It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
From August 11 to 13, volunteers joined the Ardennes Fishing Federation to clear the carcasses of tonnes of fish found in the Aisne river (Photos: Fédération de pêche des Ardennes/Facebook).
Thousands of fish were found dead on the banks and in the Aisne river near Brécy-Brières in northeastern France on August 10. Local fishermen place the blame on waste runoff from a Nestlé factory in Challerange less than three kilometres away. Volunteers, firefighters and fishermen spent three days clearing the remains of the fish from the river.
Around 9pm on August 9, sludge from Nestlé’s plant in Challerange, which produces powdered milk used in the Nescafé Dolce Gusto line, began flowing into the river Aisne via a pipeline. Factory director Tony do Rio reported that upon learning of the spill, the factory ceased production around 11pm the same evening. Firefighters were called to stop the flow of the pipeline into the river.
The following day, the fishing federation of Ardennes, the department where the pollution occurred, began to report the appearance of dead fish on the banks of the Aisne. Recreational and professional activities were prohibited in the Aisne between Challerange and Vouziers during one week after the spill, and a dam was built to limit the spread of any pollution further along the Aisne and in other local waterways.
On August 12, the Ardennes Fishing Federation sounded a call for volunteers to help clean the dead fish from the river.
'Heavy pollution on the Aisne, between Challerange and Olizy-Primat, yesterday evening,' the Ardennes Fishing Federation wrote in French in a Facebook post on August 10.
On August 12, the Ardennes Fishing Federation made a call for 'strong and motivated arms' to aid in the recuperation of fish
'The smell of rotting fish was difficult to bear'
Régis Piette, a resident of the area since 1991, helped with the cleanup effort. A certified fishing guide, he learned about the cleanup on social media. I decided to help with the cleanup as a civic duty. A river has to be protected, as well as its species, for the good of all. The experience was traumatising and difficult to accept. There were about 20 of us, divided into teams. And there were many volunteers all along the banks of the river. I am very sad to see the Aisne touched in this way, and I am very angry this could still happen in our times. I have never seen pollution like this in the river.
During the cleanup, the water had returned to its normal colour, but when the pollution wave passed it was black. I noticed that some dead river branches were black during the cleaning up. The smell of rotting fish was strong and difficult to bear. The strong heat accelerated the decomposition process. The river was carpeted with fish. The slow-moving areas and the vegetation that held the fish were a spectacle of desolation.
After collecting over one tonne of fish on August 13, Piette and other volunteers had cleared most of the debris from the river. According to a statement from the Prefecture of Ardennes, more than two tonnes of fish were recuperated in the first two days of cleanup, with the total damage estimated at 3 to 5 tonnes. The majority of the carcasses were taken to a waste processing plant and safely disposed of.
In the third day of cleaning, volunteers collected one tonne of fish carcasses. In a post on Facebook, the Ardennes Fishing Association advised residents not to touch the fish that are still left on the banks, as they are in a state of decomposition.
In the third day of cleaning, volunteers collected one tonne of fish carcasses. In a post on Facebook, the Ardennes Fishing Association advised residents not to touch the fish that are still left on the banks, as they are in a state of decomposition.
Fishing grounds devastated
The Ardennes region is known for its unspoiled natural beauty and plenty of lakes and rivers to fish in. Both local fishermen and tourists who come to the area to fish will be affected by the major species loss in the Aisne.
Those, like Piette, who fish in the river Aisne will see their activities drastically changed:
It’s inevitable that this pollution will affect the future of fishing, recreational fishing as well as my job as a fishing guide. I'm going to have to relocate my fishing school trips to let this area recover. Ardennes Fishing Federation President Michel Adam told AFP that all the fish in a 7 kilometre stretch of the Aisne have died. He said the affected fish include 14 species, some of which are protected such as eels and lamprey. Some estimate that it will take more 10 years for the Aisne fish population to recover to previous levels.
France 3 Grand Est reported that the 70 fishermen of the Challerange fishing company may not renew their membership in the group. Adam estimated that the damage to the river amounts to "several thousand euros”.
Nestlé confirms 'occasional and involuntary overflow without the presence of chemicals' According to the Prefecture of Ardennes, the death of the fish occurred due to a decrease of oxygen in the water, but an investigation is ongoing by the French Bioversity Office and gendarmerie to determine if any chemical pollution played a part in the death of the fish.
Nestlé has said that its Challerange plant usually only discharges clean water into the Aisne, but confirmed to AFP that “occasional and involuntary overflow of biological sludge effluent, without the presence of chemicals” occurred in its wastewater treatment plant. According to the Ardennes Fishing Federation, some Nestlé employees aided in the cleanup.
The federation has lodged a complaint against Nestlé for violating article 432.2 of France’s environmental code, which prohibits any damage done to the natural ecosystem through discharging or disposing waste into bodies of water.
Left: A ton of wheat pledged by dairy farmer Régis Desrumaux. The bag is decorated to show French solidarity with Lebanon. Right: Vincent Guyot, a grain farmer in France, launched the initiative to collect wheat for Lebanon. HUMANITARIAN AID / FRANCE - 08/18/2020 AFP After the explosion in Beirut on August 4, a French farmer launched an initiative on social media to help collect wheat to feed people in Lebanon. The video has been viewed more than 60,000 times since it was published on August 10, and other farmers have pledged to join. However, despite the enthusiasm, the logistics of transporting wheat to Lebanon and storing it there present complications. On August 10, Vincent Guyot, who cultivates grain in the Aisne region of France, shared a video on Twitter announcing his initiative. In the clip, he calls on Minister of Food and Agriculture Julien Denormandie, and Leá Salamé, a journalist at France Inter and France Televisions, to help the initiative. I am ready to donate a ton of wheat for Lebanon. But I am a simple grain farmer in the north of Aisne, and I do not have the operational means to organise this chain of solidarity. Help me organize it so that we can do something concrete for this country. Chère @LeaSalame Cher Mr le Ministre @J_Denormandie Aidez moi, aidez nous, à les aider concrètement, avec du 🌾 : #unetonnedeblépourleLiban . Si vous aussi vous voulez donner #unetonnedeblépourleLiban : RT , Si vous voulez soutenir cette chaine de #solidarité#fraternité : 💚. pic.twitter.com/7vrADs9Tea GUYOT Vincent (@GuyotVincent02) August 10, 2020In this first video, posted on August 10, French farmer Vincent Guyot initiates his call for farmers in France to each donate a ton of wheat to the collection for Beirut. “Sending a Tweet is fun and easy. But mounting a humanitarian operation is totally different.” Updates to the project are shared with the hashtag #UneTonneDeBlePourLeLiban [A Ton of Wheat for Lebanon]. Guyot spoke to the FRANCE 24 Observers team about the initiative. What I know is that I am a farmer and a wheat producer. This is more concrete for me than donating money. As of today, we’ve started communication, but the operational phase has not started. Next week, I hope. Sending a Tweet is fun and easy. But mounting a humanitarian operation is totally different. It takes longer. Between 29 and 30 million tons of wheat have been harvested in France [this year], and the French domestic market only consumes 15 to 20 million tons. So it is not a problem for the French market. Since the project is still in the initial planning phase, it is difficult to estimate how much wheat will be collected. A week after his first video, Guyot is still waiting on government support for his initiative. Transporting many tons of wheat from France to Lebanon is an over 4,000-kilometre journey. Guyot said he cannot launch the project on his own. #unetonnedeblépourleliban La suite ... et à suivre ... Plus de 60 000 vues en une semaine ... On va le faire ... https://t.co/6nLcNnOR4Tpic.twitter.com/aYXaehzEIq GUYOT Vincent (@GuyotVincent02) August 17, 2020 This latest video, shared August 17, tags France’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jean-Yves Le Drian and other top officials. “I've received a lot of text messages from farmers in my region who want to participate.” Régis Desrumaux is a dairy farmer in the Oise region. After seeing Guyot’s video, Desrusmaux pledged to donate a ton of his wheat to the initiative. He spoke to the FRANCE 24 Observers team about the project. Partant pour la chaîne de solidarité de @GuyotVincent02 ! Et vous, les agris de l’Oise ? @smessaertluc@60thierry@adupuy60d@LePogamGuillaum@agritof60#unetonnedeblépourleLiban@FDSEAOise@JeunesAgri60@ChLambert_FNSEA@J_Denormandie@EmmanuelMacron@JeromeDespeypic.twitter.com/SS65dqTH21 Régis Desrumaux (@DesrumauxRegis) August 10, 2020 Régis Desrumaux is a dairy farmer in l’Oise. Desrumaux joined Guyot’s campaign and pledged to donate a ton of his own wheat to Lebanon. Like many people, I was shocked when I saw what happened in Beirut. When I saw Vincent Guyot's call on social media, I said, we must participate. Our job is to feed people. It’s always easier to donate what we produce. A ton of wheat makes more sense than a euro. Vincent Guyot has this great idea. And I've received a lot of text messages from farmers in my region who want to participate. We are really in this first phase [of collection]. We’re on the starting block. L’artiste de la famille @corinnecheroux a apporté sa touche perso’. Bigbag prêt à partir pour le Liban. On attend simplement les moyens d’acheminement ! Tous derrière @GuyotVincent02 ! @EmmanuelMacron@J_Denormandie#unetonnedeblepourleLiban#toussolidairepic.twitter.com/5yVjEVzgAV Régis Desrumaux (@DesrumauxRegis) August 15, 2020 Farmer Régis Desrumaux shared this photo on August 15. The caption reads, “Family artist @corinnecheroux brought his personal touch. This big bag is ready to go to Lebanon. We are simply waiting for a means of delivery.” “Aid must also focus on rebuilding means for storing foodstuffs.” Dr. Serge Zarka is a Lebanese agronomist who lives in France. He moved to France in 1991 with his family to flee the Lebanese Civil War. He retweeted Vincent Guyot’s post to draw attention to the project. It’s an interesting initiative. Wheat is really the staple food in Lebanon. Flour and bread. The conditions of transport do not worry me because this is France and we are used to transporting wheat. But you can’t just send wheat anyway, anywhere. Many of the silos in Beirut were destroyed in the blast. One important note: we must provide different types of wheat. Some wheat is used to make bread, and other types are used for pastries. So we must ensure that the donations of wheat [from farmers] are diverse. We can’t just have wheat for making bread. There are other types of wheat that are important to the population. To regain lasting autonomy, aid must also focus on rebuilding means for storing foodstuffs. And this is a top priority before sending large amounts of inventory. Storage could be done in the meantime in Cyprus. As a Lebanese person, I am very happy about this initiative. I have a doctorate in agro-meteorology, and I studied in France. At my core, I am Franco-Lebanese. I came to France for my studies and because there was a civil war. Promoting this project is an excellent way for me to give back to Lebanon despite the distance. Currently, French officials have not responded to the initiative, but Guyot continues to share updates on social media. He shares news of this operation under the hashtag #UneTonnedeBlePourLeLiban. You can follow the initiative and contact Vincent Guyot on Twitter at @GuyotVincent02. Article by Sophie Stuber
AP FACT CHECK: Trump’s flawed justification for postal cuts
By HOPE YEN, PAUL WISEMAN and CALVIN WOODWARD 1 of 4 President Donald Trump speaks with reporters as he walks to Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House, Monday, Aug. 17, 2020, in Washington. Trump is en route to Minnesota and Wisconsin. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is misrepresenting the U.S. Postal Service’s financial problems as his postmaster general defends cuts that have slowed mail delivery in advance of the November election.
Speaking before the start of the Democratic National Convention, Trump raged anew about the perils of mail-in voting and argued that the post office needed an overhaul, blaming Amazon deliveries for its operating in the red. Package deliveries actually have been the bright spot for the post office, with double-digit increases in revenue.
Trump also gave his trade deal with China false credit for generating the purchases of U.S. goods that Beijing agreed to make. Chinese imports of U.S. products are actually running at less than half of what Trump negotiated, and it’s even worse for American farmers who sell to China.
POSTAL SERVICE
TRUMP: “One of the things the Post Office loses so much money on is the delivering packages for Amazon and these others. Every time they deliver a package, they probably lose three or four dollars. That’s not good.” -- remarks Monday to reporters.
THE FACTS: That’s false. Full Coverage: AP Fact Check
While the U.S. Postal Service has lost money for 13 years, package delivery is not the reason.
Boosted by e-commerce, the Postal Service has enjoyed double-digit increases in revenue from delivering packages, but that hasn’t been enough to offset pension and health care costs as well as declines in first-class letters and marketing mail. Together, letters and marketing mail in recent years have comprised up to two-thirds of postal revenue.
In arguing that the Postal Service is losing money on delivering packages for Amazon, Trump appears to be citing some Wall Street analyses that argue the Postal Service’s formula for calculating its costs is outdated. A 2017 analysis by Citigroup did conclude that the service was charging below market rates as a whole on parcels. Still, federal regulators have reviewed the Amazon contract with the Postal Service each year and found it profitable.
To become financially stable, the Postal Service has urged Congress for years to give it relief from the mandate to prefund retiree health benefits. Legislation in 2006 required the Postal Service to fund 75 years’ worth of retiree health benefits, at an estimated cost of $5 billion per year, something that neither the government nor private companies are required to do. ADVERTISEMENT
In the most recent quarter, for instance, package delivery rose 53% at the Postal Service as homebound people during the pandemic shifted online for their shopping. But the gain in deliveries was offset by the continued declines in first-class mail as well as costs for personal protective equipment and to replace workers who got sick during the pandemic.
The biggest factor was the prepayment of retiree health benefits, which Congress imposed and only Congress can take away.
As a quasi-government agency, the Postal Service also is required under law to provide mail delivery to millions of U.S. residences at affordable and uniform rates, an increasingly labor-intensive task given the nation’s growing population. It does not use taxpayer money for its operations and supports operations with the sales of stamps and other mail products.
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TRUMP: “We want to make sure that the Post Office runs properly and it hasn’t run properly for many years, for probably 50 years. It’s run very badly. So we want to make sure that the Post Office runs properly and doesn’t lose billions of dollars.” — remarks Monday to reporters.
THE FACTS: There’s no evidence of broad mismanagement at the Postal Service that dates back 50 years, nor did Trump offer any evidence.
The Postal Service started losing “billions,” as Trump put it, after the 2006 law mandating health prefunding took effect. Those billion-dollar payments, which coincided with the 2007-2008 Great Recession and a wider shift toward online bill payments, pushed the Postal Service into the red. Excluding those health payments, it has finished each year with revenue surpluses for most of the past decade.
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FLOYD PROTESTS
TRUMP, on unrest in Minnesota after George Floyd died in the custody of Minneapolis police: “When I sent in the National Guard, that’s when it all stopped.” — speech in Mankato, Minnesota.
THE FACTS: No, Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, deployed the Minnesota National Guard, not Trump. The president didn’t send forces to the streets in Minnesota. He repeatedly claims that he did.
In the speech, Trump went on to say he urged Minnesota officials to deploy the Guard and “they should have done it a lot sooner,” thereby acknowledging, if indirectly, that the order wasn’t his. But Walz said he mobilized the Guard at the request of city officials, not because Trump wanted him to.
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TRADE
TRUMP, on China’s adherence to the trade deal his administration negotiated with Beijing: “They are living – they’re more than living ... up to it. ... Because they know I’m very angry at them.” — “Fox & Friends” interview Monday.
THE FACTS: That’s not true. China is falling well short of its commitments under the trade deal.
The Peterson Institute for International Economics, which has been tracking China’s purchases, found this month that U.S. exports of goods to China should have totaled $71.3 billion from January through June to be on track to reach this year’s target under the Phase 1 deal. Instead, they topped out at $33.1 billion, only 46% of what they should be.
The shortfall in promised Chinese purchases of U.S. farm products is even bigger. Those purchases totaled $6.5 billion, only 39% of purchases that should have reached $16.7 billion through June.
The gap is perhaps not surprising, given that world trade has been badly disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic. But Trump did not negotiate provisions giving China leeway in any downturn. It’s conceivable, if unlikely, that Chinese purchases will pick it up in the second half of the year enough to make up for the shortfall.
But in no sense is China more than living up to the deal now.
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Associated Press writer Matthew Daly contributed to this report.
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EDITOR’S NOTE — A look at the veracity of claims by political figures.
Politics slows flow of US virus funds to local public health
By MICHELLE R. SMITH, LAUREN WEBER, HANNAH RECHT and LAURA UNGAR 1 of 11 Minneapolis Health Commissioner Gretchen Musicant poses for a portrait while visiting a COVID-19 testing event at Incarnation-Sagrado Corazon Church, Saturday, Aug. 15, 2020, in Minneapolis. As the coronavirus began to spread through Minneapolis this spring, Musicant tore up her budget to find money to combat the crisis. It was not until Aug. 5 — months after Congress approved coronavirus aid — that her department finally received $1.7 million, the equivalent of $4 per Minneapolis resident. (AP Photo/Craig Lassig)
As the novel coronavirus began to spread through Minneapolis this spring, Health Commissioner Gretchen Musicant tore up her budget to find funds to combat the crisis. Money for test kits. Money to administer tests. Money to hire contact tracers. And yet even more money for a service that helps tracers communicate with residents in dozens of languages.
While Musicant diverted workers from violence prevention and other core programs to the COVID-19 response, state officials debated how to distribute $1.87 billion Minnesota received in federal aid.
As she waited, the Minnesota Zoo got $6 million in federal money to continue operations, and a debt collection company outside Minneapolis received at least $5 million from the federal Paycheck Protection Program, according to federal data.
It was not until Aug. 5 — months after Congress approved aid for the pandemic — that Musicant’s department finally received $1.7 million, the equivalent of $4 per Minneapolis resident.
“It’s more a hope and a prayer that we’ll have enough money,” Musicant said. KHN-AP Series: Underfunded and Under Threat
Since the pandemic began, Congress has set aside trillions of dollars to ease the crisis. A joint Kaiser Health News and Associated Press investigation finds that many communities with big outbreaks have spent little of that federal money on local public health departments for work such as testing and contact tracing. Others, like in Minnesota, were slow to do so.
For example, the states, territories and 154 large cities and counties that received allotments from the $150 billion Coronavirus Relief Fund reported spending only 25% of it through June 30, according to reports that recipients submitted to the U.S. Treasury Department.
Many localities have deployed more money since that June 30 reporting deadline, and both Republican and Democratic governors say they need more to avoid layoffs and cuts to vital state services. Still, as cases in the U.S. top 5.4 million and confirmed deaths soar past 170,000, Republicans in Congress are pointing to the slow spending to argue against sending more money to state and local governments to help with their pandemic response.
“States and localities have only spent about a fourth of the money we already sent them in the springtime,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday. Congressional Democrats’ efforts to get more money for states, he said, “aren’t based on math. They aren’t based on the pandemic.”
Negotiations over a new pandemic relief bill broke down last week, in part because Democrats and Republicans could not agree on funding for state and local governments.
KHN and the AP requested detailed spending breakdowns from recipients of money from the Coronavirus Relief Fund — created in March as part of the $1.9 trillion CARES Act — and received responses from 23 states and 62 cities and counties. Those entities dedicated 23% of their spending from the fund through June to public health and 7% to public health and safety payroll.
An additional 22% was transferred to local governments, some of which will eventually pass it down to health departments. The rest went to other priorities, such as distance learning.
So little money has flowed to some local health departments for many reasons: Bureaucracy has bogged things down, politics have crept into the process, and understaffed departments have struggled to take time away from critical needs to navigate the red tape required to justify asking for extra dollars.
“It does not make sense to me how anyone thinks this is a way to do business,” said E. Oscar Alleyne, chief of programs and services at the National Association of County and City Health Officials. “We are never going to get ahead of the pandemic response if we are still handicapped.” (AP Graphic)
Last month, KHN and the AP detailed how state and local public health departments across the U.S. have been starved for decades. Over 38,000 public health worker jobs have been lost since 2008, and per capita spending on local health departments has been cut by 18% since 2010. That’s left them underfunded and without adequate resources to confront the coronavirus pandemic.
“Public health has been cut and cut and cut over the years, but we’re so valuable every time you turn on the television,” said Jan Morrow, the director and 41-year veteran of Ripley County health department in rural Missouri. “We are picking up all the pieces, but the money is not there. They’ve cut our budget until there’s nothing left.”
POLITICS AND RED TAPE
Why did the Minneapolis health department have to wait so long for CARES Act money?
Congress mandated that the Coronavirus Relief Fund be distributed to states and local governments based on population. Minneapolis, with 430,000 residents, missed the threshold of 500,000 people that would have allowed it to receive money directly.
The state of Minnesota, however, received $1.87 billion, a portion of which was meant to be sent to local communities. Lawmakers initially sent some state money to tide communities over until the federal money came through — the Minneapolis health department got about $430,000 in state money to help pay for things like testing.
But when it came time to decide how to use the CARES Act money, lawmakers in Minnesota’s Republican-controlled Senate and Democratic-controlled House were at loggerheads.
Myron Frans, commissioner of Minnesota Management and Budget, said that disagreement, on top of the economic crisis and pandemic, left the legislature in turmoil.
Democratic Gov. Tim Walz favored targeting some of the money to harder-hit communities, a move that might have helped Minneapolis, where cases have surged since mid-July. But lawmakers couldn’t agree. Negotiations dragged on, and a special session merely prolonged the standoff.
Finally, the governor divvied up the money using a population-based formula developed earlier by Republican and Democratic legislative leaders that did not take into account COVID-19 caseloads or racial disparities.
“We knew we needed to get it out the door,” Frans said.
The state then sent hundreds of millions of dollars to local communities. Still, even after the money got to Minneapolis a month ago, Musicant had to wait as city leaders made difficult choices about how to spend the money as the economy cratered and the list of needs grew.
“Even when it gets to the local government, you still have to figure out how to get it to local public health,” Musicant said.
Meanwhile, some in Minneapolis have noticed a lack of services. Dr. Jackie Kawiecki has been providing help to people at a volunteer medical station near the place where Floyd was killed — an area that at times has drawn hundreds or thousands of people per day. She said the city did not do enough free, easy-to-access testing in its neighborhoods this summer.
“I still don’t think that the amount of testing offered is adequate, from a public health standpoint,” Kawiecki said.
A coalition of groups that includes the National Governors Association has blamed the spending delays on the federal government, saying the final guidance on how states could spend the money came late in June, shortly before the reporting period ended. The coalition said state and local governments had moved “expeditiously and responsibly” to use the money as they deal with skyrocketing costs for health care, emergency response and other vital programs.
New York’s Nassau County was among six counties, cities and states that had spent at least 75% of its funds by June 30.
While most of the money was not spent before then, the National Association of State Budget Officers says a July 23 survey of 45 states and territories found they had allocated, or set aside, an average of 74% of the money.
But if they have, that money has been slow to make it to many local health departments.
As of mid-July in Missouri, at least 50 local health departments had yet to receive any of the federal money they requested, according to a state survey. The money must first flow through local county commissioners, some of whom aren’t keen on sending money to public health agencies.
“You closed their businesses down in order to save their people’s lives and so that hurt the economy,” said Larry Jones, executive director for the Missouri Center for Public Health Excellence, an organization of public health leaders. “So they’re mad at you and don’t want to give you money.”
The winding path federal money takes as it makes its way to states and cities also could exacerbate the stark economic and health inequalities in the U.S. if equity isn’t considered in decision-making, said Wizdom Powell, director of the University of Connecticut Health Disparities Institute.
“Problems are so vast you could unintentionally further entrench inequities just by how you distribute funds,” Powell said.
‘EVERYTHING FELL BEHIND’
The amounts eventually distributed can induce head-scratching.
Some cities received large federal grants, including Louisville, Kentucky, whose health department was given $42 million by April, more than doubling its annual budget. Because of the way the money was distributed, Louisville’s health department alone received more money from the CARES Act than the entire government of the city of Minneapolis, which received $32 million in total.
Philadelphia’s health department was awarded $100 million from a separate fund from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Honolulu County, where cases have remained relatively low, received $124,454 for every positive COVID-19 case it had reported as of Aug. 9, while El Paso County in Texas got just $1,685 per case. Multnomah County, Oregon — with nearly a quarter of its state’s COVID-19 cases — landed only 2%, or $28 million, of the state’s $1.6 billion allotment.
Rural Saline County in Missouri received the same funding as counties of similar size, even though the virus hit the area particularly hard. In April, outbreaks began tearing through a Cargill meatpacking plant and a local factory. By late May, the health department confirmed 12 positive cases at the local jail.
Tara Brewer, Saline’s health department administrator, said phone lines were ringing off the hook, jamming the system. Eventually, several department employees handed out their personal cell phone numbers to take calls from residents looking to be tested or seeking care for coronavirus symptoms.
“Everything fell behind,” Brewer said.
The school vaccination clinic in April was canceled, and a staffer who works as a Spanish translator for the Women, Infants and Children nutritional program was enlisted to contact trace for additional coronavirus exposures. All food inspections stopped.
It was late July when $250,000 in federal CARES Act money finally reached the 11-person health department, Brewer said — four months after Congress approved the spending and three months after the county’s first outbreak.
That was far too late for Brewer to hire the army of contact tracers that might have helped slow the spread of the virus back in April. She said the money already has been spent on antibody testing and reimbursements for groceries and medical equipment the department had bought for quarantined residents.
Another problem: Some local health officials say that the laborious process required to qualify for some of the federal aid discourages overworked public health officials from even trying to secure more money and that funds can be uneven in arriving.
Lisa Macon Harrison, public health director for Granville Vance Public Health in rural Oxford, North Carolina, said it’s tough to watch major hospital systems — some of which are sitting on billions in reserves — receive direct deposits, while her department received only about $122,000 through three grants by the end of July. Her team filled out a 25-page application just to get one of them.
She is now waiting to receive an estimated $400,000 more. By contrast, the Duke University Hospital System, which includes a facility that serves Granville, already has received over $67.3 million from the federal Provider Relief Fund.
“I just don’t understand the extra layers of onus for the bureaucracy, especially if hundreds of millions of dollars are going to the hospitals and we have to be responsible to apply for 50 grants,” she said.
The money comes from dozens of funds, including several programs within the CARES Act. Nebraska alone received money from 76 federal COVID relief funding sources.
Robert Miller, director of health for the Eastern Highlands Health District in Connecticut, which covers 10 towns, received $29,596 of the $2.5 million the state distributed to local departments from the CDC fund and nothing from CARES. It was only enough to pay for some contact tracing and employee mileage.
Miller said that he could theoretically apply for a little more from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but that the reporting requirements — which include collecting every receipt — are extremely cumbersome for an already overburdened department.
So he wonders: “Is the squeeze worth the juice?”
Back in Minneapolis, Musicant said the new money from CARES allowed the department to run a free COVID-19 testing site Saturday, at a church that serves the Hispanic community about a mile from the site of Floyd’s killing.
It will take more money to do everything the community needs, she says, but with Congress deadlocked, she’s not sure they’ll get it anytime soon.
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Smith is a writer for The Associated Press, and Weber, Recht and Ungar are writers for KHN. AP writers Camille Fassett and Steve Karnowski contributed to this report.
This story is a collaboration between The Associated Press and KHN, which is a nonprofit news service covering health issues. It is an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation. KHN is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
US Report: Nursing home cases up nearly 80% in COVID-19 rebound
By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR
1 of 2 FILE - In this June 25, 2020, file photo, residents at the Southern Pines nursing home are separated and wear face coverings during their daily bingo game in Warner Robins, Ga. A new report says COVID-19 cases in U.S. nursing homes jumped nearly 80% earlier this summer, driven by rampant spread across the South and much of the West. (AP Photo/John Bazemore, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — COVID-19 cases in U.S. nursing homes jumped nearly 80% earlier this summer, driven by rampant spread across the South and much of the West, according to an industry report released Monday.
“The case numbers suggest the problem is far from solved,” said Tamara Konetzka, a research professor at the University of Chicago, who specializes in long-term care. She was not involved with the study.
Long-term care facilities account for less than 1% of the U.S. population, but more than 40 percent of COVID-19 deaths, according to the COVID Tracking Project.
The situation is a politically sensitive issue for President Donald Trump, who is scrambling to hold on to support from older voters as polls show disapproval of his administration’s response to the pandemic.
The White House announced in late July the release of $5 billion for nursing homes, while launching a program to equip each of some 15,000 facilities with a fast-test machine to screen residents and staff for the coronavirus.
Monday’s study from the American Health Care Association found there were 9,715 coronavirus cases in nursing homes the week starting July 26, a 77% increase from a low point the week of June 21. The group is the industry’s main trade association.
Weekly deaths, rose to 1,706 the week of July 26, an increase of nearly 25% from a low point the week starting July 5.
Nursing homes in Sunbelt states had more time to prepare than facilities in the Northeast that were hit in late winter and early spring, with grim results. But Konetzka and other researchers have been warning that once a community anywhere experiences an outbreak, it’s only a matter of time before the coronavirus enters its nursing homes. A leading theory is that staffers who don’t yet know they’re infected unwittingly bring the virus in. Inside, the coronavirus encounters an ideal environment in which to spread among frail older people living in close quarters.
“As the virus surges in Sunbelt states, there’s no reason to think it won’t affect nursing homes in the same way it did in states that surged earlier,” said Konetzka. “We have learned some things about how to minimize the effect in nursing homes, but providers need the tools to implement those best practices. This is the critical role of federal policy that has not been fulfilled— securing supply chains for (personal protective equipment) and rapid testing.”
The industry analysis illustrates the march of the virus across the U.S.
As of the week of May 31, fewer than one-third of the weekly coronavirus cases were from nursing homes in Sunbelt states. But by the week starting July 26, that share was 78%.
Deaths followed a similar pattern. Nursing homes in states across the South and parts of the West accounted for 28% of deaths the week of May 31. That share was 69% by the week starting July 26.
The Trump administration says it’s executing on its plan to provide fast-test machines to nursing homes and make sure that all facilities have the protective equipment they need. But Seema Verma, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said states and nursing homes also have responsibility to safeguard residents. She called on nursing homes to step up their game.
“The reality is that (a) facility’s infection control practices is the number one factor leading to the spread of COVID within these facilities,” Verma said in a statement. Inspectors “have seen staff forgetting to wash their hands, congregating in break rooms, and wearing (protective equipment) improperly. All the testing in the world is for naught if staff don’t adhere to the basic, longstanding infection control practices that the federal government has had in place for years.”
Mark Parkinson, head of the nursing home trade group that produced the study, said the problem is bigger.
“The data indicate that this virus is spread by asymptomatic carriers and that even perfect infection control wouldn’t have stopped it,” he said. “The challenge with this virus is that because it is spread by asymptomatic carriers the prior infection control procedures didn’t work.”
Parkinson said that about 10% of facilities still report lacking an adequate supply of N95 masks, considered standard for hospital personnel.
He said the administration’s effort to distribute fast-test machines could be a “game changer,” but added “there’s still a long way to go.” Distribution is expected to be completed by the end of September.
In the meantime, Parkinson said it can still take three days, and sometimes more, to get results. “We continue to be plagued with a testing problem,” he said.
Guidelines call for nursing homes to test all residents at least once, and staffers on a regular basis.
Health and Human Services spokeswoman Mia Heck said, “We are prepared to exert our full authority to make sure the most vulnerable are being tested.”
The nursing home association is urging states struggling with the latest coronavirus surge to enact mandates for people to wear masks, saying it would indirectly benefit residents cloistered in such facilities. “There’s a direct link between COVID in the community and COVID in the building,” Parkinson said.
The Right Wing Has A New Theory For Why The Pandemic Will End Soon: T Cells
Right-wing commentators and Trump’s new science adviser, Scott Atlas, say new studies signal good news for ending the pandemic. Scientists say that’s a dangerous leap.
How the immune system responds to the coronavirus is a mystery that scientists are working furiously to unravel — but their findings are being weaponized to make unfounded claims that the pandemic isn’t a big threat.
That became clear this week, when President Donald Trump unveiled his newest science adviser on the coronavirus task force, neuroradiologist Scott Atlas. A senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, he has steadily promoted unscientific views about the virus on Fox News and elsewhere, and has said there is “zero excuse to not have the schools open in person.” On Monday, Rush Limbaugh said Atlas was “countering Fauci” and cited the new adviser’s baseless theory that “we could well be burned out of COVID” by October. The reason: “prior immunities.”
Also on Monday, an unlicensed ophthalmologist and cryptocurrency investor, James Todaro, went viral on Twitter with a similarly misleading screed. Todaro, who was in the viral “America’s Frontline Doctors” video shared by Trump and removed from social media platforms for spreading misinformation about hydroxychloroquine, falsely claimed that “T cell immunity” meant many regions were already safe from infection and that lockdowns and mask-wearing were likely useless.
But infectious disease experts say these claims grossly distort the underlying science and what it means for public health guidelines — which, right now, is nothing. If you have tips related to this story, you can reach this reporter at stephanie.lee@buzzfeed.com or stephaniemlee@protonmail.com.
The apparent basis for these statements: a slew of recent studies finding that, in some places, 20% to 50% of people have immune cells that unexpectedly recognize the coronavirus. The newest of these studies suggests that these cells exist because they have responded in the past to similar viruses that can cause colds.
But the significance of this finding remains an open question, as it’s unclear what role, if any, these cells play in the body’s overall response to the coronavirus. And there is still no evidence that having these cells from a past cold will save you from getting COVID-19.
As T cells become yet another politicized flashpoint, scientists say the bottom line is that none of these findings make COVID-19 any less of a threat. The research should not be used, they warn, to argue against shutdowns and masks or for reopening workplaces and schools in a developed nation that has uniquely failed to control the virus. Most of all, they reject the leap of logic that the research means society is close to herd immunity — the point at which enough people are immune to a virus that it stops circulating.
“We’ve got 1,000 people dying a day in the country,” Shane Crotty, an immunologist at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology who has worked on several of the recent T cell studies, told BuzzFeed News. “There’s no change in what the virus is doing based on what I find out or anybody else finds out. The virus is doing its thing and we’re doing our best to understand it.”
The claim that T cells could mean the pandemic will end in two months, he said, is “a total misunderstanding and wishful thinking.”
Brendan Smialowski / Getty Images Scott Atlas listens to US President Donald Trump during the Aug. 10 White House briefing.
Since the outset of the pandemic, Crotty and scientists around the world have been racing to untangle how the virus wreaks havoc on the body and how the body fights back.
The immune system employs different mechanisms to recognize and attack intruders. Perhaps the best-known of the bunch are antibodies, the proteins that latch onto and neutralize viruses and other invading substances. But in people who recover from the coronavirus, antibodies may only protect against reinfection for three months, recent research suggests.
Another weapon in the immune system’s armory is T cells, which come in an assortment of types and functions andare increasinglygarneringscientificattention. In the Netherlands, Germany, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the US, researchers have discovered that in some people, a specific subset of T cells recognized the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, when exposed to it. This was surprising, because these kinds of T cells, by definition, were not expected to recognize a virus they had never encountered before.
In their paper published last week in Science, Crotty and his team reported an explanation for why these cells reacted. Using human blood samples collected prior to the pandemic, they found cells that reacted to both SARS-CoV-2 and to four other coronaviruses that cause common colds. These coronaviruses, the researchers said, were apparently similar enough to the new one to make the T cells “cross-reactive.” (Crotty likened SARS-CoV-2 to “a pretty distantly related evil cousin.”)
The finding has led scientists to speculate that these cross-reactive T cells could be behind one of the pandemic’s biggest mysteries: why the virus causes severe illness in some people but mild or no symptoms in others. The latter patients might be better equipped to handle an infection, having fought off related viruses before. Children’s immune systems have to fight off a lot of colds, so maybe this is why they seem to be relatively spared by the new virus.
For now, however, this theory is just that: a theory.
“It could explain everything and it could explain nothing,” Crotty said. “Very truly, these cells may have no impact on the disease at all.” And even if this theory were borne out, it would have significant limits: As he noted, colds are caused by hundreds of viruses, not just the four identified in the study.
Either way, these cells are still just one piece of the immune system, a highly intricate machine with all kinds of T cells and antibodies working independently and together to stamp out pathogens. The big, yet-to-be answered questions are which of these elements actually protect people from getting sick and for how long.
“While T cells may offer some protection — and that’s not really known — T cells would probably not just prevent a person from being infected altogether,” said Angie Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University who is not involved with this research.
But uncertainty hasn’t stopped pundits from twisting the research to make a point.
Twitter
On July 23, before he was appointed to the White House’s coronavirus task force, Scott Atlas declared on Laura Ingraham’s show that lockdowns would not eradicate the virus, that the US outbreak was “not out of control,” and that “there is absolutely no reason to panic,” arguments he’d been makingsince the spring. That day, the nation’s case count passed 4 million. “There’s a lot of great data coming out about immunity,” Atlas went on to say. “It’s probably not known to the public, but there is a lot of data that shows that people have immunity — even people that didn’t get the infection.” He added, “That’s probably due to this T cell immunity,” and concluded, “So I think people should be much more optimistic here.” The Fox News host responded enthusiastically, saying she’d been discussing T cells and what they could mean for herd immunity on the show for “well over six weeks.”
This week, Limbaugh cited Atlas’s theory to tell listeners that the pandemic was almost over. “We could see by early October COVID-19 turn inert or dormant largely due to some underappreciated T cell, prior immunities from exposure to coronavirus, meaning colds and so forth,” the conservative radio host explained. “Some people who have come down with a cold over the course of the summer miraculously end up less likely to get COVID-19, according to Scott Atlas. And people that get colds, that’s a large portion of the population.”
Atlas directed a request for comment to White House spokesperson Judd Deere, who said in a statement that Atlas is “a world renowned physician and scholar of advanced medical care and health care policy” who, “like all of the medical experts in the Administration, is working to carry out the President’s number one priority: protecting the health and safety of the American people.”
Deere added, “We are all in this fight together, and only the media would distort and diminish Dr. Atlas’ highly acclaimed career simply because he has come to serve the President.”
Around the same time Limbaugh was praising Atlas’s theory, a similar claim was gaining traction on James Todaro’s Twitter account. Todaro, an early and avid proponent of hydroxychloroquine, is an ophthalmologist who earned his medical degree at Columbia University. He has not practiced since 2018, according to his LinkedIn profile, and his Michigan medical license expired last year. He did not respond to a request for comment.
In his thread, Todaro claimed that Crotty’s studies and others were growing evidence of “T-cell immunity.” “All those runny noses from the common cold prepared our T cells to fight COVID-19,” he proclaimed. He calculated that if about “50% of people had T cell immunity prior to SARS-CoV-2,” and an additional 10% to 20% of people were newly infected, then 60% to 70% of the population would be immune — a threshold that he said reached “herd immunity.”
“It is likely that many of the hardest hit regions of the world (e.g. Lombardy, NYC, Madrid, London, Stockholm) are now at herd immunity,” he wrote. “Lockdowns & mask ordinances (mostly coming after the peak) likely had little effect, with the exception of perhaps prolonging the spread.”
That’s not at all what the T cell research suggests, however. Having these cells still means you can get infected, only maybe — maybe — not as badly as if you didn’t have them.
“Herd immunity implies immunity, not just fewer people getting severe disease,” said Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, an epidemiologist at the University of Wollongong in Australia. “That means they do not catch it, do not spread it, they have this immunity that stops them from getting it in the first place.”
Even if 50% of the population really were somehow immune to the virus, that wouldn’t change the number of people who have been hospitalized and killed by the pandemic. As of Friday, the death toll in the US had exceeded 167,000. “It doesn’t change anything from the public health side of things,” Meyerowitz-Katz said.
Crotty is not a heavy Twitter user — he checks it about once a week — but he felt compelled to respond once he saw how far the misinformation was spreading. “It was just not understanding the science,” he said.
He banged out a series of counterpoints, explaining why Todaro’s claims were “dangerous” and unfounded. Nothing about his findings, he stressed, should change what the public should already be doing to stem transmission. “Wearing a mask is much more effective than hoping you and the people around you have pre-existing T cell memory. Wearing a mask stops infections.”
His debunk was retweeted more than 3,700 times, a mere fraction of Todaro’s reach.
Rasmussen, the Columbia virologist, worried that most people watching Fox News or coming across Todaro’s tweets would never see Crotty’s attempt to correct the record. As she put it: “They’re just going to look at, ‘Oh, here’s this big thread on T cell immunity. This sounds great. We don’t even need to worry about waiting for a vaccine.’”
“We’ve seen this a few times: People essentially using the clout of their credentials or their affiliations with a prestigious university to get them onto TV basically and amplify these messages,” Rasmussen said. The overarching message, as she saw it, is “the standard Trump administration downplaying of the severity of the pandemic, saying that ‘this is not as a big of a deal as everybody makes it out to be.’ Which, of course, the epidemiological evidence of over 160,000 deaths suggests otherwise.”
During an interview on Wednesday, it was still dawning on Crotty that his research had suddenly, unwittingly, become another political flashpoint.
“2020,” the immunologist said. “The year when all kinds of unexpected things happen.”
Stephanie M. Lee is a science reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in San Francisco. Trump makes call for new White House doctor’s virus advice
By JILL COLVIN August 16, 2020 1 of 2FILE - In this Aug. 12, 2020, file photo Scott Atlas, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, speaks at a news conference in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington. Trump has announced that Dr. Scott Atlas, a frequent guest on Fox News channel, has joined the White House as a pandemic adviser.(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has found a new doctor for his coronavirus task force — and this time there’s no daylight between them.
Trump last week announced that Dr. Scott Atlas, a frequent guest on Fox News Channel, has joined the White House as a pandemic adviser. Atlas, the former chief of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center and a fellow at Stanford’s conservative Hoover Institution, has no expertise in public health or infectious diseases.
But he has long been a critic of coronavirus lockdowns and has campaigned for kids to return to the classroom and for the return of college sports, just like Trump.
“Scott is a very famous man who’s also very highly respected,” Trump told reporters as he introduced the addition. “He has many great ideas and he thinks what we’ve done is really good.”
Atlas’ hiring comes amid ongoing tensions between the president and Drs. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, and Deborah Birx, the task force’s coordinator. While Birx remains closely involved in the administration’s pandemic response, both she and Fauci have publicly contradicted the rosy picture the president has painted of a virus that has now killed more than 167,000 people in the United States and infected millions nationwide.
Atlas, the sole doctor to share the stage at Trump’s pandemic briefings this past week, has long questioned polices that have been embraced by public health experts both in the U.S. and abroad. He has called it a “good thing” for younger, healthy people to be exposed to the virus, while falsely claiming children are at near “zero risk.”
In an April op-ed in The Hill newspaper, Atlas bemoaned that lockdowns may have prevented the development of “natural herd immunity.”
“In the absence of immunization, society needs circulation of the virus, assuming high-risk people can be isolated,” he wrote. Full Coverage: Virus Outbreak
In television appearances, Atlas has called on the nation to “get a grip” and argued that “there’s nothing wrong” with having low-risk people get infected, as long as the vulnerable are protected.
“It doesn’t matter if younger, healthier people get infected. I don’t know how often that has to be said. They have nearly zero risk of a problem from this,” he said in one appearance. “When younger, healthier people get infected, that’s a good thing,” he went on to say, “because that’s exactly the way that population immunity develops.”
While younger people are certainly at far lower risk of developing serious complications from the virus, they can still spread it to others who may be more vulnerable, even when they have no symptoms. And while their chances of dying are slim, some do face severe complications, with one study finding that 35% of young adults had not returned to normal health two weeks to three weeks after testing positive.
But Atlas’ thinking closely aligns with Trump’s perspective on the virus, which he has played down since its earliest days. While Trump eventually supported the lockdowns that once helped slow the disease’s spread, he has since pressured states to reopen schools and businesses as he tries to revive a battered economy before the November election.
Public health experts have long bemoaned Trump’s efforts to politicize the virus and have encouraged him to let doctors and scientists lead the nation’s response. But they questioned the decision to bring on Atlas, whose expertise is in magnetic resonance imaging and whose research has focused on factors impacting health care policy.
“I think he’s utterly unqualified to help lead a COVID response,” said Lawrence Gostin, a Georgetown University law professor who specializes in public health. “His medical degree isn’t even close to infectious diseases and public health and he has no experience in dealing with public health outbreaks.”
“Its very clear to me,” Gostin added, “that the president brought on somebody who will just be a mouthpiece for his agenda and a ‘yes’ person.” Gostin expressed concern that Trump was sidelining other doctors, including Birx and Fauci, because he had soured on their advice.
“In the face of an epidemic that’s killing hundreds of thousands of Americans, that’s unforgivable,” he said. “You want clear independent advice from people with long experience in fighting novel pandemics and he has none of those credentials.”
Kavita Patel, a primary care physician and health policy expert who served in the Obama White House, said there’s little that can prepare a doctor for the crucible of a presidential staff, let alone working for the famously volatile Trump.
“I expect Dr. Atlas’ time will be marked with highs and lows and hopefully he will realize that the country really needs credible expertise and guidance, not partisan bias,” said Patel. “By being partisan or political while having such an important (role), doctors undermine their credibility and ultimately dilute the role of science.”
White House spokesman Judd Deere, in a statement, praised Atlas as “a world renowned physician and scholar” and dismissed questions about Atlas’ qualifications.
“We are all in this fight together, and only the media would distort and diminish Dr. Atlas’ highly acclaimed career simply because he has come to serve the President,” he said.
Deere declined to say how long Atlas, who is now a paid special government employee, has been advising the president, and insisted his addition would not diminish the roles of Fauci and Birx.
Paul E. Peterson, director of the program on education policy and governance at Harvard University and a senior fellow at Hoover with Atlas, praised Atlas as “a really brilliant guy” with “a tremendous knowledge base” about the virus. Peterson said Atlas is someone who conducts ”the most rigorous and careful research before he comes to a conclusion.”
Some colleagues have found Atlas abrasive. But Peterson, who has written several op-eds with Atlas advocating the reopening of schools and who appeared with Atlas at a White House event this past week, praised Atlas as “delightful to work with” and stressed the value of Trump having input from people with a variety of backgrounds.
“If you get a variety of people from one perspective or one kind of training out there, that’s not desirable,” he said. “It’s extremely important to have diversity on the advisory board.”
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Associated Press writer Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar contributed to this report
Campus-based Thai protest movement extends reach to streets
By JERRY HARMER August 16, 2020 1 of 16 Pro-democracy activities display a LGBT flag during a protest at Democracy Monument in Bangkok, Thailand, Sunday, Aug, 16, 2020. Protesters have stepped up pressure on the government demanding to dissolve the parliament, hold new elections, amend the constitution and end intimidation of the government's opponents. (AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe)
BANGKOK (AP) — Anti-government protesters gathered in large numbers in Thailand’s capital on Sunday for a rally that suggested their movement’s strength may extend beyond the college campuses where it had blossomed.
Thousands of people assembled at Bangkok’s Democracy Monument, a traditional venue for political activities, where they heard speeches, watched skits and listened to music. Hundreds of police were also present, as well as a small contingent of royalists opposed to the protesters. There was no reliable estimate of the crowd size, though it appeared to be one of the biggest demonstrations in several years.
The rally ended after almost eight hours with about two dozen students who are facing arrest joining together on stage to repeat their demands and renew their commitment to the cause of democracy. They issued a call for the government to take action by next month or face another major protest rally.
The student-led movement had already declared three core demands: holding new elections, amending the constitution and ending the intimidation of critics of the government.
At the finale of Sunday’s rally, they spelled out three more points, which were also written on banners behind them: no coup d’etat, no national unity government and upholding Thailand as a democracy with the king as head of state under the constitution.
The reference to a national unity government was apparently a warning to all political parties against making a backroom deal instead of holding elections, and the reference to the king seemed to be meant as reassurance that they did not want to abolish the monarchy.
“It is clear that students from several generations are the driving force of change in Thai society,” said Narin Isariyasith, a 20-year-old student at Thammasat University.
“We have done this in the past, but Thailand still has no full democracy,” he said. “Dictatorship keeps coming back. And I think it is our duty to end this vicious cycle.”
As the army chief in 2014, current Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha led a coup ousting an elected government. He then served as prime minister in the military regime that succeeded it, and returned as premier after a general election last year. Laws guiding the 2019 election were widely seen as so heavily rigged in Prayuth’s favor that victory was all but guaranteed.
Protest leaders triggered controversy last week when they expanded their original agenda, publicly criticizing Thailand’s constitutional monarchy and issuing a 10-point manifesto calling for its reform.
Their action was virtually unprecedented, as the monarchy is considered sacrosanct in Thailand, and any criticism is normally kept private. A lese majeste law calls for a prison sentence of three to 15 years for anyone found guilty of defaming the royal institution.
The sensitivity of the issue was illustrated by the failure of most mainstream Thai media to report in any detail on the students’ manifesto about the monarchy. The issue was barely and only obliquely touched upon at Sunday’s rally.
Police have arrested several protest leaders and charged them with sedition for statements made at a small rally in July. They were released on bail and vowed to attend Sunday’s rally, in what appeared to be defiance of the terms of their release.
The activists who took the stage at the rally’s finale afterward walked to a nearby police station in what was believed to have been a bid to turn themselves in, but then quickly left unhindered, saying they had only sought to see copies of their arrest warrants. They were still waiting nearby after midnight as their lawyers discussed their legal standing with police.
Many young people at Sunday’s protest were undeterred.
A 10th grade student from Satriwithaya School, an elite secondary school for girls, said it was not the first protest she had attended. The 14-year-old, who gave her name only as Pang, was with friends at a table selling books and other items to raise funds for the protest movement.
“I came to this protest today because I want to express my standpoint in opposing the dictatorship, asking for equal rights and having a better future,” she said.
It has been unclear how the escalation of the activists’ demands to include the monarchy has affected the popularity of the movement, since it could alienate some followers or make them fearful that the authorities will crack down heavily on them.
The government may also be faced with a dilemma, since it is committed to defending the royal institution but likely wary of acting with too heavy a hand that might tilt public support to the protesters.
Prime Minister Prayuth’s government has done well in coping with the health aspects of the coronavirus, but its management of the economy had been lackluster even before COVID-19 battered it.
Royalists have responded to the student movement by defending the monarchy in online statements and petitions, and in person with a small presence adjacent to Sunday’s rally. They declared earlier that they were there to observe and bear witness to any insults to the monarchy.
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Associated Press writers Busaba Sivasomboon contributed to this report.
ICE Guards Have A “Pattern And Practice” Of Sexually Assaulting Immigrants, A Complaint Says
ICE guards would take advantage of camera blind spots and tell women no one would believe them if they spoke out, a recently filed complaint states.
Three immigrants allege Immigration and Customs Enforcement guards carried out a "pattern and practice" of sexual assault and harassment inside a Texas detention center.
The continued sexual harassment and assaults the immigrants allegedly experienced at the hands of ICE officers were detailed in a complaint filed with the El Paso County District Attorney, the US Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas, and the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General this week. The allegations inside the El Paso Processing Center (EPPC) were first reported by ProPublica.
According to the complaint, ICE guards would take advantage of camera blind spots at the El Paso facility, offer women money in exchange for sexual favors, and warn them against reporting anything, saying no one would believe them. One immigrant man was thrown into solitary confinement after complaining about harassment, the complaint said.
The women spoke out despite feeling powerless, said Linda Corchado, director of legal services for Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, which filed the complaint.
"Mapping out systemic patterns of abuse helps us all see that this is not singular, that in fact there are many more detained women who have become victimized by men in power," Corchado told BuzzFeed News. "I hope that many more women will speak out. Without them and their stories, how can we dismantle a system that has destroyed their lives? We need them."
In a statement, ICE said it has zero tolerance for any form of sexual abuse or assault against immigrants in their custody and takes all allegations seriously. The complaint is being investigated by the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) and the Office of the Inspector General (OIG).
"When substantiated, appropriate action is taken," ICE said.
In the complaint, a woman identified as Jane Doe 1 said an ICE guard took advantage of camera blind spots to forcibly kiss and touch her "intimate parts" in November.
Several days later, the unidentified ICE officer told her that if she "behaved," he would help with her release. When Jane Doe 1 refused, the ICE officer told her no one would believe her if she reported him.
About a month later, Jane Doe 1 noticed the ICE officer was watching women through a window while they used a bathroom. When she reported the incident to a captain, she said they "responded dismissively" and scared her from reporting further misconduct by the ICE officer.
Jane Doe 1 didn't see the officer for a few months until March 2020, when he was increasingly aggressive and intimidating toward her.
"She has lived in constant panic that he may do something against her again," the complaint states. John Moore / Getty Images
Jane Doe 1 also says she was sexually assaulted two times by another ICE officer.
In May, the other ICE officer pulled her aside as she walked from the medical unit to her barrack and began to kiss and touch her intimate parts, the complaint states. About a month later, the ICE officer forcibly kissed her and touched her again. Jane Doe 1 told him she would report him if he didn't stop.
"Officer [redacted] reportedly told her that no one would believe her and that there was no evidence of the assault since he had assaulted her in a camera blind spot," the complaint states.
Corchado, of Las Americas, said Jane Doe 1 is set to be deported and fears her alleged harassers will not face consequences if she is removed from the US.
Immigrants filed 14,693 complaints against ICE between January 2010 and July 2016, according to figures obtained by the advocacy organization Freedom for Immigrants. At the time, the top five facilities with the most sexual assault complaints were all privately-run immigration detention facilities. ICE relies on a sprawling network of contracts worth millions of dollars with private for-profit companies and existing jails to detain immigrants.
The El Paso detention center the complaints stem from is run by private company Global Precision Systems, which contracts with ICE to operate EPPC. A spokesperson for Global Precision Systems, a subsidiary of Bering Straits Native Corporation, said they were unable to comment on "pending legal matters."
It's rare that the OIG investigates complaints filed by immigrants against Department of Homeland Security agencies. In 2017, BuzzFeed News reported that of at least 33,126 complaints of sexual and physical abuse against DHS between January 2010 and July 2016, just 225, or 0.07%, were investigated.
The OIG did conduct 570 investigations of sexual and physical abuse, but only 225 arose from a complaint. More complaints were submitted against ICE than any other DHS agency.In 2018, the most recent year for which data is available, there were 374 sexual assault allegations. Of those, 48 were substantiated, 215 were unsubstantiated, and 29 remain open, according to ICE.
In May, BuzzFeed News reported on a woman who sued a private prison company alleging she was raped inside an ICE detention center in Texas, which resulted in her giving birth to her attacker's daughter. CoreCivic, the private prison company paid by the federal government to operate the Houston Processing Center where the woman was detained, denied the allegations. Lucy Nicholson / Reuter
Another immigrant woman, identified as Jane Doe 2 in the complaint, reported six incidents of sexual harassment at the hands of an ICE officer. Between March and April, the officer repeatedly told the woman she was attractive and said she should "fool around" with him, but she refused his advances.
The guard also told Jane Doe 2 he could pay her a lot of money if she engaged in sexual acts with him, the complaint states. When Jane Doe refused, the officer reportedly told her "she had no rights in the facility and that no one would believe her."
For the three months Jane Doe 2 was detained at the El Paso detention center, she saw repeated instances in which male officers "freely and openly" made advances toward detained women. The ICE guards would also try to make sexual arrangements in exchange for necessities like soap or a clean uniform, the complaint states.
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Even after she was released in April, ICE guards allegedly continued to harass her via messages relayed to two women in detention whom Jane Doe 2 is still in contact with.
The complaint also includes allegations from a male detainee identified as John Doe who said he caught an ICE officer staring at him as he showered. His complaint prompted the ICE guard to "repeatedly rub his genitals and stare" at him, the complaint states. After being confronted by the officer after complaining to superiors, John Doe said he was placed in solitary confinement for five days.
Adolfo Flores is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in McAllen, Texas..
