Do masks with antiviral coating offer more protection?

By The Associated Press


Do masks with antiviral coating offer more protection?

It’s an intriguing idea, but there haven’t been enough rigorous independent studies to establish whether antiviral masks are better at protecting wearers or preventing the spread of the virus.

Their specifics vary, but many antiviral masks are supposed to be made or coated with materials that have extra virus-fighting properties, such as copper.

Websites for several antiviral masks do not provide detailed information about how researchers tested their safety or effectiveness, said Hyo-Jick Choi, a materials science expert at the University of Alberta.

But it usually takes years to design and test new mask technology, said Choi, who is part of a group that has been developing a different type of antiviral mask since before the pandemic.

Masks marketed as being “antiviral” often cost more than N-95 and surgical masks. A single coated mask can cost up to $10; disposable surgical masks and N-95 masks sell at large retailers for between 35 cents and $3 per mask.

Choi said a simpler way to boost the effectiveness of the masks you’re already using is to ensure you’re putting them on, wearing them and taking them off correctly.

Full Coverage: Viral Questions

And no mask can fully protect wearers, “but almost any mask can help to protect others around the wearers,” said Jiaxing Huang, a professor of materials science and engineering at Northwestern University.

___

EXPLAINER: 

What’s with the confusion over masks?

By ANDREW SELSKY

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A sign in multiple languages encourages citizens to wear face coverings to help prevent the spread of COVID-19, Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2020, in Portland, Maine.

 (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)


A lot of the effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus comes down to a seemingly simple concept: Wearing a mask.

But the issue has proven a thorny one. Health authorities have changed their guidance on who should wear masks and when to wear them. This has led to some confusion and even suspicion.

But since the coronavirus first appeared, authorities have gained a better understanding of how it spreads and how masks can help stop that spread.

Here’s a look at how what we know about masks has changed, and how government officials are increasingly getting behind the idea of mandating the use of masks.

WHAT DO THE EXPERTS SAY?

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has long advised people to wear masks because they help prevent people who are infected — whether they know it or not — from spreading the coronavirus.

But last week, the CDC added a new reason: masks can also protect wearers who are not infected, though to a lesser degree.

The agency referred to a study led by Japanese researchers that found masks block about 60% of the amount of virus that comes out of an infected person. When an uninfected person wearing a mask is near an infected person who isn’t wearing one, the amount of virus the uninfected person inhaled fell by up to 50%.

But when BOTH people are wearing masks, that produced the best result. The decline in virus particles reaching the second person was close to 70%.

So, if everyone wears a mask when social distancing is not feasible, the infection rate will be cut, experts say.

A study done in Denmark, published Wednesday in Annals of Internal Medicine, seemed to question whether and to what extent masks protect the wearer. The study had a number of flaws, however, as the researchers acknowledged. For example, study participants who were supposed to wear masks sometimes didn’t. And the work was done at a time when not much coronavirus was spreading in Denmark – meaning there wasn’t a lot of data to draw conclusions from.

Either way, experts say masks, while helpful, are not perfect. Keeping a distance, being in well-ventilated areas, and washing hands are also important ways to reduce risk.

HOW IS THIS DIFFERENT FROM WHAT THEY’VE SAID BEFORE?

U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams tweeted on Feb. 29: “Seriously people — STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus”

But today, Adams has a different message pinned to the top of his Twitter account.

“When we can’t stay six feet away from others, please, I’m begging you, wear a face covering,” Adams says in the videotaped July 2 tweet.

And in July, the CDC stressed that cloth face coverings are a critical tool in the fight against COVID-19, particularly when everyone wears them.

Similarly, the World Health Organization early on had recommended against mask-wearing for the general public, saying they might lead to a false sense of security and that people who didn’t know how to use them properly could infect themselves.

The World Health Organization changed its advice in June, and now says people should wear them when they can’t be socially distant.

WHAT ARE THE FEDERAL REQUIREMENTS ON MASKS?

In the United States, there are none. The CDC has made only recommendations.

And the attitude from the White House has been casual at best. Before the election, President Donald Trump often ridiculed his then Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, for wearing one whenever he was out in public. The president also held rallies that brought together thousands of supporters, most of them not wearing masks.

Biden, now president-elect, has said repeatedly that there should be a nationwide mask mandate. He has also promised to ask every governor to impose mask rules. For those who refuse, he’s vowed to go around them to seek similar mandates at the county or local level until the entire country is covered.

Some other countries have already mandated mask use, from requiring them everywhere in public to using them on public transportation and in stores.

Full Coverage: Viral Questions

HOW ARE U.S. STATES HANDLING THE SITUATION?

It’s a mix. As of Tuesday, 36 states have some type of mask mandate.

Republican governors in Iowa, North Dakota and Utah — all states that are being hit hard — have recently reversed course and required at least limited mask use. Others have extended or expanded earlier orders.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds cast some doubt Tuesday on the science behind masks even as she imposed a limited mask rule, noting that neighboring states with mask mandates have seen rising numbers of cases, although not as severely as Iowa.

“If you look, you can find whatever you want to support wherever you are at,” she said.

In California, a more stringent mask mandate took effect on Tuesday. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom said residents will be required to cover up outdoors, with limited exceptions.

——

AP Medical Writer Mike Stobbe contributed to this story from New York.

___

Follow Andrew Selsky on Twitter at https://twitter.com/andrewselsky

LEARN MORE:
– Do I need to wear a mask if I’m 6 feet away from others?
– Does a face mask protect me, or just the people around me?
– Can I use a face shield instead of a mask?

– Does wearing a mask pose any health risks?
– How should I clean and store my face mask?
– Should runners wear a face mask outdoors?

Review: 

In ‘Collective,’ the rot of government corruption
By JAKE COYLE

This image released by Magnolia Pictures shows Cătălin Tolontan in a scene from "Collective." (Magnolia Pictures via AP)

A politicized healthcare crisis, horrifyingly unnecessary death, a crucial election. “Collective,” a piercing documentary about corruption in Romania, may not directly concern current events but it feels urgent and vital just the same.

In 2015, a fire swept through a Bucharest nightclub without emergency exits. Footage early in “Collective” (in theaters and on-demand Friday) captures the frighteningly fast flames engulfing the crowded club just after, fittingly, a punk band scream a song about endemic corruption in the Eastern European country. The fire left 27 dead and 180 injured. But the real scandal came after; another 37 people died of burn wounds that shouldn’t have been life threatening.


It’s in that aftermath that Romanian director Alexander Nanau began trailing the journalists of Gazeta Sporturilor, a sports tabloid that under editor Cătălin Tolontan consistently advanced the story with dogged reporting. They uncovered the heinous reason for the out-of-control bacteria in Romanian hospitals: a firm called Hexi Pharma, along with a mafia network of politically appointed hospital managers, were diluting disinfectant. Seldom will you find an uglier or more apt metaphor for corruption than — in one of the Sporturilor’s breaks — the image of maggots crawling in uncleaned wound.

This image released by Magnolia Pictures  from "Collective." 

(Magnolia Pictures via AP)

So, no, “Collective” is not a walk in the park. But it’s admirably awake to the cause-and-effect tragedies that can follow seemingly slight or obscure governmental decisions. As a journalism drama, it’s as absorbing as “Spotlight” and more sober than “All the President’s Men.” Filmed in a observation style, there are meetings with whistleblowers, photo stake-outs and deep data dives —the nuts and bolts of reporting. But scoops yield no high-fiving celebrations, just mournful disbelief at the wanton cruelty and ineptitude they uncover. “The story is so mind blowing I’m afraid people will think we’re crazy,” one reporter says.

“Collective” take a turn midway, shifting its focus to a newly installed health minister, Vlad Voiculescu who takes over following the resignation of his under-pressure predecessor. A former patients’ rights activist, Voiculescu is strikingly more candid, and gives Nanau remarkable access to his meetings. He seeks immediate reforms to the hospital system but is continually met by bureaucratic red tape and, eventually, a pseudo scandal propagated by a conservative news network. Still, he ever more bluntly beats back against the rot. After six months, his work hangs in the balance in a national election that will see the populist party easily defeat foes of corruption and turn Voiculescu out of a job. “Collective,” a document of a modern corruption that can fester and thrive anywhere, ends with a mortifying shudder and tears at a gravesite.

“Collective,” a Magnolia Pictures release, is unrated by the Motion Picture Association of America but contains violent imagery. In Romanian with subtitles. Running time: 109 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.

___

Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

WHY ALMO WOULDN'T RECOGNIZE BIDEN, YET

US drops case against ex-Mexican general after pressure

“It is ironic ... that Trump began his administration screaming about Mexicans who were bringing in drugs and ends his presidency by preventing the prosecution of a Mexican general who is a drug lord.”

By LARRY NEUMEISTER, MICHAEL R. SISAK and MARK STEVENSON

 In this Sept. 16, 2016 file photo, Defense Secretary Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos, left, and Mexico's President Enrique Pena Nieto, salute during the annual Independence Day military parade in Mexico City's main square. U.S. prosecutors on Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2020, formally dropped a drug trafficking and money laundering case against Gen. Cienfuegos, a decision that came after Mexico threatened to cut off cooperation with U.S. authorities unless the general was sent home. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)


NEW YORK (AP) — The United States on Wednesday dropped a high-profile drug trafficking and money laundering case against a former Mexican defense secretary, an extraordinary reversal that followed an intense pressure campaign from Mexico.

The full scope of Mexico’s pressure was not clear and officials were vague about what led them to drop charges in a case they celebrated as a major breakthrough just last month, when federal agents nabbed retired Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos in Los Angeles.

Two officials, one Mexican and one American, said Mexico’s tactics involved threatening to expel the Drug Enforcement Administration’s regional director and agents unless the U.S. dropped the case. But they said that was only part of the negotiation. They would not elaborate.

The officials asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the case.

A judge in New York City approved the dismissal of charges on Wednesday, capping a lightning-fast turnaround in a case that drew loud protests from top officials in Mexico and threatened to damage the delicate relationship that enables investigators in both countries to pursue drug kingpins together.

Mexico depicted the case as a victory for the country’s sovereignty and its demand to be treated as an equal partner by the United States, a striking position given that most think that Mexico’s court system — and corrupt officials — are the weak links in the country’s fight against drug trafficking.

The U.S. cited America’s relationship with Mexico as its reason for dropping the case.

“The United States determined that the broader interest in maintaining that relationship in a cooperative way outweighed the department’s interest and the public’s interest in pursuing this particular case,” Seth DuCharme, the acting U.S. Attorney in Brooklyn, told the judge at a hearing.

He said the decision to drop the charges was made by Attorney General William Barr.

Mexican Foreign Relations Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said Wednesday that he told Barr that the U.S. had to choose between trying Cienfuegos and having continued cooperation.

“It is in your hands. You can’t have both,” Ebrard said he told Barr. “You cannot have close cooperation with all of Mexico’s institutions and at the same time do this.”

The Justice Department declined comment when asked about Ebrard’s account.

By early evening, a charter jet carrying Cienfuegos, accompanied by U.S. Marshals, had landed in Mexico.

Cienfuegos, 72, was secretly indicted by a federal grand jury in New York in 2019. He was accused of conspiring with the H-2 cartel in Mexico to smuggle thousands of kilos of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana while he was defense secretary from 2012 to 2018.

Prosecutors said intercepted messages showed that Cienfuegos accepted bribes in exchange for ensuring the military did not take action against the cartel and that operations were initiated against its rivals. He was also accused of introducing cartel leaders to other corrupt Mexican officials.

Mexican officials complained that the U.S. failed to share evidence against Cienfuegos and that his arrest came as a surprise. It also caused alarm within Mexico’s military, which has played a crucial role in operations against drug cartels.

Gladys McCormick, a history professor at Syracuse University who specializes in the U.S.-Mexico relationship, said prosecuting Cienfuegos would have been enormously fraught for the United States.

“Following through on prosecuting Cienfuegos would have compromised intelligence gathering and joint military operations for years to come, which is part of the reason why the original arrest was so scandalous,” McCormick said. “He truly is untouchable and sacrosanct because of both what he represents and the secrets he carries with him.”

Mexico has repeatedly extradited major drug suspects, including at least some former elected officials, for trial in the United States. In the case of Cienfuegos, Mexican officials have taken no official position on whether he is innocent or guilty, saying that was up to the attorney general’s office to decide.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office would decide whether Cienfuegos was placed in custody once he is returned. But given that there are no charges yet in Mexico, he is likely to be set free.

“This does not signify impunity; it means that an investigation will be started,” López Obrador said.

It is rare for a highly prized defendant in a U.S. case to be arrested and then released in short order for reasons of diplomacy. Historically, it has been more likely to occur in cases involving espionage than drug trafficking.

U.S. prosecutors in Manhattan have recently resisted diplomatic efforts by another U.S. ally, Turkey, to get charges dropped against a large state-owned bank accused of violating sanctions on Iran.

Cienfuegos, a general who led Mexico’s army department for six years under then-President Enrique Peña Nieto, was the highest-ranking former Mexican Cabinet official arrested since top security official Genaro Garcia Luna was arrested in Texas in 2019.

Analysts said Cienfuegos is unlikely to face charges in Mexico.

“That is not going to happen, we all know it,” columnist Carlos Loret de Mola wrote in the newspaper El Universal. “He will return to Mexico and be set free, because that is the promise that President López Obrador made to the army.”

Outside the Brooklyn courthouse, defense attorney Edward Sapone noted that Cienfuegos has pleaded not guilty and had planned to prove his innocence.

Cienfuegos spoke little in court, answering a few questions from the judge through an interpreter.

López Obrador has entrusted Mexico’s army and navy with a broader range of tasks than most other previous Mexican presidents, and he faced pressure to win Cienfuegos’ return.

The old ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party had previously called on Mexico’s government to pay Cienfuegos’ legal fees, and on Tuesday it celebrated the decision to drop the charges. Party leader Alejandro Moreno wrote in his Twitter account that the party “resolutely supports Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos. ... We should all congratulate ourselves and always support our armed forces.”

Mike Vigil, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s former chief of international operations, said the decision “is nothing more than a gift, a huge gift” from President Donald Trump to López Obrador, probably given as a favor for past help on immigration issues.

He said the chances of Cienfuegos being convicted in Mexico are “slim to none,” noting the former defense secretary’s political connections in Mexico and the country’s idolization of the military.

U.S. civil rights lawyer Ron Kuby said the Cienfuegos case marks an odd capstone to the Trump administration.

“It is ironic ... that Trump began his administration screaming about Mexicans who were bringing in drugs and ends his presidency by preventing the prosecution of a Mexican general who is a drug lord.”

___

Associated Press writers Joshua Goodman in Miami and E. Eduardo Castillo in Mexico City contributed to this report.

THEY CUT DOWN HIS HOME
Hoot, hoot, hoot! Owl in Rockefeller Center Christmas tree

In this photo provided by the Ravensbeard Wildlife Center, Ravensbeard Wildlife Center Director and founder Ellen Kalish holds a Saw-whet owl at their facility in Saugerties, N.Y., Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2020. A worker helping to get the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree in New York City found the tiny owl among the tree's massive branches on Monday, Nov. 16. Now named Rockefeller, the owl was brought to the Ravensbeard Wildlife Center for care. 

(Lindsay Possumato/Ravensbeard Wildlife Center via AP)

NEW YORK (AP) — It wasn’t quite a partridge in a pear tree, but a worker helping set up the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree found a holiday surprise — a tiny owl among the massive branches.

The little bird, now named what else but Rockefeller, was discovered on Monday, dehydrated and hungry, but otherwise unharmed, said Ellen Kalish, director and founder of the Ravensbeard Wildlife Center in Saugerties, New York, where the bird was taken.

Kalish said the bird is an adult male Saw-whet owl, one of the tiniest owls. It was taken to a veterinarian on Wednesday and got a clean bill of health.

“He’s had a buffet of all-you-can-eat mice, so he’s ready to go,” she said.

She said the plan was to release the owl back to the wild this weekend.

The tree, a 75-foot (23-meter) Norway spruce, had been brought to Manhattan on Saturday from Oneonta, New York, in the central part of the state. The tree is put in place and then decorated over some weeks before being lit for the public in early December.

A TREE THAT SIZE IS OVER 100 YEARS OLD AND 

IS A HOME TOO MANY BIRDS LIKE A HUMAN APARTMENT BUILDING

DECONSTRUCTING GOVERNMENT
Trump pushes new environmental rollbacks on way out the door

By MATTHEW BROWN and ELLEN KNICKMEYER

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FILE - This June 5, 2009, file photo shows a Redtail hawk feeding a snake to one of her young ones nested at the Rocky Mountain Wildlife Refuge in Commerce City, Colo. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 is a vital tool for protecting more than 1,000 species of birds including hawks and other birds of prey. (AP Photo/Ed Andrieski, File)


BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — Down to its final weeks, the Trump administration is working to push through dozens of environmental rollbacks that could weaken century-old protections for migratory birds, expand Arctic drilling and hamstring future regulation of public health threats.

The pending changes, which benefit oil and gas and other industries, deepen the challenges for President-elect Joe Biden, who made restoring and advancing protections for the environment, climate and public health a core piece of his campaign.

“We’re going to see a real scorched-earth effort here at the tail end of the administration,” said Brian Rutledge, a vice president at the National Audubon Society.




The proposed changes cap four years of unprecedented environmental deregulation by President Donald Trump, whose administration has worked to fundamentally change how federal agencies apply and enforce the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act and other protections.

Most of the changes are expected to sail through the approval process, which includes the White House releasing the final version and publication in the Federal Register.

Some decisions, if they go into effect, will be easy for Biden to simply reverse. He already has pledged to return the United States to the Paris climate accord as a first step in his own $2 trillion climate plan. But he faces years of work in court and within agencies to repair major Trump cuts to the nation’s framework of environmental protections.

One change that Trump wants to push through would restrict criminal prosecution for industries responsible for the deaths of the nation’s migratory birds. Hawks and other birds that migrate through the central U.S. to nesting grounds on the Great Plains navigate deadly threats — from electrocution on power lines, to wind turbines that knock them from the air and oil field waste pits where landing birds perish in toxic water.

Right now, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 is a vital tool for protecting more than 1,000 species of birds including hawks and other birds of prey. Federal prosecutors use the act to recover damages, including $100 million from BP for its 2010 oil-rig spill into the Gulf of Mexico, which killed more than 100,000 seabirds.

But the Trump administration wants to make sure companies face no criminal liability for such preventable, unintentional deaths.

Federal officials advanced the bird treaty changes to the White House, one of the final steps before adoption, two days after news organizations declared Biden the winner of the presidential race.



For industry, “that’s an important one,” said Rachel Jones, vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers. Jones lobbied for the changes in the Migratory Bird Treaty Act at a meeting last year between private-sector representatives and staff from the White House and Interior Department. “It really matters in relation to the infrastructure we need for a modern society.”

Earlier moves by the Trump administration, which are now facing court challenges, remove protections for millions of miles of waterways and wetlands, narrow protections for wildlife species facing extinction, and open more of the hundreds of millions of acres of public land to oil and gas drilling.

Asked about the push now, as Trump and many of his supporters continue to deny his election loss. Environmental Protection Agency spokesman James Hewitt said, “EPA continues to advance this administration’s commitment to meaningful environmental progress while moving forward with our regulatory reform agenda.”

Pushing to get new rules on the books before the end of a president’s term is not unusual — former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush both did it, said Cary Coglianese, an expert on administrative law and rule-making at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School.

Obama agency heads, after a 2016 Trump victory that surprised many, pushed through rules that sought to protect funding for Planned Parenthood and toughen pollution rules on the oil and gas industries, among others.

But environmentalists and some former federal officials said the actions being taken in Trump’s final days reflect a pro-industry agenda taken to the extreme, in disregard for imperiled wildlife, climate change and damage to human health from air pollution.

“What we’re seeing at the end is what we’ve seen all along, which is a fealty to private interests over public interests,” said David Hayes, former deputy secretary of the Interior Department under Obama and now adjunct professor at the New York University School of Law. “They seem intent on finalizing these as a kind of ideological point.”

Many of the final rollbacks still pending under the Trump administration have significant implications for oil and gas companies. That includes the administration’s steps this week toward a sale of energy leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Monday’s announcement of upcoming sale drew rebukes from environmentalists and Democrats in Congress.

Brett Hartl with the Center for Biological Diversity said backers of drilling are playing the long game and know that another Republican administration favorable to drilling will come along eventually.

“Any time you’ve officially got an area under lease … it makes it harder to keep the land protected in the long run,” Hartl said.

Another proposal that arrived at the White House last week would set emissions standards for small but dangerous particles of pollution emitted by refineries and other industrial sources. Other changes would allow more drilling and mining on thousands of square miles of public lands around New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon National Historical Park and deep in the Alaska wilderness.

The Trump administration from its first days pursued American “energy dominance,” in which imported oil would no longer be needed and U.S. companies would produce a surplus of fuels that could be sold to other countries.

Finalizing the pending changes is critical to maintaining the nation’s “energy leadership,” said American Petroleum Institute senior vice president Frank Macchiarola. For the oil and gas industry, he said, the opening of the Arctic refuge to drilling was long overdue and would provide jobs and needed revenue for the state of Alaska.

Trump critics are looking to two pending Senate contests in Georgia for insight into how easily any of his administration’s last-minute changes can be undone.

If Democrats win both, they’ll control the Senate and the House and will be in position to invoke the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to strike down newly approved regulations. Otherwise, outside parties could sue or the Biden administration would have to undertake the often lengthy process of reversing changes that are fully enacted before Trump leaves office.

“Regulations are not like diamonds,” said Coglianese, the Penn law professor. “They don’t last forever.”

___

Knickmeyer reported from Oklahoma City. On Twitter follow Brown: @MatthewBrownAP and Knickmeyer: @KnickmeyerEllen

Charles Yu novel, Malcolm X bio win National Book Awards
By HILLEL ITALIE

NEW YORK (AP) — Charles Yu’s “Interior Chinatown,” a satirical, cinematic novel written in the form of a screenplay, has won the National Book Award for fiction.

Tamara Payne and her father the late Les Payne’s Malcolm X biography, “The Dead Are Arising,” was cited for nonfiction and Kacen Callender’s “King and the Dragonflies” for young people’s literature. The poetry prize went to Don Mee Choi’s “DMZ Colony” and the winner for best translated work was Yu Miri’s “Tokyo Ueno Station,” translated from Japanese by Morgan Giles.

Honorary medals were given Wednesday night to mystery novelist Walter Mosley and to the late CEO of Simon & Schuster, Carolyn Reidy, who died in May at age 71. The children’s author and current US Youth Ambassador for young adult literature Jason Reynolds served as emcee, and along with Bob Woodward and Walter Isaacson was among the Simon & Schuster writers who appeared in a taped tribute to Reidy.

Because of the pandemic, one of publishing’s most high-profile gatherings was streamed online, with presenters and winners speaking everywhere from New York to Japan. The traditional dinner ceremony is the nonprofit National Book Foundation’s most important source of income and is usually held at Cipriani Wall Street, where publishers and other officials pay thousands of dollars for tables or individual seats. The foundation instead has been asking for donations of $50 or more. As of Wednesday evening, just over $490,000 had been pledged from 851 donors.

“It’s hard in a pandemic. We were scared we wouldn’t be able to do this show,” said foundation executive director Lisa Lucas, speaking online from the children’s room of the Los Angeles Public Library. Executive director since 2016, she will depart at the end of the year to become publisher for the Penguin Random House imprints Pantheon and Schocken. Her successor has not been announced.

Along with the pandemic and the presidential election, diversity has been an ongoing theme in the book world this year and remained so Wednesday night, from Lucas urging publishers to work at transforming a historically white industry to the winners themselves.

Yu’s novel is a sendup of Chinese stereotypes and of the immigrants’ conflict between wanting to assimilate and asserting their true selves. “DMZ Colony” combines poetry, prose and images in its exploration of the history between the United States and South Korea. Mosley, the first Black man to win the medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, spoke of his debt to such literary heroes as Ishmael Reed, John Edgar Wideman and Ralph Ellison.

The award for “The Dead Are Arising” is the second time in a decade a Malcolm X biography has received a high honor for nonfiction and the second time the honor was, at least in part, posthumous. The scholar Manning Marable died right before the 2011 publication of “Malcolm X,” which went on to win a Pulitzer Prize and receive a National Book Award nomination. Les Payne, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, died in 2018.

“This is such a bittersweet moment,” Tamara Payne said upon accepting the award Wednesday night. “I really wish my father was here for this.”

Few references were made to the recent election, though politics did help inspire Yu, whose previous books include the story collections “Third Class Superhero” and “Sorry Please Thank You.” He had struggled with “Interior Chinatown,” wondering if there was a reason to tell an immigration story, until the surprise victory of Donald Trump in 2016.

“Before then, I felt it lacked a real reason for being,” Yu told The Associated Press in a recent interview. “It seemed that reference to things in the past like the Chinese Exclusion Act (a racist law passed in 1882) had relevance. I started thinking, ’This does still matter. This is a story you should try to tell.”

Winners in each of the competitive categories receive $10,000, and other finalists $1,000, with the money divided equally between the author and translator for best translated book. Roxane Gay, Rebecca Makkai and Dinaw Mengestu were among the authors, booksellers and others in the publishing community who as awards judges selected finalists from more than 1,600 books — many of them read digitally because of the pandemic.

People go hungry in Ethiopia’s Tigray as conflict marches on

By CARA ANNA

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This image made from undated video released by the state-owned Ethiopian News Agency on Monday, Nov. 16, 2020 shows Ethiopian military sitting on an armored personnel carrier next to a national flag, on a road in an area near the border of the Tigray and Amhara regions of Ethiopia. Ethiopia's prime minister Abiy Ahmed said in a social media post on Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2020 that "the final and crucial" military operation will launch in the coming days against the government of the country's rebellious northern Tigray region. (Ethiopian News Agency via AP)


NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — People are going hungry in Ethiopia’s rebellious northern Tigray region as roads are blocked, airports are closed and the federal government marches on its capital in a final push to win a two-week war. But residents are afraid to leave for fear of being killed, an internal assessment says.

Trucks laden with food, fuel and medical supplies have been stuck outside the region’s borders since the Nov. 4 announcement by Ethiopia’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed that a military offensive had begun in response to an attack by Tigray regional forces on a military base.

“At this stage there is simply very little left, even if you have money,” according to the internal assessment by one humanitarian group, seen by The Associated Press. Based on a colleague who managed to get out, it said people “will stay where they are, there is no place in Tigray where the situation is any different and they cannot cross over into the other regions of Ethiopia because of fear of what would be done to them.”

Banks in Tigray were closed for days, cutting off humanitarian cash transfers to some 1 million people, or one-sixth of the Tigray population. And even before the fighting, a locust outbreak was destroying crops.


Close to 30,000 Ethiopians have fled into neighboring Sudan, burdening villages that have been praised for their generosity, though they have little to give.

But many inside Tigray can’t or won’t leave, frightened by the threat of ethnic violence. Abiy’s office on Wednesday tried to ease those fears, saying its “law enforcement operation” against a Tigray regional leadership it regards as illegal is “primarily” targeting members of that ruling circle.

“The people of Tigray will be the first to benefit,” the statement said, as senior government officials vow the fighting will end within days. Abiy’s government accuses the Tigray government of damaging bridges and digging up roads leading to its capital, Mekele, to slow the march of federal forces.

Hundreds of wounded people have been treated so far, the International Committee of the Red Cross said after visiting a handful of health centers in the Tigray and Amhara regions. More than 400 have been treated in one hospital in the Amhara city of Gondar, including “large numbers of critically injured.”

“At the beginning, most of the wounded were fighters. As days went ahead, we started seeing more wounded civilians exiting” the Tigray region, the ICRC’s Daniel O’Malley said in an interview, adding that combatants still make up the majority. As federal forces move eastward along the front line, more wounded are coming from there.

“For the whole country, this is something terrible,” he said.

Electricity is out in the Tigray capital, and there is limited water. Hospital beds, supplies for diabetic care and dialysis, even blankets, are urgently needed, the ICRC said.

“It is unclear why all basic services to Tigray need to be cut in order to arrest, if arrest is warranted, the leadership” of the region, the head of the Tigray Friendship Liaison Office, Wendimu Asamanew, said in a statement.

Ethiopia’s federal government promised a rapid end to the fighting from nearly the start. Now humanitarian groups, experts and even the United States government are showing signs of desperation.

Map locates Eritrea and the Tigray region of Ethiopia. 

(AP Graphic/Francois Duckett)

“We do not know if there will be additional U.N.-coordinated relocation efforts out of Tigray,” the U.S. Embassy said in a brief statement Tuesday after the U.N. said some 200 foreigners had been evacuated. “U.S. citizens who cannot depart Tigray safely are advised to shelter in place.”

Well over 1,000 citizens of the U.S. and other countries had been said to be trapped, along with the bulk of the Tigray region’s residents. The Tigray regional government says more than 100,000 civilians have been displaced and seeks urgent humanitarian assistance.

Full Coverage: Ethiopia

Ethiopian refugees gather in Qadarif region, easter Sudan, Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2020. The U.N. refugee agency says Ethiopia's growing conflict has resulted in thousands fleeing from the Tigray region into Sudan as fighting spilled beyond Ethiopia's borders and threatened to inflame the Horn of Africa region. (AP Photo/Marwan Ali)

“Humanitarian workers should be given safe passage to provide assistance to vulnerable groups,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement. “Communications services in the Tigray region should be restored immediately.”

U.N. humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock said, “I call for full access to reach people in need wherever they are.” Even before the conflict almost 1 million in the Tigray region needed humanitarian assistance, he said.

His office has set aside $20 million for “anticipatory action to fight hunger in Ethiopia,” citing threats including “civil unrest, growing insecurity, locust infestations, and the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, which includes declining incomes and rising inflation.”

Even famine is a possibility in Tigray, researchers warned in The Conversation, a website for researchers. Some 80% of people are subsistence farmers and the fighting affects the upcoming harvest, they wrote.

The locust outbreak, the region’s worst in decades, has “destroyed vast areas of cropped land and numerous swarms remain active.”

The locust outbreak is so serious that even neighboring Eritrea, which has been almost silent on the conflict despite the Tigray forces firing rockets at its capital, speaks relatively openly about the insect invasion.

The split between Ethiopia’s federal government and Tigray’s — each now regards the other as illegal — has led the federal government to divert funding from the regional government, affecting early-warning systems for hunger, the researchers wrote.

This time of year was already the “hunger gap” for many, they said: “We fear that the grain baskets will remain empty because of the conflict.”

One of the researchers, Jan Nyssen, told the AP that “I know there are stores of the (U.N. World Food Program) inside Tigray, but they were there for a normal, quote-unquote, disaster.”

Ethiopian refugees gather in Qadarif region, easter Sudan, Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2020. The U.N. refugee agency says Ethiopia's growing conflict has resulted in thousands fleeing from the Tigray region into Sudan as fighting spilled beyond Ethiopia's borders and threatened to inflame the Horn of Africa region. (AP Photo/Marwan Ali)

Restocking such warehouses remains impossible, the U.N. said in an update.

Nyssen worries the locusts will pose the worse threat in the end. As of Nov. 3, the day before fighting erupted, swarms had reached as far as Mekele and were expected to move north, further into the region.

He also recalled the hunger that swept through Tigray in the 1980s as its leaders also fought the federal government. Back then, Ethiopia’s regime tried to hide the suffering, he said. “Nowadays, you can’t hide it that long.”

MELANIA'S HOME TOWN

Amid pandemic, Belgrade street kids find comfort at refuge
By JOVANA GEC

1 of 12

In this photo taken Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2020, a girl puts on her mask in Svratiste, or Roadhouse, Belgrade's first daily drop-in center for street children, in Serbia. For years, a small house tucked away in a Belgrade residential area has been an oasis of warmth and comfort for the Serbian capital's most vulnerable inhabitants - street children. The Roadhouse drop-in center has served the basic needs of hundreds of children who often have nowhere else to wash, warm up or properly eat. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — In a small, brightly-colored backstreet house in Belgrade a teenage girl is drying her hair, while two others eat lunch in the kitchen. A group of boys are having their temperatures checked at the entrance as a precaution against coronavirus.

It’s another busy day for Svratiste, or Roadhouse, Belgrade’s first daily drop-in center for street kids that for years has been a rare oasis of warmth and comfort for the Serbian capital’s most vulnerable inhabitants.

Since opening in 2007, Svratiste has welcomed hundreds of children — some as young as five — who have come here to warm up, wash or eat. With social isolation growing and the economic situation worsening in the pandemic, the center’s role has become even more significant.

Coordinator Mina Lukic said the health crisis has made Belgrade’s poor even poorer as it takes a toll on the Balkan country’s struggling economy. Prices of plastic and other scrap material that the kids and their families collect to sell have dropped dramatically in the past months, shrinking already meager earnings.

“We believe this is why we have more children visiting us in the past weeks than they used to,” she said.

“The kids that come to us are all aged 5 to 15, pre-school or primary school children,” she added. “What’s common for all of them is that they work in the street and live in extreme poverty.”

Hundreds, if not thousands of children in Belgrade fit that category. Their families typically live in make-shift slum settlements, and mostly stay out of the state’s social, health care and education systems.

From an early age, the children are sent out in the streets to beg, collect scrap materials or look for other ways to find food or money. They often face abuse and very few ever go to school.

While Serbia has a nationwide network of social care centers and institutions for the underprivileged, Lukic said the street kids often slip under the radar.

”They are a separate (social) group and should be treated as such,” she insisted.

Svratiste’s team of 13 social workers, psychologists and other experts have welcomed more than 1,400 children over the years. Funded by donors and people who regularly bring in clothes and other aid, the group recently set up another center in a new part of town.

Normally open every day, both centers only closed down during the national state of emergency when the pandemic started in March. The activists stayed in touch with the kids and their families, who returned when the lockdown was lifted in May.

In this photo taken Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2020, people pass by graffiti on a wall reading: "Stop selling children!!!" across the street from Svratiste, or Roadhouse, Belgrade's first daily drop-in center for street children, in Serbia. For years, a small house tucked away in a Belgrade residential area has been an oasis of warmth and comfort for the Serbian capital's most vulnerable inhabitants - street children. The Roadhouse drop-in center has served the basic needs of hundreds of children who often have nowhere else to wash, warm up or properly eat. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)

Apart from providing food and clothes, the Svratiste team has also sought to help the children socialize and get to know their town by visiting playgrounds, cinemas and theaters. A key effort has been to include them in the education system and make sure they stay. During the pandemic, the center helped with online classes that most children have no means of following.

One of their success stories has been Bosko Markovic, now 18, who first came to Svratiste five years ago. With the center’s help, Markovic has finished high school and now has his eyes set on becoming a policeman, he told the Associated Press.

“They (Svratiste) have made me a better person,” he said proudly.

___

“One Good Thing” is a series that highlights individuals whose actions provide glimmers of joy in hard times — stories of people who find a way to make a difference, no matter how small. Read the collection of stories at https://apnews.com/hub/one-good-thing

Toilet paper limits, empty shelves are back as virus surges
By JOSEPH PISANI and ANNE D'INNOCENZIO 

November 17, 2020

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Shelves in the paper towel and toilet paper section are depleted at a Meijer Store in Carmel, Ind., Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2020. A surge of new coronavirus cases in the U.S. is sending people back to stores to stockpile again, leaving shelves bare and forcing retailers to put limits on purchases. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

NEW YORK (AP) — Looking for toilet paper? Good luck.

A surge of new coronavirus cases in the U.S. is sending people back to stores to stockpile again, leaving shelves bare and forcing retailers to put limits on purchases.

Walmart said Tuesday it’s having trouble keeping up with demand for cleaning supplies in some stores. Supermarket chains Kroger and Publix are limiting how much toilet paper and paper towels shoppers can buy after demand spiked recently. And Amazon is sold out of most disinfectant wipes and paper towels.



A similar scene played out back in March, when the pandemic first hit and people hunkered down in their homes.

But Geoff Freeman, president and CEO of the Consumer Brands Association, formerly the Grocery Manufacturers Association, said he doesn’t expect things to be as bad this go-around since lockdowns are being handled on a regional basis and everyone is better prepared.

“A more informed consumer combined with a more informed manufacturer and a more informed retailer should provide all of us with a greater sense of ease and ensure we can meet this growing demand, “ Freeman said.

The biggest supply issue seems to be paper products: 21% of shelves that stock paper towels and toilet paper are empty, the highest level in at least a month, according to market research company IRI. Cleaning supplies have remained level at 16%. Before the pandemic, 5% to 7% of consumer goods were typically out of stock, IRI said.

Contributing to the problem is the fact that roughly 10% of the workforce at manufacturing plants where the products are made are calling out sick, mainly because they’ve been in contact with others who were tested positive to COVID-19, Freeman said.

Kelly Anderson of Colorado Springs, Colorado, said she needs more supplies now that in-person school in her area was canceled earlier this month and her two children are at home more. She’s noticed others are stocking up, too: Safeway and Walmart were nearly wiped out of bottled water and disinfectant wipes during a recent visit, both of which had been easy to find since the summer.
Full Coverage: Coronavirus pandemic

It’s also been harder to find a time slot to get her groceries delivered. Anderson says she’s had to wait as many as two days instead of same-day delivery. But that’s still not as bad as earlier this year

“March seems like a million years ago, but I do remember freaking out,” she said. “I couldn’t get groceries delivered for a week.”

Walmart said while supplies are stressed in some areas, it thinks it will be able to handle any stockpiling now than earlier this year. Amazon said its working with manufacturers to get items such as disinfecting wipes, paper towels and hand sanitizer in stock.

«Pandemics affect women and men differently» 

The history of and experiences from previous pandemics give us important information about how to handle today’s corona pandemic.

«Nearly everything we know about pandemics emergency preparedness and how the measures affect society long-term comes from the Spanish flu experience», says May-Brith Ohman Nielsen. The photo is from Walter Reed Hospital in Washington D.C in 1918. (Photo: Harris & Ewing / Wikipedia)

Susanne Dietrichson JOURNALIST, 

KILDEN GENDER RESEARCH NEWS MAGAZINE
Thursday 30. july 2020 - 

Covid-19 is not the first pandemic in human history, nor will it be the last. But have pandemics affected women and men differently through the ages? And can we learn anything about why and how, so we better understand what goes on today?

«Pandemics are a magnifying glass that sheds light on social conditions, gender included,» says May-Britt Ohman Nielsen, professor of history at the University of Agder.

Tuberculosis is one example of a disease that has affected women and men differently at different times, according to May-Brith Ohman Nielsen. 

(Photo: UiA)

Case history into consideration

Nielsen works with the history of medicine, illness, health, and epidemics. She studies how pandemics affect women and men differently and uses examples from cholera and tuberculosis.

«Infectious diseases affect women and men differently, primarily because they have different roles and functions through history,» she says.

Tuberculosis has had different effects on the sexes throughout the ages, according to Nielsen.

«The disease is still active and widespread in large parts of the world, and people live with it for a while,» she explains.

«The disease spreads through droplet infection, and the source is often difficult to trace because the illness develops slowly. Infected persons may have been ill for a long time before the symptoms occur, and the infected or their surroundings become aware of them.»

Men spread infection, women nursed

Men were often the first to be infected during pandemics such as cholera and tuberculosis because they travelled more, as sailors, tradesmen, and soldiers, Nielsen explains.

«Consequently, men spread the diseases in larger circles, as they travelled, were infected, and brought the diseases home with them.»

At home, the infected men were often nursed by their sisters, mothers, wives, and daughters, who then became infected.

«It was not unusual that the women in the family felt pressure to take care of the men regardless of whether they wanted to. Those who brought home the money took precedence in the family regardless of how dangerous the disease might have been,» says Nielsen.

«Traditionally, women have carried the burden of care and taken on the emotional responsibility. This makes up the greatest difference between men and women regarding illnesses and pandemics. Women take care of children, spouses, and parents.»

Guilt and shame

To get infected with cholera, you have to swallow the bacteria. It infects through contact, but primarily through the drinking water. When the source of infection could not be identified, people came up with other theories about how the disease was spread, according to Nielsen. These theories were also gendered.

«For instance, many believed that cholera was a punishment from God. And there were different ideas about why women and men were punished», she says.

«When it came to the men, they were often thought to be punished for drunkenness, whereas women were infected because they were promiscuously dressed and had bad morals.»

The fact that tuberculosis could be connected to hygiene also affected men and women differently. The illness brought along strict requirements for the housewife in terms of infection control measures and hygiene, Nielsen explains.


«If a family was infected, the woman of the house might be considered a bad housewife who failed to keep a clean home. Tuberculosis resulted in a lot of shame,» she says.

«The men were forbidden to spit, while the women were required to clean.»

«Like covid-19, the plague spread as a result of increased globalisation», says Ole Georg Moseng. (Photo: USN)

Plagues and globalisation

Ole Georg Moseng, professor of history at University of South-Eastern Norway, has studied the history of plagues. He also draws parallels to today’s epidemic.

«Like covid-19, the plague spread through increased globalisation,» he says.

«The plague has always been a part of human history. The oldest recorded case is from 3 900 BCE, and the last major epidemic is from 2017 in Madagascar. Plague outbreaks occur in several countries across the world every single year.»

In other words, the plague still affects us. But as a pandemic, we are primarily talking about three major waves, Moseng explains. The earliest recorded pandemic occurred in the early Middle Ages between c. 540 and 750 CE, the second began in 1346 and lasted until 1722, whereas the third pandemic wave occurred in the late 1800s.

«The first outbreak started in the cities that were the centres of civilisation: Rome, Carthage, Constantinople and in the vicinity of Alexandria,» says Moseng.

During the second and largest outbreak, which began in Crimea in 1346 and is referred to as the Black Death, the plague spread to large parts of Europe through travelling tradesmen and explorers. Repeated outbreaks in Western Europe occurred up until the early 1700s.

«We may, therefore, assume that men spread of the plague, particularly as tradesmen,» he says.

«The third plague pandemic broke out in India and China in the late nineteenth century and spread all over the world during the course of two decades. In Europe, it caused a number of minor outbreaks of plague around the year 1900.»
«Women most sorely affected»

Moseng explains that the plague bacteria is transmitted to humans via fleas from wild rodents. And during the Black Death it particularly spread through the black rat, which eats grain and grain products, but is more or less extinct in Europe today.

«We have relatively good data on gender differences in how the plague affected people from the 1600s onwards. It seems like women were most affected by the plague», says Moseng. But recent studies of the Black Death in the 1340s indicate that this was also the case back then.

The black rat is one possible explanation to why more women than men had the plague.

«Women stayed more inside the houses than men did. Rats lived in the houses, and may have given the plague on to women,» he says.

«In addition, women held traditional caring functions, which made them more exposed to infection. They had the main responsibility for the children and the elderly in the family, and their job was to care for those who were ill.»

Moseng states that another consequence of the plague, more indirectly gendered,is how it contributed to the collapse of the feudal system.

«The Black Death resulted in an enormous and persistent decline in the population in Europe, which led to poorer conditions for women in the long term,» he says.

The land rent went down and fewer people paid taxes. The feudal lords, that is, the big farmers, kings and the church, lost power. The workers’ wages went up, and the petty farmers had more money to spend.

«As a result, the land-owning aristocracy’s economic, political and social hegemony was weakened, which laid the foundation for the growth of the bourgeoisie. In bourgeois society, women had less power than in the agricultural feudal society,» says Moseng.

«Feudal society was hierarchical, but women were nevertheless more equal to men in their life as a housewife on a farm», he says.

«The wife on the farm had a lot of power, whereas bourgeois norms ensured that the men were given a more distinct leader position within the family.»
More men died of the Spanish flu

«The Spanish flu came to Norway in 1918, and led to the death of 15 000 Norwegians, or 0.6 per cent of the population. Approximately half of the Norwegian population were probably infected by the disease», according to Svenn-Erik Mamelund who is a demographer and pandemics researcher at Oslo Metropolitan University (OsloMet).

Mamelund explains that the flu pandemic affected Norway in four waves: Two in 1918, one in 1919 and a ‘echo-wave’ in 1920.

There is not enough data on gender differences in mortality rates globally. But Mamelund says that it is likely that a few more men than women died of the Spanish flu, as was the case in Norway. People around the age of thirty became sicker and died more often.

«Especially during summer 1918, more men than women were infected. Men had broader and more frequent contact with others through work and social activities than women.»

Svenn-Erik Mamelund believes that the fact that young people in fertile age now find themselves in a society in lockdown may cause further decrease in the number of childbirths. (Photo: OsloMet)

Young adults particularly affected

The Spanish flu affected primarily young adults between the age of twenty and forty. That is when women are most fertile.

«This is partly why there was a dramatic decline in the birth rate in 1919, and nine months after the Spanish flu was at a peak in the autumn of 1918. People were hesitant to have sex, because they feared being infected or because they were already ill. The mortality rate among pregnant women increased, especially during the late stages of pregnancy. The number of miscarriages also increased,» Mamelund explains.

«Many men and women lost their spouse to the flu. Approximately 4 800 people were widowed in 1918–19, and the Marriage Act required at least one year of mourning before one was allowed to re-marry. Unless a woman was already pregnant when she lost her husband to the Spanish flu, she was by law denied a new pregnancy before she had re-married. Of course some women did conceive outside of marriage, but this was not common.»

Mamelund maintains that the baby boom in Norway in 1920 is a result of the Spanish flu rather than the end of the First World War, as many historians have claimed.

«The 1920 baby boom is the greatest in Norway, only beaten by the one following the Second World War in 1946. Many people postponed marriage and childbirths until the epidemic was over in 1919. Also, Norway did not participate in the First World War,» he says.

Mamelund draws parallels to the current pandemic. The fertility rate in Norway is in decline due to the corona epidemic, according to an article in the Norwegian newspaper DN.

«The fertility rate has been in decline for a long time in Norway, and the fact that young fertile people now find themselves in a society in lockdown may cause further decrease in the number of childbirths», he says.

Widows were badly affected

Coming back to the Spanish flu, Mamelund maintains that women who lost their husbands were probably affected harder than men who became widowers.

«At that time there was no such thing as widow’s pension and social security programs, and the women lost the family’s breadwinner,» he says.

«I would like to do more research on what happened with the bereaved during this pandemic. What coping strategies did they have? What happened to all the orphans? Did women apply different strategies than men? I believe they did.»

Mamelund gives one example: A woman from the Norwegian midlands was left behind with two small children when her husband and two other children died of the Spanish flu.

She did not re-marry; instead, she divided her land, kept an acre and sold the rest. She built a house on her part of the land and bought a cow, a goat and hens for the money she got from the sale. Her daughters worked on farms in their spare time, so that they could get enough healthy food.
Resulted in widow’s pension

The Spanish flu changed the society, also for women. In 1919, the Labour Party introduced social security benefits for single mothers and widows in the capitol, according to Mamelund.

«The reason may have been the consequences the Spanish flu had for women who lost their husbands to the disease and were left behind with small children.»

Many have referred to the Spanish flu as the forgotten pandemic, he says.

«But forgotten by whom? The doctors? Historians? The history of the Spanish flu is no victory narrative and it has no winners. I think that many people wanted to forget. They wanted to leave the pandemic behind and move on.»

Here, too, there are gender perspectives, according to Mamelund.

«Nancy Bristow, an American professor of history and pandemic researcher, has studied the Spanish flu by going through diaries, letters, photographs, and other ethnographic and archive material. According to her, the doctors – who were primarily men – wanted to forget the Spanish flu altogether. They felt that they had lost the battle against the disease, and they felt powerless and disappointed.»

«For the nurses, however, it was the other way around. They felt useful during the pandemic, when they had cared for and comforted sick and dying patients. Even though there was no cure, nursing, food and care were still necessary and the nurses had been essential in this work.»
The idea of anti-bac is not new

According to Ole Georg Moseng at University of Oslo, there are some clear common features between previous pandemics and covid-19, for instance when it comes to how we fight it.

«Actions like isolation of the ill, lockdown, travel restrictions, embargo on trade, quarantines and use of facemasks were also used to fight the plague in the 16th and 17th centuries», he explains.

Antibacterial hand gel is nothing new, says Mamelund. 7000 people in Norway died from tuberculosis each year between the years 1890 and 1910. The disease was fought without medicines, but with hand wash, hygiene, social distancing and public enlightenment.

«The nurses played an important role. They travelled around and educated people. They talked about the same things as the Institute of Public Health goes on about today: keep your distance, don’t drink from your neighbour’s cup and don’t ‘spit on the floor’.»

Read: “Women’s historical contributions are still ignored”

We can learn from the Spanish flu

May-Britt Ohman Nielsen at the University of Agder also see parallels.

«Today public health workers are particularly exposed to infection. This was also the case for those who treated patients with tuberculosis», she says.

«Especially the nurses, who stayed by the bedsides in the tuberculosis sanatoriums, were infected. And they were primarily women.»

But the infection also hit places with mostly men, according to Nielsen.

«In mines, boarding schools, the military, and especially the front line during the First World War, diseases spread rapidly and a large number of men were infected by tuberculosis and the Spanish flu.»

The history and experiences from previous pandemics gives us important information about how to handle today’s corona pandemic.

«The Spanish flu is the great learning model. Nearly everything we know about pandemic emergency preparedness and how the society is affected long-term, comes from this experience. How do isolation and closed down workplaces and schools affect relations between people?» she says.

«And in what ways do these measures change society in the long run? Here we can learn a lot from history.»

Translated by Cathinka Dahl Hambro

https://sciencenorway.no/covid19-diseases-gender-and-society/pandemics-affect-women-and-men-differently/1716597