Chicago Inspector General: Police Use ShotSpotter to Justify Illegal Stop-and-Frisks

BY MATTHEW GUARIGLIA AND ADAM SCHWARTZ
AUGUST 24, 2021



ˀThe Chicago Office of the Inspector General (OIG) has released a highly critical report on the Chicago Police Department’s use of ShotSpotter, a surveillance technology that relies on a combination of artificial intelligence and human “acoustic experts” to purportedly identify and locate gunshots based on a network of high-powered microphones located on some of the city’s streets. The OIG report finds that “police responses to ShotSpotter alerts rarely produce evidence of a gun-related crime, rarely give rise to investigatory stops, and even less frequently lead to the recovery of gun crime-related evidence during an investigatory stop.” This indicates that the technology is ineffective at fighting gun crime and inaccurate. This finding is based on the OIG’s quantitative analysis of more than 50,000 records over a 17-month period from the Chicago Police Department (CPD) and the city’s 911 dispatch center.

Even worse, the OIG report finds a pattern of CPD officers detaining and frisking civilians—a dangerous and humiliating intrusion on bodily autonomy and freedom of movement—based at least in part on “aggregate results of the ShotSpotter system.” This is police harassment of Chicago’s already over-policed Black community, and the erosion of the presumption of innocence for people who live in areas where ShotSpotter sensors are active. This finding is based on the OIG’s qualitative analysis of a random sample of officer-written investigatory stop reports (ISRs).

The scathing report comes just days after the AP reported that a 65-year-old Chicago man named Michael Williams was held for 11 months in pre-trial detention based on scant evidence produced by ShotSpotter. Williams’ case was dismissed two months after his defense attorney subpoenaed ShotSpotter. This and another recent report also show how ShotSpotter company officials have changed the projected location and designation of supposed gun shots in a way that makes them more consistent with police narratives.

There are more reasons why EFF opposes police use of ShotSpotter. The technology is all too often over-deployed in majority Black and Latinx neighborhoods. Also, people in public places—for example, having a quiet conversation on a deserted street—are often entitled to a reasonable expectation of privacy, without microphones unexpectedly recording their conversations. But in at least two criminal trials, one in Massachusetts and one in California, prosecutors tried to introduce audio of voices from these high-powered microphones. In the California case, People v. Johnson, the court admitted it into evidence. In the Massachusetts case, Commonwealth v. Denison, the court did not, ruling that a recording of “oral communication” is prohibited “interception” under the Massachusetts Wiretap Act.

Most disturbingly, ShotSpotter endangers the lives and physical safety of people who live in the neighborhoods to which police are dispatched based on false reports of a gunshot. Because of the uneven deployment of ShotSpotter sensors, these residents are disproportionately Black and Latinx. An officer expecting a civilian with a gun is more likely to draw and fire their own gun, even if there was in fact no gunshot. In the words of the Chicago OIG: “there are real and potential costs associated with use of the system, including … the risk that CPD members dispatched as a result of a ShotSpotter alert may respond to incidents with little contextual information about what they will find there—raising the specter of poorly informed decision-making by responding members.”

The Chicago OIG report is also significant because it signals growing municipal skepticism of ShotSpotter technology. We hope more cities will join Charlotte, North Carolina, and San Antonio, Texas, in canceling their contracts with ShotSpotter—which is currently deployed in over 100 U.S. cities. Chicago itself has just renewed its ShotSpotter contract, which cost the city $33 million between August 20, 2018 and August 19, 2021.


According to EFF's Atlas of Surveillance, at least 100 cities in the United States use some kind of acoustic gunshot detection, including ShotSpotter.


The Technology Is Not Effective at Fighting Gun Violence

The OIG report’s findings are very clear. Despite what the ShotSpotter marketing team would have you believe about their technology’s effectiveness, the vast majority of ShotSpotter alerts cannot be connected with any verifiable shooting incident. According to the OIG, just 9% of ShotSpotter alerts with a reported disposition (4,556 of 41,830) indicate evidence of a gun-related criminal offense. Similarly, just 2% of all Shotspotter alerts (1,056 of 50,176) correlate to an officer-written ISR.

Likewise, a 2021 report by the MacArthur Justice Center, quoted by the OIG, found that 86% of incidents in which CPD officers responded to a ShotSpotter alert did not result in the completion of a case report. In only 9% of CPD responses to ShotSpotter alerts is there any indication that a gun-related criminal offense occurred.

As Deputy Inspector General for Public Safety Deborah Witzburg said about this report, “It’s not about technological accuracy, it’s about operational value.” She added:

“If the Department is to continue to invest in technology which sends CPD members into potentially dangerous situations with little information––and about which there are important community concerns–– it should be able to demonstrate the benefit of its use in combatting violent crime. The data we analyzed plainly doesn’t do that. Meanwhile, the very presence of this technology is changing the way CPD members interact with members of Chicago’s communities. We hope that this analysis will equip stakeholders to make well-informed decisions about the ongoing use of ShotSpotter technology.”

The Technology Is Used to Justify Illegal Police Harassment and Erode the Presumption of Innocence

Cross referencing the officer-written ISRs with ShotSpotter alerts, the OIG found a pattern of police conducting stop-and-frisks of civilians based at least in part on aggregate ShotSpotter data. This means police are deciding who to stop based on their supposed proximity to large numbers of alerts. Even when there are no specific alerts the police are responding to, the concentration of previous alerts in a specific area often works its way into police justification for stopping and searching a person.

The Fourth Amendment limits police stop-and-frisks. In Terry v. Ohio (1968), the Supreme Court held that police need “reasonable suspicion” of crime to initiate a brief investigative detention of a suspect, and need reasonable suspicion of weapon possession to conduct a pat-down frisk of that suspect. One judicially-approved factor that can give rise to reasonable suspicion, in conjunction with other factors, is a suspect’s presence in a so-called “high crime area.”

In light of the OIG and MacArthur reports, which show that the overwhelming majority of ShotSpotter “alerts” do not lead to any evidence of a gun, aggregate ShotSpotter data cannot reasonably be used as evidence that an area is high in crime. Therefore, courts should hold that it violates the Fourth Amendment for police to stop or frisk a civilian based on any consideration of aggregate ShotSpotter alerts in the area.

Specific cases highlighted in the OIG report demonstrate the way that aggregate ShotSpotter data, used as a blank check for stops and searches, erodes civil liberties and the presumption of innocence. In one case, for example, police wrongly used the prevalence of ShotSpotter alerts in the area, plus a bulge in a person’s hoodie pocket, to stop and pat them down, after they practiced their First Amendment right to give police the middle finger.

Cities Should Stop Using ShotSpotter

Far too often, police departments spend tens of millions of dollars on surveillance technologies that endanger civilians, disparately burden BIPOC, and invade everyone’s privacy. Some departments hope to look proactive and innovative when assuaging public fears of crime. Others seek to justify the way they are already policing, by “tech washing” practices and deployments that result in racial discrimination. Like predictive policing, police departments use ShotSpotter and its aura as a “cutting-edge” Silicon Valley company to claim their failed age-old tactics are actually new and innovative. All the while, no one is getting any safer.


The Chicago OIG report demonstrates that ShotSpotter “alerts” are unreliable and contribute to wrongful stop-and-frisks. It may not recommend that cities stop using ShotSpotter—but EFF certainly will, and we think that is the ultimate lesson that can be learned from this report.

 

Cuba: Searching for Nature’s Cure

 August 16, 2021

Fotos: Natalia Favre

Text/Photos by Natalia Favre  (El Toque)

HAVANA TIMES – Enma is 77 years old and is an herbalist. She lives in Naranjal, Matanzas, a province that had one of the highest COVID-19 infection rates by the end of June 2021. Enma leaves her home early in the morning and heads to the countryside in search of medicinal plants to help alleviate her neighbor’s ailments. The plants she picks have different properties and she knows them all; there are antibiotics, painkillers, sedatives, to help itching, colds…

Enma suffers from different chronic diseases and needs to take vitamins to strengthen her immune system. Her daughter used to get them from people who traveled abroad, but she hasn’t had access to them in a good while so she tries to get by with herbs.

Her house leaks if it rains and she doesn’t have running water. Last year, the Government gave her a housing benefit to fix it. By the time Enma realized that the builder given the job was stealing the materials and selling them on the illicit market, it was too late; the man had sold everything.

The builder is now in prison and she is still waiting for somebody in the Havana office to recognize what happened and give her back her benefit so she can finally fix her house.

In addition to her walks looking for medicinal plants, Enma has another routine. She awaits her brother Francisco’s daily visit. She makes him coffee and gives him a bunch of flowers so that he can place them under a photo of Obdulia, their mother, who passed away last year at 102 years old.

With a record number of infections, hospitals collapsing and empty drugstores, many people like Enma are seeking alternatives for their ailments in herbal medicine, especially in phytotherapy. Some people plant medicinal plants in their backyards; others, like Enma, go to the mountains to look for them or go to herbal medicine stores and specialized dispensaries.

Cuba’s Essential Medicines List comprises 619 products: 351 for hospitals and 268 for drugstores. Out of these, 263 (42%) are imported and 356 (58% are nationally produced: 350 products by BioCubaFarma, 5 by the food industry and 1 by the National Center of Agricultural Health.

An average of 85 medicines manufactured by BioCubaFarma were missing in 2020. As well as imported medicines that were unable to enter the country in recent months, and which are mainy used for secondary health care.

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Read more from Cuba here on Havana Times.

The Best Way to Support Cubans Is to End the US Blockade

The Left’s approach to Cuba should be simple: oppose US attempts to devastate the country’s economy through the blockade.

A mural in Havana, Cuba. (The Carol M. Highsmith Archive / Library of Congress)

BY AVIVA CHOMSKY

JACOBIN
08.21.2021

COVID-19 has brought economic and social crises to much of the world, and nowhere more than the Third World, where poor infrastructure, poverty, resource export dependence, inequality, and lack of accountability are endemic. Protests against scarcity, structural violence, police brutality, and corruption erupted everywhere from the United States to Colombia, Haiti, Brazil, Guatemala, Ecuador, Chile, and Argentina, just to mention a few. That unrest in Latin America rarely merited notice in the US news media — until it happened in Cuba.

In some ways, the protests in Cuba were similar to those elsewhere in the region. But in some ways, they were different. Cubans were protesting a government that the United States has officially declared an enemy and has been actively trying to overturn for more than sixty years. And the United States has actively promoted anti-government activity in Cuba with words, money, and arms. It’s not surprising that President Joe Biden, who had little to say about the dozens killed and hundreds injured by police during the protests in Colombia, other than to express his backing for Colombia’s right-wing president Iván Duque, gushed repeatedly about his support for Cuban protesters, with the obligatory denunciation of “Cuba’s authoritarian regime.”

Biden’s words were mirrored across the entire spectrum of mainstream US voices, the few exceptions being academics who actually know something about Cuba, like Louis Pérez and William LeoGrande. Regarding Latin American revolutions, liberal politicians and pundits have fallen right in line with the far right and Donald Trump, whose administration famously dubbed Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba a “troika of tyranny” and vowed to “end the glamorization of socialism and communism.” The New York Times obediently chimed in with Trump at the time, denouncing Bernie Sanders for his visit to Nicaragua in 1985. Even left media outlets joined the chorus.
A Legacy of US Subversion

After the July 26, 1959, revolutionary victory in Cuba, US officials pondered how to respond. Could they control this revolution in the interests of US corporations, as they managed to do in Bolivia in 1954? They worried especially about the larger impacts of a successful revolution. One State Department official wrote that “there are indications that if the Cuban revolution is successful, other countries in Latin America and perhaps elsewhere will use it as a model. We should decide if we wish to have the Cuban Revolution succeed.” Another, a few months later, warned that “our attitude to date [could] be considered a sign of weakness and thus give encouragement to communist-nationalist elements elsewhere in Latin America who are trying to advance programs similar to those of Castro.”The United States has actively promoted anti-government activity in Cuba with words, money, and arms.

They evinced much less concern for “the Cuban people,” who, the US ambassador at the time said, “appeared united in idolizing” the revolutionary leader Fidel Castro. “This is one-man rule with full approval of ‘masses,’” the ambassador concluded. Another, while committing the United States to establishing a “successor government” in Cuba, begrudgingly acknowledged “the impact that real honesty, especially at the working level, has made on the people” and “the fact that a great bulk of the Cubans . . . have awakened enthusiastically to the need for social and economic reform.”

One tool was the embargo. The goal, according to a State Department briefing paper, was to undermine Cuba’s economy, to “promote internal dissension; erode its internal political support . . . [and] seek to create conditions conducive to incipient rebellion.” The “only foreseeable means of alienating internal support,” the State Department offered, “is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship. . . . Every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba . . . [to deny] money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.” While internal documents from recent administrations have not been declassified, the embargo continues to stand as a pillar of US policy, and it has been repeatedly strengthened and tightened.

Another tool, what the Clinton administration called “Track Two,” has been the cultivation and funding of potential opposition movements in Cuba. Even the notorious Helms-Burton Act, or “Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act,” of 1996, best known for its strengthening of the embargo, included plans to assist organizations that could form a potential “transition government” on the island. USAID continues to funnel millions every year to “democracy building” and “independent civil society organizations” on the island and convince them to oppose the Cuban government.

When Fidel Castro stepped down in 2008, the United States bemoaned the state of the Cuban opposition it was funding and supporting. “The traditional dissident movement is not likely to supplant the Cuban government. . . . We will need to look elsewhere, including within the government itself, to spot the most likely successors to the Castro regime,” read a leaked 2009 diplomatic cable signed by US Interests Section chief Jonathan Farrar. “We see little evidence that the mainline dissident organizations have much resonance among ordinary Cubans.” Instead, the cable looked hopefully toward “younger individuals, including bloggers, musicians, and performing and plastic artists” as potential leaders of an anti-government movement. “We believe we must try to expand our contacts within Cuban society . . . to facilitate and encourage the younger generations of Cubans seeking greater freedom and opportunity.”When Fidel Castro stepped down in 2008, the United States bemoaned the state of the Cuban opposition it was funding and supporting.

Money continued to flow, much of it to unnamed NGOs and “civil society” organizations promoting these ends. Organizations claiming to support women, Afro-Cuban, and LGBTQ communities increased their prominence. Grant recipients like Development Alternatives Incorporated and Creative Associates International sent staff covertly into Cuba to “search for networking opportunities.” In 2010, Creative reported: “Our program assisted in the formation and development of an initiative seeking to establish bonds of collaboration and identity among cultural and community leaders. The project was created by a core of cultural promoters with a vision for a more participative society. A large number of cultural figures were enlisted to support the project.” Yet Creative still struggled to “counter apathy and stimulate civic engagement.” Creative Associates projects included “Stirring Afro Cuban Communities Into Action,” “Mapping Young Community Leaders,” and “Building Capacity for Peaceful Social Mobilization.”

On June 30, 2021, USAID published a new call for grant applicants, noting approvingly:

The past several months have served as a watershed moment for Cubans demanding greater democratic freedoms and respect for human rights. Artists and musicians have taken to the streets to protest government repression, producing anthems such as “Patria y Vida,” which has not only brought greater global awareness to the plight of the Cuban people but also served as a rallying cry for change on the island.

The objective of this round of grants was to “advance the effectiveness of independent civil society groups to advocate for greater human rights and freedoms.” The call noted that:

Many Cubans shy away from traditional forms of advocacy. Nonetheless, recent efforts by faith-based organizations, artists and other marginalized groups demonstrate the Cuban people’s burgeoning willingness to demand accountability, and greater respect for human rights. By incorporating a wider pool of groups as part of citizens’ demands, civil society can effectively expand its ranks, while also raising awareness of the Cuban government’s failings, which span both political and social rights. USAID seeks to support these groups in their demands for greater democratic rights and freedoms. [emphasis added]

In other words, the program urged Cubans to mobilize against the government, while also tacitly acknowledging that much of the population still lacked “awareness” of the government’s failings.

I do not believe that the Cubans who took to the streets on July 11 were simply responding to US government manipulation or hoping to obtain funding. They were motivated by real grievances, and they have every right to demand a government response.

How Should the Left Respond?

Hilda Landrove recently wrote a piece entitled “With Cubans Speaking Out, How Will the Left Respond?” Landrove lauded the protests against what she called the “long-standing totalitarian Cuban government” and accused the international left of “voluntary blindness” in its support for Cuba. She even, remarkably, claimed that the news media failed to question the Left’s false vision of Cuba as a socialist paradise. Since she does not cite a single source for any of this, readers have no way of knowing which “leftists” or “news media” she is referring to. But supposedly these unnamed leftists continually inform her that “Cuban’s lack of freedoms is the price that they pay for their sovereignty.”

I know a lot of leftists, but I don’t know any who correspond to Landrove’s caricature. A more common, and principled, response from the Left supports Cubans’ right to protest while also opposing US attempts to interfere in Cuba’s domestic affairs. We oppose US attempts to provoke Cuban dissent by devastating the country’s economy with the embargo, and we oppose US meddling that attempts to manipulate Cuban organizations into pushing for regime change.

While we oppose the Cuban government’s crackdown on the protesters, we also believe that the Cuban government’s alleged “paranoia” that sees the malevolent hand of the United States in every challenge to its policies is not really that far-fetched. The best way to promote space for Cubans to debate, protest, and seek solutions to their country’s crisis is for the United States to acknowledge Cuban sovereignty, cease its covert activities, end the embargo, and allow the pandemic and humanitarian aid that Cubans desperately need to overcome the pandemic and economic emergency afflicting the island.

Republished from NACLA.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Aviva Chomsky is professor of history and coordinator of Latin American studies at Salem State University in Massachusetts. She is the author of Central America’s Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence, and the Roots of Migration (April 2021).

#ENDTHEBLOCKADE

Cuba’s health system buckles under strain of overwhelming Covid surge

A lack of medical supplies is crippling the Covid response, amid an economic crisis sparked by the pandemic and US sanctions

A woman has her temperature checked after receiving a dose of the Abdala vaccine at a vaccination center next to an image of Cuba’s former president Raúl Castro in Havana this month. Photograph: Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters


Ed Augustin and Daniel Montero in Havana
Sun 22 Aug 2021 

Julia, a community doctor in Havana, was drafted to the intensive care unit soon after Covid-19 first reached Cuba.

Last week, her cousin died from the virus. This week, she also tested positive amid a surge in cases which has pushed the island’s vaunted health service to its limits and prompted rare public criticism from Cuban doctors.


“It hurts to see people die from this terrible virus,” she said, recovering at home from nausea after being injected with an immune booster. “The mood among doctors gets worse by the day.”

After recording one of the world’s lowest Covid rates last year, Cuba now has one of the western hemisphere’s highest. The island, which reported 12,225 confirmed cases in all of 2020, has reported almost 50 times that so far this year. And as the Delta variant spreads, a lack of medical supplies is crippling the medical response.

“There are no antibiotics, no painkillers, the basic list of medicines is almost all out of stock,” said Daniela, a family doctor in Havana who has hardly had a day off since the pandemic began.

In the face of extreme scarcity, doctors are increasingly prescribing herbal remedies. Mortuaries are overwhelmed. The country’s main oxygen factory recently broke down, compounding the intensive care crisis.

Cuba last year hospitalised everybody who tested positive for Covid, including asymptomatic cases. But even for a country with the world’s highest doctor-to-patient ratio, average daily case loads of 9,000 have made that protocol unworkable. Now children, the elderly, pregnant women and severe cases are hospitalised, while others must isolate at home.

Hundreds of doctors have been brought back from international “missions” abroad – a major hard currency generator for the state – to support exhausted colleagues. But the move has not been enough to stop the system, which last year was a model of test, track and isolate, from fraying.

“I was at home for eight days and nobody came to see me,” said Oscar, a hotel worker from Cienfuegos who came down with Covid last month.

The pandemic, which eliminated tourism, and US sanctions have knocked billions of dollars from state coffers, creating a dire economic crisis and contributing to unprecedented political unrest on the island. Strapped for cash, Cuba’s public health system has been forced to perform triage: focusing on expensive vaccine production at the expense of other medical supplies.

The prime minister, Manuel Marrero, last week recognised the depth of the crisis in uncharacteristically forthright language.

Provinces “lack antigen tests [and] medicines”, he told party officials in Cienfuegos. “But there are more complaints about subjective problems than objective problems. When you add up the [complaints about] lack of medicines, they are less than the number of complaints about mistreatment, lack of care, and home visits.”

His comments provoked outcry on social media, and 23 doctors in the eastern province of Holguin posted a video rebuttal on Facebook.

“We want to keep saving lives,” said Dr Daily Almaguer, a heart specialist, in the video. “We are not the ones responsible for our country’s healthcare collapse.”

The doctors have since been summoned by authorities.

The spike, unimaginable last year, comes as Cuban scientists race to achieve immunity through vaccination. Cuba is the smallest country in the world to have developed its own Covid vaccines. Both Soberana 2 and Abdala have an efficacy rate of more than 90%, according to clinical trials.

But US sanctions – supercharged by Trump, left in place by Biden – have slowed rollout.

Children wearing masks as a precaution amid the spread of the new coronavirus run across a street in Havana. Photograph: Ramón Espinosa/AP

Since the outgoing Trump administration designated Cuba as a “state sponsor of terrorism”, firms have taken fright and just a handful of banks in the world will now transfer funds from Cuban entities, complicating imports.

Cuban scientists say industrial scale production of Soberana 2 was stalled for weeks as they could not source an essential component.

“The lack of one small ingredient or one small control item can really throw production off,” said Gail Reed, executive editor of Medicc Review, a peer-reviewed health journal.
Advertisement

“US sanctions have had a nefarious, even lethal, effect on Cuba’s ability to face down the latest surge.”

Though slow out of the starting blocks, Cuba now has the third highest vaccination rate in Latin America (behind Chile and Uruguay). Twenty-seven per cent of the population have now been fully vaccinated, and 44% have received at least one dose.

Come September, scientists say, the island will have produced enough doses to vaccinate the whole population.

“We remain in combat against the pandemic,” said Dr Gerardo Guillén, Abdala’s lead developer. “The vaccines are working, as the data is now showing,” he added, referring to falling infection and mortality rates in Havana, where the mass vaccination campaign began.

Until millions more are fully vaccinated, the country’s exhausted army of underpaid doctors must trudge on.

“We are doing the impossible,” said Julia, the community doctor still mourning the death of her cousin. “Despite the lack of medicines, gloves and oxygen, doctors are fighting to save lives. They really are heroes.”

A Very Sad Night in Cienfuegos, Cuba

 August 21, 2021

“Last night 36 patients died in a Cienfuegos Hospital” laments a Cuban Doctor

The number of staff in Cienfuegos hospitals have been reduced by almost half. (Perlavision)

By 14ymedio

HAVANA TIMES – “The Cienfuegos hospital continues to have an oxygen deficit. The helicopters of the Primetime News on Cuban Television are something symbolic for the need that exists,” a doctor from the province, which has replaced Ciego de Ávila as the province with the highest positive rate of covid on the island, tells this newspaper.

“In recent days 32, 34 patients have died. Last night (August 17th) 36 patients died, of which only 4 had a positive PCR at the time of death. They are the only ones registered as dead by coronavirus, but in reality, the other 32 were post-covid patients and they don’t count them,” says the source.

The doctor adds that in the province there are normally one or two deaths of pregnant women a year, but in the last four days there has been a daily death. “That gives an idea of the crisis we are experiencing,” he explains, while reproaching the government for trying to pretend to have everything under control, making it difficult for humanitarian aid to arrive.

However, the provincial press continues to move the pieces. A few days ago, the Ciego de Ávila newspaper confirmed the lack of oxygen and the precarious situation in the area, and now it is September 5, the official Cienfuegos newspaper, which speaks of an “unprecedented scenario” in an article titled Covid-19 in Cienfuegos: The truth on the Table.

The newspaper denounces the fact that diagnostic tests are lacking, PCRs pile up without results, there is poor management of cases in primary care according to their risk, and that people end up in serious condition in hospitals due to the lack of screening. Added to this is the lack of medicinal oxygen — despite the incorporation of the Armed Forces and Russia into production — and the shortage of medicines and medical supplies.

To all this is added, the newspaper continues, that what the Government promised does not always arrive. “I must tell you that there are problems with food, that in not a few cases breakfast has been eaten late and lunch appears in the afternoon. It also happens that after discharge people have to wait up to three and four hours for transportation,” denounces a citizen.

September 5 also addresses one of the most serious problems, the lack of healthcare personnel. According to the newspaper, of the 701 doctors in the province, 446 are working. Most of those absent are in the care of children and relatives, but many others have tested positive for covid-19.

“There are reports of low medical coverage in isolation centers, this affects the quality of care for patients and represents an overload for the healthcare personnel who work in these spaces (…) In a visit to the Carlos Roloff vocational pre-university, in Cumanayagua, there were 250 people admitted and there were only two doctors to attend that universe,” details Félix Duarte Ortega, of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC).

The newspaper reports that the “political authorities of Cienfuegos recognized the effort of those who work in hospitals and isolation centers, in clinics and polyclinics. Those who do not give up despite the thousand and one difficulties that are experienced today.” The strategy is part of the pro-government dynamic of recent days, which tries to soften the conflict created by Prime Minister Manuel Marrero when he blamed doctors, specifically from Cienfuegos, for the violations of protocols that promote the spread of covid-19.

The rebellion of the doctors has grown since that day, both among the usual critics of the regime and in those who believe in it but watched the spectacle of being blamed for managing the disease when they must fight in the front line against it devoid of resources, and in a framework of war medicine.

“The medical personnel exist and are sacrificing themselves, what does not exist are the means. Many of us believe that they are subjecting us to genocide. While the people die they are watching the doctors to see what they say, if they are in favor or not of the Revolution,” denounces the doctor from Cienfuegos.

President Miguel Diaz-Canel has been tweeting praises to healthcare personnel for three days in an attempt to redirect the situation. Last Sunday, when the clamor of the health workers spread through the networks calling for the resignation of Marrero, he said, with little luck: “Today the groups in which we go through life are more visible, according to José Martí: On the one hand those who love and create. And on the other, those who hate and destroy. The former do not lie or slander or defame, they do not hate. They are saving lives. The others cannot with that light.”

A day later, he rectified the divisive message with another that only had a positive tone: “What we have seen the most in this time is the patriotism of our people, the Healthcare personnel, the scientists, of all those involved in the millimeter-level oxygen operation, people who are working full time in complex situations. Thank you all! ” That same day, the official press vindicated the doctors with an article titled At the foot of the patient, the hero who does not serve enemy campaigns, which once again separated the like-minded from the critics.

Yesterday, Tuesday, the campaign continued, with an image on the cover with the faces of doctors and nurses in the article entitled Let’s think about them and take care of ourselves. “Gratitude for the titanic feat assumed by our Health workers in this battle against covid-19 also requires, now more than ever, our responsibility,” says the official newspaper, on this occasion, taking care to refer to the ’rebels.’

Ernesto Haber Santos, a doctor at the Saturnino Lora Hospital in Santiago de Cuba, has rejected, through Facebook, the government’s campaign called Put your heart in it, with a view to once again winning the favor of his star workers for decades.

“We work with the little we have and the hardest we can. Tired, leaving our family and putting it at risk. But one is not willing to publicly assume reality, it is better to look for a scapegoat, and from what I see, everyone is a candidate. We have plenty of heart, we are giving our all ,and at the rate we are going we will have to continue until who knows when,” he said.

The doctor asks the Government to accept that the situation has reached the limit and to accept help. “The covid-19 overcame us, overcame the United States, Spain and many others,” claims the doctor, who asks the authorities to rectify and recognize the excellence of the country’s health workers or, on the contrary, say they are graduating untrained people and that “the pride in being a medical power is a delusion.”

Read more from Cuba here on Havana Times.

ANTI VAXXER WILL USE HORSE LINAMENT BUT NOT VACCINE'S

Tennessee GOP lawmakers push 'horse paste' treatment despite FDA warning

John Wright
August 24, 2021

Photo by Stanisław Skotnicki on Unsplash

Despite a recent warning from the FDA about using livestock medication to treat COVID-19, Tennessee GOP lawmakers are calling for "normalization" of drugs like ivermectin.

The Tennessee Legislature's joint Government Operations committee discussed the issue Thursday — even though it wasn't on the agenda — after two speakers brought it up, according to a report from the Tennessean.

"While poison control officials in Mississippi are warning the public about adverse reactions among residents who ingest a horse deworming medicine to treat COVID-19, some Republican legislators in Tennessee are suggesting the treatment should be normalized," the newspaper reported Tuesday. "Multiple Republican members expressed support for the speakers' comments, even calling for a future hearing to further discuss the drugs and why doctors aren't widely recommending them, against guidance by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration."

The FDA sounded the alarm about ivermectin on Saturday — with a tweet declaring "You are not a horse" — after it was reported that a Mississippi resident was hospitalized after ingesting so-called "horse paste" last week. Poison control officials in Mississippi and other states, including Texas, have reported an uptick in calls related to ivermectin, which has been promoted by right-wing vaccine opponents as the latest version of the Trumpian drug hydroxychloroquine.

Pharmacists have been cracking down on prescriptions for ivermectin, which is normally used to treat parasitic infections.

"As human-approved ivermectin prescriptions have been harder to come by, enthusiasts have taken to raiding rural tractor supply stores in search of ivermectin horse paste (packed with 'apple flavor!') and weighed the benefits of taking ivermectin 'sheep drench' and a noromectin 'injection for swine and cattle,'" the Daily Beast reported recently.

In Tennessee, Republican Rep. John Ragan said during last week's hearing that it's an issue deserving of consideration.

"The generalities seem to indicate that therapeutics are something that need to be explored more in terms of availability to patients and information availability to patients," Ragan said.

Two other Republican representatives reportedly expressed support for Ragan's idea of scheduling a hearing on the matter.

A woman who identified herself as a "research assistant" told lawmakers they could advocate for the use of non-FDA approved drugs. "Federal guidance is just guidance," she said. "You as the legislators in this state have the power to say we're going to use ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine or budesonide as treatments or therapeutics in the treatment of COVID-19, which is obviously recognized as a pandemic." Dr. Ryan Cole, a noted anti-vaxxer in the state, also addressed lawmakers, suggesting they could possibly compel doctors and pharmacists to dispense non-FDA-approved drugs.

After Republican lawmakers including GOP Sen. Kerry Roberts indicated they were in discussions about setting up a hearing, and even mulling potential legislation in next year's session, the state's Republican lieutenant governor, a retired pharmacist, issued a statement smacking down the idea.

"Lt. Governor (Randy) McNally does not believe such a hearing would be appropriate for the Government Operations Committee, nor would it be particularly productive generally," the statement said. "Committee hearings should be fair, balanced and stay within their prescribed subject matter. Recent meetings of the Government Operations Committee have not met these standards. Lt. Governor McNally plans to share his disappointment with Senator Roberts the next time they speak."

Read more here.

Mississippi health officials say 70% of recent calls relate to people using livestock drug to treat COVID

Meaghan Ellis, AlterNet
August 24, 2021

As the Delta variant of COVID ravages the southeastern region of the United States, officials in a state with one of the lowest vaccination rates are pleading with residents to refrain from using a livestock drug to treat COVID-19.

Approximately 70% of recent calls to the Mississippi Poison Control Center are in reference to Ivermectin ingestion, according to notice released by the Mississippi Department of Health. Many individuals who called the center have mild COVID symptoms. The center is warning that the livestock drug, which is concentrated for larger animals, "can be highly toxic to humans."

According to NPR.org, Mississippi health officials are sounding the alarm about residents using a livestock drug called Ivermectin as an alternative method of treatment for those suffering from COVID-19.

On Monday, Saturday, August 21, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released brief statement via Twitter addressing the issue. The short tweet read, "You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y'all. Stop it."

In a detailed statement, the agency offered more comprehensive remarks explaining why the drug should be avoided for use in people.

"Many inactive ingredients found in animal products aren't evaluated for use in people," the statement from the agency said. "Or they are included in much greater quantity than those used in people. In some cases, we don't know how those inactive ingredients will affect how ivermectin is absorbed in the human body."

In another statement, acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock on Monday emphasized that the authorized COVID vaccines are the best way to mitigate the spread of the virus.

"While this and other vaccines have met the FDA's rigorous, scientific standards for emergency use authorization, as the first FDA-approved COVID-19 vaccine, the public can be very confident that this vaccine meets the high standards for safety, effectiveness, and manufacturing quality the FDA requires of an approved product," Woodcock said in a statement.

She also added, "While millions of people have already safely received COVID-19 vaccines, we recognize that for some, the FDA approval of a vaccine may now instill additional confidence to get vaccinated."