U.N. secretary-general: Coronavirus fast becoming human rights crisis

A couple hold hands in West New York, N.J., on Wednesday with the Manhattan skyline in the background. Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

April 23 (UPI) -- United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Thursday the coronavirus pandemic is "fast becoming a human rights crisis" and warned governments against using it as an excuse to adopt draconian measures.

Guterres made the remarks in a video accompanying a new U.N. report that says human rights should guide the coronavirus response, and stated that people and their rights "must come first."

The U.N. chief said the virus, which has infected more than 2.6 million people worldwide, does not discriminate but its impacts do, exposing weaknesses in the delivery of public services and structural inequalities that impede their access.

"We see the disproportionate effects on certain communities, the rise of hate speech, the targeting of vulnerable groups and the risks of heavy-handed security responses undermining the health response," he said. "Against the background of rising ethnonationalism, populism, authoritarianism and a pushback against human rights in some countries, the crisis can provide a pretext to adopt repressive measures for purposes unrelated to the pandemic."

According to the report, migrants, refugees and internally displaced persons are particularly vulnerable to human rights violations, as are racial, ethnic and religious minorities, women and health workers who have been ostracized and attacked during the pandemic.

These marginalized and vulnerable populations are subject to discrimination and the pandemic is revealing the structural inequalities that cause certain groups to be disproportionately affected, it said.

The report also warned that the pandemic, through furthering economic hardships, will raise already high tensions and could provoke civil unrest.

Guterres said emergency responses must be legal, proportionate, necessary and non-discriminatory and directed with a specific focus and within a defined time frame. Governments must be transparent, responsive and accountable, he said.

"The best response is one that responds proportionately to immediate threats while protecting human rights and the rule of law"

American Farmers start to kill pigs they can't sell to slaughterhouses due to closures

ANOTHER REASON TO COLLECTIVIZE AND CENTRALIZE ALL INDUSTRIES DURING A PANDEMIC

Closed slaughterhouses are backing up the supply chain, leaving too many pigs on farms for farmers to care for. Photo by ramboldheiner/Pixabay

EVANSVILLE, Ind., April 23 (UPI) -- With coronavirus outbreaks closing slaughterhouses across the country, the American hog industry is running out of space to physically keep a backup of live pigs.

Hog farms are so crowded that producers are starting to euthanize their animals.

"I really, really don't want to kill my pigs," said Howard AV Roth, president of the National Pork Producers Council, who raises and weans pigs in Wisconsin.

"But it is getting close here. I know there are farmers who have had to kill their pigs, farmers are aborting sows. It's really awful," Roth said.

RELATED USDA to buy $3 billion worth of food from farmers for those in need

The issue stems from the more than a dozen meat packing plants that have closed since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. The most recent occurred Wednesday when Tyson Foods announced it would shut its largest pork producing plant, which is in Waterloo, Iowa.

On Monday, JBS, an international meat processing company, closed its third processing plant, in Worthington, Minn. Smithfield Foods closed its pork processing plant in Sioux Falls, S.D., last week, while Cargill closed a plant in Hazleton, Pa. Other plants have closed, too, while far fewer have reopened.

The closures have significantly reduced the nation's slaughter capacity.

RELATED Cattle industry losses expected to quickly outpace federal aid

In a normal week, the American pork industry kills 2.5 million pigs. This week, it will kill only 2 million, Roth said.

"We're looking at a backup of a half a million pigs a week, starting this week," he said. "And we were already backed up by about a half million. This is bad."

The problem also is sending pork prices plummeting. Lean hog futures were trading at about 44 cents per pound Wednesday, down from around 84 cents at the start of the year, according to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

RELATED Mushroom sales soar as Americans cook more at home during pandemic

The price matters little, though, when farmers can't sell their animals, Roth said.

"This is not milk you can spill or crops you can till into the ground," said Jim Monroe, a spokesman for the National Pork Producers Council, based in Washington, D.C. "These are live animals that need care."

Farms across the country have started to go out of business as a result of the pandemic. Two of the producers to whom Roth normally sells weaned pigs have gone under, he said. Others with whom he works are close to failing, and the future of his farm depends on how long the slaughterhouse closures continue, he said.

"This is our biggest crisis ever in pork production," said Joseph Kerns, the president of Iowa-based Kerns & Associates, a consulting firm that specializes in livestock. "And I don't say that lightly."

It is too soon to predict how many farms will go under, Kerns said. But it could be a huge number.

"This could have a huge, long-term impact on the hog industry," he said.

FULFILLING JOHN BIRCH'S DREAM

Dems urge Trump to reinstate WHO funding; Pompeo says it may never happen

United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo participates in a news briefing with members of the Coronavirus Task Force at the White House on April 8 in Washington, D.C. Photo by Chris Kleponis/UPI | License Photo

April 23 (UPI) -- House Democrats urged President Donald Trump on Thursday to reinstate funding to the World Health Organization as the State Department's top diplomat said they may never contribute to the United Nations agency again.

Democratic members of the House committee on foreign affairs told Trump in a letter that his decision last week to halt funding to the WHO is "profoundly misguided," charging the president with using the agency as a "scapegoat" to deflect from his "mismanaged and politicized response to the pandemic."

Last week, President Donald Trump announced the United States -- the U.N. health agency's largest contributor at more than $890 million -- would be halting future funding over its "mismanaging and covering up the spread" of the coronavirus.

Amid the pandemic, the Trump administration has frequently leveled criticism at China for conducting a cover-up of its initial response to the virus and at the WHO for its handling of the situation.

The foreign affairs committee said the WHO is not perfect and a review of its early handling of the health crisis should be thoroughly reviewed, especially its dealings with China, but now is not the time to halt funding.

"Halting funding to the WHO at this time is like cutting funding to the fire department in the middle of a blaze," read the letter signed by all 26-panel Democratic members. "Retreating from global health institutions at this time will only hinder our ability to fight the coronavirus, thus putting our national security and American lives at risk."

The letter was sent to the president on the heels of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stating funding may never be restored and that the WHO is in need of "a structural fix."

Pompeo charged China in an interview with Laura Ingraham of Fox News late Wednesday with continuing to be opaque and closed with the United States about the information it has on COVID-19 and said the WHO is failing its responsibility to achieve that needed transparency.

"They're not doing it. They need to be held accountable," he said of the WHO.

Days after Trump pulled the WHO's funding, 17 Republicans called for its reinstatement to be conditioned on the resignation of the agency's director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

RELATED China to give WHO $30M to help make up for U.S. funding gap

Asked if he thought Ghebreyesus' removal might be a requirement for the resumption of funding, Pompeo replied that may not be enough.

"Even more than that, it may be the case that the United States can never return to underwriting having U.S. taxpayer dollars go to the WHO," he said. "We may need to have bolder change than that."

China has frequently refuted U.S. accusations over its response to the pandemic, pointing to praise from the WHO over its response during the early days of the outbreak.

On Wednesday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters that China has been transparent since the outbreak began.

"The Chinese government has been nothing but open, transparent and responsible in timely informing the WHO and relevant countries and regions, including the United States, of pandemic-related information," he said.

On Thursday, China said it was donating an additional $30 million to the WHO to make up for the U.S shortfall.

After Trump pulled funding, Ghebreyesus urged him to reconsider, calling for unity against a common enemy.

JIM BAKKER HAS HIS SECOND COMING

#VICENews #News

Vic Berger Presents: TV Pastor Jim Bakker Really Wants You to Think He Can Cure #Coronavirus

302,485 views

•Mar 18, 2020

MEHDI HASAN AND ARUNDHATI ROY ON INDIA, NARENDRA MODI, AND THE CORONAVIRUS
The Intercept April 20 2020

THE INTERCEPT’S Mehdi Hasan spoke with acclaimed writer Arundhati Roy about India’s response to the novel coronavirus. Is the far-right government of Narendra Modi exploiting the crisis to target Muslims and the media? And might this global pandemic, as Roy has written, force “humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew”?

THE BLACK PRINCE
ERIK PRINCE OFFERED LETHAL SERVICES TO SANCTIONED RUSSIAN MERCENARY FIRM WAGNER

Photo illustration: Soohee Cho/The Intercept, Getty Images

Matthew Cole, Alex Emmons April 13 2020

ERIK PRINCE, FOUNDER of the private security firm Blackwater and a Trump administration adviser, has sought in recent months to provide military services to a sanctioned Russian mercenary firm in at least two African conflicts, according to three people with knowledge of the efforts.

Prince, who is the brother of Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, met earlier this year with a top official of Russia’s Wagner Group and offered his mercenary forces to support the firm’s operations in Libya and Mozambique, according to two people familiar with Prince’s offer.

Wagner officials said they are not interested in working with Prince, three people familiar with their decision told The Intercept.

A lawyer for Prince denied that his client met anyone from Wagner.



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The Wagner Group is a semi-private military force that operates in countries or conflicts where the Russian government seeks plausible deniability for its activities. It is often equipped and supported directly by the Russian Ministry of Defense, according to reports and experts who track Wagner’s activities. The U.S. State Department website also lists Wagner as an entity connected to the “Defense Sector of the Government of the Russian Federation.” Any business relationship between Prince and Wagner would, in effect, make the influential Trump administration adviser a subcontractor to the Russian military.

In recent years, the Russian government has deployed Wagner to several African countries, Ukraine, and Syria, where the U.S. military killed dozens of Wagner fighters in 2018 after the Russians and their Syrian allies attacked an oil facility that the United States was defending.

“Wagner Group is an instrument of Russian policy. It works under the GRU, which is the Russian military intelligence,” said Sean McFate, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a former military contractor who has written about mercenaries.

In attempting to do business with Wagner, Prince may have exposed himself to legal liability.


In attempting to do business with Wagner, Prince may also have exposed himself to legal liability. In 2017, the Trump administration sanctioned Wagner, as well as its founder and head Dmitry Utkin, for having “recruited and sent soldiers to fight alongside [Russian-backed] separatists in eastern Ukraine” during the 2014 Russian invasion. The Russian government denied involvement in the invasion, even as its forces occupied and took control of Crimea, also in Ukrainian territory, in violation of international law.

The sanctions prohibit individuals or companies from providing “financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services to or in support of, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order.” They also forbid anyone “to have acted or purported to act for or on behalf” of Wagner. The 2017 addition of Wagner to the sanctions list builds on a 2014 executive order signed by President Barack Obama.

“In my experience, the act of soliciting from a sanctioned party would indeed be an apparent violation,” said Brian O’Toole, a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council and former senior sanctions official at the Treasury Department. “Whether you make that [legal] case is an entirely separate matter,” he said, adding that pitching business to Wagner “would seem to be a fairly egregious thing to do.”




Related
The FBI Is Investigating Erik Prince for Trying to Weaponize Crop Dusters


When Prince met with Wagner leadership, he was already under federal investigation for violating arms trafficking regulations. The proposal to the Russian firm also raises questions about whether Trump administration officials authorized the meeting or were aware of Prince’s efforts to work with the group.

A former Navy SEAL who rose to prominence and notoriety as head of the private security firm Blackwater, Prince has been a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump, serving as an unofficial adviser on military and foreign policy issues in Africa, the Middle East, and Afghanistan. Prince was a Trump donor in 2016 and has worked to support the president politically while proposing private military solutions that would benefit his companies financially.

Early in the Trump administration, Prince proposed privatizing the war in Afghanistan and supplying Trump with a private spy service intended to circumvent the U.S. intelligence community. Neither proposal succeeded, despite having support for some of his ideas from senior administration officials, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

For years, Prince has tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to win military contracts with governments in Africa and the Middle East. Wagner has become an increasingly visible player in the region as Russia’s influence there has grown, allowing the country to operate under the radar at a time when “plausible deniability is more powerful than firepower,” according to McFate, the mercenary expert.

“The reason why groups like Wagner exist is that modern war is getting sneakier and mercenaries are a great way to get things done in the shadows.”


“The reason why groups like Wagner exist, and the reason why people like Erik Prince [are] succeeding, is that modern war is getting sneakier and mercenaries and groups like Wagner are a great way to get things done in the shadows,” McFate said.

Libya has been divided and in conflict since the U.S. and NATO allies removed longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011. The United Nations and most of the international community, including the U.S, recognize the Government of National Accord in the Libyan capital Tripoli as the country’s official leaders. But the eastern portion of the country is led by strongman Khalifa Hifter, who tried last year to take Tripoli. Both sides are backed by foreign powers that have continually violated a U.N. embargo on military support. Turkey and Qatar have supported the GNA, while Russia, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt have backed Hifter.

Last spring, Hifter’s forces, the Libyan National Army, moved to take Tripoli, but were thwarted within days. Hifter turned to Moscow and Wagner. Americans are prohibited from aiding either side of the conflict without U.S. government authorization.

At the same time, Prince sought to provide a force in Mozambique, where the government has been fighting a small insurgency over the past two years. President Filipe Nyusi of Mozambique flew to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in August 2019. The countries signed several trade pacts, and Russia agreed to send military aid. Russian military hardware and Russian nationals working for Wagner arrived in Mozambique in September, according to news reports.

After Wagner lost more than a dozen fighters in Mozambique, Prince sent a proposal to the Russian firm offering to supply a ground force as well as aviation-based surveillance, according to documents viewed by The Intercept and a person familiar with Prince’s proposal.

Prince has also served as an adviser to the de facto ruler of the United Arab Emirates, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, known as MBZ, for more than a decade. Under bin Zayed’s leadership, the UAE, a close regional ally of the U.S., has intervened militarily in several regional wars in the Middle East and Africa. A pariah during the Obama administration, Prince was taken in by the Emirati crown prince and awarded a contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars to create and train a presidential guard for the royal family. He was later removed for mismanagement, among other reasons.

Prince also has ties to China. He is co-chair of Frontier Services Group, a Hong-Kong based logistics company he founded and whose largest investor is the Chinese government. The Intercept has previously reported that the U.S. government has investigated Prince for his ties to China’s intelligence service. The conflicts between Prince’s commercial interests and the goals of the many governments that retain his services have piled up as Prince has tried to sell military and mercenary capabilities around the world. FSG, for example, signed a contract for fishing rights in Mozambique around the same time Prince began exploring defense contracts there. The fishing contract has since been dissolved, according to the company.

“The conflicts of interest are deep and threaten democracy when you have a free agent going between the U.S. and its main power rivals,” said McFate. “It would never clear an intelligence community background check. This is a dangerous thing for any democracy.”

U.S. AND MEXICO ARE BLOCKING KIDS FROM ASKING FOR ASYLUM BECAUSE OF CORONAVIRUS
Emily Green THE INTERCEPT April 16 2020
A Central American migrant washes the hands of a child at an encampment in Matamoros, Mexico, on March 20, 2020. Photo: Daniel Becerril/Reuters

“IF ONE OF you gets infected, you could all die,” Pablo recalled a doctor telling hundreds of asylum-seekers at a tent city in Matamoros, Mexico, as the novel coronavirus spread around the world.

Pablo, who is from Ecuador, has been living in the overpacked camp with his 7-year-old daughter since December, waiting for a U.S. judge to decide their case. The conditions were already perilous — a few dozen toilets shared by around 2,000 people, constant sickness, scarce drinking water — but the global pandemic hit like a death sentence.

Two days after the doctor’s warning, in mid-March, Pablo sent his daughter, Heidy, to cross the border without him, in a frantic attempt to get her to safety before the virus struck the tent camp. Heidy and three other girls — who had also been sent by their parents — walked by themselves up the bridge that separates Matamoros from Brownsville, Texas. The youngest was three; the oldest just eight.

But before Heidy and the other girls could present themselves to U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents, Mexican authorities grabbed the girls. “They took them and didn’t want to return them,” Pablo told The Intercept (the full names of asylum-seekers interviewed for this story are being withheld to protect them from retaliation)

As the coronavirus crisis sweeps across the U.S., asylum-seekers stuck in Mexico have grown increasingly desperate, terrified for themselves and for the children they have in tow. An untold number have decided their children’s best hope is to try and enter the U.S. alone, even if that means never seeing them again.

Under the Trump administration’s so-called Migrant Protection Protocols, better known as “Remain in Mexico,” tens of thousands of asylum-seekers arriving at the southern U.S. border since early 2019 have been returned to Mexico for the duration of their asylum process. As a result, many families have sent their kids to cross alone, since the U.S. has a decades-old policy of granting protection to unaccompanied minors.

But even that door has closed. On March 21, citing the coronavirus, the U.S. began summarily expelling children from the country.

On March 21, citing the coronavirus, the U.S. began summarily expelling children from the country.


Since then, U.S. immigration officials have expelled at least 299 minors traveling alone or without legal guardians, according to CBP. Reuters put the number at 377 children, and reported that around 120 of them were sent on planes to Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. It’s not clear what criteria CBP uses to decide who gets sent to Mexico, and who gets returned to their home country.

An unknown number of migrant children have also been apprehended by Mexican immigration authorities as they sought to enter the U.S. and sent to government shelters in Mexico.

Read Our Complete CoverageThe War on Immigrants


CBP officials deny that U.S. and Mexican immigration authorities are coordinating to prevent minors traveling alone from reaching the U.S. But it’s clear they aren’t welcome.

“This disease doesn’t know age. In fact, what we’ve heard from the medical providers is that the younger children can actually be carriers,” CBP Commissioner Mark Morgan said on a March 9 call with reporters. “When they come across the border, they pose an absolutely concrete public health risk to this country, and everybody that they come in contact with.”

Before the pandemic, unaccompanied minors were sent to shelters overseen by the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Most were eventually reunited with a family member or guardian in the United Sates. President Donald Trump has railed against the practice, describing it as a “glaring loophole” that allowed criminal teenage gang members into the country.

Immigrant rights advocates say the Trump administration is now using the pandemic as a pretext to block all asylum-seekers, including children.

“This is part of the Trump administration’s war to prevent people from coming over by any means necessary,” said Richard Newman, managing attorney for the San Antonio Region Justice for Our Neighbors Border Project. “The reason someone sends their children across without them is because they are so desperate.”

Read Our Complete CoverageThe Coronavirus Crisis


As the coronavirus spread, some families packed up and returned to the countries they fled. Currently, there are around 1,500 asylum-seekers in the tent camp in Matamoros, and roughly a third of them children, said Valerio Granello, project coordinator for Doctors Without Borders in Matamoros.

Granello said Mexican immigration officials want to fence in the migrant camp to control movement in and out, and limit possible contagion. There are 13 confirmed cases in Matamoros as of Wednesday.

“The living conditions of migrants at the camp are already precarious, making them more vulnerable to the pandemic,” Granello said. The concept of social distancing is meaningless as the asylum-seekers live in a sea of jam-packed tents.

“We are terrified this virus will infect our boy.”


“We are terrified this virus will infect our boy,” said Daniel, a Honduran asylum-seeker who has lived in the tent camp since June with his 9-year-old son. He asked to withhold his last name because he was scared that speaking out would put him at risk.

On March 22, Daniel sent his son across the bridge to present himself to CBP officers. But it was one day after Trump’s new border rules took effect, and the U.S. officers told the boy he had to return to Mexico, Daniel said. They are now awaiting their next asylum hearing.

“We invested everything to come here. We can’t return because we don’t have anywhere to live,” he told The Intercept.

Some parents who sent their children to the U.S. not only saw their hopes dashed, but nearly lost custody of their children — like Pablo, the Ecuadorian father.

After Mexican immigration officials apprehended his daughter and the other girls, Pablo and the other parents slept on the floor of the immigration office, pleading for the return of their children. Instead, the girls were taken to a government-run shelter, and the parents were required to show birth certificates and give urine samples.

“They wanted to see if we were drug addicts or alcoholics — I don’t know what,” he said.

The government released the girls after two days. For Pablo, it felt like an eternity.

Pablo described his daughter as stoic and quiet. But at night, when they are together in the tent, she cries. Their next court hearing is in May, but it’s likely to be delayed because of the outbreak.

“She asks, ‘When are we going to get there? Why can’t we leave here?’” he said. “I tell her that we have to wait to see what the court says.”

---30---

Can Lysol or Clorox kill the coronavirus?

Disinfectants claim to kill 99.9 percent of all germs and viruses. But is COVID-19 the 0.01 percent that slips through?

VIDEO https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-cures/484794-can-lysol-or-clorox-kill-the-coronavirus?jwsource=cl

By Anthony DiFlorio / Video by Greg Hudson

As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and federal health officials warn that an outbreak of the novel coronavirus is inevitable in the U.S., a growing question is whether household disinfectants can stop it.

Lysol, Clorox, and similar products have long been touted as having the ability to kill 99.9 percent of germs, often on contact.

That includes diseases such as flu strains, E. coli and salmonella. And Lysol’s label lists “human coronavirus” as one of the pathogens it can wipe out. But that isn’t the novel coronavirus now known as COVID-19; that’s the strain that causes the common cold.

So, can they kill the novel coronavirus, COVID-19?

The answers are somewhat reassuring.

Bleach-based products like Clorox are likely to destroy the virus on hard surfaces, since they have worked on similar pathogens such as SARS.

Clorox wipes, for example, work against rotavirus, a large, nonenveloped virus in the Reoviridae family.

And Lysol, which uses hydrogen peroxide, has also been proven against similar viruses, but on hard, nonporous surfaces (rather than porous ones, such as paper or fabric).

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has a guidance policy that allows companies to claim their products are effective against certain emerging viruses, as long as they can show the products work on other, harder-to-kill viruses.

Both Clorox and Lysol have set up FAQ pages about coronavirus, noting that they have tested products against viruses “similar” to the novel coronavirus, and some meet the requirements set out under the EPA policy, and therefore can be used by those concerned about COVID-19. However, there is no evidence or claim yet that it kills COVID-19 on contact.

In contrast, the makers of hand sanitizer giant Purell were reprimanded by the FDA in January for making unsubstantiated claims that its products prevent the spread of viruses. The FDA was quick to point out that Purell’s products have not been tested against diseases such as Ebola or influenza —or COVID-19.

The novel coronavirus continues to spread primarily through person-to-person contact: an infected person touching you or sneezing or coughing near you.

So, yes, Lysol and Clorox can be useful. But staying away from those who are infected and washing your hands frequently and thoroughly are still the best medicine.

TO PROPERLY DISINFECT A SURFACE YOU MUST CLEAN IT FIRST, USING SOAP AND WATER WHICH WILL ALSO KILL 99.9% OF BUGS, ONCE IT DRIES YOU APPLY LYSOL OR BLEACH AND ALLOW IT TO AIR DRY. DISINFECTION IS ALWAYS A TWO STEP PROCEDURE DWELL TIME, THE TIME THE DISINFECTANT STAYS WET ON A SURFACE CAN VARY FROM 5-20 MINUTES, THE LONGER THE DWELL TIME THE MORE OFTEN YOU NEED TO WET THE SURFACE.

BUT PLEASE PLEASE DO NOT INJECT EITHER OF THEM AS THAT WOULD BE FATAL (DR. TRUMP SAID YOU COULD, OF COURSE HE LIES)

Who gets care in a pandemic? Assuring human rights is part of preparedness

BY JOE AMON, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 04/23/20
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL

© Getty Images


Imagine being an emergency medical technician called to the scene of a car accident and finding dozens of people injured and needing help. With limited supplies, a single ambulance, and people with varying severity of injuries, where do you start? I remember a scene like that 30 years ago, when I was working as an EMT in Springfield, Mass. Two cars crashed into each other and then plowed through a crowd of people waiting at a bus stop. Hospitals are experiencing something similar with the COVID-19 pandemic, as patients overwhelm the capacity of intensive care units, doctors and nurses.

In response, bioethicists and medical societies have discussed various approaches to triaging patients — in other words, deciding who gets care. But the issue is broader. My fear in the current pandemic is that we are watching as a tragedy unfolds and are not being asked by our political leaders to do anything more than to stay home. We are asking health care providers to put themselves on the line; we are hoping that supplies will arrive from somewhere; we are assuming that vital information about how to protect us will reach everyone and be understood — despite contradictory messages on things as simple as whether to wear a mask.

Traditionally, in deciding who gets care, hospitals or EMTs might use a “first come, first served” approach, prioritizing those who are in urgent need and right in front of you. That means some patients who may be in severe need but, because of income or race or other criteria, are less able to get to a health care provider will not receive care. 

Many have backed a utilitarian approach: seeking the greatest benefit for the greatest number. But in practice, this is not so simple and can discriminate against people based on age or disability. The director of the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services raised this concern at the end of March and announced that the office was opening civil rights investigations to ensure that states did not engage in “ruthless utilitarianism.” He said that “persons with disabilities, with limited English skills, and older persons should not be put at the end of the line for health care during emergencies.”

There’s no simple or right or best approach when care must be rationed. However, we need to start the conversation by reflecting upon the broader “rationing” that occurs in our society and manifests itself as vast health inequalities. Health care providers intuitively understand this, because they see how socially and economically disadvantaged groups struggle daily to stay healthy and to access care.

It is not surprising that the same people will fare worse during a pandemic — less able to get information about the virus, less able to practice “social distancing” because of their need to work or because of where they live, including crowded apartments, on the streets or in a county jail awaiting trial because they can’t pay bail for a minor offense.

Thirty years ago, facing that car accident, the first thing I did was get people who were well enough to help me. There was a limit to how much people who were untrained in first aid could do, but their extra hands helped me and helped those who received even a small amount of care, regardless of their ultimate outcome.

With more than 2.6 million cases of COVID-19 worldwide, we need to find greater social solidarity and we need political leadership that will direct that solidarity toward ensuring that those who are most disadvantaged are cared for and protected. This can be as simple as neighborhoods checking in on those who are elderly, disabled or have underlying health conditions, but it also needs to be about expanding social safety nets and maximizing justice and fairness.

In response to the pandemic, Portugal extended full citizenship rights to all migrants and asylum seekers. Immigration authorities in Spain said they would release people from detention because of the high risk for transmission in closed institutions. Barcelona’s street vendors, out of work amid the lockdown, joined forces with a clothing company to sew masks and aprons for health workers whose supplies were running low. Yet in the U.S., some states took advantage of the crisis to try to limit access to abortion and pass discriminatory laws against transgender people.

When this crisis abates, there will be a lot of discussion about “lessons learned” and how to ensure we are ready for the next pandemic. Part of the answer is to invest more in our public health and health care systems. But at least as large a part of pandemic preparedness is building solidarity and ensuring the resilience of our communities by fighting for human rights, social justice and the protection of the disadvantaged. If we succeed at that, we will have much less need for crude criteria for rationing care or asking doctors to decide who will get life-saving care and who will not.

Joe Amon is director of global health at the Drexel University Dornsife School of Public Health and the former Human Rights Watch health program director. Follow him on Twitter @joeamon.

Ecuador’s Death Toll During Outbreak Is Among the Worst in the World

A New York Times analysis suggests that Ecuador’s death toll is 15 times higher than its official tally of coronavirus deaths, highlighting the damage the virus can do in developing countries.

TRANSCRIPT0:00/6:35How Ecuador’s Port City Became a Coronavirus EpicenterEcuador took early aggressive measures to stop the coronavirus, but ended up becoming an epicenter of the pandemic in Latin America. How? We revisit the first confirmed case and what led to the disease’s spread.
Outside a hospital in Guayaquil, Ecuador, a family seals the coffin of their father with plastic wrap. Many people in Guayaquil blame the government for failing to slow the spread of coronavirus, and to deal with the thousands of bodies that have piled up in the aftermath. Guayaquil has suffered arguably the worst Covid death toll in Latin America. The thing is, Ecuador had acted earlier than its neighbors to close borders and order strict quarantine. So what went wrong? From the start, the one-two punch of rapid contagion and the ensuing death toll caught local and national officials off guard. On Feb. 27, doctors in Guayaquil diagnosed the country’s first Covid-19 patient, Bella Lamilla, a 71-year-old retired teacher, otherwise known as “Patient Zero.” Dr. Esteban Ortiz-Prado is a medical investigator helping to advise the government on the pandemic. It took 13 days to diagnose Lamilla with coronavirus. And in that time, she infected many other people, including much of her family, pictured here in 2019. In all, three family members died, including Bella herself. After she arrived in Ecuador, Lamilla stayed in the home of her niece, Cassandra, in the town of Babahoyo. Bella Lamilla was certainly not the only case. There were at least six other flights from Madrid to Guayaquil between the time she arrived and when she was diagnosed. Other travelers later tested positive for Covid-19. Those lost weeks led to an out-of-control epidemic. Two and a half weeks after Bella Lamilla’s diagnosis, the country was on lockdown. Two weeks after that, Guayaquil was in the throes of the most aggressive outbreak in Latin America. “It is true that at the very beginning, it was a disaster. We are learning by mistake, by errors that we made.” This is Dr. Juan Carlos Zevallos. He was installed as Ecuador’s health minister in late March, after the former minister resigned. He admits the government should have tested and tracked patients. But he also blames residents for not following stay-at-home orders after Bella’s diagnosis. “Ecuador, as I said, was prepared. I mean, did all the measures in place and very early. Unfortunately, the people didn’t hear us. And they did not obey those restrictions.” Like a lot of cities in Latin America, a large segment of Guayaquil’s population lives day to day, working informal jobs. So to stay home means not eating. It was a perfect storm of factors that left Guayaquil’s hospitals and morgues overwhelmed. Now, the government of Ecuador has another dilemma: Just how to bury the thousands of bodies that have piled up in the weeks after Lamilla’s death? Ecuador’s official Covid death toll is several hundred. But forensic police have been working around the clock to collect and account for thousands more dead. And construction is now underway for various large burial sites around the city. Container trucks like this one transport corpses to one new site on the outskirts of Guayaquil, in the neighborhood of Pascuales. Local residents fearful of contamination are outraged. Officials in charge of handling the dead have promised that each body will have a separate resting place. We attempted to film drone footage of the new burial site. But Ecuadorean soldiers ordered our team to bring the drone down, and temporarily confiscated our footage. A human rights worker documented the incident. Since the first coronavirus diagnosis, distrust of the government’s handling of this crisis appears to have spread as fast as the contagion itself.

By José María León Cabrera and Anatoly Kurmanaev April 23, 2020

QUITO, Ecuador — With bodies abandoned on sidewalks, slumped in wheelchairs, packed into cardboard coffins and stacked by the hundreds in morgues, it is clear that Ecuador has been devastated by the coronavirus.

But the epidemic is even worse than many people in the country realize.

The death toll in Ecuador during the outbreak was 15 times higher than the official number of Covid-19 deaths reported by the government, according to an analysis of mortality data by The New York Times.

The numbers suggest that the South American country is suffering one of the worst outbreaks in the world.

The figures provide a dire indication of the damage the virus can do to developing countries, where it can quickly overwhelm health care systems and even the government’s ability to keep count of how many people are falling to the disease.

“There were people dying at the doors of our clinics and we had no way of helping them,” said Marcelo Castillo, head of an intensive care unit in a private hospital. “Mothers, husbands, asking in tears for a bed, because, ‘You are a doctor, and you have to help us.’”


A staggering number of people — about 7,600 more this year — died in Ecuador from March 1 to April 15 than the average in recent years, according to an analysis of official death registration data by The Times.

That spike stands in stark contrast to the number of deaths that the government has officially attributed to the coronavirus: 503 people by April 15.

Mortality data in the middle of a pandemic is inexact, and it could change. The additional deaths include those from Covid-19, as well as from other causes, including people who could not be treated at hospitals inundated with coronavirus patients.

But the data points to an enormous, and sudden, increase in deaths. Three times the usual number of people died in Ecuador during the first two weeks of April, when the number of people falling ill reached a peak — an extraordinary rise that exceeds increases seen in similar data from Spain and the United Kingdom.


The funeral of a person thought to have died of Covid-19 and who was buried in a cardboard coffin in Ecuador.Credit...Mauricio Torres/EPA, via Shutterstock

Ecuador’s beleaguered government, which is also dealing with its worst economic crisis in decades, acknowledged early in the outbreak that its official mortality figures fell far short of reality.

“We know that both the number of infections and the number of deaths are falling short,” Ecuador’s president, Lenín Moreno, said in a public address on April 2. “The reality always overtakes the number of tests and the speed of attention” of medical services, he said

There has been a surge of infections in the province that includes Ecuador’s business capital, Guayaquil, where residents are thought to have brought the virus home after visiting Spain.

In Guayaquil, fatalities during the first two weeks of April were eight times higher than usual, the data indicates — a far greater rise than that of New York City, where fatalities were four times higher in recent weeks.

Within weeks of the first case being identified in Guayaquil, hospitals were overflowing and burial systems collapsed under overwhelming demand, leaving dead bodies to pile in the streets and pushing families to bury loved ones in coffins made of cardboard.

Lining up outside of a pharmacy last week in Guayaquil, Ecuador, which has seen one of the worst outbreaks of coronavirus in the world.Credit...Santiago Arcos/Reuters

While the images shocked Latin America and the world, the true scale of the crisis has largely been obscured by the government’s limited ability to determine who has the virus, a situation exacerbated by global shortages of tests and other materials, said Cynthia Viteri, Guayaquil’s mayor

“We will never know what the real number is, because there are no tests,” Ms. Viteri said.

In early April, the government created a task force to deal with the precipitous climb in the number of dead bodies that needed attention in Guayaquil. At the peak of the crisis, the team collected and authorized the burial of five times as many bodies than would normally be buried in the city on any given day.

The wave of deaths is all the more disturbing for being impossible to explain. There is no obvious reason for Ecuador to be devastated far more than other countries. Its population is relatively young, and most people live in rural areas, both factors that should reduce the risk, said Jenny Garcia, a demographer who studies Latin America at the Institut National d’Études Démographiques in France.

That mystery is reflected in the pandemic’s uneven consequences around the world, raising questions no one has been able to answer. Are some places just lucky? Do unknown local factors lead to dramatic differences?


Health Ministry personnel visited homes to test for coronavirus in Guayaquil.Credit...Jose Sanchez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Medical workers in Guayaquil and local residents who have lost their loved ones described the despair that washed over the city during the peak of the epidemic in early April. The virus spread through the usually bustling port city of three million with bewildering speed, hitting the plush suburban gated community of Samborondón and the working-class district of Febres Cordero particularly hard.

“I fall asleep with anxiety, not because I fear infection — I actually don’t think about it — but because of the overload,” said Dr. Castillo, who works in an intensive care unit in Samborondón.

In another city hospital, the Teodoro Maldonado Carbo, a doctor who did not want to give his name because he has been asked not to speak to the media, described what he said were scenes out of a horror film.

There were corpses in wheelchairs, in stretchers and on the floor in the emergency area, he said. The smell was such that the staff refused to enter.

Several of his colleagues fell sick and waited in wheelchairs for patients to die, hoping it would give them a chance to use a ventilator.

The spike in deaths caused chaos and anger outside hospitals and morgues, as grieving families struggled to recover the bodies of family members or to collect their death certificates. In the city’s poorer neighborhoods, some residents said they had to wait for up to six days in the 90-degree heat for emergency services to collect the bodies of deceased relatives and neighbors.


Hospitals in Ecuador were overwhelmed with Covid-19 patients.Credit...Rodrigo Buendia/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Darío Figueroa, a handyman, said he dressed in a homemade protective suit made of garbage bags and spent nearly 12 hours searching for his mother’s body in the overflowing morgue of Guayaquil’s Guasmo Sur hospital in late March.

There were hundreds of decomposing bodies stacked in piles, he said, as if they were sacks of potatoes or rice.

“The reek was insufferable,” he said. “The morgue was packed, as were the corridors — they were very long, and filled with corpses. The waiting room was filled with corpses.”

Mr. Figueroa said he finally buried his mother five days after her death from respiratory symptoms. She died on arrival to the hospital without being tested for the virus.

A national lockdown ordered by the government in mid-March appears to be bearing fruit, as official infection rates have stabilized. Deaths also fell sharply in Guayaquil last week. Official figures show 128 died on April 15 in Guayas, the province that includes Guayaquil. That’s down from 614 on April 1.

Despite the respite, Mr. Moreno, the president, said the country is facing one of its toughest moments in its 200-year history, as the economic cost of the pandemic has been compounded by the collapse of export revenues, ruptures in the country’s main oil pipelines and massive foreign debt payments.

He is now facing a tough choice between keeping a paralyzed economy shuttered longer, or risking a resurgence of the virus.

Under pressure from business groups, Mr. Moreno said this week he’s considering relaxing the lockdown and allowing some industries to go back to work. The news was greeted with anxiety in Guayaquil, where many residents are torn between a desire to return to work and fear of reliving the chaos of the past weeks.

“The pandemic is not over,” said Gina Mendoza, a Guayaquil nurse who has recently recovered from coronavirus. “We are scared of what could happen.”


Coffins for sale in Guayaquil.Credit...Vicente Gaibor del Pino/Reuters