Posted by Sirena Bergman in news
Twitter/Mike Pence
Vice President Mike Pence, who was controversially named coronavirus czar despite the fact that he doesn't actually seem to believe in science nor have any background in medicine, tweeted a picture last week of a "very productive meeting" of the "White House Coronavirus Taskforce".
But people quickly pointed out that there was something a bit odd about the attendees photographed.
The image showed 19 people sitting around a table, all of whom are men. In the periphery of the picture, we see another handful of brogue-clad feet, which appear to belong to even more men. Men for days! Pence (who famously refuses to spend time alone with women other than his wife) presumably loves to see it.
Many people, including presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren, were quick to point out this bizarre set-up.
And before you say it, it turns out that women are actually highly represented in this field, so no it wouldn't have been hard for them to find one or two to include.
(Unlike some of the men included, whose qualifications elude us...)
This isn't just about the optics either. Not including women in discussions around public health can have dire consequences (mainly for women).
Twitter/Mike Pence
Vice President Mike Pence, who was controversially named coronavirus czar despite the fact that he doesn't actually seem to believe in science nor have any background in medicine, tweeted a picture last week of a "very productive meeting" of the "White House Coronavirus Taskforce".
But people quickly pointed out that there was something a bit odd about the attendees photographed.
The image showed 19 people sitting around a table, all of whom are men. In the periphery of the picture, we see another handful of brogue-clad feet, which appear to belong to even more men. Men for days! Pence (who famously refuses to spend time alone with women other than his wife) presumably loves to see it.
Many people, including presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren, were quick to point out this bizarre set-up.
And before you say it, it turns out that women are actually highly represented in this field, so no it wouldn't have been hard for them to find one or two to include.
(Unlike some of the men included, whose qualifications elude us...)
This isn't just about the optics either. Not including women in discussions around public health can have dire consequences (mainly for women).
Others also noticed the distinct lack of racial representation too.
There was a different picture also circulating, which appeared to be of the same meeting, which included one woman among the sea of white men. Said photo appears to show participants praying.
Pray away the coronavirus, why not? Maybe that's the solution no one's thought of...
(Spoiler: it's not. Since the pictures were posted, two people have died of coronavirus in the USA and infections are now approaching 90,000.)
The Twitter thread also mentioned that Trump's "number one priority" was to "protect the health and well-being of the American people", which is why he was holding the meeting in the first place. It's an interesting turn of events after Trump's statement on coronavirus last week in which he said that it would be cured by a "miracle" and will just "disappear".
Perhaps the miracle real miracle we need is ending the patriarchy.
What does it take to qualify for Trump's coronavirus task force?
Would now be a good time to ask what exactly the qualifications are for those with formal roles on the White House Coronavirus Taskforce?
March 2, 2020, 9:20 AM MST
By Steve Benen
Vice President Mike Pence published a tweet on Saturday, assuring the public via Twitter that the White House Coronavirus Taskforce had completed a "very productive meeting" in the Situation Room. The tweet included an image of the meeting's participants.
Right off the bat, something obvious stood out in the image: there were literally no women in the photograph. In 1950, such a picture would be expected. In 2020, that's an awfully tough personnel dynamic to defend.
But there were also concerns about those who were at the table. Among those visible were Pence, Surgeon General Jerome Adams, HHS Secretary Alex Azar, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and HUD Secretary Ben Carson. Including Carson seemed odd, though he did have a successful career as a physician. (He was formally named a member of the task force yesterday.)
But also visible was Larry Kudlow, director of the White House National Economic Council, who was formally chosen for the Coronavirus Taskforce last Thursday.
Or put another way, Kudlow was named to the task force two days after he shared these words of wisdom with a national television audience.
"We have contained this. I won't say airtight, but it's pretty close to airtight," Kudlow told CNBC. The outbreak is a "human tragedy," but it's not likely to become an "economic tragedy," he said.
What's more, the day after being added to the White House task force, Kudlow boasted that Trump's response to the outbreak will likely help the Republican's campaign prospects.
"I think the way he's handling this will have a very positive effect on his re-election campaign," Kudlow told reporters at the White House. "I'm a longtime Trump friend and watcher and now, of course, the last couple of years I've been working with him -- for him. I think it was one of his best news conferences I've ever seen him give."
Maybe now be a good time to ask what exactly the qualifications are for those with formal roles on the White House Coronavirus Taskforce?
Related
Previous post: Pence defends over-the-top coronavirus rhetoric as 'understandable'
The consequences of a coronavirus task force made almost entirely of men
Public-health experts say the Ebola epidemic should serve as a warning
(Carolyn Kaster/Ap; iStock)
Lena Felton THE LILY
March 2,2020
On Saturday — the same day the first U.S. coronavirus death was reported in Washington state — Vice President Pence, who has been tasked with overseeing the country’s response to the outbreak, sent a tweet. “Today we had a very productive meeting of the White House Coronavirus Taskforce in the Situation Room,” it read.
Along with the tweet, a photograph showed members of the task force sitting around a large rectangular table. About 20 people were pictured. Not a single woman was included in the shot — a detail that didn’t go unnoticed on Twitter.
Where are the women scientists, physicians, public health experts?
This is 2020.— Leslie McCarthy (@LeslieM3355) March 1, 2020
In late January, the Trump administration announced the formation of the President’s Coronavirus Task Force. Led by Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar, it included 11 additional members — all of whom were men.
Last week, after officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that U.S. citizens should begin making preparations for the spread of the infectious disease, more members were added to the task force. That included one woman: Deborah Birx, the State Department’s global AIDS director, who was named the “coronavirus response coordinator.” (Officials from the White House and the CDC have not responded to requests for comment.)
[ Live updates: Global coronavirus death toll surpasses 3,000; markets stage cautious recovery on stimulus hopes]
The task force’s apparent lack of gender diversity isn’t just about optics, according to public health experts: It’s likely to carry real consequences for women.
“We can’t ignore 50 percent of the population when it comes to effective health policy,” says Imogen Coe, a professor of chemistry and biology at Canada’s Ryerson University who has written about gender equality in medicine. “The consequences of doing so could range from inconvenience to very severe.”
The coronavirus death toll has now passed 3,000 globally, and the U.S. government has confirmed 87 coronavirus cases in total as of Monday afternoon, including the first in New York. On Monday, the Washington State Department of Health announced four more deaths, bringing the U.S. total to six. An analysis has suggested the virus has probably been spreading in the state, undetected, for weeks.
Experts say they can’t understate the importance of having a diversity of perspectives when it comes to addressing as serious an outbreak as this. Many cite the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa as an example. Sarah Hawkes, a professor of global public health and co-director of the gender equality initiative Global Health 50/50, points to research that showed women were absent in leadership decisions related to the outbreak. They were disproportionately affected by the epidemic: Health teams reported that 75 percent of those who were infected with or died from Ebola were women.
“You can design all sorts of systems and responses, but the one thing we should’ve learned from the Ebola crisis is that if we don’t engage good representation from the communities you’re trying to reach, you’re not likely to be a very effective program,” she says.
Although men are likelier to die from the coronavirus, women contract it in similar numbers, based on data from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
Among the biggest risks for women is that they vastly outnumber men when it comes to both paid and unpaid care work. In other words, they will be largely responsible for caring for the sick, recognizing when to keep their children home from school and dealing with other day-to-day realities of such an outbreak, according to experts.
When you lack those perspectives “at the table,” it’s easy to create policy removed from the needs of the health-care workers on the ground, says Coe, the Ryerson professor. “You need to be asking specific questions for the women who are taking care of families and ill people and who are often on the front lines,” she says.
A recent New York Times article found that the situation for female health workers in China has been especially harrowing: One nurse’s superiors “told her and her female colleagues that they ‘lacked the spirit of devotion’ and discipline after they sought help getting pads and tampons.”
[ Mapping the spread of the new coronavirus]
Women make up 70 percent to 80 percent of the U.S. health-care workforce, but they’re underrepresented in leadership, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Public health is somewhat of an anomaly, with many women leading the field, according to Susan Wood, director of the Jacobs Institute of Women’s Health at George Washington University. In other words, the lack of women in Pence’s photo “is not for there being a lack of qualified women in public health,” she says.
Wood has seen emergency response flounder when it comes to addressing women’s specific health needs, she says. In the cases of emergency evacuations or quarantines specifically, supplies such as diapers and baby formula are often included — but menstrual supplies aren’t necessarily a given.
Coe agrees: Considerations around women’s reproductive health is crucial in addressing the coronavirus outbreak. “If you are a young woman who’s pregnant and you have a family member who just came back from one of the hot spots — Italy, Iran — what is the advice you should be getting?” she asks. “What are the recommendations going to be for women who are breast-feeding?”
Experts worry that if these perspectives aren’t represented in initial conversations, those needs won’t be adequately addressed in policies. Regardless of the qualifications of some on the task force — Hawkes points to Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases — there are likely to be blind spots. What the photo communicates, says Hawkes, “is that there’s either a systematic bias or a systematic blindness to the importance of diversity.”
But there is a potential bright spot, according to Kelly Thompson, co-author of a World Health Organization report on gender disparities in the global health workforce: There’s opportunity for increasing perspectives going forward. The NIH, for example, has a mandate that its research needs to include women and minority groups. As Thompson puts it, “Looking toward any research that’s going to be done on the coronavirus, or future vaccine work, we definitely need to make sure that mandate is given priority.”
Source: (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
The White House announced Monday afternoon two new members have been added to the coronavirus task force being overseen by Vice President Mike Pence.
"Today, Vice President Mike Pence and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar announced the addition of the following individuals to the President’s Coronavirus Task Force: Robert Wilkie,
Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Seema Verma, Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services," the White House released in a statement.
Since the task force was announced by President Trump last Thursday, members have been meeting every day to go over developments and will do so again Monday afternoon at the White House.
Here is a list of the other members, courtesy of the Trump administration:
Robert O’Brien, Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs
Dr. Robert Redfield, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health
Deputy Secretary Stephen Biegun, Department of State
Ken Cuccinelli, Acting Deputy Secretary, Department of Homeland Security
Joel Szabat, Acting Under Secretary for Policy, Department of Transportation
Matthew Pottinger, Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor
Rob Blair, Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor to the Chief of Staff
Joseph Grogan, Assistant to the President and Director of the Domestic Policy Council
Christopher Liddell, Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Coordination
Derek Kan, Executive Associate Director, Office of Management and Budget
THE ONLY WOMAN BUT SHE GETS PASSING MENTION IN THIS PSA
Secretary Wilkie oversees the Veterans Affairs healthcare system, which treats nearly 10 million veterans every day in thousands of facilities across the country. According to the U.S. Census, more than 100 million people are enrolled in Medicare or Medicaid, headed by Administrator Verma.
Since the task force was announced by President Trump last Thursday, members have been meeting every day to go over developments and will do so again Monday afternoon at the White House.
Here is a list of the other members, courtesy of the Trump administration:
Robert O’Brien, Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs
Dr. Robert Redfield, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health
Deputy Secretary Stephen Biegun, Department of State
Ken Cuccinelli, Acting Deputy Secretary, Department of Homeland Security
Joel Szabat, Acting Under Secretary for Policy, Department of Transportation
Matthew Pottinger, Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor
Rob Blair, Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor to the Chief of Staff
Joseph Grogan, Assistant to the President and Director of the Domestic Policy Council
Christopher Liddell, Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Coordination
Derek Kan, Executive Associate Director, Office of Management and Budget
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