Exclusive: As the U.S. shut down, Trump's legal fight to build wall ramped up

Jarrett Renshaw APRIL 16, 2020

(Reuters) - Even as the Trump administration was struggling to deal with the coronavirus outbreak, it was ramping up efforts to seize land along U.S. southern border to build a wall and fulfill a major campaign promise, a Reuters review of federal court records shows.
FILE PHOTO: Segments of the first border wall in Texas since President Trump took office as seen near Donna, Texas, U.S. December 8, 2019. REUTERS/Veronica G. Cardenas/File Photo

Donald Trump made building the wall a central promise of his 2016 campaign, but those efforts have been plagued by delays and false promises. Late last year, the administration got more aggressive, pledging to use the federal courts to seize large swaths of private land, mostly in Texas.

While most of the U.S. has been slowed by the COVID-19 crisis - which has infected nearly 650,000 Americans and killed at least 32,000 more - Trump’s efforts to construct a southern border wall has only gained steam.

In the past 12 months, the administration opened 41 cases in federal court to seize land to build a wall along the southern border of Texas. Nearly half of those cases – 16, or 39 percent - were filed in the past two months.

The bulk of the new filings came in March, when the administration opened 12 cases, the most in any month under Trump, a Reuters review of federal filings found.

The administration wants immediate possession, bypassing traditional procedural steps and forcing landowners to move more swiftly, records show.

Advocates for the landowners say the administration is choosing a bad time to get more aggressive, forcing landowners to choose between leaving their home to fight the case despite statewide stay-at-home guidance or lose their property.

Also, a successful defense can be expensive, requiring paid experts, lawyers and other professionals at a time the U.S. economy is shedding a record number of jobs.


“The timing, on a human level, is very bad,” said David Donatti, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in Texas who represents a family fighting government seizure of their property.

Nayda Alvarez, a 49-year-old public school teacher, was served court papers in March. She and her extended family - including her elderly father who suffers from several health issues - live on 6-acre (2.4-hectare) ranch along the Rio Grande river that the administration wants to take immediately.

“It’s very scary. My hands are tied because we are quarantined and fighting the federal government, literally,” said Alvarez, who is working with the ACLU and another group, the Texas Civil Rights Project, in her defense.

She was preparing to go to federal court on Tuesday, donning a mask and gloves, but her lawyers were able to delay the hearing until June.

Unlike in other states, most of the U.S. borderland in Texas is privately owned, which has delayed wall construction by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Federal lawyers have had to comb property records, track down landowners, make offers to buy the land and — if owners refuse to sell — file lawsuits to seize the land.

The White House did not respond to requests for comments for this story.

In recent weeks, Trump has made the case that the global pandemic only proves the need for stronger borders. On March 12, he retweeted a follower’s commentary linking the health scare to the need for strong borders and added “We need the Wall more than ever!”

Three Democratic lawmakers representing congressional districts along the U.S.-Mexico border recently called on the Trump administration to temporarily pause the legal efforts.


“To put vulnerable families already suffering at disproportionate rates at this time is simply unconscionable,” the lawmakers wrote in an April 8 letter to the departments of Justice, Defense and Homeland Security.

Immigration and border security has been a top issue for Republicans for the last few years. Yet now it appears to be overshadowed by concerns about healthcare as the COVID-19 pandemic sweeps across the country.

When asked what they considered to be “most important problem facing the U.S. today,” 18% of Republicans said healthcare in an April 13-14 Reuters/Ipsos poll, up 3 percentage points from a similar poll that ran Feb. 19-25, while 15% said it was immigration, down 10 points from the February poll.

Supplies for coronavirus field hospital held up at U.S.-Mexico border

A family of migrants are seen outside a tent at a migrant encampment where more than 2,000 people live while seeking asylum in the U.S., while the spread of Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues, in Matamoros, Mexico April 9, 2020. REUTERS/Daniel Becerril Slideshow (14 Images)

Julia Love, Mica Rosenbe APRIL 16,2020

(Reuters) - Red tape and rules on importing medical gear have delayed work on a field hospital for migrants in an asylum camp near Mexico’s border with Texas, undercutting efforts to prepare for the coronavirus pandemic, according to organizers of the project.

Mexican authorities approved construction of the 20-bed field hospital on April 2. But since then, a trailer laden with supplies for the project has been parked in Brownsville, Texas, less than a block from the U.S.-Mexico border.

Global Response Management, the nonprofit sprearheading the project, said the trailer contains an X-ray machine, cots, heart monitors, medical tents, generators and other equipment. Its staff fear time is running out to prepare for a coronavirus outbreak.

“If we are trying to set up the hospital in the middle of the epidemic, it’s too late,” Andrea Leiner, director of strategic planning for the organization, told Reuters.

There are no confirmed cases yet in the camp on the banks of the Rio Grande that houses about 2,000 migrants, mostly Central Americans seeking asylum in the United States. The camp also holds Cubans, Venezuelans and Mexican asylum seekers along with other nationalities.

But testing has been limited. Health experts say the migrants are exceedingly vulnerable, their immune systems worn down after months living in closely packed tents.

On April 10, the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) issued a temporary rule limiting the export of some personal protective gear needed for use within the United States.

Global Response said it believed it had to remove equipment such as gloves, surgical masks and N95 masks from the trailer in Brownsville. It is now trying to source what it can from Mexico.

Late Wednesday, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency said Global Response’s supplies were not subject to the FEMA order and were approved for export. But the nonprofit maintained on Thursday that it had removed some medical gear from its shipment on the advice of its U.S. customs broker, who cited guidance from border officials on the ground.

Global Response said while its shipment has been cleared on the U.S. side, it is now awaiting a letter from local Mexican government certifying that the equipment will only be brought into the country for six months, so it can be approved by Mexican customs.
Global Response tried to obtain the letter from the Matamoros mayor’s office Wednesday but was told the letter had to come from the National Migration Institute (INM), Leiner said.

Mexico’s customs agency, the Matamoros mayor’s office and INM did not respond to requests for comment.

In addition to the trailer, Global Response has collected hundreds of cloth masks sewn by volunteers for the camp, but it has only been able to bring them in three at a time, the quantity deemed for “personal use” and thus not subject to import duties in Mexico.

The group has accumulated 3,500 rapid tests for the coronavirus to use in the camp, said executive director Helen Perry.

Many in the camp are awaiting U.S. hearings under the Trump administration’s Migrant Protection Protocols policy. All hearings under the program have been suspended until May 1.

In Matamoros, which has a population of about half a million people, the five public hospitals have 25 ventilators and 11 intensive care beds between them, according to figures provided to Reuters by the state government last month.

A Mexican government plan to relocate the asylum camp’s migrants to a stadium was abandoned, Global Response’s Leiner said.

The nonprofit and INM are now working to fence off the camp and conduct temperature checks as people enter, she said.

Reporting by Julia Love in Mexico City and Mica Rosenberg in New York, additional

Protests erupt after deaths at U.S. factories in Mexican border town

Jose Luis Gonzalez

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (Reuters) - Protests have erupted outside factories in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez in recent days after the deaths of several workers, including some employed by U.S. companies, from what the protesters said was the coronavirus.

Employees of Honeywell International Inc hold a protest to demand the respect of the quarantine to avoid contagious of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico April 16, 2020. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez

MORE PHOTOS

So far, 82 people have tested positive for the new coronavirus in the city that lies across the border from El Paso, Texas, local authorities said on Thursday. A total of 19 have died, the city health department said.

Several workers for Lear Corporation, a Michigan-based car seat maker, have died from respiratory illnesses, the company said in a statement to Reuters.

Honeywell International Inc on Thursday told Reuters a worker at one of its plants in the city had died after being sent home to self-quarantine and receive medical attention.

The deaths and the protests about ongoing production at border factories follow outbreaks of the virus at meat-packing plants in the United States that have raised concerns over working conditions during the epidemic.

Lockdowns that aim to stop the spread of the coronavirus are disrupting supply chains in the $1.2 trillion North America Free Trade Agreement region, with growing friction between governments and companies about which industries should continue to operate.

On Thursday, dozens protested outside the Honeywell site where the employee who died had worked, demanding its temporary closure, following similar rallies outside other U.S. and Mexican plants in the city.

“We want them to respect the quarantine,” said Mario Cesar Gonzalez, who said the Honeywell Ademco factory made smoke alarms.

“The manager said that we are essential workers. I don’t think an alarm is essential.”

Honeywell said the factory makes controls for heating, ventilation and air conditioning for critical infrastructures such as hospitals and laboratories.

In a statement to Reuters the company said it was “deeply saddened” to learn that one of its workers had died.

Honeywelll said authorities had not confirmed if the employee died from COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, but that it had closed the site, which the employee had worked at, for 48 hours to sanitize the area.

The company did not say when the death happened but said the worker had not been on site since April 2.

Lear said it had ceased all employee-related activities by April 1 in Ciudad Juarez.

“We are saddened that several employees at our Juarez City operations, who were receiving medical treatment at the same local government social security hospital in Juarez, have passed away, due to complications of respiratory illness,” the company said in the statement.

The Lear shutdown appeared to be in line with the Mexican government’s declaration of a health emergency on March 30, requiring companies to cease operations if their activities are deemed non-essential.

On Wednesday, dozens of other workers protested outside an assembly factory run by Regal Beloir, a Wisconsin-based manufacturer that produces electric motors for household appliances. They demanded the closure of that plant after the alleged death of one of their coworkers.

“A colleague already died last night. He had been working here. There are infected workers and we are not being told,” said one person who identified himself as a Regal employee at the protest but declined to give his name for fear of retribution.

Reuters was not able to confirm a death of a Regal worker. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Mexican government is investigating whether some “non-essential” companies continue to operate. Refusing to follow the rules could constitute the crime of damage to health and could cost lives, Deputy Health Minister Hugo Lopez-Gatell said on Wednesday.

From April 3 until Tuesday, 15% of companies with non-essential activities had refused to stop work, Lopez-Gatell said.

The World of the John Birch Society: Conspiracy, Conservatism, and the Cold War

From the Inside Flap

The blueprint of the modern Tea Party, front and center in the John Birch Society's strongest years'

Hardcover – June 27, 2014

by D. J. Mulloy (Author) is Associate Professor of History

at Wilfrid Laurier University and author of American Extremism

 Selection of the History Book Club
Named One of "Six Books for Insight on a Trump Presidency" by the Washington Post

As far as members of the hugely controversial John Birch Society were concerned, the Cold War revealed in stark clarity the loyalties and disloyalties of numerous important Americans, including Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, and Earl Warren. Founded in 1958 as a force for conservative political advocacy, the Society espoused the dangers of enemies foreign and domestic, including the Soviet Union, organizers of the US civil rights movement, and government officials who were deemed "soft" on communism in both the Republican and Democratic parties. Sound familiar? In The World of the John Birch Society, author D. J. Mulloy reveals the tactics of the Society in a way they've never been understood before, allowing the reader to make the connections to contemporary American politics, up to and including the Tea Party. These tactics included organized dissemination of broad-based accusations and innuendo, political brinksmanship within the Republican Party, and frequent doomsday predictions regarding world events. At the heart of the organization was Robert Welch, a charismatic writer and organizer who is revealed to have been the lifeblood of the Society's efforts.

The Society has seen its influence recede from the high-water mark of 1970s, but the organization still exists today. Throughout The World of the John Birch Society, the reader sees the very tenets and practices in play that make the contemporary Tea Party so effective on a local level. Indeed, without the John Birch Society paving the way, the Tea Party may have encountered a dramatically different political terrain on its path to power.

Review

"The World of the John Birch Society is a thorough, fair, and nuanced examination of the controversial organization. . . . [A] must-read for anyone who wants to understand the mind-set of the JBS."
—H-Net Reviews in the Humanities & Social Sciences

"Mulloy's essential look at [the John Birch Society] brilliantly reveals the Society's hard-nosed conservatism while linking it to movements that preceded today's Tea Party."
—Publishers Weekly

"Mulloy's work offers a much-needed return to an examination of the far right. The rise of the Tea Party, the persistence of allegations about the place of Barack Obama's birth, his alleged 'un-Americanism,' and other recent political developments suggest that some of the older concepts, and the older focus on more extreme elements of the right, remain warranted."
—Timothy Thurber, author of Republicans and Rac

https://www.amazon.com/World-John-Birch-Society-Conservatism/dp/0826519814

U.N. chief: Now is not the time for U.S. to stop WHO funding

Bicyclists wear protective face masks amid the coronavirus crisis in Beijing on Thursday. China reported 10 new local cases Wednesday and three dozen that were imported. Photo by Stephen Shaver/UPI | License Photo

April 15 (UPI) -- United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres responded late Tuesday to U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to halt funding to the World Health Organization, saying now's not the time to pull its primary source of support.

Guterres said there will be time when the coronavirus pandemic is over to reflect and examine how those involved reacted to the crisis.

"It is also not the time to reduce the resources for the operations of the World Health Organization or any other humanitarian organization in the fight against the virus," he said in a statement. "As I have said before, now is the time for unity and for the international community to work together in solidarity to stop this virus and its shattering consequences."
Earlier Tuesday, Trump announced he would pull WHO funding as part of his administration's review of the group's response to the COVID-19 outbreak. He accused the organization of "mismanaging and covering up" the virus' spread and said the United States, the WHO's leading donor, demands "full accountability."

"America and the world have chosen to rely on the WHO for accurate, timely and independent information to make important public health recommendations and decisions," Trump said. "If we cannot trust that this is what we will receive from the WHO, our country will be forced to find other ways to work with other nations to achieve public health goals."

The decision was met with swift criticism from American Medical Association President Patrice Harris and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates.

Halting funding for the World Health Organization during a world health crisis is as dangerous as it sounds. Their work is slowing the spread of COVID-19 and if that work is stopped no other organization can replace them. The world needs @WHO now more than ever.— Bill Gates (@BillGates) April 15, 2020

India lockdown

Meanwhile, India published revised lockdown guidelines on Wednesday outlining a relaxing of restrictions.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said a day earlier the 21-day lockdown would be extended until May
3.

Since last month, much of India's transportation system ground to a halt, cinemas and shopping malls were ordered to close and religious halls and places of worship were shuttered.

Some of the world's most stringent lockdown rules will continue under the new guidelines, but come Monday, fisheries, animal husbandry and tea, coffee and rubber plantations, among other agricultural activities, may open for work again, the government said. Other industries to be affected include farming, supplies manufacturers and other agricultural-related businesses.

China dropChina reported a drop in new cases Wednesday, signaling efforts to stem infections across its border from Russia may be working.

Beijing's National Health Commission recorded 46 new cases. All but 10 were imported. China has implemented a series of measures, such as closing all land border checkpoints with Russia to stop infections from entering -- particularly through Heilongjiang, China's northernmost province that's received many of the foreign cases.

Since it began announcing imported cases last month, China has reported 1,500 from abroad. The new infections increase its total to about 82,300. The health commission also reported one death.

Scenes from a pandemic: World copes with COVID-19

Pedestrians walk past a police vehicle in Jerusalem on April 12. The Israeli government deployed 1,000 police officers to enforce a full closure on Jewish religious neighborhoods with the highest rate of coronavirus. Photo by Debbie Hill/UPI | License Photo

Proposed abortion ban challenged by lawmakers, activists in Poland

Aborting compromised fetuses, which account for 98 percent of legal abortions in Poland, would be prohibited by law under the new proposal. 

April 15 (UPI) -- Polish lawmakers debated a controversial proposal on Wednesday to ban nearly all abortions and criminalize those who teach sex to teenagers.

Poland already has some of the toughest abortion laws in Europe, allowing the procedure only in cases of rape or incest if the mother's life is at risk or the fetus is seriously compromised.

Aborting compromised fetuses, which account for 98 percent of legal abortions in Poland, would be prohibited by law under the new proposal.

The other legislation calls for those who teach sex to teens to be prosecuted. Critics of the proposal say it's tantamount to banning sex education in schools.

The proposals, introduced by Poland's ruling Law and Justice Party, would put the nation at odds with the European Union, but could energize more conservative voters to support ally and incumbent President Andrzej Duda.

"This is a gesture to the right-wing of the political spectrum," said Anna Materska-Sosnowska, a political scientist at Warsaw University. "This agenda might divide the opposition and divert attention from the most important topics, which are health and economic issues."

Some have questioned the timing of the proposals, as they were introduced just weeks before the May 10 presidential election.

Due to restrictions brought on by the coronavirus outbreak, activists against the abortion ban have taken their opposition online. An online petition against both proposals has attracted more than 700,000 signatures.

Thousands of other demonstrators, however, ignored coronavirus restrictions and rallied in the streets of Warsaw Tuesday.

Nurses push back on pressure to work without right equipment

By MARTHA MENDOZA and KIMBERLEE KRUESI APRIL 16, 2020

In this image provided by Lizabeth Baker Wade, nurses at Providence Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, Calif., on April 10, 2020, raise their fists in solidarity after telling managers they can't care for COVID-19 patients without N95 respirator masks to protect themselves. The hospital has suspended ten nurses from the ward, but has started providing nurses caring for COVID-19 patients with N95 masks. (Lizabeth Baker Wade via AP)

Nurse Mike Gulick was meticulous about not bringing the coronavirus home to his wife and their 2-year-old daughter. He’d stop at a hotel after work just to take a shower. He’d wash his clothes in Lysol disinfectant. They did a tremendous amount of handwashing.

But at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California, Gulick and his colleagues worried that caring for infected patients without first being able to don an N95 respirator mask was risky. The N95 mask filters out 95% of all airborne particles, including ones too tiny to be blocked by regular masks. But administrators at his hospital said they weren’t necessary and didn’t provide them, he said.

His wife, also a nurse, not only wore an N95 mask but covered it with a second air-purifying respirator while she cared for COVID-19 patients at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center across town in Los Angeles.

Then, last week, a nurse on Gulick’s ward tested positive for the coronavirus, which causes the disease COVID-19. The next day doctors doing rounds on their ward asked the nurses why they weren’t wearing N95 masks, Gulick said, and told them they should have better protection.

For Gulick, that was it. He and a handful of nurses told their managers they wouldn’t enter COVID-19 patient rooms without N95 masks.

“I went into nursing with a passion for helping those who are most vulnerable and being an advocate for those who couldn’t have a voice for themselves, but not under the conditions we’re currently under,” Gulick said.

The hospital suspended him and nine colleagues, according to the National Nurses United, which represents them. Ten nurses are now being paid but are not allowed to return to work pending an investigation from human resources, the union said.

They are among hundreds of doctors, nurses and other health care workers across the country who say they’ve been asked to work without adequate protection. Some have taken part in protests or lodged formal complaints. Others are buying or even making their own supplies.

Guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention don’t require N95 masks for COVID-19 caregivers, but many hospitals are opting for the added protection because the infection has proven to be extremely contagious. The CDC said Wednesday at least 9,200 health care workers have been infected.

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

Saint John’s said in a statement that as of Tuesday it was providing N95 masks to all nurses caring for COVID-19 patients and those awaiting test results. The statement said the hospital had increased its supply and was disinfecting masks daily.

“It’s no secret there is a national shortage,” said the statement. The hospital would not comment on the suspended nurses.

Angela Gatdula, a Saint John’s nurse who fell ill with COVID-19, said she asked hospital managers why doctors were wearing N95s but nurses weren’t. She says they told her that the CDC said surgical masks were enough to keep her safe.

Then she was hit with a dry cough, severe body aches and joint pain.

“When I got the phone call that I was positive I got really scared,” she said.

She’s now recovering and plans to return to work next week.

“The next nurse that gets this might not be lucky. They might require hospitalization. They might die,” she said.

As COVID-19 cases soared in March, the U.S. was hit with a critical shortage of medical supplies including N95s, which are mostly made in China. In response, the CDC lowered its standard for health care workers’ protective gear, recommending they use bandannas if they run out of the masks.

Some exasperated health care workers have complained to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

“I ... fear retribution for being a whistleblower and plead to please keep me anonymous,” wrote a Tennessee medical worker, who complained staffers were not allowed to wear their own masks if they weren’t directly treating COVID-19 patients.

In Oregon, a March 26 complaint warned that masks were not being provided to nurses working with suspected COVID-19 patients. Another Oregon complaint alleged nurses “are told that wearing a mask will result in disciplinary action.”

One New Jersey nurse who asked not to be named out of fear of retribution, said she was looking for a new job after complaining to OSHA.

“Do I regret filing the complaint? No, at least not yet,” she said. “I know it was the right thing to do.”



Some are taking to the streets.

On Wednesday, nurse unions in New York, Massachusetts, Michigan, Illinois, California, and Pennsylvania scheduled actions at their hospitals and posted on social media using hashtag “PPEoverProfit.” PPE, or personal protective equipment, refers to items such as masks and gowns.

Nurses at Kaiser Permanente’s Fresno Medical Center in central California demanded more protective supplies at a protest during their shift change Tuesday. The hospital, like many in the U.S., requires nurses to use one N95 mask per day, which has raised concerns about carrying the infection from one patient to the next.

Ten nurses from the facility have tested positive with COVID-19, Kaiser said. Three have been admitted to the hospital and one is in critical care, protest organizers said.

Wade Nogy, a Kaiser senior vice president, denied union claims that nurses have been unnecessarily exposed.

“Kaiser Permanente has years of experience managing highly infectious diseases, and we are safely treating patients who have been infected with this virus, while protecting other patients, members and employees,” Nogy said.

Amy Arlund, a critical care nurse at the facility, said that before the pandemic, following infection control protocols they’re currently using would have been grounds for disciplinary action.

“And now it’s like they’ve thrown all those standards out the window as if they never existed,” Arlund said. “It’s beyond me.”
__

This story has been corrected to reflect that the name of the organization that represents nurses is National Nurses United, not National Nurses Union.

Medical intelligence sleuths tracked, warned of new virus

By DEB RIECHMANN AP APRIL 16, 2020

 In this March 19, 2020, file photo laboratory scientist Andrea Luquette cultures coronavirus to prepare for testing at U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md., where scientists are working to help develop solutions to prevent, detect and treat the coronavirus. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — In late February when President Donald Trump was urging Americans not to panic over the novel coronavirus, alarms were sounding at a little-known intelligence unit situated on a U.S. Army base an hour’s drive north of Washington.

Intelligence, science and medical professionals at the National Center for Medical Intelligence were quietly doing what they have done for decades — monitoring and tracking global health threats that could endanger U.S. troops abroad and Americans at home.

On Feb. 25, the medical intelligence unit raised its warning that the coronavirus would become a pandemic within 30 days from WATCHCON 2 — a probable crisis — to WATCHCON 1 — an imminent one, according to a U.S. official. That was 15 days before the W orld Health Organization declared the rapidly spreading coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic.

At the time of the warning, few coronavirus infections had been reported in the United States. That same day, Trump, who was in New Delhi, India, tweeted: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA.” Soon, however, the coronavirus spread across the world, sickening more than 2 million people with the disease COVID-19 and killing more than 26,000 people in the United States.

The center’s work typically is shared with defense and health officials, including the secretary of health and human services. Its Feb. 25 warning, first reported last month by Newsweek, was included in an intelligence briefing provided to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but it’s unknown whether Trump or other White House officials saw it. Various intelligence agencies had been including information about the coronavirus in briefing materials since early January, according to the official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to confirm details about the alert.

At least 100 epidemiologists, virologists, chemical engineers, toxicologists, biologists and military medical expert — all schooled in intelligence trade craft — work at the medical intelligence unit, located at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland. Requests to interview current workers were denied, but former employees described how they go through massive amounts of information, looking for clues about global health events.

“You feel like you’re looking for needles in a stack of needles,” said Denis Kaufman, who worked in the medical intelligence unit from 1990 to 2005 and again later before retiring.

Most of the information they study is public, called “open source” material. A local newspaper in Africa might publish a story about an increasing number of people getting sick, and that raises a flag because there’s no mention of any such illness on the other side of the country. A doctor in the Middle East might post concerns about a virus on social media. But unlike organizations such as the WHO, the medical intelligence team, part of the Defense Intelligence Agency, also has access to classified intelligence collected by the 17 U.S. spy agencies.

The medical unit can dig into signals intelligence and intercepts of communications collected by the National Security Agency. It can read information that CIA officers pick up in the field overseas. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency can share satellite imagery and terrain maps to help assess how a disease, like Ebola or avian flu, might spread through a population.

“Every day, all of us would come into work and read and research our area for anything that’s different — anything that doesn’t make sense, whether it’s about disease, health care, earthquakes, national disaster — anything that would affect the health of a nation,” said Martha ”Rainie” Dasche, a specialist on Africa who retired from the DIA in 2018. “We start wondering. We look at things with a jaundiced eye.”
Full Coverage: Virus Outbreak

They don’t collect intelligence. They analyze it and produce medical intelligence assessments, forecasts and databases on infectious disease and health risks from natural disasters, toxic materials, bioterrorism as well as certain countries’ capacity to handle them. Their reports are written for military commanders, defense health officials and researchers as well as policymakers at the Defense Department, White House and federal agencies, especially the Department of Health and Human Services.

The center was originally in the U.S. Army Surgeon General’s office during World War II, but military leaders throughout history have learned the hard way about the danger that disease poses to troops.

“In the Spanish-American War, there were major epidemics of typhoid fever and dysentery,” according to a report written in 1951 at Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston in Texas. “World War I saw widespread outbreaks of influenza and malaria. In World War II, there was a high incidence of malaria and infectious hepatitis. ... In all wars prior to World War II, losses from disease exceeded losses from battle injury.”

Today, the team’s success comes in providing early warnings that prevent illness. That can be difficult if a country doesn’t report or share information out of fear that the news will affect its economy or tourism. Some undeveloped countries with poor health systems might not compile good data. Information from countries trying to play down the seriousness of an epidemic can’t be trusted.

Kaufman said massive amounts of information come out of China, where the first reports of the new coronavirus surfaced in the city of Wuhan. But because the country is run by an authoritarian government, the medical intelligence researchers glean information from the local level, not Beijing.

“Researchers, in some cases, have more success in learning information from the bottom up — not from the central communist government, but from localities,” he said. “That’s where some guy in Wuhan might be saying ‘I can’t report this because I don’t want to look bad to my boss’ or there’s a guy who says he can’t talk about avian flu because his cousin runs the bird market and doesn’t want to hurt his business.”

China sends aid to African nations amid racism charge

China has denied racial discrimination following reports of African residents being evicted from their homes. Photo by Stephen Shaver/UPI | License Photo

April 16 (UPI) -- China is sending dozens of medical experts to Burkina Faso and Ethiopia amid accusations of racial discrimination against African residents in the southern city of Guangzhou.

Beijing's foreign ministry said Wednesday medical teams would be dispatched to areas affected by COVID-19. Burkina Faso has confirmed 542 cases and 32 deaths, and Ethiopia has reported 85 cases and three deaths, the South China Morning Post reported. Cases in Africa have surpassed 17,000.

Video footage that went viral this week showed groups of black men pulling suitcases and being pushed out into the street by Chinese police officers.

"I don't know where I will sleep tonight," one man says.

Reports have since surfaced of African residents in Guangzhou being evicted from their homes and banned from hotels, prompting governments in Africa to issue a joint condemnation of related incidents.

Earlier in the week, Ugandan politician and musician Bobi Wine said he would be working with Neil Nelson, the U.S. founder of news service Atlanta Black Star, to evacuate Africans and African Americans out of China.

"The two leaders are currently working together to facilitate a humanitarian mission to airlift those Africans and African-Americans who are affected by these attacks to a country in Africa that is willing to receive them," their joint statement read.

Wine also said he and Nelson appealed to Beijing to protect Africans overseas. On Twitter, the Ugandan politician described what he saw on footage as "inhumane treatment."

The U.S. State Department has advised U.S. citizens of African descent to avoid non-essential travel to China.

Reports of discrimination came after Chinese state media claimed five Nigerian men violated quarantine guidelines and visited a local restaurant, infecting the owner and his child. The five men had reportedly tested positive for the novel coronavirus in Guangzhou

China has denied local authorities discriminated against African residents.

upi.com/6998437

U.S. warns North Korean cyberattacks threaten financial system


April 15 (UPI) -- The Trump administration warned that North Korea is conducting cyberattacks that not only threaten the United States but the international financial system.

U.S. NEWS
APRIL 16, 2020 / 1:04 AM

In a 12-page joint advisory published Wednesday, the U.S. State Department, Treasury, Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation accused North Korea of conducting cyberattacks targeting the financial sector to generate funds for its weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs, warning that the attacks pose "a significant threat to the stability and integrity of the international financial system."

According to a statement from the State Department, the advisory's purpose is to "raise awareness" of the cyberthreat posed by North Korea.

"The United States is deeply concerned about North Korea's malicious cyberactivities, which the U.S. government refers to as HIDDEN COBRA. The DPRK has the capability to conduct disruptive or destructive cyberactivities affecting U.S. critical infrastructure," the advisory said referring to North Korea by the initials of its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The report said the state-sponsored cyberactors are hackers, cryptologists and software developers who attack financial institutions, digital currency exchanges and politically motivated operations that target foreign media companies through deploying malware tools that have increasingly grown in sophistication.

The interagency report details several attacks widely attributed to the communist nation, including the November 2014 cyberattack on Sony Pictures Entertainment in retaliation for the 2014 comedy film "The Interview" that was set in the hermit kingdom and mocked leader Kim Jong Un, the February 2016 cyberheist of $81 million for the Bangladesh Bank and the May 2017 WannaCry 2.0 ransomware attack when hundreds of thousands of computers in more than 150 countries were infected with malware to extort money from their owners, among others.

The agencies in the report urged governments, industry and the public to adopt countermeasures against the threat, such as raise awareness, share technical information about the threat, implement best cybersecurity practices and notify law enforcement if one suspects they have been victimized through malicious cyberactivity.

The consequences, however, of engaging in or supporting Pyongyang's illicit activities include being sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury and criminally prosecuted by the Department of Justice, it said.

Meanwhile, the State Department's Rewards for Justice program is offering a reward of up to $5 million to anyone who has information about the Kim regime's cyberactivities.

"It is vital for the international community, network defenders and the public to stay vigilant and to work together to mitigate the cyberthreat posed by North Korea," the report said. 


The United States has previously sanctioned and criminally charged individuals linked to North Korea's cybercrimes.

In September 2018, Park Jin Hyok was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury and charged by the Justice Department for his involvement in several of the North's high-profile attacks, including against Bangladesh's central bank and Sony Pictures.

Last month, the Treasury imposed sanctions against two Chinese nationals for laundering millions of dollars of stolen in 2018 from a cryptocurrency exchange by a U.S.-designated North Korean-sponsored cybergroup.

The report was published a day after North Korea fired a series of projectiles and air-to-ground missiles into the sea toward Japan.

Exclusive: Inside Trump’s Failed Plan to Surveil the Canadian Border

A leaked memo shows Customs and Border Protection requested millions of dollars to monitor the movements of Canadian citizens.

By Ken Klippenstein APRIL 10, 2020

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and US President Donald 

Trump pose at the White House in 2017.

 (Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

In late March, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) requested military support to surveil the US-Canada border with mobile cameras and underground sensors. The request was rebuffed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who feared opposition from the Canadians, according to an internal Pentagon memo obtained exclusively by The Nation.

The memo reveals that CBP sought 916 military personnel to undertake duties at the Canadian border, including operating mobile surveillance cameras, unmanned ground sensors, and motor transportation. Overall, CBP’s request was estimated to cost $145.3 million.

In addition, it would provide 540 military personnel on the southern border—adding to the 5,000 military personnel including military police, marines, planners, and engineers.


The memo, marked for official use only, was sent from Kenneth P. Rapuano, assistant secretary for homeland defense and global security, to Secretary of Defense Mark Esper. It was provided to The Nation by a Pentagon official on the condition of anonymity to avoid professional reprisal.

Stephanie Carvin, a professor of International Relations at Carleton University in Ottawa, expressed outrage at the proposal, telling The Nation, “Americans remember 9/11, but Canadians remember 9/12 because that was the day our border shut down…. The United States is 80 percent of our trade—it’s our oxygen. If it’s cut off, we can’t breathe.…

“Militarization runs against almost everything institutional in Canadian foreign and domestic policy going back the last 20 years, and I don’t say that lightly.”

The memo ties Covid-19 to border enforcement, describing the request’s purpose as being to help CBP “as part of the Federal response to the Covid-19 pandemic.” But it later cites immigration enforcement as one of its goals. “CBP does not have the resources required to maintain public health standards and national security requirements to enforce immigration laws without additional DoD support,” it notes.

Despite CBP’s concerns, undocumented immigration to the United States remains relatively low, with the vast majority of it coming across the southern border. Furthermore, the incidence of Covid-19 is far higher in the United States than Canada or Mexico.

Political scientist Stephen Saideman, who serves as director of the Canadian Defence and Security Network as well as Paterson Chair in International Affairs at Carleton University, called the plan a “harebrained idea.”

“It seems like a strange use of resources at this moment in time,” Saideman said. “There is no threat of Canadians fleeing to the US given that national health care in Canada becomes a far greater magnet during a pandemic; Canada is not only a week or two behind the US in terms of the progress of the pandemic, but is also flattening the curve better; [and] there has not been much threat of illegal migration in this direction historically.”

The Nation previously reported on a memo from March in which the Department of Homeland Security requested military support up north, stating that “any unknown or unresolved illegal entries into the United States in between Ports of Entry (POE), have the potential to spread infectious disease.”

Carvin described the mood in Canada when the plan was first reported as “first shock and then laughter.”

President Trump has repeatedly accused foreigners of spreading diseases, accusing Mexican migrants of bringing “tremendous infectious disease…pouring across the border.” He has also demanded that Covid-19 be called a “Chinese” virus. But he has not publicly targeted Canadians—yet.

The US-Canadian border, often described as the oldest demilitarized border in world history, has historically been free of a military presence from either nation; but that could change under the Trump administration, which has already moved to restrict travel between the United States and Canada.

The plan does not appear to have been low-level speculation, judging from the seniority of staff involved. The memo notes that the commander of US Northern Command spoke about it with the commander of the Canadian Joint Operations Command.

While the chairman of the Joint Chiefs rejected the plan, he also appears to leave open the possibility, provided the Canadians approved.

“The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has reviewed this request for assistance and non-concurs on the use of military personnel to staff MSC [Mobile Surveillance Camera] vehicles along the northern border because he does not see the link between MSC support, sensors, and the COVID-19 outbreak,” the memo states. “The Chairman caveats his non-concurrence, by noting ‘if supported, I recommend we work with our Canadian counterparts to address their concerns about the “militarization” of the northern border prior to committing any forces.’”

Maj. Mark Lazane, a spokesperson for the Pentagon’s US Northern Command, told The Nation, “DoD [Department of Defense] has a long history of supporting Customs and Border Protection in securing the U.S. borders; however, we do not have an approved mission assignment to support CBP along the northern border. For information regarding potential future support, please contact CBP or the Department of Homeland Security.”

Neither Customs and Border Protection nor the Department of Homeland Security responded to a request for comment.

Correction: A previous version of this article misattributed two quotations from Stephanie Carvin to Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister, who declined to comment. The story has been corrected.

Google Doodle series will thank coronavirus helpers over the next two weeks [Updated]


Abner Li- Apr. 16th 2020@technacity


Last week, Google released a simple and moving ad thanking healthcare workers around the world for combating COVID-19. The company is now continuing that praise by saying thank you to all coronavirus helpers with a series of Google Doodles over the next two weeks.

This week, we’re beginning a series of Doodles to recognize the many people responding to COVID-19 — from doctors and nurses caring for people on the front lines, to teachers and food service workers ensuring essential goods and services are still available

This Google Doodles series — usually reserved for multi-week sporting events like the Olympics and World Cup — coincides with National Public Health Week in the US.

The first thanks public health workers and researchers in the scientific community. Given that there will be several Doodles in this series, Google is using the same basic format where the “G” sends heart/thanks/appreciation/respect to a themed “e” at the end.

Monday’s features graphs depicting curves, while the one tomorrow sees the last letter dressed in scrubs. The Search homepage at the bottom notes who Google is recognizing that day.
Google Doodles: Thank you coronavirus helpers
April 6: Public health workers and to researchers in the scientific community


April 7: Doctors, nurses, and medical workers


April 8: Emergency services workers


April 9: Custodial and sanitation workers


April 10: Farmworkers and farmers


April 13: Grocery workers


April 14: Public transportation workers


April 15: Packaging, shipping, and delivery workers


April 16: Food service workers


April 17: Teachers and childcare workers



Other coronavirus helpers that will see a thank you include:


Over the next two weeks, our Doodles will honor other essential frontline workers, including healthcare workers, first responders, and the many people keeping services like sanitation, food service, public transit, schools, and more up and running. Thank you to all the people who are working to save lives and keep communities safe during this pandemic

Since the COVID-19 pandemic started, Google has leveraged its platforms to provide information and link to health resources. Recent efforts involve:
Google aggregates user location history to quantify COVID-19 impact in 131 countries
Google launches ‘COVID-19 Information & Resources’ website
[Update: Progress] Verily launches COVID-19 screener and testing for California
Verily shows how its COVID-19 drive-thru testing works [Video]


FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
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Google DoodleGoogle's homepage is one of the most-viewed web pages around the globe, and often, the company uses that page to draw attention to historic events, celebrations, or current events such as "coronavirus helpers" and more using Doodles. The colorful drawings are changed on a regular basis.

The Coronavirus Strike Wave Could Shift Power to Workers—for Good

Workers at companies that offer poor pay and unsafe working conditions now know they are essential. And many expect to be treated that way.
By Bryce Covert is a contributor at The Nation and a contributing 

op-ed writer at The New York Times. APRIL 16, 2020

Amazon employees hold a protest and walkout over conditions at the company's Staten Island distribution facility. (Spencer Platt / Getty Images)

Daniel Steinbrook’s job at Whole Foods has changed completely as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. His store is mobbed. Many customers come in wearing masks. Steinbrook, who works at a Whole Foods in Cambridge, Massachusetts, hasn’t been given a mask by his employer and was told he couldn’t wear a scarf over his face for added protection.

“It’s been extremely stressful,” Steinbrook said. “And it’s grown increasingly stressful over time as the pandemic has advanced and the risks have gotten higher.”

On March 31, he and his fellow Whole Foods workers across the country went on strike, orchestrating a mass sick-out to protest what they say is a lack of protections for employees and customers alike. It’s the first national collective action ever staged by Whole Foods employees.

They are one of a number of groups of workers who have gone on strike in recent weeks. Amazon warehouse workers walked off the job in Detroit, Chicago, and New York City; in the latter, they’ve now staged two strikes in as many weeks over safety and pay concerns. Workers at fast-food restaurants such as McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC, Checkers, Domino’s, and Waffle House have gone on strike in California, Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee. They’ve been joined by workers at companies where workers have never gone on strike before, such as Family Dollar, Food Lion, and Shell gas stations. Instacart shoppers held a national strike on March 30, refusing to accept orders. Workers for Shipt, Target’s same-day delivery service, organized a walkout on April 7. The unrest has even spread to bus drivers, poultry workers, and painters and construction workers.

The stakes are high. Many of these workers have been deemed essential as their employers stay open. But, striking workers say, their employers are not doing enough to protect their health and keep them financially afloat. Already, grocery workers have started to die from Covid-19.

This marked the first time that Steinbrook took part in workplace activism. “I’m not someone who ever gets involved in things like this,” he said. “I normally just shut up and do my job.”


Finding out that Whole Foods’s paid sick leave policy requires a positive Covid-19 test even though the company isn’t covering the costs of tests galvanized him. “It incentivizes employees to come into work sick,” he explained. And, he pointed out, Whole Foods’s policy runs counter to guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control.
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Meanwhile, Whole Foods has not been closing stores where employees test positive. Instead, they do a deep cleaning overnight and notify employees via voicemail; customers may not have any idea. And there is nothing done to address whether or not other employees were also infected. “This is an extremely dangerous and irresponsible policy [from] Whole Foods meant to preserve their profits,” Steinbrook said. “It’s frankly only a matter of time for a Whole Foods Market employee to die from Covid-19 that they contracted at work.”

Steinbrook is also worried that his employer is putting the rest of his community at risk. “A number of the existing policies are frankly dangerous for employees and customers and the public at large,” he said. “Any transmission within the store will grow exponentially within the community, and it will put people’s lives at risk.”

Grocery store workers and others stage a protest rally outside the Whole Foods Market, in the South End of Boston. (Pat Greenhouse / The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

So Whole Foods employees have issued a set of demands: paid leave for anyone who isolates or self-quarantines, health care for part-time and seasonal employees, company coverage of coronavirus testing and treatment for all workers, double hazard pay, new policies to facilitate social distancing in stores and ensure adequate sanitation, and an immediate shutdown of any store where an employee tests positive with pay for all of its employees.

The company did not respond to a request for comment. In response to the pandemic, it has increased hourly pay by $2 an hour.

Steinbrook doesn’t believe the company will make changes without pressure. It’s already ignoring the CDC recommendations, as well as a letter sent by 14 state attorneys general and the attorney general of Washington, D.C. urging the CEO of Amazon, which owns Whole Foods, and the CEO of Whole Foods Market to change its paid sick leave policy. Executives are “not listening to the government,” Steinbrook noted. “They’re not going to listen to me, just a random employee.” But, he hopes, they might listen to employees banding together.

“Since the entire nation is shut down…and grocery stores are one of the few places open, I think that they have a big responsibility for public health,” he said.

That sentiment—that so many employers are putting their employees in danger by flouting the recommendations of authority figures—is part of what has made this moment such a fertile one for labor activism according to Nelson Lichtenstein, distinguished professor of history at the University of California Santa Barbara. The current swell of strikes comes after two years of a huge uptick in worker unrest: more workers went on strike in 2018 than any time since 1986, and the numbers held steady last year. “People face crises with the ideas and traditions and impulses that have immediately gone before it,” Lichtenstein pointed out. It’s no coincidence that all of these workers have responded to this crisis with walkouts after two years of strikes by teachers, nurses, and Uber drivers—not to mention movements like Occupy Wall Street and the Fight for 15. “We have had a decade where these ideas are floating around,” he noted.

But something vital has shifted. “It’s not just that their [working] conditions are bad—that’s been in existence forever,” he said. Now these workers are being called heroes and told by society “they are part of a larger, important…vital functioning of society.” That makes it even more egregious when their employers then violate the “new set of social norms and moral structures set up by this crisis,” he said. “There demands [have been] legitimized by other people in authority and power and prestige.” Workers feel a sense of empowerment in their new, essential roles—which makes them even more outraged when their employers don’t live up to the moment and take steps to protect and compensate them adequately. “Those things come together and create an explosive situation,” he said. This moment “gives them a sense of moral righteousness.”

The Coronavirus Crisis

THE WORKERS ON THE FRONT LINES OF THE PHILIPPINES’ FIGHT AGAINST CORONAVIRUS
Xyza Cruz Bacani

THE LESSON OF THE CORONAVIRUS? THERE’S NO ONE LEFT TO TRUST.
Elie Mystal

IMMIGRANTS ARE BEARING THE BRUNT OF THE CORONAVIRUS CRISIS
Cinthya Santos Briones, The Nation and Magnum Foundation

UNDERCOUNTING COVID-19 DEATHS IS A DEADLY MISTAKE
Jeet Heer

More in this series

There’s another factor on workers’ side: All of these companies are in high demand right now. Grocery stores can barely keep shelves stocked. Customers are relying on deliveries from Amazon and Instacart so they don’t have to go outside. Workers “have the leverage here,” Lichtenstein said.

Mario Crippen can’t afford to stay away from his job at an Amazon warehouse in Detroit. He has a three-month-old and a six-year-old to provide for. At the same time, he’s terrified of bringing coronavirus home to his family. At least three of his coworkers have tested positive; employees in 64 Amazon warehouses and shipping facilities have now tested positive. When he arrives at work he goes straight to his station—the company is not doing any screening for Covid, he said—and waits to be given the one bleach wipe per worker to wipe down his entire station. The company has run out of masks for employees and has stationed employees by doors to squirt sanitizer into people’s hands in order to ration it.

Amazon’s current order volumes look like we’re in the midst of the winter holiday frenzy. “I feel like I’m on my last days when I walk in there,” he said. He was at work when he got a call from the company informing him that two of his coworkers had tested positive. “That made me so scared,” he said. “It made me think, ‘Do I already have it, what if I go home and give it to my family, what’s going to happen to them, who’s going to be the breadwinner for the family, who’s going to take care of them, how is my family going to pay for a funeral?’ All those thoughts running through my head.”

“I’m feeling like somebody’s going to have to die for them to take action,” he said. “Nobody is listening to us.” In the face of inaction, he and his coworkers went on strike on April 1, the third strike at an Amazon warehouse in as many days, following actions in New York City and Chicago. The company has since fired three warehouse employees who say they were involved in the labor actions. Employees are demanding that the warehouse be shut down immediately to clean it while ensuring all employees keep being paid, safety measures be implemented and the necessary disinfecting supplies be stocked, the company cover medical care for any employees or their family members who contract the virus, anyone who self-quarantines receive pay, and the company stop processing all nonessential items.

Amazon employees hold a protest and walkout over conditions at the company's Staten Island distribution facility. (Spencer Platt / Getty Images)

“This accusations are simply unfounded [sic]. Nothing is more important than the safety of our teams,” Rachael Lighty, a communications manager for Amazon, said in an e-mail. She pointed to the company’s “preventative health measures” and “enhanced cleaning and sanitation,” as well as the additional $2 per hour pay and paid time off it has offered.

“I’d rather be a part [of the strike] than to lose my life for that job,” Crippen said. “A job can be replaced. But your life cannot be.”

On the morning of March 12, Jordan Backman, who lives in Issaquah, Washington, woke up planning to fulfill shopping orders for Instacart like she does every weekday, but “I just felt off,” she said. By the evening she had a constant, painful cough; then she developed a fever. A few days later her son developed the same symptoms. There was a string of days when she was so sick she could barely get out of bed. The only way she could have been exposed, she said, is working for Instacart.

When she called the hospital, she was told to go into a 14-day quarantine, so she stopped working. When she finally recovered, she figured she would be able to get pay from Instacart for the time that she was sick, given that the company has said it will offer 14 days of paid leave to anyone “who is diagnosed with COVID-19 or placed in individual mandatory isolation or quarantine, as directed by a local, state, or public health authority.” But the company denied her because it said she wasn’t told to quarantine by a public health official and because her test came back negative, even though there is a high rate of false negatives.

“I was really excited to get back to work after not being able to work for two weeks,” she said. But her frustration over the company’s refusal to grant her paid leave pushed her to take part in a national strike on March 30. Organizers say thousands of other Instacart workers joined her, some of whom are refusing to do shopping trips until their demands are met. Backman is also on strike indefinitely. “I’m not working until Instacart decides to pay me,” she said. She also wants the company to commit to at least $5 of hazard pay per order.

“We have been consistently, proactively communicating with the shopper community to ensure they have the support they need,” Instacart said in an e-mail. “We’ve made a number of significant enhancements to our products and offerings over the last few weeks that demonstrate Instacart’s unwavering commitment to prioritizing the health and safety of the entire Instacart community.” That includes providing disinfecting supplies and safety kits for its workers in the wake of the strike, sick pay for all part-time employees, and bonuses ranging from $25 to $200 depending on how many hours were worked. But so far, Instacart has not budged on its requirements for using paid sick leave or increasing hazard pay.

At a Food Lion grocery store in North Carolina, Nyreese Cole can barely keep the shelves stocked. People are buying so much that the store has put limits on certain items, such as meat and toilet paper. And yet the company isn’t giving employees masks and gloves. Cole has bought his own latex gloves. “The only thing that’s available to help is sanitizer at the front door and washing my hands in the bathroom,” he said.

“I know I’m risking myself every day I do go to work,” he said. But he needs all of the hours he can get at work so that he can pay his bills; he’s even been calling to see if he can get extra shifts. “It might sound crazy, but I feel like I don’t have a choice,” he said. “At the end of the day, rent is going to keep coming.”

He currently makes $10.50 an hour as a stocker, and the company has said it will give employees an extra dollar as hazard pay. But he wants hazard pay of at least $15 an hour. He also thinks the company should guarantee paid sick leave. So he joined fast food and retail workers to go on strike across the Raleigh-Durham area on March 27 with, he says, at least one other Food Lion coworker.

Food Lion disputes that any strike took place at its store. “We did not have any widespread absentees,” Matt Harakal, manager of external communications, said in an e-mail. “As a result of the coronavirus outbreak, we have implemented pandemic guidelines, including modified attendance policies, enhanced compensation and other key benefits. We are monitoring this fluid situation, and continue to follow guidance from local, state and national health authorities including the CDC.” He also said the company recently ordered face masks for employees.

Bettie Douglass is also seeking more hours even though she’s worried that her job has left her exposed. She was working a full-time schedule at McDonald’s in Missouri, but when the coronavirus hit and demand dropped, the company reduced her hours to 20 per week. She’s worried that her utilities will be cut off come May 1. Her refrigerator broke and she doesn’t have the money to fix it, but without it it’s hard for her to stock up on food for her family.

So she’s still going to work at McDonald’s, even though she’s 62, and even though the company hasn’t given any of them masks. “All we were told was use the sanitizer and wash hands frequently,” she said. “I have to take a chance everyday because I can’t afford not to go to work.”

As soon as she heard there was a strike brewing, “I knew I was going to do it,” she said. “Because if you don’t stand for something, you don’t stand for anything.” She walked off the job along with more than 100 other fast-food employees in both St. Louis and Tampa, Florida on March 31.

She’s been with McDonald’s for 14 years and has never gotten a raise. “We don’t have any type of retirement, we don’t have any type of benefits, we don’t have any type of sick pay,” she noted. Unlike many of the workers who’ve recently gotten active, Douglass has gone on strike before, with the Fight for 15. “I’m going to continue to do it until we get some better benefits, until they take us into consideration and take us serious,” she added.

“Our highest priority is to protect the health and well-being of our people,” McDonald’s owner and operator Nicole Enearu said in an e-mail, in a response to a request for comment. She said she has made “an ample supply” of gloves available to employees and is asking sick employees to stay home.

Some of these strikes have been orchestrated by Fight for 15 organizers, who have led larger and larger walkouts among fast-food workers and other low-wage employees for several years, demanding higher pay and the right to form a union, as well as newer groups, such as Working Washington, which has been organizing Instacart and other gig workers. But others have sprung up more organically. Whole Foods employees are not unionized, and the company has a history of aggressive union busting. There, the sick-out emerged from “online organizing of random employees who are concerned,” Steinbrook noted. “It was probably obvious before, but it’s definitely obvious now: the need for employee organizing to protect themselves and stand up for themselves.” These strikes could therefore extend beyond the end of the current crisis, whenever it might subside.

Striking workers have notched a few victories. Instacart said it will provide free health and safety kits to workers. Lawmakers have taken notice; Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Ro Khanna unveiled an “Essential Workers Bill of Rights” on Monday that would grant grocery store, food service, warehouse, delivery, and other workers health and safety protections, premium pay, and paid sick and medical leave.

For now, the wave of strikes shows no sign of cresting. Amazon workers in New York and Chicago have staged other one-day walkouts since the one Crippen joined in Detroit. Fast-food strikes have spread to California. After workers at a pizzeria in Chicago learned that a coworker had tested positive, they all walked out of the job on April 11. And the employees who already took part may do so again. Despite Steinbrook’s prior reluctance to join in workplace activism, he’s prepared to do more. “If these things are not changed, if these demands in the petition are not addressed immediately, there absolutely will be more mass actions,” he promised. Whole Foods workers are already planning another sick out for May 1. Steinbrook and his coworkers also hope that their action “will have a cascading effect on other grocery stores and other retail chains.”

As the crisis continues to unfold, a general strike—one that extends across industries and, indeed, possibly engulfs the whole country—“is not inconceivable,” Lichenstein said. If unrest spreads from not just frontline employees but throughout entire companies, those companies would have to shut down until workers’ demands are met. There are budding signs of such solidarity: white-collar Amazon employees sent an internal e-mail in support of the warehouse workers who have gone on strike and protested publicly about their working conditions; in response, Amazon fired two of them on Friday. It would be similar to entire school systems being shut down to support teachers going on strike in 2018.

“There needs to be continuing labor organization to prevent something like this from happening again,” Steinbrook said.