Kamala Harris: President Trump's Failure to Lead On Coronavirus Has Resulted in ‘Body Bags’

“He’s abandoned the role of the president of the United States.”​

By Liz Landers Apr 17 2020, VICE


Sen. Kamala Harris thinks that President Trump’s failure to respond quickly to the coronavirus has made the crisis worse, causing economic destruction and costing American lives.

"There is no question that that had we a president in charge who actually took their responsibility seriously, that we would probably be looking at a lot less damage than we have incurred," she said in an interview with VICE News. "We watch every day of the number of people infected and the number of people who are dead. We are every day hearing and watching stories about body bags. So, look, the buck stops with the president."

This week the U.S. took the global lead in both confirmed coronavirus cases as well as deaths, surpassing Italy, Spain, and possibly China, though data from China is thought to be unreliable. At the same time, 22 million have claimed unemployment benefits in the past three weeks, and retail sales have plummeted as wide sectors of the economy have shut down.

The California Democrat laid much of the blame at the feet of the president.

“The fact is that he has abandoned his role of leadership and meaning the role of the president of the United States," she said. "He’s abandoned the role of the president of the United States.”

Harris ticked off what she sees as failures of the Trump administration in its response to the pandemic, which has now claimed more than 30,000 lives in the U.S.

“His failure to take this seriously, from the time of calling it a hoax, to getting rid of the Obama administration’s focus through the White House on pandemics, to him trivializing the issue including the importance of social distancing” has made the crisis in the United States worse than it needed to be, she said.

Harris spoke to VICE News through a video conference on Thursday to discuss legislation she has introduced to prioritize funding and tracking of racial health disparities from the pandemic. An Associated Press analysis of communities with racial impact data show that while African Americans made up 21% of the population studied, they accounted for 42% of the deaths to the coronavirus.

Harris, who dropped her own run for the White House earlier this year, is thought to be a potential vice presidential pick for presumed Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

In the interview, she accused the current White House of taking an ideological approach to fighting the virus, rather than using the best science and fact-based analysis..

“The thing about this moment and it also is a source, therefore, of frustration about who this president is and how he has been approaching this issue: this is science. These things just don’t lie. Science is based on empirical data. Science is based on peer review. Science is based on analysis, objective analysis.”

Costco Is Thriving During The Coronavirus Pandemic. Its Workers Say They’ve Paid The Price.

Ben Kothe / BuzzFeed News; Getty Images

Costco has long been beloved by employees, some of whom have worked there for decades. But the retailer’s decision-making during the coronavirus pandemic has tested their loyalty and compromised their health.
 April 17, 2020

The last day Regina Lee was in the office, she was coughing so badly it rattled her whole body. The Costco Travel agent didn’t often work on Saturdays, but she’d picked up an extra shift on March 14 to help field the barrage of calls from customers trying to cancel cruises amid the coronavirus pandemic. Beloved in the office, the 59-year-old rarely missed a day of work in her 20 years at the company. That day, though, her coworkers kept wondering why she was there.

Ten days earlier on March 4, officials in King County, Washington — home to Costco’s headquarters and the initial epicenter of the US outbreak — called on businesses to let their employees work from home during a “critical moment in the growing outbreak.” Major Seattle-area companies like Microsoft and Boeing heeded that warning, shuttering their corporate operations and shifting employees to remote work. Costco did not. That same day, Costco CEO Craig Jelinek emailed thousands of workers at the company’s sprawling corporate campus in Issaquah, Washington, to say that allowing corporate employees to work remotely wouldn’t be fair to the “great number of Costco employees locally and across the country” in its stores who could not. “Our jobs here are to support our retail business, and we’re not prepared at this point to have corporate employees work from home,” he wrote.

“‘We take care of employees.’ Bullshit.”

Throughout her Saturday shift, Lee, who had diabetes, struggled to control her dry, hacking cough while processing refunds for some of the hundreds of customers calling Costco’s 20-year-old travel business. “She should go home,” Lee’s concerned colleagues whispered among themselves as she struggled to catch her breath. A supervisor eventually checked on her, but the agent remained at her desk until the end of her shift at 3 p.m. By Monday morning, she was dead.


Courtesy Raymond Lee
From left: Regina Lee, Willa Lee, and Susie Lee in 2004.


Lee was the first known Costco employee in the US to die of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, after she collapsed at the Everett, Washington, home she shared with her sister, Willa, and their mother, Susie. Two weeks later, they were dead too. The Lees are now three of the more than 31,000 people who have died in the US — and nearly 140,000 people globally — from the novel coronavirus.
With 547 retail warehouses across the US, Costco has become a lifeline for millions of people during the pandemic. However, more than 100 employees and contractors told BuzzFeed News that the $140 billion global retailer placed thousands of workers at its corporate offices and stores at risk through its lack of transparency on confirmed cases, disregard for warnings, and inability to adjust long-standing policies during a critical period. These people, most of whom asked for anonymity for fear of losing their jobs, said Costco left its workers unprotected and uninformed on the front lines of the worst global health crisis of their lifetimes.

“Is business that much more important?” Regina’s brother Raymond Lee told BuzzFeed News. “Shame on Costco. They say, ‘We take care of employees.’ Bullshit.”


Grant Hindsley for BuzzFeed News
Raymond Lee poses for a portrait at his mother and sisters’ home while holding a picture of the three of them, in Everett, Washington, April 10.
“No higher priority than your own well-being”

Costco employees said the company should have seen this coming.

In conversations with BuzzFeed News, both corporate and warehouse workers wondered why Costco management was so slow to enact firm coronavirus protocols at its North American locations, given what the global retail giant had seen in its stores in Asia, where the pandemic first spread.

And that hesitation may have let the virus spread further than it otherwise would have.

According to interviews and internal memos obtained by BuzzFeed News, at least 21 people at Costco’s corporate offices and at least 54 at warehouses across the US have tested positive for COVID-19. According to employees, at least two have died after contracting the disease.

Meanwhile, workers at Costco’s warehouses — what the company calls its stores — said the retailer didn’t do enough to prepare or protect them from thousands of customers who flooded in to stock up on toilet paper, cleaning supplies, and bulk groceries as coronavirus fears ramped up in March. Some employees who spoke to BuzzFeed News said warehouse managers failed to properly inform them of confirmed coronavirus cases among their colleagues and were slow to shut down or professionally sanitize their stores — leaving them and their members at risk.

“Working for Costco during this devastating point of time has become a living nightmare,” a Los Angeles–based warehouse employee told BuzzFeed News, noting that the company’s coronavirus response has disillusioned workers. “They will continue to prioritize the needs of the business over their employees’ well-being, even when we are in a state of emergency. We were never prepared for this.”

"Working for Costco during this devastating point of time has become a living nightmare.”

Costco, its CEO, and members of its leadership team did not respond to repeated requests for comment on a detailed list of questions regarding its response to the coronavirus pandemic. In a March 21 memo obtained by BuzzFeed News, Jelinek suggested he would not be responding to press inquiries. “As we’re dealing with this unprecedented situation we aren’t spending a lot of time engaging with the media and other occasional critics,” he wrote.

While many companies in the US, including Starbucks, Trader Joe’s, and Amazon, were slow to respond, in part because their leaders followed the federal government’s haphazard messaging and response, Costco’s management had plenty of warning. On an earnings call 11 days before Lee died, the company’s chief financial officer touted its response to the spread of the coronavirus in China and South Korea, both countries where it has stores. Costco has also weathered previous health crises, including the 2002–03 SARS outbreak.

In conversations with BuzzFeed News, Costco workers from an array of positions across the US detailed circumstances they deemed irresponsible. Two pregnant women in Texas were so concerned about their working conditions they took extended, unpaid leaves, their manager said. In Ohio, a manager described the “carelessness” of ignoring social distancing protocols by keeping every checkout register open. Employees in Las Vegas wondered why their stores were letting customers mill around and touch nonessential items like clothes and patio furniture. A manager in Michigan said elderly hourly workers were made to sanitize an area of the store where an infected employee had been without being told what and why they were cleaning.
Got a tip? Email one of the reporters of this story at Brianna.Sacks@buzzfeed.com or Ryan.Mac@buzzfeed.com, or contact us here.

“I do think Costco has implemented some good practices now, but it just took too long,” the Michigan manager said. “They were reactionary the entire time instead of taking the opportunity to be a leader in the industry.”

Since BuzzFeed News first reported on working conditions at Costco facilities during the outbreak, the company has strengthened its response. More than a week after Lee’s death, it enabled most of its corporate employees to work remotely. It also confirmed it would temporarily boost warehouse pay by $2 an hour, promised to provide masks and gloves, shortened store hours, required plexiglass shields on registers, and limited how many customers were allowed in a store at a time, though some employees say those aren’t being followed. BuzzFeed News obtained an internal memo sent earlier this month that shows that Costco now monitors employees’ temperatures in accordance with federal guidelines. The company has also ramped up its messaging to employees and its CEO has visited multiple warehouses to thank his workers.

Coronavirus In The Workplace: BuzzFeed News looks at how companies and employees are handling the coronavirus pandemic.

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“While we should be very proud of serving our communities, at the same time I know Costco employees have personal concerns and anxiety as well,” CEO Craig Jelinek said during a rare company-wide video address on March 30. “So I want to be clear about this: The business of Costco is important, and our communities and coworkers depend on us. But there’s no higher priority than your own well-being and the well-being of your families.”

“We are all expendable.”

For some workers, Jelinek’s message seemed like damage control. Many people worked at Costco for years, citing the company’s health care benefits, retirement plans, and relatively high pay as reasons why it was a good place to work. The company’s delayed and deficient handling of the coronavirus pandemic, however, has dampened those sentiments, making employees feel as if they had to choose between their health and their livelihoods. Without accumulated holiday or sick pay, some employees living paycheck to paycheck said they were told they had to come to work or take unpaid leave — even if they thought they had been exposed to the disease.

“We are all expendable,” said one Costco shift supervisor in Oregon. “Who talks about protecting us? I am not hearing anyone stand up for us.”


Anadolu Agency / Getty Images
An employee gives a wet towel to the customers who arrive to buy supplies at a Costco Warehouse in New Jersey, March 7.

“Everyone is sharing gloves”

Detailing potential risk factors in its 2019 annual earnings report, Costco warned of potential “public health issues” that “could disrupt our operations ... or have an adverse impact on consumer spending and confidence levels." But the coronavirus pandemic, at least in its early weeks, seems to have had the opposite effect.

As people flocked to warehouses to stock up for weeks of self-isolation, Costco’s sales jumped more than $1.6 billion, or 11.7%, in the five weeks leading up to April 5, according to a recent financial report. E-commerce sales were up nearly 50%. Those numbers were “strong,” said CFRA Research analyst Garrett Nelson, who noted that the pandemic was an “opportunity for them to pick up customers” and build upon its membership count of some 100 million cardholders.

Costco had seen crisis-inspired sales booms before. In 2003, as SARS wreaked havoc on Asia, its stores in Taiwan — where it now has 13 locations — not only weathered the storm but thrived. “People would come to Costco to buy food because they trusted it,” Richard Chang, Costco’s senior vice president of Asia, said in a 2018 interview.

So as the coronavirus outbreak gained momentum in China and South Korea, company leaders who’d been through the SARS crisis temporarily closed and cleaned affected locations while implementing strict daily disinfecting and social distancing regimens.

“Our warehouses have overall remained open with only a few total days of closures at a couple of locations in Korea, as well our Shanghai location, [and] there has been some limitations required on the number of people in the facility at a given time,” Costco Chief Financial Officer Richard Galanti said on a March 5 earnings call.

In the US, Costco’s workers aware of the measures taken to protect their foreign colleagues wondered why the same wasn’t being done for them. In private Facebook groups for employees and in interviews with BuzzFeed News, they fumed about the disparity between the precautions taken abroad and what was happening in the US.

“When you look at the Costcos in [South] Korea, they shut down the entire store and cleaned it,” one employee at the company’s Hayward, California, warehouse told BuzzFeed News in mid-March. “We only shut down to control how many people were in the store. There hasn’t been one deep cleaning. The employees there are decked out with masks. [There’s a] commitment to protection.”

“We were having 3,500 people allowed to come in at a time and no masks have been required.”

Meanwhile, as wave after wave of customers clamored for paper towels and pasta at US locations, employees at a number of Costco warehouses said managers floundered amid a lack of clear direction from higher-ups about social distancing and customer limits.

At the store in Culver City, California, on March 13, two days after Gov. Gavin Newsom advised citizens to avoid large crowds, door count sheets provided to BuzzFeed News illustrated the chaos. From 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., employees at the door checked in 4,015 Costco cardholders. The total door count for that day was 10,371 members, which does not account for the fact that multiple people can enter the store on the same membership card.

“We were having 3,500 people allowed to come in at a time and no masks have been required,” a supervisor at that location told BuzzFeed News on March 19. “Everyone is sharing gloves. We’re bringing our own, and if we have enough we give them to each other.”

At one point, as Costco stores racked up banner days, with some regularly exceeding sales of $1 million every 24 hours, employees struggled to buy supplies for their own families. They’d often find that crucial items like baby formula and disinfecting wipes were sold out by the time their shifts ended. Multiple warehouse workers told BuzzFeed News they felt expendable.

“I feel like we weren’t considered and we are like little guinea pigs looking at sales,” said one Culver City warehouse employee, adding that management took nearly a day to tell them about a colleague’s positive COVID-19 test, after cleaners in hazmat suits wiped down the areas where they worked. “The store will manage $600,000 to $1 million on a normal day. The other day we were at $1.4 million.”

At the end of March, Costco mandated that every location let employees shop from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. every Friday, according to internal documents seen by BuzzFeed News.


Provided to BuzzFeed News
A man in a hazmat suit is seen cleaning the Costco location in Norwalk, Connecticut, after Gregory Ulrich's death.
“Business as usual”

Gregory Ulrich had just acclimated to his new warehouse in Norwalk, Connecticut, when he abruptly called in sick around mid-March. His colleagues immediately worried that the manager, an esteemed Costco veteran of nearly 20 years, had contracted the virus. The affable 57-year-old had been “coughing up a storm” for a few days, an employee told BuzzFeed News, explaining that “Norwalk had a huge outbreak, so people were getting a bit on edge.”

On Friday, March 27, Ulrich was rushed to the hospital, a friend told BuzzFeed News. He died the following Monday from complications associated with the novel coronavirus. Alicia Ramnarine, a former Costco colleague, told BuzzFeed News that Ulrich was always cheerful, kind, and “a gentle man in a place full of chaos.” Ulrich’s family declined to comment.

According to two employees, warehouse leaders held two “emergency meetings” addressing the coronavirus panic. At the first, around March 16, management told staff that no one at the store had the virus and that people who spread rumors to the contrary could be fired because of the “severity of the misinformation,” a worker in attendance said. At the second meeting, about a week later, management said they “did not know about his positive results” and that they were going to enact more safety measures. Norwalk, Connecticut, had 17 confirmed COVID-19 cases at the time. That number has since swelled to 747 cases and 32 deaths.

In a note posted in the warehouse break room the day Ulrich died, management called his death “a great loss” and said that the longtime employee would be “profoundly missed.” As the store closed for the night, workers watched as a hazmat crew came in and disinfected the store’s cash registers.


Provided to BuzzFeed News
Gregory Ulrich

The following day, the Norwalk store’s general manager posted a second letter in the break room, saying he did not know Ulrich had the coronavirus because “his doctors did not feel he had it, nor would they test him.” The store leader told staff in bold letters to “DEMAND” to be tested if they were feeling symptoms as “doctors are waiting far too long to test people on their assumption that their patients don’t have it.”

A spokesperson for Greenwich Hospital of the Yale New Haven Health System declined to comment on Ulrich’s case, citing patient privacy laws.

At the time, his Norwalk colleagues had been hearing about coronavirus cases at other warehouses and saw every cough as a potential danger. Two employees who worried Ulrich had the virus feel that management should have been more vigilant in monitoring for early warning signs and done a better job enforcing social distancing rules.

“I remember posts in our employees group page about measures some warehouses were taking, and many of us did wonder what we were waiting for. It was like business as usual,” one employee told BuzzFeed News, adding that his colleagues were “scared” to come into work.

However, another worker there said he was “happy” with the warehouse’s response. Costco did not respond to requests for comment on safety protocols at the Norwalk location.

As of April 6, three other workers have tested positive for COVID-19, according to documents obtained by BuzzFeed News, bringing the Norwalk warehouse’s total case count to at least four.

“His doctors did not feel he had it, nor would they test him.”

The experience of the employees in Norwalk is not unique. At more than a dozen warehouses across the country, workers told BuzzFeed News that management at their locations was often slow to implement safety measures and failed to adequately inform them of new or suspected coronavirus cases among their colleagues. Some workers have taken it upon themselves to tally the cases, using a private, employee-only Facebook group to share information about coworkers who have reportedly contracted or died from COVID-19.

Labor advocates said the federal government’s own dismissiveness of the virus, blundered response, and weak guidelines set the tone for Costco and other major retailers. Protocols from the CDC and FDA offer “very minimal guidance” on how to protect workers and could enable businesses to pressure employees to return to work even if they’re sick, Peter Dooley, senior project coordinator for the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health, told BuzzFeed News, calling essential workers the “most at-risk and the most neglected.”

“The messaging from the top was of total denial for action or precaution, and the shame of it is that we had examples of what had been put in place in other countries,” Dooley said. “The real problem is the deception for people to think that they're not at risk, or in the low-risk category, and now we have grocery workers dying from the virus. If a worker gets sick with the illness it should be a presumption it was work exposure.”

Costco’s corporate leaders have been issuing new temporary operational guidelines for all its US warehouses. On March 27, they told managers that they’re required to provide masks, gloves, and plexiglass screens at checkout stands, sanitize registers every 15 minutes, and limit common contact points like silverware dispensers in break rooms. Some changes are happening, workers said, but many feel it’s too late. In New York, the Westbury warehouse on Long Island has at least eight infected workers, according to company notices provided to BuzzFeed News.

Amanda Rosado, a deli worker at Costco’s Port Chester, New York, location told BuzzFeed News that by this month four of her coworkers had tested positive for COVID-19, a situation she described as “a holy fucking clusterfuck.”

The 31-year-old told BuzzFeed News that during a recent Saturday shift, she noticed that a supervisor overseeing the registers was coughing and had red eyes, but he continued to work without gloves, handling cash that was later touched by dozens of employees. Later, he went home sick. Another colleague she worked with recently in the meat department had tested positive for the coronavirus, according to letters sent by another employee to BuzzFeed News.

And she couldn’t help but wonder: “How many people might have gotten sick because they walked into my warehouse?”

“How many people might have gotten sick because they walked into my warehouse?”


Rosado has worked for Costco since she was 19. Now a single mom with three kids who also cares for a brother with HIV, she said she felt vulnerable because of her managers’ lax approach to safety. She told BuzzFeed News that one person she’s worked closely with in the small deli room has been sick, and that another coworker went home with a terrible cough, only to come back a week later. The warehouse where Rosado works is just 15 minutes away from New Rochelle, New York, an early coronavirus hot spot and containment zone, but it only started giving employees masks at the beginning of April, she said.

Fearful of contracting the virus and bringing it home to her kids and immunocompromised brother, Rosado decided to take a leave of absence, using some of her vacation days to cushion the financial blow. At first, she said she was told she did not “fall under the criteria” to apply for a coronavirus-related break, where employees could request unpaid time off if they’re high-risk, concerned about working, or have symptoms — though she said she’d been in contact with an infected coworker and has chronic asthma.

“I want to do what I feel is right for me and my family,” she said. “Working at Costco is like fighting an invisible enemy with a blindfold and no weapons.” Costco did not respond to requests for comment on the exchange.

Among the most marginalized workers at Costco are its contractors, some of whom were thrown into difficult roles to keep up with demand, from packaging to loading supplies in crowded distribution centers. After Costco shuttered its famous food sample stations in early March, it placed the sample servers, who were employed by a third-party company named Club Demonstration Services, on sanitization teams to keep them on the payroll.

It was a tough spot to be in, several former CDS sample servers told BuzzFeed News. They needed the money — but some of the tasks, including walking the length of warehouses to clean where a potentially sick person had been, were difficult for the workers, many of whom were over 65 and had preexisting health problems. Less than a month later, CDS abruptly fired all 30,000 workers, as BuzzFeed News first reported, without warning or severance. In an announcement, Costco said it would be using its own employees to clean.


Mike Stewart / AP
An employee of Costco sprays a disinfectant on shopping carts in Kennesaw, Georgia, April 3.
NO GOOGLES NO RESPIRATOR

Employees out, seasonal workers in

Costco’s response to the coronavirus pandemic varied across its 547 locations in the US. Employees at some warehouses told BuzzFeed News their managers have been proactive, strictly enforcing limits on customers allowed in stores and mandating social distancing in the break rooms.

But for every story of the company’s success, there seems to be another of its failures. In Hayward, California, home to the second-largest Costco warehouse in the Bay Area, employees continue to complain of lax safety measures. Minutes after management announced its fifth COVID-19 case at the end of March, half of one manager’s employees walked off the floor. Most haven’t come back, and the manager told BuzzFeed News he doesn’t blame them. Over the past few weeks, he has logged and photographed what he believes to be at least 10 sanitization and safety failures at the 154,000-square-foot warehouse.

The manager told BuzzFeed News that Costco’s decision to expand open hours at an already overworked store has made things worse. Hayward, which used to open its doors at 10 a.m., now officially opens at 7:30 a.m. and closes at 6:30 p.m. But hours before that, at 3 a.m., it welcomes health care workers and first responders who are unable to shop during normal business hours. At 6 a.m., seniors and Instacart workers can begin shopping. It’s a grueling schedule that makes coronavirus safety protocols tougher to manage.

“We’re not taking care of the community if none of the employees are protected.”

Since the end of March, about 100 of the Hayward store’s 330 employees have taken leave, the manager said, some forgoing pay after exhausting their sick days and paid time off. To supplement the loss of full-time employees, the warehouse, like many others across the US, has hired scores of seasonal hourly workers who require training. These temporary employees said they, too, have become essential parts of the workforce but have remained largely invisible, with no hazard pay or sick time. Some contractors said they were given scant protections for working in crowded environments and handling supplies.

“The aggressiveness is not there. You hear it from [the governor], but it's not trickling down to the businesses and their essential workers,” the manager in California said. “I do like Costco — in dire times we take care of the community — but we're not taking care of the community if none of the employees are protected.”


Grant Hindsley for BuzzFeed News
Costco’s Travel office, where Regina Lee worked before passing from COVID-19, in Issaquah, Washington, April 11.
“Costco … won’t close for anything”
By early February, Regina Lee and her Costco Travel colleagues were already feeling the impact of the coronavirus on their work. As news filtered to the US that hundreds of passengers on the Diamond Princess cruise liner had been quarantined in Japan, customers began flooding the phone lines, asking if they should cancel trips or if there were any deals to be had.

Agents told BuzzFeed News that, at times, more than 850 people would be waiting on lines for up to three hours, overrunning their systems. To manage the volume, some travel employees worked 12-hour shifts, while others came in seven days a week, even as the state of Washington received early signs of what lay ahead.

“Here we are in a very close working environment amid the outbreak, and we’re right up the road from Kirkland, [Washington,] and that retirement home where all the first deaths came from,” one travel employee told BuzzFeed News, referencing Life Care Center, a nursing home that accounted for the nation’s earliest coronavirus cases and fatalities. “I pass it every day on my way to work [and] wondered what happens when it hits here at Costco Travel. It would be like a bomb going off.”

“What happens when it hits here at Costco Travel. It would be like a bomb going off.”

By Friday, March 13, Washington had recorded 694 cases of COVID-19 and more than 100 deaths, the majority of which were in King County. The news deeply unsettled employees at Costco Travel and the company’s corporate offices, who told BuzzFeed News of their mounting anxiety as coworkers developed coughs or flulike symptoms. The risk for contagion was high, they said, pointing to their open floor plans with close-quartered pods, crowded shuttles that ran between parking lots and other buildings, and shared eating areas.

Many employees wanted to work from home but were forbidden from doing so. Some told BuzzFeed News that Costco’s resistance to remote working stemmed from its “old-school” culture, where long-serving executives didn’t understand its merits. Employees said management refused to give them laptops and often cited solidarity with their warehouse colleagues as justification for forbidding remote work. The stores were renowned for staying open in harsh weather, and if warehouse workers could brave snowstorms, management said, so should office employees. If you got snowed in, that counted as a sick day.

“Costco thinks it is the USPS and won't close for anything,” one former employee of 15 years said. “You have to bring your butt into work, despite the conditions.”

As the coronavirus spread across King County, executives stuck to the same logic, sending emails that they were monitoring the outbreak, telling sick employees to stay home, and suggesting that those people who were considered “high-risk” use paid time off. The majority of office workers, though, were expected to come in if they wanted to collect a paycheck, and those without vacation time were left in difficult positions.

Costco did not respond to repeated requests for comment about these policies.

The death of Lee shocked her coworkers. She was a favorite among colleagues, who remembered her smile and knack for leaving chocolates on people’s keyboards. On the Monday she died, Lee’s fellow agents had been answering the onslaught of calls when at around 11:30 a.m., management cut off their phone lines. The office became abruptly, eerily quiet. Then an email arrived in their inboxes.

“I was so mortified that they didn’t close the office when my friend died.”

“As soon as I read her name, I leaped out of my chair,” one agent who sat near Lee for years said. “My headset was still on my head, and I pointed to her nameplate, which was still on her cubicle.”

In announcing her death, Costco Travel Vice President Peter Gruening said Lee died “unexpectedly” and that the company had “no information that this was related to COVID-19.” As a precaution, the company would close the building for a cleaning, he wrote, adding, “As of now, we expect to open tomorrow as usual.”

Shortly after the announcement, supervisors came to the floor and ushered everyone out. Agents remembered checking their phones all night for a message, wondering if they’d be quarantined at home. “The next morning, they said, ‘We are open just as usual,’” a current employee told BuzzFeed News. “There was so much confusion and anxiety. So many people didn’t show up.”

Those who did come back on Tuesday furiously wiped down their desks while wondering aloud if they should have stayed home. Later that afternoon, corporate leadership confirmed in an email that Lee had tested positive for the novel coronavirus, acknowledging that the news “causes a great deal of concern and anxiety among employees.” The building, though, remained open.


Tuesday 3/17/20
To: All Home Office employees
From: Ron Vachris and Peter Gruening
Subj: Important Update on Costco Travel Employee

We are following up on yesterday’s notice about the Costco Travel employee who passed away at home Sunday night. We received confirmation this afternoon that the employee tested positive for COVID-19. In the interests of privacy, we are not disclosing the employee’s name here.

We understand this new causes a great deal of concern and anxiety among employees, particularly those at Costco Travel.

Yesterday and last night, we took the precaution of bringing in a professional cleaning crew to perform a thorough cleaning and sanitation of the Costco Travel building (LP-2). Following the cleaning, the building reopened today. Additional sanitation will continue daily.

“I was so mortified that they didn’t close the office when my friend died,” said one travel employee who has been with the company for more than a decade. “Costco is my family, and I love them — but that really tore it for me right there.”

The morning after Lee’s death, CEO Craig Jelinek said in an email that company leadership was “now encouraging more employees at the Home and Regional office to work remotely.” Later that evening, the retailer posted a message from Jelinek on Facebook addressed to Costco members, noting that it “is firmly committed to the health and safety of our members and employees” and was “complying with public health guidance.” At the time, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee had closed schools and banned gatherings of more than 250 people in certain counties but had yet to issue a stay-at-home order.

According to corporate employees, Costco began disclosing confirmed COVID-19 cases in company-wide emails three days after Lee's death, sometimes sending multiple notes in a day. It kept employees at its corporate offices until March 25 — long after its corporate peers had shuttered theirs and two days after Inslee’s executive order mandating residents stay home. The campus, though, has remained open and some employees have told BuzzFeed News that they’ve seen colleagues and their managers taking conference calls from the offices.

On March 25, Gruening congratulated his team on the shift to working from home. By the end of that workday, Costco corporate had confirmed that at least nine of its employees, including a worker at a campus deli, had tested positive for COVID-19.

“Frankly, it is absolutely amazing that we’ve been able to transition from 100% onsite to a fully functioning remote-work program in under two weeks,” the Costco Travel vice president wrote in an email to staff. “It is a testament to the hard work, quick thinking and resourcefulness of many.”

Wednesday 3/25/20
From: Peter Gruening
Subj: Costco Travel Update - March 25

Please also continue to be patient and understanding as we work through this new world of remote work. We are all navigating this for the first time. Frankly, it is absolutely amazing that we’ve been able to transition from 100% onsite to a fully functioning remote-work program in under two weeks. It is a testament to the hard work, quick thinking and resourcefulness of many. The support, patience and understanding by all has been phenomenal thus far and it is definitely appreciated.

As of April 9, at least 21 corporate and travel employees have tested positive for COVID-19, according to internal emails obtained by BuzzFeed News. Ten of those people work in the travel department, and four of them sit on the same floor as Lee. One of those agents, who was officially diagnosed March 19, had been complaining on Facebook about her high fever and loss of taste two weeks earlier. "This is what happens when people are so afraid and they can’t afford to stay home and they come in,” an employee told BuzzFeed News.

Workers said they’re infuriated and frustrated that their leaders did not enact stronger precautionary measures. Some, like an IT employee who worked in another building down the road from Lee and contracted the virus, wondered what would have happened if management had simply listened.

The first week of March, when the total of coronavirus cases in King County surpassed 70, the IT employee had come down with aches and a fever but couldn’t get tested due to the scarcity of kits. Reading headlines about hospitals rationing masks and infected Washington residents quarantined in motels, the employee sent multiple emails to several leaders notifying them about their coronavirus-like symptoms, expressing fear for the worker's close-quartered colleagues, and asking to work from home. It was going to get bad, the employee warned in emails, and no one was taking it seriously.

In response, this employee said, they were reprimanded for overreacting. It took nearly four days, but they were approved to work from home right before Lee died.

Shortly after, the employee tested positive for COVID-19. Now their entire family is sick too. So far, according to internal emails, eight people who work in the same building have told Costco they have the virus.

“I was sick and trying to shout from the rooftops: ‘This is serious!’” the employee said, voice breaking. “I was sitting there, absolutely helpless.”


Grant Hindsley for BuzzFeed News
Raymond Lee

The Costco family
It’s been nearly a month since the pandemic brought the country to a tumultuous halt, forcing millions of Americans out of work and to stay at home. As the initial panic subsided, so too has the early chaos at Costco’s warehouses. Though stores often see significant lines, the people who work at them are better protected and better compensated. There are fewer shoppers in stores and more masks, and temperature checks.

In certain states, lawmakers have heard and acted upon food service workers’ fears and concerns. Washington state passed new protections on April 13, prohibiting companies from forcing high-risk employees into unsafe conditions or penalizing or firing them for refusing to work in them. The governor’s proclamation came just days after the Trump administration announced that employers do not have to officially document coronavirus cases.

Back in Issaquah, Costco’s corporate employees have settled into their new remote working routines. Travel staffers are still fielding calls, occasionally from people inquiring about deals on cruise packages.

On April 3, agents received a message about Regina Lee. Kathy Robinson, Costco Travel’s associate vice president of operations, sent an email to employees noting that the “rapid transition to work from home did not allow us to fully digest the news of Regina’s passing.” In her note, the executive called the 59-year-old a “quiet and beautiful person” who “always included your name when she walked by and said hi.” She included a link to her obituary page for people to share their thoughts.

They did. Although Lee was soft-spoken, she lit up the office with her giggle, kind gestures, and giant cookie trays. She will be greatly missed, they wrote. They’re in shock that she’s dead.

Raymond Lee is too. He continues to struggle with the idea that most of his immediate family is dead. His sisters, Regina and Willa, were getting ready to retire, he told BuzzFeed News, and they had just paid off the mortgage on the home they shared with their mother.

“I’ve lost a total of two younger sisters and my mother in two weeks,” he said. “The week before, I buried my baby sister. And the following Friday, I buried my mother and my other baby sister.”

Some of his sister’s colleagues have called him to offer condolences. It’s been nice, he said, but it’s not the call he’s been waiting for.

“No one from Costco has made one call to say that they’re sorry for the loss of Regina,” he said. “Isn’t that something? Costco says they treat their employees like family.” ●

MORE ON COSTCO
A Costco Corporate Employee Died From COVID-19, But Staff Still Need Approval To Work From Home

Brianna Sacks · March 18, 2020

More Costco Employees Have Tested Positive For The Coronavirus Days After A Coworker Died From The Disease

Brianna Sacks · March 19, 2020

Costco Employees Say They're Not Properly Protected To Be On The "Front Lines" Of The Coronavirus Pandemic

Brianna Sacks · March 20, 2020

The Company That Handles Free Samples At Costco Is Shutting Down Because Of The Coronavirus

Brianna Sacks · April 1, 2020

Brianna Sacks is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Los Angeles.



Ryan Mac is a senior tech reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in San Francisco.

A Doctor Who Honed His Skills In Gaza Is 3D-Printing Face Shields In His Basement For Canadian Hospitals

ER doctor Tarek Loubani has printed around 1,000 face shields during the coronavirus crisis, working in his spare time from his basement.

Megha Rajagopalan BuzzFeed News Reporter
Reporting From London Posted on April 17, 2020

Silvio Avila / Getty Images
Doctors wear face shields in the ICU of the Hospital de Clinicas in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

LONDON — Tarek Loubani has spent years 3D-printing simple medical devices with a team of engineers to help patients in the Gaza Strip, one of the toughest places in the world to source medical equipment.

But now the coronavirus pandemic has left hospitals around the world short of the most basic medical supplies, and Loubani, an ER doctor, is printing face shields back home in Canada.

Loubani has so far printed 1,000 face shields in two weeks, working mostly by himself from the basement of his house in London, Ontario.

The 39-year-old describes himself as “one of your friends who was a geek in his basement in high school.”

“I always really enjoyed technology, and I always would look at it and try to imagine what I could do with it,” he said.

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



The Glia Project
An employee at the Glia Project wearing a 3D-printed face shield.
Loubani, along with a group of engineers and other doctors, started an organization in 2013 called the Glia Project that 3D-prints medical supplies. He came up with the idea while working in Gaza — a place where hospitals frequently lack basic medical and surgical supplies in part because of an Israeli and Egyptian blockade. (Loubani has worked in the region on and off since 2011.)

Hospitals around the world, including in North America, are currently grappling with shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE), including face shields, which medical personnel depend on during the pandemic. While 3D printing doesn’t represent a scalable solution to the problem, Loubani’s efforts to make face shields — along with other individuals and organizations using 3D printing to address shortages — underscores the desperate need.

The face shields he has made have been sold to a local hospital, and also online to customers in Canada and elsewhere, all for a nominal fee. (His organization is licensed to produce the shields under Canadian regulatory standards.) He produces them in his downtime, when he is not working long shifts at the hospital.

Loubani was working at a hospital in Gaza when he came up against a problem he’d never encountered before: Though the doctors he worked with were highly trained, they simply could not access basic medical equipment. Hospitals would try to order even something as simple as a stethoscope, but found they would take months to arrive, or never show up at all.

“The stethoscope is such a simple piece of equipment,” he said. “But you lose a few pieces and suddenly you have just doubled the cost.” In Gaza, where UN authorities have said the health care system is close to collapse, it was unsustainable.


Lillian Suwanrumpha / Getty Images
A nurse holds a newborn baby wearing a face shield at Praram 9 Hospital in Bangkok, Thailand.

Loubani said hospital officials in Gaza tried offering bribes and even smuggling equipment, but this proved expensive and unreliable.

“We just couldn’t get medical equipment in,” he said. “I learned if you can’t make it, you can’t depend upon it.”

Loubani had bought a 3D printer to tinker with before he first went to Gaza in 2011 to train doctors and practice medicine.

“Open-source 3D printers had just hit the market and they were terrible,” he recalled. “I remember when we started trying to print, it took a lot of time for the tech to catch up with the ideas.”

“I found engineers who were really interested in the work,” he said. “There were a few of us who were into this, and we started working on it.” Some of his collaborators were Palestinian; others were from Canada and Europe.

He wondered if 3D printing — back then a far less sophisticated technology — could help produce stethoscopes and other tools for hospitals in Gaza.

Together they founded the Glia Project, which publishes open-source plans for printing medical hardware. Their goal is to expand access to these tools for everyone in need.


The Glia Project

Loubani sees 3D-printing face shields as a way to contribute to the fight against COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

3D printing isn’t a catchall solution. Martin Culpepper, a professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, pointed out in a recent interview that masks and face shields would have to be made from materials that are compatible with sterilization techniques and the medical devices that hospitals use, meaning that the person making the items would need a degree of expertise or medical contacts.
“The sheer volume of the need is another reason we are discouraging the use of 3D printing to produce PPE on MIT’s campus,” said Culpepper. “Some hospitals need thousands of pieces of PPE each day, 3D printing just cannot keep up with that demand.”

But 3D printing has already saved lives in the fight against the coronavirus. When a hospital in Italy ran out of respirator valves needed to connect patients to breathing machines, a company stepped in and printed 100 of them within 24 hours.

Loubani said 3D printing is too slow and energy-intensive to be good for mass manufacturing face shields. But he said that it could fill in holes where big manufacturers have lagged.

“People with 3D printers can fill this immediate change in need and lack of supply until the big boys and girls can retool and start the supply.”


MORE ON THIS
These Nurses Were Suspended For Refusing To Work With Coronavirus Patients Without N95 Masks 

Emmanuel Felton · April 16, 2020

How The Coronavirus Is Affecting Black And South Asian Communities Across The UK 

Hannah Al-Othman · April 16, 2020


Megha Rajagopalan is a world correspondent for BuzzFeed News and is based in the Middle East.

Coronavirus Updates Canada: Trudeau Announces Help For Energy Workers, But No Big Bailout for the Industry Yet


Canada is investing $1.7 billion to clean up orphan wells and millions of dollars for emission reduction efforts as COVID-19 continues to batter the country's already struggling energy sector.

By Anya Zoledziowski

Apr 17 2020


ON THURSDAY, PRIME MINISTER JUSTIN TRUDEAU SPOKE WITH PREMIERS ABOUT TOPPING UP SALARIES FROM SOME ESSENTIAL WORKERS. PHOTO BY SEAN KILPATRICK (CP)

Updated at 12:30 p.m. (EDT): Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced new measures that he said will support Canada’s struggling energy sector workers who are at risk of losing their jobs.

The measures are also intended to help the environment, Trudeau said.

Canada is investing $1.7 billion to clean up orphan wells and inactive wells in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia, Trudeau said on Friday. The prime minister also announced a $750-million emission reduction fund through pollution reduction efforts, with a focus on methane, and $75 million to help cut offshore emissions in Newfoundland and Labrador.



Trudeau said an estimated 10,000 energy sector jobs will be maintained thanks to the investments, 5,200 in Alberta alone.

“This public health crisis must not prevent us from taking action to fight the climate crisis,” he said.

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney applauded the orphan well-related investment on Twitter.

“This is critical to getting thousands of people in the energy sector back to work immediately,” Kenney said.

Trudeau also introduced $500 million in support for the arts, culture, and sports sectors.

The money will go to Heritage Canada, so that artists, “rising stars of sporting association,” and related organizations can receive wage support or funding if they’re experiencing liquidity problems.

The government is also providing $962 million to regional development agencies and the Community Futures Network to support small businesses, many of which are based in rural communities. Another $270 million will support early stage developers and innovators who don’t qualify for the wage subsidy, Trudeau said.

According to City News, U.S. and Canada officials also have agreed to extend the border closure for another 30 days.

Parliament could sit Monday

Outgoing Conservative Party Leader Andrew Scheer wants a small group of MPs to sit in Canada’s Parliament for four days out of the week, despite ongoing government-mandated physical distancing measures geared towards fighting COVID-19.

The government has said previously it’s considering virtual alternatives to house meetings, but Scheer is eager to get back to real-life meetings.

He said MPs need to sit in the House, so they can hold Trudeau’s Liberals to account.

Parliament is set to sit on April 20, unless all four parties agree to continue the current pause.
Canada could be flattening curve

The number of new COVID-19 cases in Canada is starting to decrease from day to day, according to Health Canada, but several outbreaks are still causing concerns.

The total of COVID-19 cases is now doubling every 10 days or so, according to Canada’s top doctor, Dr. Theresa Tam. In March, cases were doubling every three days.

As of Thursday night, there were 30,670 cases of the virus and 1,250 deaths across the country. Outbreaks in long-term care facilities make up nearly half of all deaths.

A personal support worker who worked at a nursing home in Toronto’s east end died of COVID-19 on Thursday.

Altamont Care Community centre has recorded eight COVID-19-related deaths, including the worker, and 42 cases of the virus.

Outbreaks in long-term care facilities have resulted in a higher COVID-19 death rate than Canada had originally projected.

Trudeau told reporters on Friday that 125 members of the Canadian Armed Forces with healthcare training will be providing support for workers in long-term care facilities in Quebec.

Trudeau spoke with provincial and territorial premiers late Thursday to discuss topping up the salaries for support workers who make under $2,500 per month. More details are expected soon.


Outbreaks elsewhere

Three guards who work at a Brampton, Ontario jail have tested positive for COVID-19, prompting Peel Public Health to declare an outbreak.

Health authorities are now rushing to test inmates and, according to the Toronto Star, 12 symptomatic inmates are in quarantine.

In Alberta, there are now at least 12 cases of COVID-19 linked to the Kearl Lake oilsands facility, near Fort McMurray. Two cases are on site and another 10 workers who tested positive are offsite.
Canada and Wuhan to collaborate

Ottawa is funding a project to develop rapid and cheap COVID-19 screening tests that is collaborating with Wuhan Institute of Virology, a high-security, infectious disease facility located in COVID-19’s birthplace, the Globe and Mail reported.


The project, one of at least 100 research projects funded by Ottawa to fight COVID-19, will be spearheaded by a University of Alberta professor, Le Xiaochun, who will receive $828,000 to develop equipment that will allow for the tests.
Breakdown of cases

Tam has said two days in a row that evidence suggests a slow down in new COVID-19 cases in Canada. Even still, new cases—and deaths—are still being reported. As of Thursday night, Canada had 30,670 cases and 1,250 deaths.

Here’s a breakdown of confirmed or probable COVID-19 cases across the country:

British Columbia: 1,575

Alberta: 2,158

Saskatchewan: 305

Manitoba: 250

Ontario: 9,525

Quebec: 15,857

Newfoundland and Labrador: 252

New Brunswick: 117



Nova Scotia: 579

Prince Edward Island: 26

Yukon: 8

Northwest Territories: 5

Nunavut: 0

Late Thursday, the global total of confirmed COVID-19 neared 2 million, with more than 130,000 deaths.


 Even More Canadians Can Apply for the CERB

Canada's COVID-19 death toll by mid-April surpassed 1,000, which is higher than officials projected, and the country's GDP shrank by 9 percent in March, according to Statistics Canada.

By Anya Zoledziowski

Apr 15 2020


PRIME MINISTER JUSTIN TRUDEAU SAID HE WILL ANNOUNCE MORE MEASURES FOR STUDENTS SOON
Updated at 12:30 p.m. (EDT): Canada is expanding eligibility for the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB), as the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) continues to batter Canada’s economy,

The CERB will now include people who are earning up to $1,000 per month, seasonal workers facing no jobs, and people who have run out of employment insurance (EI) since January 1.

As of Monday, nearly 6 million Canadians had applied for CERB, a federal aid program for people who have lost work (or can’t work) as a result of the pandemic and aren’t eligible for employment insurance.


The CERB will pay people $2,000 per month for four months.

The government will also top up the pay for essential workers who are making under $2,500 per month like those working in long-term facilities, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced on Wednesday.

He will be meeting with the provincial and territorial leaders to discuss the wage boost, so that it can be implemented as quickly as possible, he said.

Trudeau will announce more measures for students and businesses struggling with commercial rent soon, he said.

New mental health supports

As of Wednesday, Canada is also offering an online mental health portal, Wellness Together Canada, that aims to help people struggling with anxiety, depression, loneliness, and other mental health struggles as a result of long-term self-isolation.

The app will connect people to mental health professionals—social workers, peer support, psychologists—for chat sessions and phone calls, and will provide information for those seeking a wide-range of mental health struggles, including support with addiction.

Canada’s federal government also passed its emergency wade subsidy designed to help struggling businesses keep their staff on payroll. The subsidy will pay up to $847 per week per employee for 12 weeks, with the hope that businesses will be able to keep their staff and rehire people already laid off.
Record-breaking economic shrink

On Wednesday, Statistics Canada released a flash estimate that found the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) shrank by 9 percent in March, the largest one-month decline since StatCan started publishing related data in 1961.

GDP is the core measure of a country’s economic health.

Canada’s GDP declined by 2.6 percent in the first quarter of this year, StatCan said.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) released grim projections on Tuesday for the global economy, expecting it to shrink by 3 percent, as COVID-19 continues to batter international markets.

The report estimates Canada’s economy will contract by at least 6.2 percent.
Death toll higher than expected

Cases of COVID-19 are likely going to be much higher than predicted in Canada, researchers say, and the country’s current death toll, which surpassed 1,000 on Wednesday, has already exceeded a best-case scenario.

By Wednesday afternoon, Canada had reported 27,557 cases and more than 1,000 deaths and Ontario had recorded its highest number of deaths in a single day. The province extended its state of emergency for another 28 days, until May 12.

Canada had originally estimated that between 500 and 700 deaths would take place by April 16.

An onslaught of COVID-19 outbreaks in long-term care homes account for nearly half of all fatal infections and have caused the higher than expected number of total deaths and more deaths in homes are expected.

Researchers are projecting that the number of COVID-19 cases will be much higher than Canada’s federal politicians predict, particularly if physical distancing measures are relaxed anytime soon.

While Canada Health estimates that about 10 percent of Canadians will get sick from COVID-19 with current controls in place, a study by researchers from several universities, including the University of Ottawa and the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that between 56.7 percent and 84.5 percent of the population could fall ill, depending on how long physical distancing is in place.

Amir Attarran of the University of Ottawa, one of several researchers who worked on the study, told the Toronto Star that the country has made it past the virus’ first wave, which is good news, but there will likely be new outbreaks.

“We are all pre-immune, we are all still susceptible,” Attaran said. “If we lift the self-isolation and go out, many of us could get sick. Some of us will die.”

Trudeau said it will be “weeks” before physical distancing measures can be lifted and the economy reopened.

“It would be terrible if we loosened measures too quickly,” Trudeau said, because that could result in another spike of COVID-19.

Trudeau has also said several times that life likely won’t go back to “normal” until there is a vaccine for the novel coronavirus.

---30---

“Pure Baloney”: Zoologist Debunks Trump’s COVID-19 Origin Theory, Explains Animal-Human Transmission

APRIL 16, 2020

GUEST
Peter Daszak
disease ecologist and the president of EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit that works globally to identify and study our vulnerabilities to emerging infectious disease.

LINKS
Peter Daszak on Twitter
EcoHealth Alliance

With the largest one-day death toll in the U.S. yet — 2,400 in just 24 hours — President Trump is trying to deflect attention from his handling of the pandemic by waging a war on public health experts and science, threatening to cut World Health Organization funding and fueling a theory that the coronavirus came from a lab in Wuhan, China. We speak to a zoologist who has been sounding the alarm about a coming pandemic for years. “The idea that this virus escaped from a lab is just pure baloney,” says Peter Daszak, disease ecologist and the president of EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit that works globally to identify and study our vulnerabilities to emerging infectious disease. “These pandemic viruses that emerge originate in wildlife.”

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman, here in New York, the epicenter of the pandemic, with my co-host Nermeen Shaikh, usually sitting right here at my side but joining us from her home to keep us all safe and stop community spread. Hi, Nermeen.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Hi, Amy. And welcome to our listeners and viewers around the country and around the world.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to begin right away with our first segment. The White House is unveiling new guidelines today aimed at rolling back states’ stay-at-home orders protecting against the spread of coronavirus. President Trump’s call to wind down social distancing came as the United States recorded more than 2,400 deaths in just 24 hours, the highest one-day death toll for any nation since the start of the pandemic. Across the United States, there are nearly 640,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, though the true number is likely far higher due to the critical shortage of tests. At least 31,000 people have died of the disease in just a matter of weeks.

Despite this, President Trump spent the last few days waging a war on journalists, public health experts and science. On Wednesday, Trump suggested, without evidence, that World Health Organization officials conspired to hide the truth about the coronavirus. His comments came one day after he announced the U.S. would begin withholding hundreds of millions of dollars of funding for the U.N. body. At the same news briefing, President Trump fueled the fringe theory promoted by Fox News that the virus came from a lab in Wuhan, China. This is Fox News reporter John Roberts questioning Trump at Wednesday’s press briefing.


JOHN ROBERTS: Mr. President, multiple sources are telling Fox News today that the United States government now has high confidence that while the coronavirus is a naturally occurring virus, it emanated from a virology lab in Wuhan, that because of lax safety protocols, an intern was infected, who later infected her boyfriend and then went to the wet market in Wuhan, where it began to spread. Does that correspond with what you have heard from officials?


PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, I don’t want to say that, John, but I will tell you, more and more we’re hearing the story. And we’ll see. When you say multiple sources, though, there’s a case where you can use the word “sources.” But we are doing a very thorough examination of this horrible situation that happened.

AMY GOODMAN: This came just one day after the Pentagon’s top general, Mark Milley, said the coronavirus likely came from natural sources, not a Chinese lab. On Thursday, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson responded.

ZHAO LIJIAN: [translated] China’s position on the origin and means of transmission of the novel coronavirus is clear. We will always believe this is a scientific issue, which should be studied by scientists and medical experts. I would like to remind you, the head of WHO has repeatedly said there’s no evidence that the coronavirus was made in a lab. Many well-known medical experts in the world also believe that claims of the so-called laboratory leaks have no scientific basis.

AMY GOODMAN: The scientific journal The Lancet has said the virus seems to have come from wildlife.

Well, for more on the origins of the coronavirus, Trump’s response, and where we go from here, we’re joined by a zoologist who has long studied diseases that cross the animal-human divide, and who for years has been sounding the alarm about a coming pandemic. Dr. Peter Daszak is with us. He’s a disease ecologist, the president of EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit that works globally to identify and study our vulnerabilities to emerging infectious disease. EcoHealth Alliance has been studying coronaviruses in China since the end of the SARS outbreak in 2004. This coronavirus is really called SARS2. He’s joining us from the Hudson River Valley in New York.

Welcome to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. So, if you can unpack what we just heard, it goes to the issue of the origins of the coronavirus. Especially interesting that President Trump is raising this now as he’s being seriously attacked for the United States’ lack of action and delay, and so he is striking out at as many sectors as he can. But talk about the origins of the coronavirus, Dr. Daszak.

PETER DASZAK: Yeah, great to be here.

Look, first, the idea that this virus escaped from a lab is just pure baloney. It’s simply not true. I’ve been working with that lab for 15 years. And the samples collected were collected by me and others in collaboration with our Chinese colleagues. They’re some of the best scientists in the world. There was no viral isolate in the lab. There was no cultured virus that’s anything related to SARS coronavirus 2. So it’s just not possible.

And like you say, it’s really a politicization of the origins of a pandemic, and it’s really unfortunate. The stories, as President Trump said he’s been hearing, have been around since day one of the outbreak, and they’re around in every outbreak. Every single outbreak of a novel virus, somebody somewhere says, “Well, this has been manufactured in a lab.” In fact, a few weeks ago, when this started circulating, I googled ”HIV is man-made.” Do it yourself and see. There are people out there who still believe this is a bioengineered virus that spread around the world. It’s just really unfortunate. And I don’t really know why these conspiracy theories get such traction. I think the people just have trouble understanding what’s going on on the planet.

We’ve been studying the origin of emerging diseases. About 75% of every new emerging disease — think about Ebola, H1N1 flu, H5N1 flu, you know, these pandemic viruses that emerge — originate in wildlife. Every species of wildlife carries viruses that are a natural part of its biology, a bit like we have the common cold and herpes, cold sores. They don’t really do much to the species in the wild, but sometimes when we make contact with them, we pick up those viruses, and they can be lethal. Most times they’re not, but every now and again we get a lethal virus. And we estimate there are 1.7 million unknown viruses in wildlife, so there’s a lot of diversity out there that could emerge in the future.

And really, we need to be looking at that, instead of pointing fingers for political gain at scientists who are working to benefit public health. The scientists in those labs are right now, today, working to see if vaccines and drugs will kill the coronavirus to save our lives. This sort of battle doesn’t help in a pandemic.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Dr. Daszak, could you say more about the origins of this specific pandemic? What do we know about its origins? Of course, many believe, as you’ve said, that it originated in bats. But explain how it moved from bats to humans. Was it at the Wuhan market? And what did that involve?

PETER DASZAK: Yeah, it’s — we don’t really know for sure, but we can trace back the origins by looking at the genetic signal within the virus itself. So we sequence out the gene from the virus, the genome, and then we compare it to others. And when we do that, we see that the viruses in people, the closest relative of those are from bats. This is not unusual. Bats happen to carry a lot of different viral species. There are many different bats around the world that carry their own viruses. We make contact with them. Often we don’t see them. They fly at night, for instance. And we pick up their viruses. SARS coronavirus, the original virus, emerged from bats. Ebola virus is a bat-origin virus. Rabies and many others.

How did a virus like this get from a bat to a human? It is a very strange thing when we try and think about it. But first of all, in Southeast Asia, there is a huge diversity of bats. People live out in rural areas close to bat caves. They’re exposed every night when bats fly over them, urinate, defecate, maybe onto their food or into their drink. People go into bat caves. People go in for various reasons. They go in to dig out the bat guano, the feces, and they use it as a fertilizer, just like we used to do many years ago with bird feces. They go into caves to shelter from the rain. They’re farmers. They’re subsistence farmers hunting and eating wildlife, so they get exposed that way. People do eat bats. It’s true. And they eat bats all around the world. It’s a free source of protein. If you’re out there in a bat cave, they’re pretty easy to catch. And these are the ways people get exposed.

Now, how did it get into the market? We know for sure that the Wuhan market was part of this outbreak, but we think that the first few cases weren’t in the market. And this is not uncommon. We’ve seen this with many, many other disease outbreaks, new viruses that emerge. They trickle out from rural areas through a person getting infected maybe in Hunan province and then moving into Wuhan, that maybe they’re part of the wildlife trade. Maybe a farmer got infected, or a farmer’s animals, and they were shipped into the markets. These wet markets aren’t just places to sell wildlife; they’re places where people congregate. They come in in droves. They circulate around. They’re really good places for a virus to spread. And if a person brings it in, or an animal, that virus will spread. And it looks like that’s what’s happened here.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And could you also explain — you have talked about the environmental causes of this, what’s called a virus spillover, like — infectious diseases like COVID-19, causes such as environmental, causes such as deforestation, the loss of biodiversity, and wildlife poaching. You’ve also said that people are developing a lot of new towns in this region of southwest China with a lot of high-speed train lines. And you warn that we’re going to see more pandemics like this as long as such rampant development continues. So, could you explain what the link is between development and the spread of these infectious diseases?

PETER DASZAK: Well, we’ve done the science on this. We’ve been working on this for 20 years. We tracked every known emerging disease to its origin, from the scientific literature. And then we tested, with mathematical models, what’s driving that, what are the causes that could underlie the emergence of these new diseases. And what we found is they emerge in places where human populations are very dense and growing. They emerge in the tropics mainly, because that’s where the wildlife diversity is, and the viruses that become pandemic come from wildlife.

And the other key factor is land-use change, people moving into new areas, encroachment into wildlife habitat, building roads into a forest for a mine or for a logging camp. There are many, many examples of diseases, like Ebola, SARS and others, HIV itself, from this. And that’s a global trend that will drive the rise of future pandemics.

Now, we’re not saying that we’ve got to stop every modern aspect of development. We can do these things, but we need to do them in a smarter way, a more sustainable way. And we need to start treating pandemics as a risk of doing these things around the planet. We’ve got to reassess our relationship with the environment and reduce our ecological footprint. It’s to the benefit of conservation. It’ll reduce climate change. It will also stop us getting sick. And I think that’s a really important point. For folks on the right who aren’t interested in conservation or climate change, what about your own health? You know, we are making ourselves sick by making the planet sick.

And that’s really the message that needs to come through from this, because if we just treat this as another disease, wait for a vaccine and then think, “Great, it’s all over,” well, I’ve got news. There are 1.7 million more viruses out there that will be emerging in the future. We can either wait for them to emerge and get sick and have another global recession, or we can get out there and readdress our relationship with wildlife and make the planet a little bit healthier.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you about a recent tweet, Dr. Daszak. You refute the widespread belief that COVID-19 is a black swan event, pointing to a 2013 Wired article that said, quote, “there are bats carrying a virus that can directly infect people, and cause another SARS pandemic.” If you could comment on that, and also the idea that if this came from a virology lab — there are labs, of course, in China, there are labs in the United States — it doesn’t have to be a conspiracy theory that released on the world, but the idea of perhaps there weren’t the proper safety precautions or someone inside the lab somehow got infected, that can happen in any virology lab in the world?

PETER DASZAK: Yeah, look, I mean, we’ve been raising the flag on these viruses ever since SARS, for 15 years. We went out to work in China with our colleagues out there, with a specific goal of saying, “Where did SARS come from?” It was an alarm call, SARS, because we had 8,000 people infected, 10% of them died, a very high death rate. But it didn’t go to a true global pandemic like COVID-19. So we went out to China, and we started looking into wildlife origins of this virus.

And what we found was really surprising: a huge diversity, dozens, hundreds of bat-origin coronaviruses. We found evidence that they were continually spilling over into people. We looked at rural populations in southwest China and found 3% of them had antibodies to these viruses. And we estimate that the exposure across Southeast Asia is about 1 million to 7 million people a year, just by living in rural areas where bats live. So, it’s not just an expectation that we’ll have more events. It’s a certainty. And we started saying that.

We looked at the viruses bats carried, and we showed that they can actually already infect human cells in the lab. They can cause disease, like SARS, in some of the mouse models for SARS. And they evade the vaccines that were being developed at the time. And this is not unusual. You know, there are many other viruses. There are viruses related to Ebola that we don’t know much about. We don’t know if they infect people. There are viruses related to influenza out there that we don’t know what they do in people.

But the way to deal with this is not to wait for them to emerge and make us sick. The way to do this is to get out there ahead of the curve, find out what’s out there in wildlife, find out who’s at risk, work with the people on the frontline and reduce that risk. And, you know, that’s a really important public health message. It’s also a really important message for international development. These viruses tend to emerge in poor countries in the tropics, just by the nature of where wildlife live, countries that are less able to deal with outbreaks. So, sending out taxpayer money to those countries is very unpopular with the current administration, but it not only protects them, it protects us. It’s a right-wing agenda and a left-wing agenda.

Now, on issue of whether this could be a lab release, well, this is the problem with conspiracy theories, you know? It’s impossible to say that it didn’t happen, and it never will be possible, even if you showed video evidence of every hour of everybody working in that lab. And there are video cameras up there. These are biosecure labs with very high-tech, sophisticated security systems. Even if you showed all the notebooks, the conspiracy folks would continue to say, “Well, it’s a cover-up. Clearly something happened, and these are doctored notebooks, doctored videotapes.”

The point is that, let’s look at a balance of probability. That’s what you have to do. We have a few hundred technicians and scientists working in these labs. They do not have a problem with staff or with security or with loose controls. These are very well-run labs. They’ve been inspected by the U.S. CDC, by people working in BSL-4 labs, high-security labs, in the U.S., in France and internationally. They’re accredited by the U.S. So, it’s ironic that now we’re saying they’re not very well organized. We actually inspected them properly and allowed them to open. You know, the cables that were reported in the —

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Dr. Daszak —

PETER DASZAK: Sorry, yeah.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Dr. Daszak, if I may just interrupt, just we only have a minute, and this is a question that we have to get to before we move to our next segment, which is on India. You know, there was widespread belief that COVID-19 would cause hundreds of thousands of deaths in the developing world, from India to Brazil, and that millions would be infected. But that’s not yet happened. Your response to why that might be the case, and whether we should expect something different in the future? We have a minute.

PETER DASZAK: Well, yeah, look, rich countries test more. We can afford it. And poor countries don’t. And what I expect is that there are a huge number of hidden community transmission in poorer countries around the world, that is going to create an incredible problem in the future.

Who’s going to deal with that problem? Countries that can’t afford to are going to seek support from their colleagues and their allies around the world. It’s going to go through the WHO, the very organization we heard yesterday we’re going to pull funding from. It’s a travesty. And again, if we let that happen, we will see this outbreak continuing to cause problems in the developing world, and it won’t go away. And it will affect us. We’re never going to be free from a pandemic if we allow a virus to rage uncontrollably in countries that are out there with travelers coming back into the U.S. So, again, it’s misguided. It’s shortsighted.

And I really hope we address this quickly and aggressively, because, you know, I really feel that it’s going to be impossible to do social distancing in the favelas of Rio and the slums and some of the places where people are already disenfranchised because they’re considered illegal squatters. So, there really are going to be issues around the world with this coronavirus in poorer countries, for sure.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Peter Daszak, we want to thank you so much for being with us, disease ecologist, president of EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit that works globally to identify and study our vulnerabilities to emerging infectious disease.

When we come back, we speak with the acclaimed author Arundhati Roy about the coronavirus in India and the political implications of the crisis. She says, “The pandemic is a portal.” Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: Medical workers in Kerala, India, dancing for their patients. Kerala is where our next guest, Arundhati Roy, was