Trump Called Ukrainians “Terrible People.” They Are Airlifting Tons Of Lifesaving Medical Supplies To The US With The Biggest Cargo Planes In The World.
LOTS OF BIG AIRPLANE PICTURESOver the course of the next month, planes owned by the state-run Antonov Airlines will carry medical masks and other supplies on 11 trips from Asian countries to the US.

Christopher MillerBuzzFeed News Contributor Posted on April 17, 2020

Noah Seelam / Getty ImagesThe Antonov AN-225 Mriya, at Rajiv Gandhi International Airport in Hyderabad, India, in 2016.

In May 2019, President Donald Trump described Ukraine as being full of “terrible people” who “tried to take me down.” Two months later, he was on the phone with his newly elected counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, asking him to “do us a favor.”

The favor Trump wanted — opening investigations into his political rival, Joe Biden, now the presumptive Democratic nominee for president — never came, and Trump withheld important military aid to the war-torn country for months. The rest, as they say, is history.

But months later, as the coronavirus pandemic ravages the US, Ukraine is doing Trump a huge favor: The country is using its cargo planes — the biggest in the world — to ferry crucial personal protective equipment (PPE) from Asia to medical professionals on the front line of the health crisis in the US.

Over the course of the next month, Ukrainian state-run Antonov Airlines will send its giant An-225 Mriya and An-124 Ruslan planes on at least 11 trips from Asian countries to the continental US, Vitaliy Shost, Antonov’s deputy director, told BuzzFeed News from the company’s headquarters in Kyiv.

“Our first flight to the US is planned for next week — with a flight from Shanghai to Columbus, Ohio,” Shost said. The cargo consists mostly of medical masks, protective clothing, and disinfectant agents, he said.

Aivaras Abromavicius, CEO of Ukroboronprom, the Ukrainian state defense conglomerate that oversees Antonov, told BuzzFeed News from Kyiv that some flights could include ventilators.


Antonov Airlines/Tetiana Peklun
Vitaliy Shost looks at a calendar showing the dozens of booked Antonov Airlines flights in the coming weeks that will deliver medical aid.

The deliveries come as the coronavirus crisis in the US drags on and hospitals across the country continue to report shortages of basic medical supplies.

Shost declined to disclose commercially sensitive information such as how the flights to the US were paid for and how much they cost. He said the company operates “through brokers” and has “no direct contact or very limited connection with the cargo owners.” Use of the Mriya reportedly costs around $30,000 an hour and may run as high as $1 million in total, depending on the type of cargo carried and the distance needed to travel.
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At 275 feet in length and weighing 310 tons completely empty, the Mriya — Ukrainian for “dream” — is the world’s largest and heaviest cargo aircraft. With six powerful engines on its 290-foot wings, it’s capable of carrying another 275 tons — strapped to its top, as it did with the Soviet Union’s Buran space shuttle, or in its cargo hold. To get a sense of just how big that space is, consider this BBC description: The length of its cargo hold is longer than the Wright brothers’ first flight, from takeoff to landing. It’s also the only Mriya ever produced; a second one remains unfinished in a hangar in Kyiv.

The slightly smaller Ruslan is anything but small; at 226 feet and weighing 200 tons, it is the largest military cargo plane in the world. And Antonov owns five of them, including one model that can carry 120 tons of cargo and a second that is reinforced and able to lift 165 tons.

Often the planes are used to transport oversize cargo, such as military tanks, plane engines, and even smaller aircraft fuselages. They are loaded on board through an opening in the nose of the planes.

Because of the enormity of the planes and the current health risks, Abromavicius said “the utmost care is needed in planning these flights, loading the cargo, following the flight instructions and quarantine instructions.” He said everything has to run with the “precision of a Swiss watch.”


Gleb Garanich / Reuters
People wearing protective masks board a renovated Antonov An-225 Mriya cargo plane on the tarmac of an airfield outside Kyiv earlier this month.


All models of the Antonov planes will be used in the US deliveries between mid-April and mid-May, Shost said. He said there is the possibility that more flights to the US could be made later as well.

The planes are in high demand elsewhere. Since March, Shost said, several countries have chartered either the Mriya or the Ruslans to shuttle supplies to their coronavirus-stricken nations. They include Canada, Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Kuwait, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Slovakia, Spain, and Switzerland.

A video published on Tuesday shows the Mriya landing in Warsaw, where it delivered tons of medical supplies purchased from China by the Polish government. The livestream shared by Chopin Airport was watched by more than 80,000 people.

The departures and arrivals of the Mriya, which Shost boasted as being “part of our Ukrainian heritage,” are seen by aviation enthusiasts as big events. Heads of government and even royalty turn out to see the behemoth in action, Shost said.

The Mriya’s next medical supply delivery is in Paris on Saturday.

The global demand for the planes has translated to a 40% jump in orders for Antonov Airlines. That means all of its planes are booked through much of May.

“Thіs April, according to our estimates, is a record month in terms of the flight time,” Shost said. For instance, the Ruslan planes alone clocked 1,001 hours halfway through the month. “This is fantastic, but it’s not done magically,” Shost said. “Our relatively small team works really hard to arrange all the flights and requests.”


Paul Kane / Getty Images
The Antonov AN-225 Mriya landing at Perth international airport in Australia in 2015.


The US is also doing its part to help Ukraine in its fight against the coronavirus. Like the US, Ukraine has seen the number of infections within its borders increase exponentially since March. As of April 17, Ukraine had 4,662 recorded cases, with 125 related deaths. And medical supplies there are in short supply.

The State Department said in a statement Thursday that it is providing Ukraine with $9.1 million in health and humanitarian assistance to “help prepare laboratory systems, activate case-finding and event-based surveillance, support technical experts for response and preparedness, bolster risk communication, and more.”

It said the assistance will also prevent and control infection at targeted health facilities and support water, sanitation and hygiene interventions for the most vulnerable populations in the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, eastern Ukraine. Six years of war between the Ukrainian military and Russia-controlled separatist forces has killed some 14,000 people and devastated the regions’ economies and infrastructure.

The US has invested nearly $5 billion in total assistance to Ukraine over the past 20 years, including nearly $362 million in health assistance, according to the State Department.

Also included in that total was $391.5 million in security assistance that Trump personally ordered to be held up in order to get Ukraine’s President Zelensky to bend to his will. He ultimately released the aid in September, but only after a whistleblower complaint that sparked the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry.

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Here’s A Timeline Of How A Bill Gates, Reddit, and AMA Turned Into A Coronavirus Vaccine Conspiracy

In less than a month, the baseless claim went from an obscure biohacking blog to the New York Post and RT.

Jane LytvynenkoBuzzFeed News Reporter April 18, 2020

Jeff Pachoud / Getty Images

On March 18, at 1 pm EST, Bill Gates logged on to Reddit for an AMA — an interview in which people asked the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft their burning questions. Gates makes fairly frequent Reddit appearances, but this one was notable because most of the questions centered around the coronavirus and one of his philanthropic causes, global health.

Gates was asked about how businesses would change because of the virus. He responded by talking about supply chain issues and the need for basic necessities, like water and electricity.

“Countries are still figuring out what to keep running,” he wrote. “Eventually we will have some digital certificates to show who has recovered or been tested recently or when we have a vaccine who has received it.”

His answer inadvertently kicked off an online frenzy. Gates has long been a target of conspiracy theorists, including those who falsely paint him as responsible for the global pandemic. It also fed into false anti-vaccination conspiracies theories, which have gained traction online and contributed to outbreaks of measles and deaths of children.

One of the first articles to pick up on Gates’s response was on a website on biohacking, Biohackinfo, which has only a few thousand followers on Twitter and Instagram. The day after the AMA, the site published a post titled “Bill Gates will use microchip implants to fight coronavirus.”


Reddit

Gates did not mention microchips at any point during his Reddit conversation. Nevertheless, the article falsely claimed he was referring to a December 2019 study funded by the Gates Foundation on quantum tattoos — invisible ink that could last five years and be read with a smartphone.

“These markings were developed to provide a vaccination record and there is no ability to track anyone’s movements,” one of the study’s authors told PolitiFact, which debunked the claim. “This technology is only able to provide very limited (e.g. non-personalized) data locally. These markings require direct line-of-sight imaging from a distance of less than one foot. Remote or continuous tracking is simply not possible for a variety of technical reasons.”

The conspiracy theory's biggest boost came from a March 21 YouTube video on the Law Of Liberty channel, which has 27,000 subscribers. The video, which has been viewed nearly two million times, cited the Biohackinfo article and compared quantum tattoos to what it called the “Mark of Satan,” while implying that Gates was the anti-Christ.

The conspiracy picked up more attention on April 13, when former Donald Trump advisor Roger Stone speculated on the Answer, a Salem, OR radio station, that Gates had created both the coronavirus and a vaccine with a microchip in it to track the global population. “Roger Stone: Bill Gates may have created coronavirus to microchip people,” read a headline from the New York Post from the same day. The Post made no attempt to challenge Stone’s false statements, and the article is now the second-most popular piece of content on Facebook about Gates and microchips, behind the Law Of Liberty YouTube video.


YouTube

Russian media has picked up on Stone’s comments, too. State-funded website RT translated Stone’s comments into its Spanish edition, citing the New York Post report. Like the Post, RT didn’t provide correct information to counteract Stone’s speculation, although it did say that Gates had dismissed the theory in an interview with CCTV. The story has received over 100,000 Facebook likes, shares, and comments.

Dr. Georges Benjamin, the executive director of the American Public Health Association, told BuzzFeed News that he was not aware of a microchip small enough to be injected in a vaccine.

“The whole idea of immunization certificates really is not the idea of a nanoparticle,” Dr. Benjamin said.

He said that there are valid human rights concerns about cellphone-based or ID-card vaccine tracking, adding that testing and vaccinating were the most sure-fire way of protecting people from the coronavirus.

Dr. Benjamin also stressed that while there are ongoing efforts to find a vaccine for the coronavirus, it could be anywhere from a year to 18 months before it could start being given to the public, once discovered. He said that risks with anti-vaccination disinformation “are enormous.”


New York Post

“Vaccines are safe and effective,” he said. “That vaccine — once produced and proven to be safe and effective — is going to be a lifesaver. It's absolutely a major part of our ability to go back out, leave our homes, go back to work, and go to big sports events.”

Nevertheless, the conspiracy has continued to spread, with the initial story receiving nearly 60,000 Facebook likes, comments, and shares, according to data from social media tracking tool BuzzSumo.

One reason the hoax may have spread so widely is that it tied into existing paranoia about Gates and his philanthropic foundation. Gates has long been accused of wanting to control the global population and other outlandish goals, including that he is the anti-Christ.

Theologian Paul Decock, an expert on the final book of the Bible who teaches at St. Joseph's Theological Institute in Cedara, South Africa, told BuzzFeed News that interpretation was inaccurate. In the Book of Revelation, not only those who follow Satan were said to receive marks or seals, he told BuzzFeed News, but “those who are faithful to God are also sealed [as] a sign of protection.”

He added that identifying Gates as the Anti-Christ was wrong.

“Almost anyone in history who stands out in one way or another has been identified as the Beast,” Decock said. “In the Book of Revelation, we cannot find a simple answer to our particular case of Bill Gates, as if the text had Bill Gates in mind. We have to discern whether Bill Gates [is] in the service of God or the service of the Devil. Therefore, it requires reflection, reasoning, discernment. In any case, for me, Bill Gates appears clearly to be on the side of God.”

Despite its scientific and exegetical inaccuracies, the Law Of Liberty YouTube post has 1.3 million Facebook likes, comments, and shares, primarily from Facebook groups, according to data from social media research tool CrowdTangle. Many of those Facebook groups tout their support for US President Donald Trump, promote conspiracy theories, and oppose vaccination.

“We have clear policies against COVID misinformation and we quickly remove videos violating these policies when flagged to us,” a YouTube spokesperson told BuzzFeedNews. “For borderline content, such as [this] video, we reduce recommendations.”

According to non-profit disinformation tracking organization First Draft, false allegations that Gates wanted to implant microchips through coronavirus vaccines have spread not only in North America, but worldwide. First Draft has found versions targeting Australians and Europeans in early April. Misinformation has also spread across WhatsApp groups and Facebook pages in Africa, with one post from a Congo-based page garnering over 8,000 shares.

“Conspiracy theories are harmful to people’s confidence in vaccines,” Dr. Benjamin said, adding, “This will not be the end of conspiracy theories around vaccines.”

9 OUT OF TEN DOCTORS AGREE

Trump is insane: And it’s time for leading Democrats to say that out loud


Published April 18, 2020 By Dave Masciotra, Salon - Commentary

Psychologists warn of the deadly consequences of the “silent partner” in abusive homes. When a father beats or sexually assaults a child, the family will often react by refusing to discuss the abuse, allowing silence to enable the predator and protect against confronting a reality that is too painful and frightening.

This article first appeared in Salon.

The United States of America is now an abusive household. Donald Trump is the lunatic authority figure stalking and traumatizing the victims — the American people — while the Democratic Party, along with the mainstream media, act as the silent partner.

It becomes increasingly evident, with Trump’s every social media post, public utterance and policy directive, that our president suffers from a severe form of mental illness. His insanity threatens millions of lives, and has become particularly dangerous during the most devastating public health crisis in the last 100 years.

For all the criticism that Democrats and pundits advance against Trump, their refusal to state the obvious forces the American public to feel as if we are the ones confined to a mental institution. It also emboldens Trump, even as he prioritizes his fragile ego, his compulsion to appear infallible and political expediency above the lives of countless human beings.

The most popular terms that Trump’s opponents use are “liar,” “un-American,” “egomaniac” and “malignant narcissist.” All of these labels are weak, which is why we watch as Trump peels them off like Band-Aids after a shower. Half the public probably doesn’t know what “malignant narcissist” means, while “un-American” is too vague and ideological to have any widespread resonance. “Liar” quickly collapses into the “all politicians lie” refrain, and “egomania” is borderline meaningless, considering that almost anyone who becomes famous in our consumer society — including most high-powered CEOs, Hollywood celebrities and professional athletes — obviously have massively swollen egos.

The reality that is too painful and frightening for many Americans to confront is that the wealthiest and most militarily powerful country in the world, during a pandemic, is under the leadership of someone who is certifiably nuts.

In December of 2019, 350 mental health professionals co-signed a letter to Congress stating that Donald Trump’s “deteriorating mental health” constituted a “threat to the safety of our nation.” It was merely a month later that Trump would begin to ignore multiple warnings regarding the coming COVID-19 epidemic, repeatedly announcing at rallies and on Twitter that media coverage of the virus amounted to a “hoax,” and making bizarre, unscientific statements that the potential pandemic would “go away like a miracle.”

One recent morning — again, while thousands are dying and the coronavirus ravaged numerous American cities — Trump tweeted 46 times in a few hours, mostly to mock House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whine about “fake news” and retweet conspiracy theorists arguing for the firing of Dr. Anthony Fauci.

If any of our loved ones behaved in a similar manner, we would plead for psychiatric intervention. One does not have to have the expertise of a psychiatrist at the Yale University School of Medicine to make that assessment, but Dr. Bandy X. Lee, who indeed holds that title, recently told Salon that Trump’s “pathological malice,” “mental pathology,” and “bottomless need to place his own psychic survival above any protection of the public” could “destroy the nation or the world.”

Lee was the principal editor of the 2017 bestseller, “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.” She has also organized a coalition of 800 mental health professionals who are “sufficiently alarmed that they feel the need to speak up about the mental health status of the president.”

A Change.org petition started by Dr. John Gartner, a psychotherapist and former professor at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, calls on Congress to remove Trump from office on the grounds of mental unfitness. It now has 70,602 supporters, most of them professionals with education or experience in the mental health field.

In the foreword to “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” Dr. Robert Jay Lifton, a psychiatrist who is one of the world’s leading experts on the psychological causes of war and terrorism, writes that the United States has entered a disastrous stage of “malignant normality”:

Judith Herman and I, in a letter to the New York Times in March 2017, stressed Trump’s dangerous individual psychological patterns: his creation of his own reality and his inability to manage the inevitable crises that face an American president. He has also, in various ways, violated our American institutional requirements and threatened the viability of American democracy. Yet, because he is president and operates within the broad contours and interactions of the presidency, there is a tendency to view what he does as simply part of our democratic process — that is, as politically and even ethically normal. In this way, a dangerous president becomes normalized, and malignant normality comes to dominate our governing (or, one could say, our antigoverning) dynamic.



Since the first printing of “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” and the publication of the letter from 350 mental health professionals, the fatal consequences of Trump’s mental instability have become manifest. The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed a terrifying hypothetical into a catastrophe with effects that multiply by the hour.

Even as rates of infection and the daily body count escalate, while overwhelmed hospitals lack the equipment to properly care for their patients and protect their workers, Trump displays a horrific failure to empathize with victims, place public need above personal interest or even acknowledge reality. He continues to tout the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine, which so far has shown little if any positive effects on coronavirus patients, and is known to increase the risk of cardiac arrest.

Trump makes decisions that threaten more lives, such as the elimination of U.S. funding for the World Health Organization, which is not only on the front lines against the global spread of COVID-19, but is also central to the campaign against treatable diseases throughout the developing world. He boasted of the creation of a coronavirus website in partnership with Google — which does not exist and never will — and has likened his presidential powers to those of a dictator, telling a report that “the authority of the president of the United States is total.” (In an entirely typical Trumpian maneuver, he then retreated from that position without acknowledging he had ever said any such thing.)

Unlike other world leaders, who allow their chief medical officials to lead press briefings on the pandemic, the wannabe dictator hosts a surreal press conference nearly every afternoon. This has become a pathological national spectacle, in which Trump insults journalists, makes transparently false claims and answers simple questions, like “What do you say to the Americans who are scared?” with incoherent rage: “I say you’re a terrible reporter.”

In their cowardice, weakness and lack of imagination, the White House correspondents, the networks and publications they represent, and most Democratic officials offer a hideous illustration of “malignant normality.”

Most journalists, adhering to an institutional decorum that might have been appropriate during the Carter administration, ask Trump a question and then dutifully take notes while he blusters through an illiterate response.

Lenore Taylor, an editor with Guardian Australia, offered a reasonable perspective on Trump last year that still eludes her American peers. After attending a White House press conference, she wrote that she realized “how much the reporting of Trump necessarily edits and parses his words, to force it into sequential paragraphs or impose meaning where it is difficult to detect,” and concluded that most of journalism “masks and normalizes his full and alarming incoherence.”

Major newspapers and television networks largely refuse to publish or air consideration of Trump’s mental health, ignoring the consensus of hundreds of the most prestigious academics and doctors in the field.

Dr. Anthony Fauci was recently compelled to grovel before the Dear Leader, insisting that when he had said that earlier adoption of social distancing would have saved lives, he of course intended no criticism of the porcelain president.

For the sake of the country, millions of lives and everyone’s sanity, some political figure of national prominence needs to respect the consensus of mental health professionals, and publicly declare that President Donald Trump is mentally unstable and unfit for office. This must be stated in the simplest terms possible, and while making clear that he or she is not joking or issuing the statement for dramatic effect. It is time to liberate American discourse from its self-imposed restraints, and it is essential to the future of American democracy that Trump’s mental condition becomes a focal point of urgent investigation and discussion.

Shameless and dishonest operatives on the right have no reticence about making the health of a major Democratic figure part of public inquiry, even when they have to resort to baseless lies. In 2016, many Republican commentators – from Sean Hannity to Trump himself — warned that Hillary Clinton was near death, because she appeared wobbly at one public event. Four years later, she is still alive. Currently, discussions of Joe Biden’s “dementia,” without any clear evidence of cognitive decline, dominate right-wing chatter about the prospective Democratic nominee.

More than a thousand mental health professionals are now on the record declaring that Donald Trump is mentally unfit for office, but leading Democrats still refuse to discuss the issue openly. Amid this pandemic, Democratic cowardice regarding Trump’s insanity goes beyond the usual liberal pattern of bringing a pillow to a knife fight. It puts millions of lives at risk.

No Democratic governor, even one with considerable power and influence like California’s Gavin Newsom or New York’s Andrew Cuomo, can afford to gamble with the health of his or her people by alienating Trump. But a prominent U.S. senator — perhaps Chris Murphy of Connecticut or Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts — or even Joe Biden himself, must level with the country about what anyone outside Trump’s cult following can see with their own eyes. The president is sick. It’s time to talk about it.

A recent profile in the New Yorker of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell quoted a staffer as claiming that behind closed doors McConnell has described Trump as “nuts.” Democrats should demand to know if the Republican Senate mastermind truly believes that the president is impaired, and force McConnell to choose between yet more lies and the future of his country.

Democrats should also get over their concerns about angering Trump supporters. Anyone who continues to applaud Trump’s weird and reckless disregard for humanity at this point is beyond the limit of rational persuasion. Trump supporters live in a hallucinatory dreamscape under the authority of a maniac. Let them have their anti-social distancing rallies, and allow them to believe that Barack Obama invented COVID-19 shortly after he was born in Kenya.

Rational Americans need to stop enabling this abusive and deranged presidency. Declare Donald Trump insane and, at long last, bring an end to our era of malignant normality.

"I Don't Want To Die Here!": Older ICE Detainees Fear The Worst As The Coronavirus Spreads

"I cry every night, every day. I feel helpless. I don’t know what’s going on."

Hamed AleazizBuzzFeed News Reporter Posted on April 17, 2020

Stephan Savoia / AP
An immigrant facing deportation to El Salvador returns to his cell at an ICE facility in Boston.
Mariela, one of hundreds of older immigrant detainees in government custody at local and private detention centers across the country, worries she will die in a jail.

The 60-year-old Colombian has been in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody for two months in El Paso, Texas, where she folds laundry and helps clean the facility, a job for which she says she is paid $1 a day.

Mariela is accused of violating her visa by working in the US — a charge she denies — and knows she’s at a higher risk of death than younger detainees if she contracts COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

“I am very afraid of getting the virus. That’s my life,” she said. “This shouldn’t exist at all — detaining people who are more than 60 years old. I came to the US with a visa. This is an injustice. I cry every night, every day. I feel helpless. I don’t know what’s going on.”

Medical experts and immigrant advocates have warned that the highly contagious disease puts everyone in detention at risk. But for the older detainees in ICE custody, the inherent problems within jails — like a lack of necessary space to accommodate proper social distancing guidelines — put them in even more danger, they say. Advocates have used these arguments as a way to push for more releases.

“These people are at increased risk of serious complications and death from [COVID-19],” said Marc Stern, a public health expert and faculty member at the University of Washington. Data from the CDC show there's increased risk to those who are 50 and older, he noted.

“So they should be among those people ICE prioritizes for consideration to release. The other — and from the public’s standpoint more important — reason for the public to be concerned about this is that it is more likely that these people will become infected if they are in a detention center than at home. And when they get sick, they’re going to be transported to a local community hospital where they may very well occupy a scarce hospital or ICU bed and ventilator,” Stern said.

Last month, ICE officials began assessing their inmate population to locate “vulnerable” detainees, including those who are over 60 or pregnant. So far, they have released nearly 700 detainees, and detention numbers are the lowest they have been in several years. As of Friday, there were more than 300 detainees over the age of 60 in ICE facilities, 93% of whom have either a record of criminal convictions or pending criminal charges, according to an agency official.



ICE spokespeople have said determinations on whom to release are based on the “person’s criminal record, immigration history, ties to the community, risk of flight, and whether he or she poses a potential threat to public safety.”

“Due to the unprecedented nature of COVID-19, [ICE] is reviewing cases of individuals in detention who may be at higher risk for severe illness as a result of COVID-19. Utilizing CDC guidance along with the advice of medical professionals, ICE may place individuals in a number of alternatives to detention options,” the agency wrote in a statement. “Decisions to release individuals in ICE custody occur every day on a case-by-case basis.”

Advocates, however, point to the older detainees still in custody as proof that ICE is not doing enough. Lawsuits filed by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the Center for Constitutional Rights in recent weeks have asked a federal judge to force ICE to release a pair of 78-year old detainees and a 62-year-old asylum-seeker.

“It is very irresponsible to be detaining him in this situation. He is elderly. He has medical conditions that make him extremely vulnerable to COVID-19,” said Carlos Moctezuma Garcia, an attorney representing Raul Garza Marroquin, one of the 78-year-olds in custody.

Garza, who has hypertension, mixed hyperlipidemia, polyosteoarthritis, and prediabetes, has been in ICE custody at the Port Isabel Detention Center in Los Fresnos, Texas, for the last several weeks, according to the lawsuit. He alleges that he has been unable to get regular access to soap and hand sanitizer, a charge that others in detention centers across the US have also made.

Garcia attempted to get Garza out of custody in late March, but the request was denied by an ICE official. Garza, who is a permanent resident, has been arrested on multiple charges of driving while intoxicated, and, in 2016, an assault allegation.

Similarly, lawyers from the Center for Constitutional Rights sued the government last month for the release of Matilde Flores de Saavedra. The 78-year-old detainee, who like Garza is a permanent resident, was picked up by ICE officials in June after serving a sentence for conspiracy to transport undocumented immigrants, according to court documents.

In a declaration to the court, Saavedra said she has diabetes and high blood pressure.

“Tensions are running high as everyone in the dorm is worried that the detention center is doing nothing to prevent them from contracting the disease,” she wrote about the conditions at the LaSalle ICE Processing Center in Louisiana. “Neither the staff nor the detainees use gloves or masks around the dorm and neither the staff or ICE have said anything to any of us about coronavirus. All we know is what we see on television.”

ICE officials have not publicly offered the ages of the detainees who have tested positive for COVID-19. They have, however, provided the information to congressional officials. Thus far, among the 105 detainees who have tested positive for COVID-19, nearly a dozen have been over the age of 50.




Stern, the expert from Washington, said that ICE officials should change their assessment of the vulnerable population in agency custody by including those over the age of 50. Correctional health experts have found that those in detention are physiologically comparable to those in the community who are older.

“Many state departments of corrections and the Federal Bureau of Prisons therefore define ‘elderly’ or ‘older’ variously between 50 and 60 years of age,” he said. “No such scientific information exists for the immigration detention population. In the absence of such science, it is not unreasonable to extrapolate from the next most comparable populations, i.e., jails and prisons.”

In recent days, Mariela, who owns dental clinics in her home country, has called her attorney sobbing about officers showing up in full protective clothing to remove a sick detainee.

Her attorneys are worried that her stay in custody will last weeks if the government attempts to carry out the deportation. Government officials denied a request to pause her deportation order on Thursday.

“I am listening to a woman who knows what is going on, who runs a business in her home country, who should never have been detained, in freefall panic. Each time she calls, she is more anxious and more panicked,” her attorney, Heidi Cerneka at Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, said. “She said, ‘I don't want to die here!’"

The NLRB Is Looking Into Claims That Amazon Violated Employees' Rights During The Coronavirus Pandemic

As employees, labor activists, and lawmakers decry Amazon’s firing of employees involved in labor protests, the National Labor Relations Board is looking at the company’s record of targeting people over social distancing violations

Caroline O'DonovanBuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on April 18, 2020

Scott Olson / Getty Images

Former injured Amazon employees join labor organizers and community activists to demonstrate and hold a press conference outside of an Amazon Go store in the loop to express concerns about what they claim is the company's "alarming injury rate" among warehouse workers on December 10, 2019 in Chicago.

Federal labor regulators have indicated that they will be watching Amazon after workers in Chicago filed charges against the company alleging it retaliated against them for participating in protests about working conditions during the coronavirus pandemic, according to public documents filed this week.

The labor board’s inquiry, which experts say is unusual, comes as Amazon is under national scrutiny for firing at least four employees who engaged in walkouts and work slowdowns to protest worker safety during the pandemic.

Employees in Chicago allege that instead of responding to their petition asking for the closure of their warehouse after two workers tested positive for the coronavirus, Amazon instead retaliated against them. The company, they charged, is going after labor leaders on the pretext that they violated new social distancing rules. Workers in other places, including New York and Minnesota, have accused the company of similar tactics in recent weeks.

“They’re just trying to pressure us and intimidate us so that we don’t try to do this type of activity again."

“They’re just trying to pressure us and intimidate us so that we don’t try to do this type of activity again,” said Samir Quasir, an Amazon employee in Chicago who filed a charge with labor regulators this week alleging that the company retaliated against him after he participated in two protests and one walkout earlier this month. His bosses, he said, alleged that he had violated six feet of social distancing, a rule he said he may have inadvertently violated but that Amazon selectively enforces. “There’s a pattern here,” he said. “I do feel targeted.”

Regarding these claims, a spokesperson for Amazon declined to comment on individual employees, but said it “respect[s] the rights of employees to protest and recognize their legal right to do so; however, these rights do not provide blanket immunity against bad actions, particularly those that endanger the health, well-being or safety of their colleagues.”

The workers’ allegations are part of an effort on behalf of workers in Amazon facilities across the country to push the country’s largest online retailer to offer higher wages and better working conditions. Amazon has previously settled at least one charge with the labor board, and dozens of other complaints have been withdrawn by workers or dismissed by the board in the last decade.



In Chicago, the effort is being led by a group called DCH1 Amazonians United, one of whose members, Ted Miin, filed a charge February alleging that his manager had singled him out for distributing pamphlets about workers rights. Such distribution is protected under federal laws that protect employees’ right to discuss working conditions.

On Thursday, the labor board’s regional director in Chicago announced in a written response that an Amazon manager had unlawfully interrogated Miin about his workplace organizing, but declined to punish Amazon because the incident was “isolated in nature”, and “because there have not been any meritorious charges against the Employer within the past several years.”

However, the regional director also said that he would consider levying punishments “If a meritorious charge involving other unfair labor practices is filed against” Amazon within the next six months.

Workers in Chicago are flooding the board with similar complaints. Already this week, three employees in Chicago have filed additional allegations of retaliation against Amazon with the National Labor Relations Board.

Among them is one from Quasir, who said he was called into a meeting with HR after participating in walkouts demanding improved coronavirus protections. Quasir said he was asked to sign a written statement about the walkouts, which Quasir said he feared could be used against him. After he refused, Amazon gave him a “final written warning” for allegedly violating six foot social distancing rules meant to protect employees from infection.

“Usually you get a verbal warning, and then a couple written warnings, and then a final written warning, and then they can terminate you after that. But I never got a verbal warning,” Quasir told BuzzFeed News. “[It was] straight to a final written warning.”

A second employee who requested anonymity out of fear of further retaliation said she was written up for entering the Amazon delivery station where she works without a badge when she and other protesters were delivering a petition to Amazon management during one of the walkouts.

A third employee also filed a charge of retaliation this week. The labor board is in the process of investigating those charges, and two additional employees are planning to file new charges soon, sources told BuzzFeed News.

Wilma Liebman, former chair of the National Labor Relations Board, said the decision in Chicago is an unusual one, and a sign that the regional director there is “leaving the door open that if there’s more conduct that occurs, that he would add this one in to other events to allege as unlawful.”

“To a certain extent, he’s invited them to file more charges,” Liebman said.

The Amazon employee terminations could be taken into account in the eventuality of a hearing before a labor board judge, Liebman said, but the board ultimately has little power to actually punish a company of Amazon’s size should its behavior be determined to be unlawful. “All they can do is get a slap on the hand,” she said.

As people on lockdown across the country turn to Amazon for household supplies and food while avoiding brick-and-mortar stores, Amazon's sales have skyrocketed. But employees say the company hasn’t done enough to protect them from COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. As lawmakers and labor groups have called for Amazon to take better care of its employees, the company has scrambled to implement safety procedures including temperature checks and the distribution of face masks, and is experimenting with disinfectant fogging and even creating its own COVID-19 test.




On Friday Amazon Senior Vice President of Global Affairs Jay Carney told CNN that he doesn’t know how many Amazon employees have tested positive for COVID-19. But the Athena Coalition, an alliance of organizations focused on Amazon, claims employees at more than 75 Amazon facilities so far have tested positive for COVID-19. Amazon has declined to shutter the vast majority of these facilities for disinfection, and employees in New York, Chicago, and Michigan organized protests and walkouts in opposition to that decision.

At the end of March, Amazon fired Chris Smalls, a New York based employee who the company said terminated for entering an Amazon facility in violation of company orders to self-quarantine. Last week, the company fired Maren Costa and Emily Cunningham, two Seattle-based corporate employees and organizers of the Amazon Employees for Climate Justice group who had spoken out in support of warehouse workers demanding better protections from Amazon. And an Amazon employee and workplace organizer in Minnesota, Bashir Mohamed, told BuzzFeed News on Monday that he’d been fired by Amazon after collecting signatures on a petition related to the coronavirus. Amazon said at the time that it respects workers rights to voice their concerns, and that all three of those employees were fired for violating company policies.

Though no Amazon employees in Chicago have been fired, members of DCH1 Amazonians United say they see a connection between the terminations at other facilities and the targeting and retaliation they’re experiencing following the four walkouts they held, one of which was captured on video and involved a caravan of community members whose cars temporarily shut down the delivery station and ultimately were dispersed by police.

“Management has been harassing and targeting individual DCH1 workers who participated in the four protest actions,” the group said in a petition published Friday evening. “. They are violating our rights, and are trying to intimidate us and bully us into submission.” The group is demanding Amazon clear the involved employees' records and reinstate fired workers in other states.

DCH1 Amazonians United credits their protests and petitions for what they say are somewhat improved safety conditions at Amazon: workers said they’re now provided with masks, their temperatures are checked before they start work, and while the building still hasn’t been closed for cleaning, the housekeeping crew has increased their efforts.

But they also said it’s difficult to adhere to six-foot social distancing rules while rushing to move packages as fast as Amazon expects them to, and workers who participated in the walkouts say those rules are being enforced selectively to target them.

How the rich reacted to the bubonic plague has eerie similarities to today’s pandemic

 April 18, 2020 The Conversation


The coronavirus can infect anyone, but recent reporting has shown your socioeconomic status can play a big role, with a combination of job security, access to health care and mobility widening the gap in infection and mortality rates between rich and poor.

The wealthy work remotely and flee to resorts or pastoral second homes, while the urban poor are packed into small apartments and compelled to keep showing up to work.

As a medievalist, I’ve seen a version of this story before.

Following the 1348 Black Death in Italy, the Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio wrote a collection of 100 novellas titled, “The Decameron.” These stories, though fictional, give us a window into medieval life during the Black Death – and how some of the same fissures opened up between the rich and the poor. Cultural historians today see “The Decameron” as an invaluable source of information on everyday life in 14th-century Italy.

Giovanni Boccaccio.
Leemage via Getty Images

Boccaccio was born in 1313 as the illegitimate son of a Florentine banker. A product of the middle class, he wrote, in “The Decameron,” stories about merchants and servants. This was unusual for his time, as medieval literature tended to focus on the lives of the nobility.

“The Decameron” begins with a gripping, graphic description of the Black Death, which was so virulent that a person who contracted it would die within four to seven days. Between 1347 and 1351, it killed between 40% and 50% of Europe’s population. Some of Boccaccio’s own family members died.

In this opening section, Boccaccio describes the rich secluding themselves at home, where they enjoy quality wines and provisions, music and other entertainment. The very wealthiest – whom Boccaccio describes as “ruthless” – deserted their neighborhoods altogether, retreating to comfortable estates in the countryside, “as though the plague was meant to harry only those remaining within their city walls.”

Meanwhile, the middle class or poor, forced to stay at home, “caught the plague by the thousand right there in their own neighborhood, day after day” and swiftly passed away. Servants dutifully attended to the sick in wealthy households, often succumbing to the illness themselves. Many, unable to leave Florence and convinced of their imminent death, decided to simply drink and party away their final days in nihilistic revelries, while in rural areas, laborers died “like brute beasts rather than human beings; night and day, with never a doctor to attend them.”

Josse Lieferinxe’s ‘Saint Sebastian Interceding for the Plague Stricken’ (c. 1498).
Wikimedia Commons

After the bleak description of the plague, Boccaccio shifts to the 100 stories. They’re narrated by 10 nobles who have fled the pallor of death hanging over Florence to luxuriate in amply stocked country mansions. From there, they tell their tales.

One key issue in “The Decameron” is how wealth and advantage can impair people’s abilities to empathize with the hardships of others. Boccaccio begins the forward with the proverb, “It is inherently human to show pity to those who are afflicted.” Yet in many of the tales he goes on to present characters who are sharply indifferent to the pain of others, blinded by their own drives and ambition.

In one fantasy story, a dead man returns from hell every Friday and ritually slaughters the same woman who had rejected him when he was alive. In another, a widow fends off a leering priest by tricking him into sleeping with her maid. In a third, the narrator praises a character for his undying loyalty to his friend when, in fact, he has profoundly betrayed that friend over many years.

Humans, Boccaccio seems to be saying, can think of themselves as upstanding and moral – but unawares, they may show indifference to others. We see this in the 10 storytellers themselves: They make a pact to live virtuously in their well-appointed retreats. Yet while they pamper themselves, they indulge in some stories that illustrate brutality, betrayal and exploitation.

Boccaccio wanted to challenge his readers, and make them think about their responsibilities to others. “The Decameron” raises the questions: How do the rich relate to the poor during times of widespread suffering? What is the value of a life?

In our own pandemic, with millions unemployed due to a virus that has killed thousands, these issues are strikingly relevant.

Kathryn McKinley, Professor of English, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=RED+DEATH

AP PHOTOS: In Iran, isolated musicians perform from rooftops

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — On the rooftop terrace of her Tehran apartment building, 28-year-old Mojgan Hosseini’s fingers pluck the strings of her qanun, an ancient stringed instrument, bringing life to an Iranian capital stilled by the coronavirus.

With performance halls closed and many isolated in their homes as a result of the Mideast’s worst virus outbreak, Hosseini and other Iranian musicians now find performance spaces where they can. That includes rooftops dotted with water tanks and littered with debris, empty front porches and opened apartment windows. Their music floats down on others stuck in their homes, fearful of the COVID-19 illness the virus brings.

Their impromptu concerts draw applause and offer hope to their listeners, even as public performances still draw hard-line scrutiny in the Islamic Republic.

“We’re not front-line medical workers, hospital custodians, or grocery workers, but I think many musicians — myself included — have felt an obligation to offer our services of comfort and entertainment in these trying times,” said Arif Mirbaghi, who plays the double bass in his front yard.

Iran has been hard-hit by the virus with more than 76,000 confirmed cases, including more than 4,700 fatalities.

In this Wednesday, April 8, 2020, photo, Behnam Emran, a 28 year-old self-taught musician, plays accordion on the roof of his home during mandatory self-isolation due to the new coronavirus disease outbreak, in Tehran Iran. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Musicians long have been a mainstay in Iranian life, dating back to the ancient Persian empires. Legend has it that King Jamshid, the fourth king of the Pishdadian Dynasty, known as the “king of the world,” created music with a four-stringed lyra.

Over time, Western influence brought with it the symphonies of Europe. Initially after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, pop and Western-influenced music all but disappeared. Classical music slowly re-emerged in the 1990s and has become increasingly popular. But women still cannot sing before audiences including men and hard-liners have broken up concerts that pushed the cultural limits imposed by Iran’s Shiite theocracy. Outside of Tehran, officials increasingly break up performances.
Full Coverage: Photography

But the coronavirus pandemic has loosened some mores, as doctors and nurses dance in social media videos that earlier could have served as grounds for arrest.

Among those taking to the rooftops are female musicians like 36-year-old composer and tar player Midya Farajnejad. A tar is a long-necked stringed instrument

In this Wednesday, April 8, 2020 photo, Behrad Soukhakian, a member of the National Orchestra of Iran and Tehran Symphony, 37, plays violin on the roof of his home during mandatory self-isolation due to the new coronavirus disease outbreak, in Tehran Iran. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

“It is not easy for me to stay at home and not be on stage or in studio during quarantine, so I ... play tar on the roof, to share my emotions with the neighbors,” Farajnejad said during a lull in one recent session.

Others, like 26-year-old accordion player Kaveh Ghafari, agree.

“During these quarantine days, the only place that I feel I can share my music is in my yard with my neighbors as my main audience,” he said. “These days I can feel the power of art more than ever.”

For Hosseini, the qanun player, the music gives her an outlet she’d otherwise have as a member of Iran’s National Orchestra. Only the occasional motorbike or bird’s chirp could be heard as she played one recent afternoon.

“Since COVID-19 hit Tehran, the rooftop terrace of my apartment has become my stage to perform and my neighbors have became my main audience these days,” she said.

In this Monday, March 30, 2020, photo, musician Shiva Abedi, 30, plays kamancheh on the roof of her home during mandatory self-isolation due to the new coronavirus disease outbreak, in Tehran Iran. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

In this Sunday, April 5, 2020 photo, musician Arif Mirbaghi, 33, plays double bass at the yard of his house during mandatory self-isolation due to the new coronavirus disease outbreak, in Tehran Iran. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

In this Wednesday, March 25, 2020, photo, musician Farideh Sarsangi, 28, plays drums on the roof of her home during mandatory self-isolation due to the new coronavirus disease outbreak, in Tehran Iran. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

In this Saturday, March 28, 2020 photo, composer and musician Midya Farajnejad, 36, plays tar on the roof of his home during mandatory self-isolation due to the new coronavirus disease outbreak, in Tehran Iran. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

In this Thursday, April 9, 2020 photo, musician Yasamin Koozehgar, 22, plays cello on the roof of her home during mandatory self-isolation due to the new coronavirus disease outbreak, in Tehran Iran. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

In this Wednesday, April 8, 2020 photo, Mohammad Maleklee, 23, of the National Orchestra of Iran and Tehran Symphony, plays saxophone on his window, during mandatory self-isolation due to the new coronavirus disease outbreak, in Tehran Iran. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

In this Sunday, April 5, 2020 photo, musician Kaveh Ghaffari, 26, plays accordion at the yard of his house during mandatory self-isolation due to the new coronavirus disease outbreak, in Tehran Iran. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

____

Hong Kong activists arrested over last year's democracy rallies

AFP / ISAAC LAWRENCEArrested former lawmaker and activist Martin Lee is known as the father of democracy in Hong Kong

Police in Hong Kong carried out a sweeping operation against high-profile democracy campaigners on Saturday, arresting 15 activists on charges related to massive protests that rocked the Asian financial hub last year.

Among those targeted was 72-year-old media tycoon Jimmy Lai, founder of anti-establishment newspaper Apple Daily, who was arrested at his home.

The group also included former lawmakers Martin Lee, Margaret Ng, Albert Ho, Leung Kwok-hung, Au Nok-hin and current lawmaker Leung Yiu-chung.

They are accused of organising and taking part in unlawful assemblies in August and October, according to the police.

Five were arrested on suspicion of publicising unauthorised public meetings in September and October.

"The arrestees were charged or will be charged with related crimes," superintendent Lam Wing-ho said.

All 15 are due to appear in court mid-May.

Media boss Lai was previously detained in February over his participation in another August rally that was banned by police for security reasons.

"Finally I've become a defendant. How do I feel? I'm very much relieved," Lee, known as the father of democracy in Hong Kong, told media after he was bailed.

"For so many years, so many months, so many good youngsters were arrested and charged, while I was not arrested. I feel sorry about it," the 81-year-old barrister and founding chairman of the city's first political party said.

He added he does not regret his actions and is proud to walk with Hong Kong's youngsters in their fight for democracy -- remarks the city's police chief Chris Tang said left him "very worried and surprised".

"As a veteran of the legal profession... he continues to incite youngsters to violate the law. I don't think he should feel proud, he should feel ashamed," Tang said.

AFP/File / Nicolas ASFOURIHong Kong was shaken by widespread and sometimes violent street protests in 2019

The semi-autonomous city was shaken by widespread and sometimes violent street protests in 2019, sparked by a now-abandoned proposal to allow extraditions to the authoritarian Chinese mainland and its opaque judicial system.

"Today's arrests of pro-democracy figures in Hong Kong is another nail in the coffin of 'one country, two systems'," China director at Human Rights Watch Sophie Richardson said, referring to the principle that guarantees freedoms in the city not seen on the Chinese mainland.

"It's hard to know Beijing's next precise move, but it seems Hong Kong officials will further enable abuses rather than defend Hong Kong people's rights."

Last year's rallies morphed into a wider movement calling for greater freedoms in the most concerted challenge to Beijing's rule since the former British colony returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1997.

The protests and clashes with police have since died down, partly due to exhaustion and arrests but also because of the emergence of the deadly coronavirus.

China's leaders have refused to accede to the protesters' demands, which include fully free elections in the city, an inquiry into alleged police misconduct during the protests and an amnesty for more than 7,000 people arrested during the movement -- many of them under the age of 20.

Pro-democracy lawmaker Claudia Mo said Saturday the local government "is trying very hard to introduce a reign of terror".

"They are doing whatever they can do to try to silence, to take down the local opposition, but then united we stand," she said. "It's so obvious they're choreographing all their acts."

Chris Patten, Hong Kong's last colonial governor before the 1997 handover, said the arrests were another step towards burying the city's autonomy.

"This is not the rule of law. This is what authoritarian governments do," he said. "It becomes ever more clear, week by week and day by day, that Beijing is determined to throttle Hong Kong."

<div> <br class="Apple-interchange-newline">https://apnews.com/cd48443b426c63490a169cb2d5b097dc</div>

Hong Kong police arrest democracy 

activists, media tycoon

By ZEN SOO


1 of 5
Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai, center, who founded local newspaper Apple Daily, is arrested by police officers at his home in Hong Kong, Saturday, April 18, 2020. Hong Kong police arrested at least 14 pro-democracy lawmakers and activists on Saturday on charges of joining unlawful protests last year calling for reforms. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu)HONG KONG (AP) — Hong Kong police arrested at least 14 veteran pro-democracy lawmakers, activists and a media tycoon on Saturday on charges of joining unlawful protests last year calling for reforms.

Among those arrested were 81-year-old activist and former lawmaker Martin Lee and democracy advocates Albert Ho, Lee Cheuk-yan and Au Nok-hin.

Police also arrested media tycoon Jimmy Lai, who founded the local newspaper Apple Daily.

Lai, Lee Cheuk-yan and Yeung Sum — a former lawmaker from the Democratic Party — were charged in February over their involvement in a mass anti-government demonstration on Aug. 31 last year. The protests in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory against proposed extradition legislation exposed deep divisions between democracy-minded Hong Kongers and the Communist Party-ruled central government in Beijing.


The bill — which would have allowed Hong Kong residents to be sent to mainland China to stand trial — has been withdrawn, but the protests continued for more than seven months, centered around demands for voting rights and an independent inquiry into police conduct.

While the protests began peacefully, they increasingly descended into violence after demonstrators became frustrated with the government’s response. They feel that Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam has ignored their demands and used the police to suppress them.

The League of Social Democrats wrote in a Facebook post on Saturday that its leaders were among those arrested, including chairman Raphael Wong. They were accused of participating in two unauthorized protests on Aug. 18 and Oct. 1 last year.

‘I am so afraid’: India’s poor face world’s largest lockdown
By TIM SULLIVAN and SHEIKH SAALIQ

1 of 26
In this April 3, 2020, photo, Rajesh Dhaikar's children play with balloons in their house in Prayagraj, India. Dhaikar has a small balloon stall in a nearby market, selling plastic bursts of red and blue and yellow one at a time, and rarely earning more than $2.50 a day. His wife, Suneeta, makes about $20 a month cleaning homes. They have five children, ranging in age and a bank account with about $6.50 in it. India has launched one of the most draconian social experiments in human history, locking down its entire population, including hundreds of millions of people who struggle to survive on a few dollars a day. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)




The street peddler watched the prime minister’s speech on a battered TV, with her family of five crowded around her in a one-room house with no toilet and no running water. It’s squeezed into a Mumbai shantytown controlled by an obscure Mumbai organized crime family.

Mina Jakhawadiya knew that outside, somewhere in India, the coronavirus had arrived, wending its way through this sprawling nation of 1.3 billion people. But the invisible danger seemed far away.

Then suddenly it wasn’t.

“Every state, every district, every lane, every village will be under lockdown” for three weeks, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told the nation on March 24, giving India four hours’ notice to prepare. “If you can’t handle these 21 days, this country and your family will go back 21 years.”


As governments around the world try to slow the spread of the coronavirus, India has launched one of the most draconian social experiments in human history, locking down its entire population -- including about 176 million people who struggle to survive on $1.90 a day or less. Modi’s order allows Indians out of their homes only to buy food, medicine or other essentials. No going to work. No school. No playgrounds.




As governments try to slow the spread of the coronavirus, India has launched one of the most draconian social experiments in human history. Its entire population is locked down, including millions who struggle to survive on $1.90 a day or less. (April 17)

India’s handling of the lockdown and the ever-spreading virus is a test for the developing world, offering clues to how countries from Bangladesh to Nigeria can fight COVID-19 without forcing their poorest citizens into even worse hunger and further destitution.

While India’s economy has boomed over the past two decades, pulling vast numbers out of extreme poverty, inequality also has grown.

Those near the top can hunker down in gated apartment complexes, watching Bollywood movies on Netflix and ordering food deliveries online. But not Jakhawadiya, who makes a living selling cheap plastic buckets and baskets with her husband on the streets of Mumbai.

For her, the order means 21 days in a 6-by-9-foot room with five people, no work, a couple days of food and the equivalent of about $13 in cash.

She looked at Modi speaking on their little television, spattered with stickers left over the years by one child or another.

“I am so afraid,” she thought.

___

In this March 31, 2020, photo, Mina Ramesh Jakhawadiya, center, watches news on coronavirus along with her children in her one room house in a slum in Mumbai, India. Jakhawadiya makes a living selling cheap plastic goods with her husband on the streets of Mumbai. For her, the order means 21 days in a 6-by-9 foot room with five people, no work, a couple days of food and very less cash. As governments around the world debate ways to slow the spread of coronavirus, India has launched one of the most draconian social experiments in human history, locking down its entire population, including hundreds of millions of people who struggle to survive on a few dollars a day. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

This story was produced with the support of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

___

March 27

Across India

The reasons for the lockdown are clear.

While India had only 536 confirmed coronavirus cases and 10 deaths when Modi gave his speech, it’s also one of the most crowded places on Earth, a nation where social distancing is impossible for millions. The risk is that it could hopscotch from the Himalayas to South India, ravaging cities and villages. Mumbai, for instance, has a population density of 77,000 people per square mile — nearly three times higher than New York City, which crowding helped turn into one of the world’s deadliest epicenters.

Then there’s India’s medical system. Except for private health care for those who can afford it, the medical system barely functions across wide swathes of the country. Public hospitals, especially outside major cities, often have limited supplies, questionable cleanliness and third-rate doctors.

Very few people have been tested, so the true scale of the outbreak is unknown. If India’s hospital system were overrun by COVID-19 cases, it could collapse in days, leaving untold numbers to die.

As a result, many experts say Modi had to act as he did to buy time to prepare.

The lockdown means India has “probably pushed out the epidemic peak by three to eight weeks,” said Ramanan Laxminarayan, an epidemiologist and economist who directs the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy in Washington.

But that logic means little for Indians at the bottom of the economic ladder. For these people — for Jakhawadiya in Mumbai, for a maid walking to her home village in the north, for a watchman bicycling his way across the country — three weeks can be an eternity.

“If they stopped the lockdown for just a few days then I could go into town and earn some money,” said Paresh Talukdar, a beggar who supports a family of five in India’s far northeast state of Assam with food supplies down to almost nothing. “One or two days (of lockdown) would be OK, but 21 days is a very long time.”

Now 60, Talukdar lost his left leg and hand more than 30 years ago in a fight over family land. In normal times, he rides a bus from his tiny village to the nearest city, where there are enough people to make a living begging. Most days bring him about $2.50.

But now there’s no bus to take, and few people out on the streets anyway.

Already, he says, the ever-growing hunger has made it hard to sleep. “Thoughts are always coming into my mind, like: What’s going to happen tomorrow?”

___

March 29

Lucknow, north India

For five days after the lockdown began, in a city in the north Indian plains, the maid wondered what she should do.

Ramshri Verma lives in a shantytown on the fringes of Lucknow, a noisy, chaotic city of nearly 4 million people. On the morning after Modi’s speech, she went to the home where she has worked for the past two years.

“I didn’t know what they meant by a ‘lockdown,’” she said.

She knocked. Her employers shouted at her through the closed door.

“They told me to come back after 21 days,” Verma said. They also told her she wouldn’t be paid for those days.

She walked home, stopping at a few small stores. She bought rice, cooking oil, spices and lentils, basic staples for many Indians. That left her with 300 rupees — about $4 — for her, her husband and their two children.

Then the family waited. They don’t own a television, so the children bickered about who could watch videos on their only phone.

By March 29, the family was out of food and there was only one place to go: back to the ancestral village where she and her husband were raised. That morning, with bus and train networks shut down, they joined the swarms of migrants who spilled out of cities to walk, sometimes for hundreds of miles, to their home villages.

It was an epidemiologist’s nightmare - and the last thing India needed as it struggled to stop the coronavirus from spreading. The numbers already were rising with worrying speed, reaching 1,024 cases and 27 deaths.

For Verma, home was some 90 kilometers (55 miles) away in Sanjrabad, a tiny grid of streets surrounded by lush fields of sugarcane.

“There were thousands of people who were walking,” she said. “Along the way I met other people who came from my village and we started to walk together.”

The children were tired. Their feet hurt. They cried.

But she and her husband pushed them on.

Late that night, they reached the edge of Sanjrabad and thought they would go home for dinner. But the village leader came out to stop them.

“’You could be infected with the virus,’” he said, ordering them into quarantine in the village school.

There were no medical checks, and no police to enforce the order. But in the ways of rural India, it’s hard to refuse a village head.

Minutes later, everyone was locked inside.



In this March 31, 2020, photo, Mina Ramesh Jakhawadiya, right with her son Ritik Ramesh in her lap watches news on coronavirus as her daughter Guddi Ramesh brushes her teeth in their one room house in a slum in Mumbai, India. Jakhawadiya, who makes a living selling cheap plastic goods with her husband on the streets of Mumbai. For her, the order means 21 days in a 6-by-9 foot room with five people, no work, a couple days of food and very less cash. As governments around the world debate ways to slow the spread of coronavirus, India has launched one of the most draconian social experiments in human history, locking down its entire population, including hundreds of millions of people who struggle to survive on a few dollars a day. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)


___

March 31

Prayagraj, central India

The balloon seller just couldn’t get used to the lockdown.

“There is a strange stillness in our neighborhood since all this started,” said Rajesh Dhaikar.

Normally, he has a small stall in a nearby market, selling plastic bursts of red and blue and yellow one at a time, and rarely earning more than $2.50 a day. His wife, Suneeta, makes about $20 a month cleaning homes.

They have two rooms with a thatch roof covered with a blue tarpaulin. In the rainy season, water seeps in. The single light dangles from a cord.

Suneeta sleeps on the only bed. The five kids sleep on the floor lined up under blankets. Rajesh sometimes sleeps on the sidewalk out front, stretched out on a cart handmade from wooden planks and bicycle tires.

They have a bank account — with about $6.50 in it.

Nearly half the family’s income comes from their 17-year-old son Deepak, a thin, wiry boy with carefully combed hair and a teenager’s bored slouch. He dropped out of school after 7th grade and now makes about $40 a month working in a neighborhood tea stall. One day, he says, he’ll have his own stall.

When he can, Deepak slips outside to play cricket with friends. They scatter when the police come by, then return to their match a few minutes later.

His mother doesn’t like it. Suneeta doesn’t completely understand coronavirus, but she knows getting near other people can kill you.

“What else do you expect from a 17-year-old? He doesn’t listen to anyone and does whatever he wants,” she said.

___

April 3

Along Highway 48, western India

The watchman confronted the lockdown by buying a bicycle.

A skinny, soft-spoken 30-year-old with a carefully trimmed beard, Mohammed Arif was working as a guard at a Mumbai apartment building when he got a call on April 1. His 60-year-old father had suffered a brain hemorrhage, and was battling for his life in a hospital in Rajouri, a small town in the Himalayan foothills of Kashmir.

By then the lockdown had begun. Buses and trains sat idle. Flights had been cancelled, though he couldn’t have afforded a ticket anyway.

So Arif bought a Hero Ranger bicycle with fading purple paint from a fellow guard for about $8, and set off the next morning with the equivalent of $12 in his pocket and a small rucksack with clothes, a loaf of bread and a water bottle.

His destination was 1,300 miles (2,100 kilometers) away.

“What choice do I have?” Arif said in a phone call at the end of his first day, when he still had more than 2,000 kilometers to go. “He has no one else.”

“Poor people suffer always and face tribulations. There’s no escape,” he said. “But at least my conscience is clear.”

Repeatedly, Arif stumbled onto people who helped him. In one town, a man running a tiny tire-repair shop offered him chicken and rice. A couple days later, a truck driver shared his lunch.

One of the biggest surprises: the police. The Indian poor often fear the police, who regularly demand bribes and beat people with their bamboo staffs. But while police stopped Arif a few times, they always let him pass once he told his story.

He sleeps near gas stations, because they are well lit, or at closed roadside restaurants. Sometimes, he stops when he simply can go no further.

“I reached a highway village last night and wanted to rest there until dawn. But the villagers told me to go away,” he said in one early morning phone call. “They said people might harm me, or even kill me.”

He quickly left and kept pedaling until he reached a small forest.

“I stopped and I’m now waiting for sunrise,” he said.

A few days later, luck won out. After 450 kilometers (300 miles) of cycling, India’s paramilitary police picked him up and, in a public relations display, arranged trucks to take him to the hospital where they were transferring his father.

He brought the bicycle with him.

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April 6

Sanjrabad, north India

For three days, Ramshri Verma and the other migrants remained locked in the school in her ancestral village. Local officials brought them nothing. The group begged passersby for food and water.

Finally, a team of doctors escorted by police opened the school’s doors. The doctors stood well back, talking to the group from a distance.

For Verma and her family, quarantine was over.

The doctors didn’t check anyone’s temperatures or run any tests. “They only told us that we should wash our hands and then we were told to go home,” she said.

The maid and her family moved into her father in-law’s house.

At first it felt like being released from prison, but it quickly became clear things wouldn’t be much easier.

Because they weren’t registered in the village, they were not eligible for the food rations that local officials were occasionally distributing for the poor. They are surviving on handouts from family of flour and rice, and a few dollars her husband earned working as a laborer for a couple of days.

The neighbors avoid them, especially when they walk to the communal tap to get water, fearing they carry coronavirus.

She keeps her children at home. When they aren’t watching phone videos, they join her on the roof.

“We can see a lot of things from the roof: cows, goats, buffaloes,” said Verma.

The children also watch the village kids play. But they never join in.

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April 10

Mumbai, western India

Things were growing tense in the Jakhawadiya house. So many days locked together in a tiny space. So little to do. They watched TV — state television was rebroadcasting The Ramayana, an iconic, 78-episode series based on the Hindu epic that was wildly popular in the 1980s — but that eats up only so much time.

The gangsters who run the neighborhood had come by a few times for their $65 monthly rent, which was due on April 1. But the family didn’t have the money.

Mina Jakhawadiya was worried. The family was hungry, though aid groups were distributing enough food every few days to keep the worst hunger at bay.

“I know we are facing bad days ahead,” said Jakhawadiya, a fierce-eyed 47-year-old woman who, like many in India’s vast slums, is a force of will. She knew how to arrange for a daughter’s heart surgery and can feed her family on her minuscule profits. But she’s never faced anything like this.

When things grew especially difficult, it was her quiet husband, Ramesh, who defused the tension, joking and roughhousing with the kids.

“I saw him laughing today,” Mina said in early April, clearly surprised. “The kids were laughing too. I felt really good inside but I have this perpetual fear of what might happen next. Today we have a roof to sleep under, but what if tomorrow we’re evicted? What if we have no food?”

She refuses to watch the news. By April 10, coronavirus cases had reached 7,598, with 226 deaths.

“There is no good news right now,” she said. “All they talk about on the television is people dying.”

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April 12

Prayagraj, central India

The teenage tea-stall worker, Deepak Dhaikar, was increasingly unhappy.

“The lockdown was not the right decision,” grumbled Deepak, whose friends no longer came out to play cricket. “The rich can survive even if the lockdown stretches for a year, but what will the poor do?”

Without even a television, he had started going to bed earlier, and waking up later. One day was blurring into the next.

But sometimes, a 17-year-old who knows the streets can be useful.

When a call came that his grandparents had run out of bread, his mother turned to Deepak.

His grandparents live a few miles (kilometers) away. She gave him a half-kilo (one pound) of flour and sent him out into the streets. He jogged through roads, alleys and fields, dodging police checkpoints or talking his way through them, until he reached his grandparents and delivered the food.

But like Deepak, many in India were growing frustrated as the lockdown stretched on.

On April 10, as cases kept climbing, hundreds of migrant workers desperate to return home took to the streets in the western city of Surat, burning cars. Police arrested at least 80 people.

Two days later, outside a wholesale vegetable market in the north Indian city of Patiala, police stopped a car of Sikh men, who carry swords as a declaration of their faith. When the police refused to let the men in without curfew passes, the Sikhs injured three policemen, chopping off the hand of one.

Across the country, small towns and villages had started closing themselves off, trying to keep the virus away.

“No outsiders allowed,” said a sign on a makeshift barricade in a village north of New Delhi, where groups of men demanded identification from passersby.

An hour’s drive away, in the barricaded village of Siroli, squads of young people were patrolling in search of Muslims, who increasingly were being blamed for the virus after a large spike in cases from a New Delhi meeting of an Islamic group.

“No Muslim is allowed in our village,” said Mohan Kumar, the leader of Siroli.

Such suspicions have threatened to widen religious fault lines that ripped New Delhi just weeks ago, when Hindu mobs attacked Muslims and dozens were killed.

In early April, the government tightened the lockdown in specific areas, using police to seal off neighborhoods with multiple infections, and ordering all stores closed and residents to remain at home. Government workers would deliver food and medicine.

In New Delhi alone, 23 such hot spots were ordered sealed on April 8. But in Deepak’s neighborhood, social distancing still seemed impossible.

“Poor families like ours live in crowded neighborhoods,” he said. “It’s hard to stay away from each other.”
In this March 30, 2020, photo, Mina Ramesh Jakhawadiya, center, scolds her son Ritik Ramesh, left, not to go out and play because of coronavirus and be in the house in Mumbai, India. Jakhawadiya makes a living selling cheap plastic goods with her husband on the streets of Mumbai. For her, the order means 21 days in a 6-by-9 foot room with five people, no work, a couple days of food and very less cash. As governments around the world debate ways to slow the spread of coronavirus, India has launched one of the most draconian social experiments in human history, locking down its entire population, including hundreds of millions of people who struggle to survive on a few dollars a day. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)__

April 14

Across India

In the tiny Mumbai house with plastic walls, Jakhawadiya’s family again gathered around the battered television to watch the prime minister.

Three weeks had passed since the lockdown began, and the virus had spread exponentially, from 536 confirmed cases to 11,487. Deaths jumped from 10 to 339. Both numbers, which are widely seen as undercounts, continued to climb.

“You have endured immense suffering to save your country,” Modi told the nation in his speech.

Then he announced the lockdown would continue for two more weeks, though some areas could be reopened next Monday. He gave few details. “It undoubtedly looks costly right now. But measured against the lives of Indian citizens, there is no comparison.”

Modi pleaded for Indians to look out for their neighbors: “Take care of as many poor people as you can.”

Mina Jakhawadiya and her family were stunned. That day, the rent collector had shouted at her and demanded payment. They still had received no government food handouts.

“We will die if people stop giving us food,” she said.

For the poor, hunger had become a worse enemy than COVID-19. People feared the virus — but the larger fear was about simply getting through the next two weeks. And what if the lockdown was extended again?

Elsewhere in Mumbai, thousands of migrants and slum-dwellers, furious over the lockdown extension, charged a train station demanding to go home. Police beat them back with bamboo batons.

In Assam, Talukdar, the beggar, was terrified: “Every day we are eating less food,” he said. His family was surviving on a monthly government food ration of 20 kilos (44 pounds) of rice, and meager handouts.

And in Prayagraj, the balloon seller was furious.

“These big leaders take decisions in their big houses!” said Rajesh Dhaikar.

“Did anyone ask the poor what they are eating?”


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Associated Press journalists Rafiq Maqbool, Rajesh Kumar Singh, Anupam Nath, Channi Anand, Aijaz Hussain, Emily Schmall and Yirmiyan Arthur contributed to this report.