for the next two weeks. Atiya currently has $50 in her bank account and is expecting a paycheck from Amazon on Friday. Because she’s only worked for the company for a couple of weeks, she’s only accrued a couple shifts' worth of paid time off, most of which she’d already used to stay home to care for her 4-year-old daughter.

“I received my pay statement today and it says $0.”

Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Responding to questions regarding temperature checks and paid leave for those sent home, a company spokesperson said Wednesday: “All hourly employees are welcome to use paid and unpaid time off options. This includes unlimited unpaid time off through the end of April.”

Last month, Amazon announced that any employee who tested positive for the coronavirus or was ordered to quarantine by a medical professional would receive up to two weeks of pay. But workers the company has sent home with fevers, which may or may not have been caused by the coronavirus, said Amazon wasn't giving them paid leave beyond any paid time off they had already accrued.


Inland Empire Amazonians United

Amazon started checking employees’ temperatures at work earlier this week. According to a text message sent to Amazon employees in Southern California, “If someone has a temperature of 100.4F or above, we’ll require them to go home until you have been fever free for 72 hours.”

But the company, which made $3.3 billion in profit in the last quarter of 2019, said employees sent home with fevers should use their accrued paid time off if they have it or go without pay if they don’t.

“[Amazon hasn’t] reached out to me to find out my status or what’s going on,” said Atiya.”If I don’t get any type of funds, I’m not sure what to do, especially if I have to quarantine myself. I don’t know too many pantries around here. I’m not sure where I can get food ... for my family.”

Other workers told to self-quarantine are unsure whether they’ll be paid for the time they spend at home. “I’m still waiting on a case manager to give me a call,” a Detroit-based Amazon employee who declined to be named told BuzzFeed News. “Our payday is this Friday. I received my pay statement today and it says $0.”

This employee received written quarantine instructions from his doctor last Thursday and said he was supposed to hear from Amazon within three to five business days, but he’s still waiting. “Financially I’m wrecked at this point in time,” he said.

Amazon employees around the country have said that, despite the company’s claims about enhanced cleaning and workplace safety, it’s not doing enough to protect them from the coronavirus pandemic. Thousands of employees, including more than 500 white-collar tech workers, have signed petitions demanding that Amazon provide more hazard pay and paid sick leave and temporarily close facilities where employees have tested positive for disinfection. Dozens of employees in New York, Chicago, and Detroit have walked off the job and picketed outside Amazon facilities in protest of inadequate sanitation and unsafe working conditions.

Amazon is also under a spiraling PR crisis today after a leaked memo was published in Vice in which the company's general counsel called Chris Smalls — a New York worker whom the company fired for failing to adhere to quarantine orders as he protested its handling of the pandemic — "not smart or articulate." Smalls' termination has become a rallying cry for critics of the company, with Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday calling it "absolutely immoral."

Amazon’s new temperature screenings are intended to make the company’s facilities safer by preventing sick people from infecting their coworkers, but employees say the process is confusing, inconsistent, and potentially causing more problems.

Amazon “is forcing employees to test their coworkers for fever because no one would volunteer to do this,” an employee in Edison, New Jersey, who requested anonymity, told BuzzFeed News. “All people who are tested are less than 6 feet between tester and the employee being tested.” He said Amazon is providing “no additional protections for testers.”

Amazon did not immediately respond to request for comment on its fever screening procedures.

Meanwhile, he said that despite the concerns he and others have voiced, Amazon still isn’t disinfecting individual work stations.
“Mr. Bezos is the richest man in the world and Amazon workers deserve better.”

Federal health and safety guidelines recommend employers not require employees to present documentation of illness to receive financial aid during the pandemic, but companies like Instacart, Uber, and Amazon are still requiring workers to present positive tests. This requirement is proving to be a problem for many workers in states that have test shortages.

“Here in NJ people are lined up for hours at driving through testing centers,” said the New Jersey–based Amazon employee. “[It] takes weeks to get the result. Many centers run out of tests before the end of the day.”

More than a dozen lawmakers, including four US senators, have signed letters to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos demanding answers on employee concerns about safety protections during the coronavirus pandemic. Last Friday, Brian Huseman, Amazon's vice president for public policy, wrote in a public response that the company wouldn't penalize employees who missed work if they needed to stay home and seek medical help.

In response to the news that Amazon wasn't guaranteeing paid leave to employees who failed its temperature screening, Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown said: “Jeff Bezos is putting employees at risk of contracting the virus by forcing workers to go without pay and failing to implement critical health protections. Mr. Bezos is the richest man in the world and Amazon workers deserve better."

Coronavirus In The Workplace: BuzzFeed News looks at how companies and employees are handling the coronavirus pandemic.
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Employees At Office Depot Stores Don’t Think They’re Providing Essential Services During The Coronavirus Pandemic. They Still Have To Go To Work Anyway.

“We’re getting a bunch of people who are kind of just bored shopping,” one employee said.

OFFICE DEPOT OPERATES IN CANADA AS WELL AS THE USA

April 2, 2020

Joe Raedle / Getty Images

As businesses have shuttered around the US, Office Depot has kept thousands of employees in stores, bringing them face-to-face with customers who the company says need access to toilet paper, cleaning products, and equipment to work from home.

In reality, employees told BuzzFeed News, stores can’t keep household essentials stocked on shelves, and some customers are coming in just to browse. With limited access to supplies to sanitize stores and no masks or gloves, employees fear they’re putting their health at risk to provide a service that’s far from essential: ringing up a box of pens, desk accessories, or other trivial items.

“Everything that corporate said that makes us essential we have been either completely sold out of for more than two weeks or we’ve been getting like maybe one or two of these items on the truck and selling out of those within 15 minutes,” a store employee in Michigan said.

Supplied
The shelves inside an Office Depot store.

As officials in more than 30 states order people to stay home and nonessential businesses to close to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus, the office supply company has argued that it provides goods and services that help keep essential businesses running. In general, officials have agreed, but at least one state, Pennsylvania, has specifically ordered office stores to close.

As of Thursday, BuzzFeed News called multiple Office Depot locations in the state and found they were still open for business. One employee said he was frustrated that his bosses were ignoring the law.

“They were very clearly outlined by the state as not being a life-sustaining business and to go against that and be like, ‘Oh sure we are. We have some water and hand sanitizer occasionally when we get it in,’ is — I don't know it just seems like they’re flouting the legal definition of what was established,” he told BuzzFeed News.

Office Depot did not immediately respond to questions. A spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Governor's Office said anyone who believes a business is violating the order to close should contact law enforcement.

"All non-life-sustaining businesses in Pennsylvania should be closed if they do not have an exemption from the commonwealth," the spokesperson said. "Failure to comply with these requirements will result in enforcement action that could include citations, fines, or license suspensions."

Legal definitions aside, more than 20 employees in 13 states said they don’t think they’re providing essential services and worry they are only contributing to the spread of COVID-19 by going to work — putting themselves and their loved ones at risk of getting sick. The employees spoke to BuzzFeed News on the condition of anonymity because they feared getting fired.

“I'm dealing with 50+ customers a day, and handling their stuff. I don't know where they've been or who they've been around. I don't know if they're sick and if they're passing something onto me that I can potentially pass onto someone else,” an employee said in an email to BuzzFeed News. “I'm risking my health, the health of my family, and customers [sic] health every day.”

And, like workers at Costco, CVS, Amazon, Starbucks, and other major retail stores, associates and managers at Office Depot, which also operates Office Max stores, said the company isn’t doing enough to protect them from being exposed to the virus. They’re still coming into close contact with customers who ignore social distancing guidelines and insist that employees handle their personal devices for repairs and copies. They said they’re told by corporate that they’re not allowed to wear masks or gloves, though some are wearing them anyway, and the company has not provided adequate cleaning supplies for them to properly sanitize the stores.


Supplied
A box of supplies sent to a store for employees.

“A lot of people will say retail workers are expendable because like, to most companies, people are expendable, but it's never just been so apparent in your face every day at work,” another employee in Texas said.

While some employees who spoke to BuzzFeed News have been calling out of work, most said they can’t afford to stay home because they don’t have any paid time off or paid sick leave. The company has said in communications reviewed by BuzzFeed News that employees will be excused from work if they have any concerns about COVID-19, but some said they’ve been told otherwise.

A manager in Oklahoma said he was pressured into coming in to work on a reduced schedule after requesting to use his PTO to stay home. He was concerned he could bring the virus home and expose his mom — who could then expose his elderly grandparents.

“My mom is one of the sole caregivers for them, so it’s really important I can’t let her or them get sick,” he said.

Despite the company’s written guidance, another manager in St. Louis said anyone who is refusing to work during the pandemic is supposed to be reported to human resources. She added she is trying her best “to make sure no one is having to come in sick,” but she is not allowed to require that her staff stay home.

Another now-former employee at a store in Canton, Ohio, told BuzzFeed News her store manager told her she had to resign last week if she didn’t come into work.

“I was like, ‘I can’t continue to keep putting my family in danger ... so she was like, ‘So you're resigning then?’ And I was like, ‘I guess so,’” said the former employee, who lives with her grandmother, who is in her seventies, and other extended family. “I gave her ... the lock for my locker and my name tag, and that was it.”

When it came down to it, she said she couldn't bear the thought of possibly getting her family sick and dealing with the guilt of that even though she has medical bills, a phone bill, and other expenses to pay.

“I have to pick and choose what I pay and hope for the best,” she said.

Health officials agree the best way to prevent the spread of the disease is for people to stay home as much as possible and to keep a distance of at least 6 feet from others when out in public.

But orders and guidance issued by state officials on the closure of nonessential businesses have been somewhat vague. For example, California’s list of essential workers does not specifically mention office supply retail stores, but a spokesperson for the state’s Department of Public Health told BuzzFeed News that Office Depot is considered an essential commercial retail business because its stores “supply essential sectors.”

In documentation the company sent to employees, Office Depot claimed it provides “necessary products and services to essential businesses, critical infrastructure industries, and other customers” because it sells household products and equipment, like laptops, phones, and printers. The company said it also provides necessary tech and shipping services that support an at-home workforce, the remote learning educational community, and other essential businesses.
But employees said they’re constantly out of stock of cleaning supplies and other items, like webcams, monitors, and headsets that people may use to work from home, and are seeing customers who come in to the store to buy nonessential items or just browse.
“We’re getting a bunch of people who are kind of just bored shopping,” an employee in Texas said in an email, adding that most of their store’s sales have been furniture.

In a March 27 letter to customers, Office Depot outlined a number of measures the company was taking in its stores to ensure employee and customer safety, including providing curbside pickup at most locations, reducing the hours stores are open, limiting store occupancy to no more than 25 people, and “enabling a six-foot distance requirement” for employees and customers.
Supplied

Employees say it’s not enough, noting that many customers are still choosing to come inside rather than order online and pick up items at the curb. They also said they have been unable to enforce the 25-person limit and distancing requirements.

“It’s just words on paper just to prove that they wrote something down and said, ‘Oh no we gave the orders out, we gave the protocols and the guidelines — we laid everything out for them,’” the manager in Oklahoma said.

Employees said they want the company to offer them paid sick leave and hazard pay or a raise for continuing to work under these conditions, provide personal protective equipment and more adequate cleaning supplies to disinfect the stores, and switch operations to only curbside pickup orders, like Best Buy has done, or close the physical stores altogether.

“Any time the company sends like a message or an email, it just kind of seems like a slap in the face like, ‘Oh we’re so happy that you're risking your health and safety for us,’” a Texas employee said. “It feels like they don't care about us.”

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Stephanie K. Baer is a reporter with BuzzFeed News and is based in Los Angeles.
Albert Samaha is an investigative reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.

FDA Now Says It Will Allow Imports Of KN95 Masks,  An Alternative To Scarce N95 Masks
Although the regulator recently authorized use of many kinds of foreign-certified respirators, it left the Chinese masks off the list.

Ken Bensinger BuzzFeed News Reporter April 2, 2020

Bryan R. Smith / Getty Images
A member of the medical staff listens as Montefiore Medical Center nurses call for N95 masks and other critical PPE to handle the coronavirus epidemic in New York, April 1.

In a move that could significantly ease national shortages of personal protective equipment, a top Food and Drug Administration official said Thursday that the agency will not block imports of KN95 respirator masks, a Chinese equivalent to the N95 masks needed by health care workers on the front lines of the coronavirus epidemic.

Until now, the legality of importing KN95 masks has been unclear. A little more than a week ago, the regulator authorized use of a variety of foreign-certified respirators as a substitute for scarce N95 masks on an emergency basis. That authorization came amid a growing public outcry over doctors and nurses forced to reuse respirators or even fashion masks from bandanas

But the FDA’s emergency authorization omitted the KN95 mask — despite the fact that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had previously included it on a list of “suitable alternatives” to the N95 mask.

That omission has sown considerable confusion among hospitals, health care workers, importers, and others who had considered turning to KN95 respirators when the market for N95 masks became overheated.

A BuzzFeed News story about the KN95 published earlier this week led to demands from members of the public, experts in the import business, and even a member of Congress that the FDA clear the path for KN95 masks. A KN95 petition launched early this week has to date gained more than 2,500 signatures.

“The FDA is not blocking KN95 mask importations,” said Anand Shah, the agency’s deputy commissioner for medical and scientific affairs in an interview.

But he added that even though the agency will allow importers to bring the equipment into the country, they would be doing so at their own risk. Unlike normally certified devices, or those authorized on an emergency basis, KN95 masks would have none of the legal protections or other support provided by the federal government.

The Chinese-certified KN95 mask is designed to similar standards as the N95 — which is certified by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health — yet is currently cheaper and far more abundant. Prices for N95s have, in some instances, risen to $12 or more per mask, while KN95 masks are available for less than $2, according to importers and manufacturers’ marketing materials.

While some hospitals and government entities have decided to accept donations of KN95 masks, many others have refused, citing a lack of clear guidance from the FDA, which regulates medical devices. And importers have worried that their shipments of masks could get tied up by US Customs at the border. Some of those importers said they remain concerned that without full federal authorization, they could be sued should someone fall ill after using one of the respirators.

“Our lawyer warned us we could get in trouble with these KN95s,” said Shawn Smith, a Santa Monica, California, entrepreneur who has been attempting to bring masks into the country to sell to hospitals. “He said we could get sued or even face criminal charges.”

As a result, Smith said, he’s had to join the fray of those trying to make deals to bring in N95 masks, an effort that he said has driven up prices sharply in the past few weeks.

Another would-be importer who emailed the FDA was told Tuesday that the agency “does not object to importation and use of these respirators during the emergency.”

But the FDA has not to date publicly explained the exclusion of KN95 masks from its emergency use authorization. In fact it has made no mention at all of the masks in any public forum. That left those considering purchases or donations of the protective equipment to make potentially costly decisions in an information vacuum, and fostered what amounts to a gray market for the much-needed masks — as well as considerable concern.

Shah said the FDA’s decision to omit the masks was not based on the quality of Chinese certification standards.

Kena Betancur / Getty Image
A couple wears face masks and surgical gloves as they walk in Central Park on March 22 in New York City.

“There are a number of countries that we feel are as vigorous as” US standards, said Shah, “and China is one of them.” Despite that, he said the agency chose not to include KN95 masks “due to the challenges of authenticating product imported from China,” noting that the agency has identified “inauthentic” products labeled as KN95 masks coming into the US. Shah declined to elaborate on what issues were found with those masks.

According to manufacturers, suppliers, and importers, as much as 80% of the world’s supply of all respirator masks of all types are manufactured in China, including US-certified N95 masks and those certified under European Union and other national standards. And multiple cases of counterfeit or nonfunctional masks labeled as N95 have been reported in recent weeks.

One hospital in Teaneck, New Jersey, last week said it had received 1,000 N95 masks from a trusted vendor and discovered they were fake. The CDC maintains an entire web page dedicated to phony N95 masks.

Ahmad Gharabli / Getty Images
Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion, wearing a KN95 mask, arrives at a drive-through testing location for COVID-19 in the Palestinian neighborhood of Jabal Mukaber in east Jerusalem, April 2.
Ken Bensinger  is an investigative reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Los Angeles. He is the author of "Red Card," on the FIFA scandal. His DMs are open.

Health Care Workers Are Risking Their Lives Treating COVID-19 Patients