'The sun will shine again,' Captain Tom, 99, raises millions and the spirits of a nation

Paul Sandle

LONDON (Reuters) - Captain Tom Moore, 99, a British war veteran, completed the last of 100 laps of his garden on Thursday, raising more than 15.4 million pounds ($19 million) for the health service in a feat that has spread joy across the country amid the coronavirus gloom.

“For all those people who are finding it difficult at the moment: the sun will shine on you again and the clouds will go away,” said Moore, dressed in a blazer and tie and displaying his war medals, after completing his walk.

The retired army captain, who has used a walking frame with wheels since breaking his hip, set himself the target of walking the 25 metres around his garden 100 times before his 100th birthday on April 30.

He completed his challenge to praise from around the country and beyond - and a salute from soldiers in the regiment which replaced his own. “I feel fine,” he said.

Raised in Yorkshire, northern England, Moore served in India, Burma and Sumatra during World War Two.

He said the walk was inspired by the care he received from Britain’s state-run National Health Service when he broke his hip and when he was treated for cancer.

His original target was 1,000 pounds.

But that modest aim was blown away as media attention from around the globe zoomed in on his garden in Bedfordshire, central England.


Veteran Capt Tom Moore talks to soldiers from 1st Battalion The Yorkshire Regiment who formed a Guard of Honour for the veteran as he completed his fundraising walk for the health services, in Bedfordshire, Britain, April 16, 2020. Ministry of Defence/Crown Copyright 2020/Handout via REUTERS

The story lifted the hearts of a nation in lockdown, weary of relentless waves of grim news.

It has also embodied an outpouring of gratitude for Britain’s doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers on the front line in the fight against the pandemic.

So far, nearly 13,000 people with COVID-19 have died in British hospitals, the fifth-highest total globally. Twenty-seven were health workers, Health Minister Matt Hancock said.

Moore’s achievement was a “shaft of light” in the darkness of the COVID-19 crisis, he said. “Captain Tom, what an inspiration to us all.”

FANTASTIC

Moore said the amount raised from more than 750,000 supporters was an “absolutely fantastic sum of money”.

“It’s unbelievable that people would be so kind to give that sort of money to the National Health Service,” he said.

Moore received a guard of honour from soldiers from the First Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment, the successor to his Duke of Wellington’s regiment, as he completed his final lap.

Afterwards he received messages of congratulation from figures from sport, politics and entertainment.

Ben Stokes, England’s leading cricketer, said he hoped he would be moving as well as Moore when he was 50 let alone 100, while finance minister Rishi Sunak praised his “Yorkshire grit”.


Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is recovering after being treated in intensive care with COVID-19, would look at ways to recognise Moore, his office said.

“Tom has captured the heart of the nation with his heroic efforts and has raised an incredible amount of money for hard working NHS staff,” Johnson’s official spokesman said.

A petition for Moore to receive a knighthood had received more than 20,000 signatures on Thursday, and he was even in the running to be voted British “Sports Personality of the Year”, an honour that went to Stokes, who is 28, in 2019.

Moore remained focused on the sacrifices made by health service workers and the efforts of his fellow Britons, who have been locked down since March 23.

“You’ve all got to remember that we will get through it in the end, it will all be right, it might take time,” Moore said. “At the end of the day we shall all be ok again.”


Moore’s family said they had fielded interest from as far afield as the United States, France and Australia.

Son-in-law Colin Ingram said raising money for the health service had given Moore a new lease of life.

“He’s coming down in the morning sprightly and loving it,” Ingram told Reuters on Wednesday.

The money raised will go to NHS Charities Together, an organisation that represents 140 member charities that support the work of the health service, according to his donation page on the JustGiving website.


Additional reporting by Kate Holton and Elizabeth Piper, Editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Janet Lawrence

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

Jarrett Renshaw APRIL 16, 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

Julia Love, Mica Rosenbe APRIL 16,2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jose Luis Gonzalez

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

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

MORE PHOTOS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From the Inside Flap

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

Hardcover – June 27, 2014

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

at Wilfrid Laurier University and author of American Extremism

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

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

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

Review

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

India lockdown

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Scenes from a pandemic: World copes with COVID-19

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

Proposed abortion ban challenged by lawmakers, activists in Poland

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nurses push back on pressure to work without right equipment

By MARTHA MENDOZA and KIMBERLEE KRUESI APRIL 16, 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



Some are taking to the streets.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Medical intelligence sleuths tracked, warned of new virus

By DEB RIECHMANN AP APRIL 16, 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

China sends aid to African nations amid racism charge

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

China has denied local authorities discriminated against African residents.

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