Tuesday, April 14, 2020

Why The Coronavirus Is Killing Black Americans At Outsize Rates Across The US

“You can’t drive a bus or wash dishes on Zoom,” said one doctor. “These are people we count on to do essential jobs, and they are going unprotected.”

Dan VerganoBuzzFeed News Reporter
Kadia GobaBuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on April 10, 2020

Brendan Mcdermid / Reuters
Pallbearers exit with a family member during a funeral at Jurek Park Slope Funeral Home during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease in Brooklyn, April 8.
In Milwaukee, Chicago, New Orleans, and all over the nation, the coronavirus pandemic has thrown the long-running racial divide in the health of Americans into stark relief, seen in the outsize numbers of deaths among black populations in hard-hit cities and regions.

“Health disparities have always existed for the African American community,” Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said at the White House on Tuesday, responding to a flurry of news reports of black patients dying in larger-than-expected numbers. “Here again with the crisis, how it’s shining a bright light on how unacceptable that is because, yet again, when you have a situation like the coronavirus, they are suffering disproportionately.”


Jeremy Singer-Vine / BuzzFeed News / Sources: State and local agencies, collected Apr. 9 (deaths); American Community Survey (population).

For a variety of reasons, including a greater likelihood of working jobs that put them on the frontline, decreased access to health care that starts them out with more illness, and crowded living conditions that facilitates the virus spread, the coronavirus has been especially brutal in black communities.

Lawmakers from both parties are now calling on US health officials to release racial data on novel coronavirus cases and deaths nationwide, pointing to dramatic differences in hotspots across the country. On Wednesday, the heads of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, and Congressional Black Caucus, called on Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and CDC Director Robert Redfield to release and analyze such data. That followed Sen. Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican, making a similar request on Tuesday. “In recent days, a number of concerning reports have emerged, suggesting COVID-19 has had a particularly harmful impact on communities of color,” Scott wrote in his letter

A week earlier, a group of House Democrats made a similar request, spurred by reports of more than a third of cases in Milwaukee striking black residents.

“It’s hard to tease apart all the threads, and ultimately they all come down to the same thing,” physician Janet Seabrook of Community HealthNet Health Centers in Gary, Indiana, told BuzzFeed News. “What we are seeing is not surprising, and it really comes down to a lack of resources and lack of health care delivering the numbers we are seeing right now.”


Peter Aldhous / BuzzFeed News

As of Thursday, there have been more than 454,000 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus across the US and almost 16,000 deaths. The racial disparity accompanying the US outbreak of the pandemic illuminates the medical challenges that black communities, and other communities of color, including Latinos and Native Americans, face every day:

Dangerous Jobs

“You can’t drive a bus or wash dishes on Zoom,” Oscar Alleyne, a public health expert with the National Association of County and City Health Officials told BuzzFeed News. “These are people we count on to do essential jobs, and they are going unprotected.”

A lot of the people most at risk for catching the novel coronavirus are the ones in service jobs who can’t avoid contact with the public, exemplified by Detroit bus driver Jason Hargove, who died this month from coronavirus complications after he made a video that went viral in March discussing people coughing on his bus.

“People of color are often working in service jobs, cashiers, nursing, home health aides. These aren’t jobs you can phone in,” said Seabrook.

Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows black people work a disproportionate number of jobs as health care and personal care assistants, for example. Such jobs lead to exposure with potentially sick people, which is even more risky for people who aren’t wearing hospital-grade protective gear.
Share
 of black workers
Share
 of total workers
Office and administrative support
13.8%
11.7%
Transportation and material moving
9.5%
6.1%
Management
7.2%
11.5%
Food preparation and serving-related
6.5%
5.6%
Production
6.1%
5.6%
Health care support
5.4%
2.3%
Personal care and service
5.1%
3.8%

“Someone has to do these jobs, but people in service jobs just have a higher risk,” said Seabrook. These are people more likely to take cold medicine to knock down a fever and head to a job they can’t afford to lose.

Even before social distancing orders in states nationwide led to the staggering unemployment claims with millions now out of work, the unemployment rate for blacks was already higher, at 6.7%, against 4% for whites in March, which means they have less freedom to just quit their job.

And black people have less savings, with the median worker having only 9.5% of the median wealth that whites did in 2016, which means they have little to survive on if they did quit. That means putting off a doctor’s visit if paying for food or rent comes first, said Alleyne. “We’d really like to see more [coronavirus] data from more cities overall, but poverty is generally a risk factor in health care.”

“They are far more likely to be taking mass transit to get to work because they are less likely to have a car,” said Alleyne. “That’s also a risk.”

Worse Health

At the White House briefing, Fauci worried about greater rates of high-risk illnesses among black people, saying, “The diabetes, hypertension, the obesity, the asthma — those are the kinds of things that wind them up in the ICU and ultimately give him a higher death rate.”

Health experts say such preexisting conditions are widely linked to reduced access to health care among black people, with 11% uninsured against the national rate of 7% in 2017, as well as higher rates of obesity.

“I am worried about the Deep South when I look at where this is going and where we will be looking next,” said Seabrook. Many black Americans in the South live in states that did not expand insurance after the passage of Obamacare at the start of the last decade. The region coincides with the “Stroke Belt” across the southeastern US, where there is a 50% higher risk of a deadly stroke, compared to the rest of the country, and an even higher risk for black people living there. The observation is linked in studies to higher rates of diabetes, heart disease, and smoking, as well as less access to health care in general.

Physicians in Virginia have already complained about a lack of coronavirus testing in black communities during the pandemic, where missing a few cases in states that have cut public health agencies’ budgets for decades could lead to an unchecked outbreak. For example: Albany, Georgia, is still struggling with an outbreak tied to a single infected person attending a funeral. In the city, 1 in 90 people have been infected. Approximately 90% of the fatalities in Albany by March 30 had been in the city’s black community, according to the New York Times.
Xinhua News Agency / Getty Images
Medical workers transfer bodies of victims who died of COVID-19 
at a hospital in New York, the United States, April 6.
Worse Housing

“I’m seeing patients who live with grandparents, who sleep in rooms with bunk beds,” said Seabrook. “If you get sick, they don’t have a guest room to isolate you in. It’s very difficult.”

Black and Latino families live in crowded multigenerational homes at much higher rates (26% and 27%, respectively) than white families (16%), according to the Pew Research Center. More than 60 million Americans live in multigenerational homes, where young asymptomatic people might put their older relatives at risk. Worries about this scenario drove a lot of school closings, despite the lower risk to the young from the coronavirus.



Jimmy Vielkind@JimmyVielkind
.@NYGovCuomo says the racial disparities in who has died from the coronavirus raises lots of questions. "It always seems like the poorest people pay the highest price. Why? Why is that?” One question is whether essential workers are disproportionately non-white.04:46 PM - 08 Apr 2020
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As well, black and Latino homes are more likely to be in communities with worse air quality, according to the American Lung Association, driving up rates of asthma, another risk factor for severe cases of COVID-19. A Harvard University study released on Sunday suggests that counties with worse air quality standard would see an increased coronavirus death rate.

“It really is a matter of priorities,” said Alleyne. “Are we going to take care of vulnerable people, especially the ones on the front lines?”


MORE ON THIS
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer Weighed In On Why So Many Black Americans Are Dying Of COVID-19Julia Reinstein · April 8, 2020



Dan Vergano is a science reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Washington, DC.

Kadia Goba is a political reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Washington, DC.

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WASP'S
“My President Is Not My God”: Some Churches Are Planning To Host Hundreds For Easter Sunday Services Despite The Coronavirus

The federal government recommends no one attend gatherings of more than 10 people, but some churches are still encouraging big congregations to attend Easter Sunday services.

Ema O'ConnorBuzzFeed News Reporter
Kadia GobaBuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on April 11, 2020

Carlos Barria / Reuters

Pastor Tony Spell attends Sunday service at the Life Tabernacle Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, April 5, challenging state orders against assembling in large groups to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

The journalists at BuzzFeed News are proud to bring you trustworthy and relevant reporting about the coronavirus. To help keep this news free, become a member and sign up for our newsletter, Outbreak Today.

When he picked up the phone and heard it was a reporter on the line, Louisiana Pastor Tony Spell almost immediately began reciting the Declaration of Independence.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” Spell, the leader of Life Tabernacle Church in Baton Rouge told BuzzFeed News Thursday morning over the phone.

“My government is not my creator, my president is not my God,” continued Spell, who was charged with six misdemeanors last week for continuing to hold in-person services despite the coronavirus pandemic. “The president did not give me my rights to worship God and to assemble in church, and no socialist government or godless president can take that right away.”

“The president did not give me my rights to worship God.”

While the majority of churches in the country have chosen to suspend services during the coronavirus outbreak — choosing, when they can, to host their congregations online via livestream — several churches around the country have continued to hold services. Many of them have big Easter Sunday plans, even as some church gatherings across the US have led to outbreaks among their congregants.

Glorious Way Church in Houston, Texas, plans to hold a socially distanced Easter morning service on Sunday, removing benches and using volunteer ushers to make sure family units stay six feet apart from one another, the distance recommended by the Department of Health and Human Services to help prevent spreading the virus.

Solid Rock Church, a megachurch in Ohio, has stated it will keep holding services as long as the First Amendment of the Constitution is upheld, though a notice on its website says it is limiting its services, suspending collections and communion “in a normal sense,” and that there are not a “large number of worshippers” in the facility for services. A link to “Easter @ Solid Rock” leads to an unrelated event, and the church’s calendar seems to show that the church plans on holding two services Sunday at their Lebanon (“North”) campus, as well as some “adult classes” for members of the church, including a finance class and one called “Marriage Matters.”

A woman who answered Solid Rock’s phone told BuzzFeed News she has been advised to refer all callers to its website, due to “all the bad press we’ve received” for staying open. The website has a notice saying they “agree we must all comply” with Ohio’s order, and lists ways in which the church is attempting to mitigate the spread.

However, it also insists it is the church’s responsibility to stay open, quoting this line from the New Testament: “Let us not give up the habit of meeting together, as some are doing. Instead, let us encourage one another all the more, since you see that the Day of the Lord is coming nearer. Hebrews 10:25.”



The Bridge Church@BridgeChurchRTx
Come witness this POWERFUL moment in history! We invite everyone out to come join us, as we observe Jesus' last hours, through worship and skit. Tonight at 7pm here at The Bridge Church. This is a POWERFUL skit! You don't want to miss!07:20 PM - 08 Apr 2020
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The Bridge Church in Robstown, Texas, has continued to hold special services leading up to Easter, Pastor Joel Garza told BuzzFeed News over the phone Thursday, as well as its normal Sunday services. They disinfect the church before and after services, ask congregants to stay a “safe distance” from other families, and set up speakers in the parking lot for those who prefer to stay in their cars for service, but anywhere from 100 to 200 attendees have been showing up, Garza said, adding that he hopes more people come this Sunday for Easter services.


Claire Bangser / Getty Images

Buses bring churchgoers to a Palm Sunday service at the Life Tabernacle Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, April 5, despite statewide stay-at-home orders due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Spell, of the Life Tabernacle Church in Baton Rouge, told BuzzFeed News he is sending 27 buses out to bring congregants to his church for Easter Sunday service, and that he expects about 2,000 people to attend. The service will last all day with a rotating cast of congregants as more are bused in and out — about eight hours for the morning service and three hours in the evening, he said.

Since the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak, medical experts have advised against gatherings of more than a few people. On March 15, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) urged against the congregating of more than 50 people. Just a few days later, President Donald Trump released his guidelines for slowing the spread of coronavirus, including avoiding “social gatherings in groups of 10 or more people.”

Many houses of worship are obeying these guidelines, and some influential religious organizations and sects, including the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Catholic Church, the US Council of Muslim Organizations, and various denominations of Judaism have closed their houses of worship or are urging services take place online.

As BuzzFeed News reported last month, a poll conducted in mid-March found that nearly a fifth of religious Americans said they were still attending in-person services. However, conditions have changed and worsened significantly since then, and some outbreaks have even occurred explicitly due to church gatherings. At least 70 attendees of a church in Sacramento, California, were diagnosed with COVID-19 last week, and in March churches in Arkansas and Illinois saw dozens of citizens fall ill after attending church events.

Several states that have issued stay-at-home orders have included exceptions for houses of worship. New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Michigan, and California have all issued stay-at-home orders that either designate houses of worship as “essential” (exempting them from having to close) or encourage them to close but exempt them from penalties.

For example, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer banned all gatherings outside the home, but added that “a place of religious worship, when used for religious worship, is not subject to penalty" for violating the order.

Other states have directives that are not particularly clear on the guidelines for houses of worship. South Carolina and Alabama did not explicitly address houses of worship, but left them out of their list of nonessential businesses required to close. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards issued an executive order in mid-March that banned gatherings of more than 50 people, but made exceptions for traveling “to-and-from” houses of worship. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s order exempts houses of worship from the state’s ban on gatherings of more than 10 people, but he then tweeted a plea to religious leaders to halt in-person services.

Even with these exemptions, some religious leaders, like Spell, have flouted directives so openly that they are now facing criminal charges.


Gerald Herbert / AP
Pastor Tony Spell speaks to media after holding an evening service at the Life Tabernacle Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, March 31.

“Right now I have $5,000 in fines and am facing up to 900 days in jail,” Spell said Thursday, adding that his congregation continues to support him and is even growing with each service, people coming from all over the country, he said, from as far as Michigan and Minnesota. He has, at times, claimed his congregation is as big as 1,800

The Central Police Department in Baton Rouge confirmed Spell has to go to court on six counts, but said the court will decide on a fine amount and sentencing.

Asked if the department plans to break up Easter services at Life Tabernacle Church, the spokesperson told BuzzFeed, “As far as us going up in the church Sunday, unless the government puts an order out and tells the chief, our hands are tied, ma’am. We can only enforce what he’s put out. We’ve gone as far as we can go.”

Contrary to Spell’s claims, “He does not have 1,800 people in that church. Ever,” the spokesperson said. They added that the police department is on scene, monitoring the situation — but has not been invasive — and there are multiple agencies investigating the church.

In Florida, state and local governments grappled with confusing executive orders that all seem to center around megachurch pastor Rodney Howard-Browne of the River at Tampa Bay Church. Howard-Browne was arrested on March 30 after refusing to close doors in response to social distancing guidelines.

Hillsborough County in Florida issued a “safer-at-home” order on March 27 for everyone, aside from essential workers. All other residents were to leave their homes only for food, medicine, and essentials. Three days later, on April 1, Gov. Ron DeSantis followed up with a statewide executive order declaring churches “essential.” He then signed a second order that would supersede “any conflicting official action or order issued by local officials in response to COVID-19.”

Thursday afternoon, Howard-Browne posted a powerful minutelong video with the caption “The Church Shall Stand.”

“And if it is the end, then so be it. We’re willing to die for the cause of the Gospel,” Howard-Browne's voice boomed, calling the directive to close churches amid the pandemic an “insidious plan to shut the church of Jesus Christ down.” It’s still not clear if the church will open for Easter.

Pastor Jon Duncan of Cross Culture Christian Center in Lodi, California, was stopped by police before hosting in-person Palm Sunday services on April 5. The church that rented Duncan’s congregation space, Bethel Open Bible Church, had even changed the locks three weeks earlier to keep the pastor from holding services. A receptionist for Bethel Open Bible Church told BuzzFeed News Thursday that she “didn’t know” whether the group would be holding Easter Sunday services as well. The landlord did not return BuzzFeed News’ request for comment.

Other churches, like Glorious Way Church in Houston told BuzzFeed News that they are working with law enforcement to continue to hold services. Glorious Church has instituted strict social distancing rules, requiring people to wait in their cars until they are able to be ushered into the church by a volunteer and making sure every family unit is at least 6 feet apart.


Apu Gomes / Getty Images
Pastor Rob McCoy leads a communion ceremony after an online Palm Sunday service at the Godspeak Calvary Chapel sanctuary in Thousand Oaks, California, April 5.

In a phone call Thursday, Glorious Way Church Associate Pastor James Buntrock said that he has even hired law enforcement to be present at services to protect his congregation from media covering the church, or in case any “activist type people” try to show up to spread COVID-19 among the church attendees.

“Nobody has threatened us directly here,” Buntrock said, adding that they haven’t had any problems with members of the press either: “But I've heard rumors of those possibilities,” he said, “so I just wanted to be prepared.”

Texas’ stay-at-home order explicitly labeled houses of worship “essential services,” and some churches, like Glorious Way and the Bridge Church are taking that very seriously.

“We as essential organizations need to show up right now.”
“We as essential organizations need to show up right now. If nurses and doctors, or police officers and firefighters, didn’t show up, it would be considered dishonorable,” Bridge Church leader Joel Garza told BuzzFeed News. “Yet churches, for whatever reason, seem to feel like it's okay not to show up when our world needs us the most.”

Garza even went as far as to say that he believed attending services would help people fight off coronavirus.

“Right now people are staying at home, depressed, it weakens your immune system, and they're most susceptible to disease through depression,” Garza said. “But if they come to church, they're encouraged, they're joyful, their immune system receives like a B-12, and they're able to go do better fighting off any kind of infirmities.”

American Psychological Association Director of Clinical Research and Quality Vaile Wright told BuzzFeed News Friday that there was “certainly no evidence” to suggest that attending church could boost your immune system, and that even recommending a distance of 6 feet between congregants was still in violation of the CDC’s recommendations.

“Long-term stress can suppress the immune system and that can in turn lead to illness, and we do know social contact is a way to buffer stress. However, the benefit that can come from that social contact does not have to be face to face,” Wright said. “It’s important that we come together during these times of worship, but you have to balance that with the public health imperative to stay physically apart.”


Gerald Herbert / AP
Congregants arrive for evening service at the Life Tabernacle Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Staff who spoke to BuzzFeed News from each of the churches choosing to remain open for Easter said they had received angry, and even vulgar and explicit, complaints about their choice, but that they see the pandemic as even more of a reason for them to stay open.

The pastors also argued that they are providing concrete support for people affected by the pandemic through their charity. Many churches that have remained open have also been gathering and distributing food and essentials to people whose income or meal access has been affected by coronavirus closures.

“I appreciate what doctors and nurses are doing. We pray for them. They are right in the middle of this — they're being separated from their families. It's horrible,” Glorious Way’s pastor Buntrock said.

“But the answer to this is not an entirely natural answer,” he continued. “We've got to bring God into this. He is the answer to this. I want that message to get out. So that's why we're staying open.” ●

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The White Anglo Saxon Protestants. This was the first immigrant group to settle in America in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. They are often referred to as the 'old immigrants'. WASPs originally came from northern Europe, especially from Britain, Ireland, Germany and Scandinavia.
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Nearly 3,000 Health Care System Employees In The Detroit Area Have Confirmed Or Suspected Coronavirus Infections

The number is likely higher as not all health care systems are revealing how many employees have been infected.

ACROSS THE RIVER FROM WINDSOR, ONTARIO, CANADA

Emma Loop BuzzFeed News Reporter Posted on April 12, 2020

Elaine Cromie / Getty Images
A sign outside Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan, April 8. Nearly 1,500 Beaumont employees have symptoms of COVID-19, including 500 nurses.

The coronavirus outbreak has spread rapidly in the Detroit area, straining the health care system there. Now, as infections continue to surge, so too has the number of health care workers who have fallen ill.

Nearly 3,000 people employed by health care systems in southeast Michigan have either tested positive for the virus or developed symptoms of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. At least four have died.

“There has been a shortage of nursing staff throughout the hospital,” said a nurse who works at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit and has contracted the virus. “Oftentimes nurses are being pulled from different units to assist on units with higher numbers of patients,” said the nurse, who spoke on background because she did not have authorization to speak to the media. “I can honestly say the nervousness is apparent in many of us. Seeing each other getting sick just increases the anxiety that one of us might be next and bring it home to our family.”

BuzzFeed News asked the eight major health care systems in the area for data on how the virus has affected their employees, as well as a breakdown by occupation. Among the five health care systems that responded, 2,722 employees are either confirmed or suspected to have the coronavirus — the most comprehensive total to date for the Detroit area and more than the number of infections among health care workers in the entire state of California. Though the number includes all employees, a large portion of them are medical staff, according to two systems.

Among the general population, there are more than 18,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the city and surrounding region. The area represents just 1.3% of the US population but 3.6% of the country’s coronavirus infections, with black people accounting for a disproportionate number of cases and deaths.

The number of health care workers in the region who have contracted the virus is likely significantly higher. Three Detroit-area health care systems failed to provide data — and one of them operates hospitals that have been hit especially hard by the outbreak, where staffers have publicly denounced their working conditions. At another, a surgeon has died and hundreds of nurses have called in sick.

A recent BuzzFeed News investigation found that at least 5,400 health care workers in the US have been infected based on available data collected at the state level — but as the Detroit figures show, the true number is likely much higher due to inconsistent tracking throughout the country. Michigan health officials, for example, have said they are not specifically collecting this information.

Though more than 100,000 people work for health systems in the Detroit area — which includes Wayne, Macomb, Oakland, and Washtenaw counties — the loss of thousands of employees at a time when the system is already strained has contributed to widespread staff shortages and increased fears about the pandemic among frontline medical staff.

Steve Homick, an emergency room nurse at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan, said his hospital has also replaced sick nurses with those from other units to address staff shortages and offered healthy employees incentive pay to take extra shifts.

“I know that nurses have gotten really sick from this. I know that nurses have passed away from it — so for us, every time we hear a name, it’s really concerning to us,” Homick said. “We’re worried about our staff.”

The infections underline the personal risk that frontline health care workers now take each time they report to work; many don’t have enough equipment to protect themselves from a contagious virus that isn’t yet fully understood. The numbers also underscore Detroit’s status as a hot spot for the outbreak in the US.


Jeff Kowalsky / Getty Images
Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan, April 7.


“This pandemic brings to light the deep problems rooted in the way our health care system functions,” said Jamie Brown, president of the Michigan Nurses Association, adding that the union has been urging lawmakers in Michigan for years to pass a bill to prevent understaffing in hospitals. “This current crisis shows exactly why that is so important.”

Brown said Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer “is doing everything she can” to get medical staff more personal protective equipment, “but a national shortage needs a national solution.”

“It is horrifying that as nurses around our country are falling ill, the federal government refuses to use every single tool at its disposal to produce the necessary amount of PPE,” Brown said.

Nurses in the Detroit area and across the country have had to reuse gowns and different kinds of protective masks — sometimes for up to a week — which they say increases the risk of infection for them and patients.

Like others across the country, health care systems in the Detroit area have been working to find more protective equipment and staff to deal with the swell of COVID-19 patients. Hospitals have received mask donations from the community and are bringing in nurses from other hospitals or outside agencies to try to fill the gaps.

Still, employees have gotten sick and, in some cases, died. That was the case last week, when a longtime nurse working at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit became one of the first nurses in the state to die after contracting the coronavirus. A relative told the Detroit News that the nurse, who was asthmatic, thought she had been infected by a patient while she wasn’t wearing a face mask and couldn’t get tested until she developed symptoms.

The Henry Ford Health System said Thursday that since mid-March, 872 employees have tested positive for the coronavirus and those with symptoms are being prioritized for testing. The system can also deliver staffers their results within 24 hours, senior leaders said during a press call.

Beaumont Health, another large health system serving the region, announced earlier this week that 1,500 of its employees were off work with symptoms of COVID-19 — 500 of whom are nurses. Beaumont did not indicate how many employees have received positive test results.

At veterans affairs medical centers in the Detroit area, 40 employees have tested positive for the coronavirus, the department confirmed in an email to BuzzFeed News this week. Of them, 25 work at the John D. Dingell VA Medical Center in Detroit and 15 work for the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System, located about 40 miles west of downtown Detroit. Two employees, one from each location, have died, a spokesperson said.

Michigan Medicine, the University of Michigan’s health system, also located in Ann Arbor, announced earlier this week that 110 of its employees had tested positive for the coronavirus. Like other health care systems, Michigan Medicine noted that employees could have contracted the virus anywhere — not just at work.

“We have approximately 30,000 employees, so the number testing positive has not yet affected our ability to respond to the outbreak,” a spokesperson told BuzzFeed News by email.

In the McLaren Health Care system, which operates hospitals across the state, more than 500 employees had confirmed or suspected cases of COVID-19 as of Wednesday morning, 200 of whom work in southeast Michigan, spokesperson Kevin Tompkins wrote in an email. “And the majority of these employees are clinical care providers,” he said.

Ascension, a nationwide health care system, operates hospitals in and around Detroit but did not respond to multiple requests for information. More than 200 nurses at one of its hospitals reportedly called in sick recently, largely due to the coronavirus, and a surgeon at an Ascension hospital just north of Detroit died last week due to complications related to COVID-19.

The Saint Joseph Mercy Health System, which employs more than 12,000 people in southeast Michigan, refused to provide data about how many of its staffers have gotten sick as a result of the virus. “We respect the privacy of our colleagues, and we do not share that information publicly,” spokesperson Laura Blodgett said by email on Friday. She added that no employees had died.

The Detroit Medical Center also refused to provide data about its employees to BuzzFeed News, saying that it is “not providing patient numbers related to COVID-19.” The system’s hospitals are short on protective equipment and have been overwhelmed by the outbreak — one, DMC Sinai-Grace, is reportedly so short-staffed that patients are dying in the hallway before nurses can get to them. The health system fired a nurse last month after she pressured management to address the shortages, and on Sunday emergency room nurses staged a sit-in to call attention to their working conditions.

The DMC’s Harper University Hospital in midtown Detroit has also experienced severe equipment shortages, BuzzFeed News reported last week. A nurse who works there said this week that staff shortages haven’t been as extreme as Sinai-Grace but a few colleagues on her floor are off sick “and it definitely makes staffing harder.”

She said her hospital is trying to make sure that nurses aren’t attending to more than three or four patients at a time because of how critically ill they can be. “It’s hard when we are short-staffed and have to take up to five patients each,” the nurse said, speaking on background.

The DMC did not address questions about what kind of support it offers staffers who have caught the coronavirus. The nurse said she doesn’t believe the staff have been offered extra time off but that management has mentioned mental health services are available.

At other health systems, the support provided to employees who get sick varies. The University of Michigan is giving staff who need to self-quarantine an additional 10 days of paid time off. VA employees, like all those who work for the federal government, get paid annual and sick leave. They can also get weather and safety leave if they have the virus but don’t show any symptoms and can’t work from home, the VA spokesperson said. And at Beaumont, staffers have to self-quarantine for seven days if they have symptoms, and that period doesn’t eat into their regular paid time off, a spokesperson said.

At McLaren, employees use their paid time off to cover their days in quarantine and can receive mental health services. “We are looking every day at what we can be doing to better support our employees,” Tompkins wrote.

St. Joseph Mercy, which provides two weeks of paid administrative leave for those in quarantine, also provides mental health support, with counseling services and a “Colleague Hotline” staffed by human resources employees and others, Blodgett wrote. “The team provides support many different ways and one in particular is to be a calming voice and help colleagues navigate through the challenging time by answering questions they may have.”

Henry Ford’s support for employees impressed the nurse who has contracted the virus. She said employees receive an extra nine days of paid time off if they get sick with COVID-19 and can also call a hotline if they feel stressed or anxious.

“Testing was very quick and I got my results fast,” she added, noting that she was initially denied a test because she wasn’t exhibiting enough symptoms. “But the testing guidelines are provided by CDC and that’s what they were following, so I don’t blame them.”

The Michigan Nurses Association says that health systems in the area are generally not doing enough to support employees. Brown, the union president, said nurses should be able to wear their own protective equipment if the hospitals don’t have enough, get tested if they need it, not have to care for COVID-19 patients if they have underlying health conditions or other vulnerabilities, and be allotted extra hours of paid time off for COVID-19 reasons in addition to paid leave for those who have to self-quarantine. Brown added that nurses who have been recently laid off should be trained to help those working in intensive care units.

“By raising our collective voice as nurses and frontline health care workers, we have been able to win many of these gains from hospitals, including full paid time off for nurses exposed to COVID-19 and protections for immunocompromised nurses,” Brown said. “However, in most instances, this was only won after nurses came forward publicly to pressure the health care system into doing the right thing. Hospital executives should be seeking to work collaboratively with their frontline staff instead of dismissing us.”

Testing for health care workers has varied in its speed and availability among systems. Some nurses still can’t get tested, Brown said.

But among the systems surveyed, the rules for when nurses can rejoin the front lines after getting sick are largely the same and based on guidance from the CDC: Employees must stay home for at least seven days and be symptom-free for three before going back to work.

“I don’t agree with that,” the Henry Ford nurse said. “By doing that, we risk more staff getting sick. I understand there’s a shortage of staff currently and it’s probably a way to replenish that, but it just puts everyone else at risk. ... It’s not just a simple cold, you know. It’s a brand-new disease that we barely know anything about.”

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Emma Loop is a political reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Washington, DC. PGP fingerprint: BB2A EF65 4444 A4AC 6F30 760B 9C22 13B3 0938 1A00.
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#USPS
People Are Buying Stamps And Praising Mail Carriers After The US Postal Service Said It Needs A Coronavirus Bailout

"Let's all buy stamps and save the Post Office."

THROUGH RAIN, SLEET, SNOW AND PANDEMICS 
THEY GO TO DELIVER THE MAIL 

Lam Thuy VoBuzzFeed News Reporter Posted on April 12, 2020

Mario Tama / Getty Images
A US Postal Service worker wears a mask and gloves while delivering mail as the coronavirus pandemic continues in California, April 9.

As the coronavirus pandemic continues, the US Postal Service said that it's seen a "devastating" drop in revenue and needs funding from Congress to ensure it can keep delivering letters and packages to the millions of Americans currently sheltering at home.

But so far, the USPS hasn't received cash in the stimulus plans aimed at propping up other types of US businesses — prompting some people on Sunday to show support by buying stamps, sharing tributes to mail carriers, and starting discussions about why the mail is such an important part of American life.


Swara Ahmed@swarzseawalker
Just bought this beautiful Save Vanishing Species set! #BuySomeStamps #USPostalService https://t.co/muNtL6jxWg05:37 PM - 12 Apr 2020
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#USPostalService and #saveUSPS were tweeted thousands of times after the Washington Post reported Saturday that President Donald Trump was personally blocking potential emergency funding. According to the Post, Trump threatened to veto a version of the recently passed stimulus package that included a $13 billion bailout for the US Postal Service and instead extended the agency a $10 billion loan. The USPS has been financially troubled for decades, but a drop in its main funding source — first-class and marketing mail — due to the coronavirus pandemic has only worsened its economic outlook.

"We now estimate that the COVID-19 pandemic will increase the Postal Service’s net operating loss by more than $22 billion dollars over the next eighteen months, and by over $54 billion dollars over the longer term, threatening our ability to operate," Postmaster General Megan Brennan said in a statement on Friday.

Rep. Gerry Connolly, a Democrat who has led the push to provide USPS with aid, has also said Trump personally blocked potential funding plans.

"Every single one of us will feel the impact if the #USPostalService disappears, @realDonaldTrump," Connolly tweeted on Sunday. "The American people want to #SaveTheUSPS. Whether we can is up to you."

Some people praised the mail delivery personnel in their lives.


dawn renee@SteelCityDawn
Since #USPostalService is trending. Here’s EJ. He’s been my mailman for years. Out here in pandemics & hurricanes. Looking fine.01:21 PM - 12 Apr 2020
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InMinivanHell@inminivanhell
My mom was a single woman w/3 kids who struggled to make ends meet. For decades she delivered mail for the #USPostalService in the scorching heat, the pouring rain, with a bag way too heavy, she even delivered mail in our neighborhood bec she couldn’t afford daycare. #saveusps03:35 PM - 12 Apr 2020
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Letter Carriers@NALC_National
Veteran letter carrier Tom Riley's unforgettable journey that touched many lives! Tom was 17 when he joined the Air Force. After retiring from the Air Force in 1963, he joined the #USPostalService as a carrier. Tom has written more than a dozen books. https://t.co/0Jo6YDOBAV #1u02:35 PM - 12 Apr 2020
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Bill Tedesco 🌊 #Resist@tedescobill
#USPostalService My dad, Mailman Mike Tedesco, Syracuse NY. Probably early 1960s. Honest, modest, dependable and true. Still kickin' at 98.12:22 PM - 12 Apr 2020
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Others pointed out the opportunity USPS provided in particular for black workers, who continue to make up about 27% of the postal workforce.


Annette Gordon-Reed@agordonreed
The Post Office was always embattled in the South because it was one of the few places where black people could get jobs that were well-paying. Many whites resented it because it was a way out of blacks working in service to them for little pay.04:04 AM - 12 Apr 2020
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stay at home mathematician@futurebird
My grandma was a postal carrier. USPS was one of the few that would hire black women, back then even they tried to discourage women by offering them solo rural routes. Grandma took it. My dad has memories of doing homework in the back of the truck as a little boy. #SaveUSPS07:42 PM - 12 Apr 2020
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Some postal workers also spoke out about how necessary their jobs are now.


realKY Derby Divas@KYDerbyDiva
#USPostalService 26 years of service & just helped coordinate delivery of 25,000 Chrome Books for public school students K-12 to maintain education while schools remained closed for #COVID19 We are essential & over 225 years the life line in rural communities #USPostalService03:18 PM - 12 Apr 2020
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Dingus J McGee, ESQ*@DingusJMcGee
For millions across the country, we're the only face they often see all day, even before social distancing. Their connection to the world around them, even if it's just for a comment on the weather, or to be a two minute ear for a rant about "kids these days."10:37 PM - 10 Apr 2020
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The postal service also played an important part in bringing Americans together throughout history, professors and historians said.


Mehrsa Baradaran@MehrsaBaradaran
Here's why we should #SaveThePostOffice: The Postal Act of 1792 (signed into law by George Washington) made the decision that the post office would serve every community regardless of costs.11:09 PM - 10 Apr 2020
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Erin Bartram@erin_bartram
I wonder if historians of the early US are especially ride-or-die for the post office because it seems like one of the least tainted "democratic" ideas of the founding period. It's always been one of the easiest ways to explain "the public good" in classes.03:41 PM - 12 Apr 2020
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Others tried to support the USPS by buying stamps.


Heather & Jessica@fuggirls
Since everyone is buying stamps to help #SaveUSPS, here are some of my favorite ones! (I love stamps.) You can buy stamps of famous post office murals!!!!!!: https://t.co/dx680PDKb806:41 PM - 12 Apr 2020
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Yuko@aidosaur
If people are planning on buying some USPS stamps, may I recommend these Dragon Forever stamps? The photos don't show it off but they all have SPOT FOIL on em— I have an extra sheet set aside that I plan on framing! #SaveUSPS https://t.co/W3cBsuzNPl02:17 PM - 12 Apr 2020
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Maliha Fairooz@malihaness
Just bought 5 set of stamps. Who wants to be penpals? #SaveUSPS08:41 PM - 12 Apr 2020
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And some pointed out the role USPS plays in democracy with voting by mail.


(((Claudia Miles❄️)))@claudiamiles
I just bought a book of Marvin Gaye stamps on https://t.co/BJB94tn1cK because, among other things, I want to be able to vote by mail. Let’s all buy stamps today and save the Post Office. #SaveUSPS #buystamps https://t.co/4q0PxvJRzo06:09 PM - 12 Apr 2020
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The USPS website currently displays a notice that says that “due to a high volume of orders at this time” users should “allow an additional 2-3 days for the delivery” of their order. It wasn't immediately clear if this was linked to the online campaigns, and a USPS spokesperson couldn't immediately provide stamp sales numbers to BuzzFeed News.

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Lam Thuy Vo is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.
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OMG ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE
 Scientists Have Reported The First Case Of The Coronavirus Spreading From A Dead Body
“We need to take care of the people who take care of the dead,” one pathologist said.
Dan Vergano BuzzFeed News ReporterPosted on April 13, 2020

Angela Weiss / Getty Images 
Medical personnel move a deceased patient to a refrigerated truck.

Thailand is reporting the first fatal case of the novel coronavirus being transmitted from a dead patient to a medical examiner, a finding that experts say adds to safety concerns for morgue and funeral home workers amid the global pandemic.

“This is the first report on COVID-19 infection and death among medical personnel in a Forensic Medicine unit,” said a Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine study released on Sunday.

“The disinfection procedure used in operation rooms might be applied in pathology/forensic units too,” wrote the authors, Won Sriwijitalai of the RVT Medical Center in Bangkok and Viroj Wiwanitkit of China’s Hainan Medical University. “At present, there is no data on the exact number of COVID-19 contaminated corpses since it is not a routine practice to examine for COVID-19 in dead bodies in Thailand.”

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NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD 1968

With nearly 1.9 million novel coronavirus cases reported worldwide as of Monday, Thailand has reported only 2,579 cases, although it was one of the earliest countries to report infections outside of China. The death of the forensic team member was only the second case reported among medical personnel in Thailand as of March 20, the authors added.

“Not just the medical examiners, but morgue technicians and the people in funeral homes need to take extra care,” said Angelique Corthals, a professor of pathology at CUNY's John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “It is a real concern.”

Very little is known about how long the new coronavirus can survive in dead bodies or whether corpses can be contagious to people who handle them.

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NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD 1968

Ebola is the best-known virus that poses an infection risk from dead bodies, but guidelines from the World Health Organization also recognize a risk to workers who handle dead bodies from hepatitis, tuberculosis, and cholera.

On March 25, the head of Thailand’s Department of Medical Services had announced the bodies of coronavirus victims were not contagious amid reports of temples refusing to perform funeral services. However, some morgue workers worldwide have raised concerns as hastily built facilities have been erected to handle excessive deaths.

“Anyone coming into contact with a COVID19 positive body, alive or dead, should be using personal protective equipment to prevent exposure,” health policy expert Summer Johnson McGee of the University of New Haven told BuzzFeed News by email. Coroners are increasingly being asked to conduct investigations into causes of death for patients who have died and were not been tested, she noted, in efforts to trace contacts with exposed family members, neighbors, and coworkers.

“Autopsies and subsequent investigations present real risks for coroners to acquire COVID-19,” she said.
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NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD 1968

As efforts increase for temporary mass burials of victims and temporary morgues, medical personnel handling people's remains need to be included in priorities for protective equipment, said Corthals.

“We need to take care of the people who take care of the dead.”

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Dan Vergano is a science reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Washington, DC.

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