Friday, April 24, 2020
AOC Says Reopening the Economy Shouldn't Mean Returning to 70-Hour Workweeks
“Only in America ... when the president tweets about ‘liberation,’ does he mean ‘Go back to work."
By Emma Ockerman Apr 22 2020
![]()
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said it’s not all that “liberating” to open up the economy during a global pandemic so people can return to grueling 70-hour workweeks, in the debut installment of VICE TV’s political talk show “Seat at the Table with Anand Giridharadas,” which aired Wednesday at 10 p.m. ET. VIDEO BELOW
The New York Democrat slammed President Trump’s encouragement of the protesters calling to “liberate” various states from their lockdown orders. The sweeping stay-at-home mandates are meant to protect people from the coronavirus and keep hospitals from collapse, but they've also contributed to widespread job loss.
“Only in America, does the president, when the president tweets about liberation, does he mean ‘Go back to work,’” the progressive legislator said. “We have this discussion about ‘going back’ or ‘reopening’ — I think a lot of people should just say, ‘No, we’re not going back to that. We’re not going back to working 70-hour weeks just so that we can put food on the table and not feel any sort of semblance of security in our lives.”
Separately, Ocasio-Cortez spoke of the virus’ devastation in her district, which encompasses hard-hit neighborhoods in the Queens and the Bronx. New York City alone has recorded nearly 140,000 cases of COVID-19, and almost 15,000 deaths.
“I have to call family members, congregations, and people in our community offering condolences day in and day out.”
“Only in America ... when the president tweets about ‘liberation,’ does he mean ‘Go back to work."
By Emma Ockerman Apr 22 2020
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said it’s not all that “liberating” to open up the economy during a global pandemic so people can return to grueling 70-hour workweeks, in the debut installment of VICE TV’s political talk show “Seat at the Table with Anand Giridharadas,” which aired Wednesday at 10 p.m. ET. VIDEO BELOW
The New York Democrat slammed President Trump’s encouragement of the protesters calling to “liberate” various states from their lockdown orders. The sweeping stay-at-home mandates are meant to protect people from the coronavirus and keep hospitals from collapse, but they've also contributed to widespread job loss.
“Only in America, does the president, when the president tweets about liberation, does he mean ‘Go back to work,’” the progressive legislator said. “We have this discussion about ‘going back’ or ‘reopening’ — I think a lot of people should just say, ‘No, we’re not going back to that. We’re not going back to working 70-hour weeks just so that we can put food on the table and not feel any sort of semblance of security in our lives.”
Separately, Ocasio-Cortez spoke of the virus’ devastation in her district, which encompasses hard-hit neighborhoods in the Queens and the Bronx. New York City alone has recorded nearly 140,000 cases of COVID-19, and almost 15,000 deaths.
“I have to call family members, congregations, and people in our community offering condolences day in and day out.”
“I have to call family members, congregations and people in our community offering condolences day in and day out. I have to talk to teenage kids who have lost their parents. I have to talk to spouses that have lost their husband or wife of several decades,” Ocasio- Cortez said. “I have to talk to people who have lost their pastor or who have lost their imam or who have lost their spiritual leader of their community, and you know, I have to talk to people who say, 'Where am I going to get my next meal,' or 'Am I going to be evicted from my apartment next month?'”
PAKISTAN IS A SECULAR STATE
Doctors Are Begging Pakistan to Close Mosques or Risk a Coronavirus Catastrophe
Doctors say it was a huge mistake to bow to religious clerics, who demanded an end to government restrictions right before Ramadan.
By Tim Hume Apr 23 2020
![]()
People MEN attend evening prayers while maintaining a level of social distancing to help avoid the spread of the coronavirus, at a mosque in Karachi, Pakistan, Wednesday, April 22, 2020. Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan's government bowed to demands by religious leaders and agreed to keep mosques open during the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan. (AP Photo/Fareed Khan)
Pakistan’s leading doctors are begging the government to close mosques during Ramadan, fearing a catastrophic spike in coronavirus infections during the Muslim holy month.
On Saturday, Pakistan's leaders caved to demands from top religious clerics to lift lockdown measures that had restricted gatherings in mosques to five people or fewer. But doctors say that was a huge mistake, warning that high attendance at mosques — which are typically crowded during Ramadan — is likely to fuel a devastating outbreak.
At a news conference late Wednesday, doctors from the Pakistani Medical Association urged the government to rethink its decision to allow mosques to open during Ramadan, which is expected to begin on Friday in Pakistan.
“Unfortunately, our rulers have made a wrong decision; our clerics have shown a non-serious attitude,” Qaiser Sajjad, secretary-general of the Pakistani Medical Association, told the news conference.
Earlier this month, Pakistan’s government restricted gatherings in mosques as part of efforts to prevent a wider coronavirus outbreak. But many mosques openly flouted the rules, and last week, an influential group of clerics — who wield considerable influence in the devoutly Islamic country — announced that they would no longer observe the restrictions.
READ: Pakistan has banned large prayer services to prevent a coronavirus catastrophe. Clerics are holding them anyway
The government swiftly acquiesced to most of their demands, and on Saturday lifted the restrictions on group prayers as long as worshipers adhered to a 20-point list of standard operating procedures. These include wearing face masks, bringing prayer mats from home, banning the elderly and vulnerable from attending, and maintaining social distancing.
“I urge people to pray at home, but if they want to go to mosques, they will have to follow these 20 points,” Prime Minister Imran Khan said in a televised address, warning that the ban would be reimposed of there was a viral outbreak at a mosque.
Doctors have been alarmed by that approach, saying the guidelines will be impossible to implement, and are already being widely breached. Already, they said, mosques are being heavily attended by people in their 60s and 70s, meaning that the advice for vulnerable groups to stay away is not being followed.
Saad Niaz, a doctor speaking at the conference, warned ICU beds and isolation facilities in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, were already at capacity from a recent surge in coronavirus cases, and would be overwhelmed in a few days unless drastic measures were taken.
Pakistan has confirmed more than 10,000 cases of coronavirus, including 212 deaths, but experts warn the peak isn’t expected to hit until May. Many of the cases so far have been linked to religious gatherings.
READ: A prayer meeting has created huge coronavirus clusters in India and Pakistan
Ammar Rashid, an Islamabad-based public health researcher for research center Heartfile, told VICE News that the doctors’ appeal was “remarkable” for how directly it called out the clerics for being irresponsible.
“It is rare to hear such direct criticism of the ulema [a body of religious scholars] from any professional organization, which tend to stay out of religious matters,” he said.
“But the doctors did not hold back and basically told them they were directly jeopardizing lives.”
Despite the stark warning, he said, it wasn’t clear whether the government would heed the doctors’ advice. It has previously dismissed similar calls from provincial officials for tougher lockdown measures, dismissing them as attempts to politicize the outbreak, and several pro-government channels cut away from the doctors’ press conference as it aired, he said.
“The next couple of days will be crucial. If cases surge, as is likely, it may push them to reconsider.”
Doctors Are Begging Pakistan to Close Mosques or Risk a Coronavirus Catastrophe
Doctors say it was a huge mistake to bow to religious clerics, who demanded an end to government restrictions right before Ramadan.
By Tim Hume Apr 23 2020
Pakistan’s leading doctors are begging the government to close mosques during Ramadan, fearing a catastrophic spike in coronavirus infections during the Muslim holy month.
On Saturday, Pakistan's leaders caved to demands from top religious clerics to lift lockdown measures that had restricted gatherings in mosques to five people or fewer. But doctors say that was a huge mistake, warning that high attendance at mosques — which are typically crowded during Ramadan — is likely to fuel a devastating outbreak.
At a news conference late Wednesday, doctors from the Pakistani Medical Association urged the government to rethink its decision to allow mosques to open during Ramadan, which is expected to begin on Friday in Pakistan.
“Unfortunately, our rulers have made a wrong decision; our clerics have shown a non-serious attitude,” Qaiser Sajjad, secretary-general of the Pakistani Medical Association, told the news conference.
Earlier this month, Pakistan’s government restricted gatherings in mosques as part of efforts to prevent a wider coronavirus outbreak. But many mosques openly flouted the rules, and last week, an influential group of clerics — who wield considerable influence in the devoutly Islamic country — announced that they would no longer observe the restrictions.
READ: Pakistan has banned large prayer services to prevent a coronavirus catastrophe. Clerics are holding them anyway
The government swiftly acquiesced to most of their demands, and on Saturday lifted the restrictions on group prayers as long as worshipers adhered to a 20-point list of standard operating procedures. These include wearing face masks, bringing prayer mats from home, banning the elderly and vulnerable from attending, and maintaining social distancing.
“I urge people to pray at home, but if they want to go to mosques, they will have to follow these 20 points,” Prime Minister Imran Khan said in a televised address, warning that the ban would be reimposed of there was a viral outbreak at a mosque.
Doctors have been alarmed by that approach, saying the guidelines will be impossible to implement, and are already being widely breached. Already, they said, mosques are being heavily attended by people in their 60s and 70s, meaning that the advice for vulnerable groups to stay away is not being followed.
Saad Niaz, a doctor speaking at the conference, warned ICU beds and isolation facilities in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, were already at capacity from a recent surge in coronavirus cases, and would be overwhelmed in a few days unless drastic measures were taken.
Pakistan has confirmed more than 10,000 cases of coronavirus, including 212 deaths, but experts warn the peak isn’t expected to hit until May. Many of the cases so far have been linked to religious gatherings.
READ: A prayer meeting has created huge coronavirus clusters in India and Pakistan
Ammar Rashid, an Islamabad-based public health researcher for research center Heartfile, told VICE News that the doctors’ appeal was “remarkable” for how directly it called out the clerics for being irresponsible.
“It is rare to hear such direct criticism of the ulema [a body of religious scholars] from any professional organization, which tend to stay out of religious matters,” he said.
“But the doctors did not hold back and basically told them they were directly jeopardizing lives.”
Despite the stark warning, he said, it wasn’t clear whether the government would heed the doctors’ advice. It has previously dismissed similar calls from provincial officials for tougher lockdown measures, dismissing them as attempts to politicize the outbreak, and several pro-government channels cut away from the doctors’ press conference as it aired, he said.
“The next couple of days will be crucial. If cases surge, as is likely, it may push them to reconsider.”
US Federal Prison Staff Say the Government Is ‘Getting Hustled’ with Bogus Coronavirus Masks
“The quality is terrible,” said one federal prison staffer of the KN95 he received. “I don’t even know where they got ’em from.”
By Keegan Hamilton and Daniel Newhauser Apr 21 2020
![]()
Packaging from the KN95 mask supplied to Ray Coleman. Courtesy of Coleman.
“The quality is terrible,” said one federal prison staffer of the KN95 he received. “I don’t even know where they got ’em from.”
By Keegan Hamilton and Daniel Newhauser Apr 21 2020
Packaging from the KN95 mask supplied to Ray Coleman. Courtesy of Coleman.
Ray Coleman was incredulous when a manager ordered him to throw away his N95 respirator moments after he was fitted to wear it. Coleman, a literacy coordinator at FCI Tallahassee, a low-security federal prison with about 900 inmates in the Florida Panhandle, says he was told that his respirator had expired but replacements would be arriving soon.
Coleman knew there was a national shortage of N95 respirators, which are the best-known protection against inhaling the coronavirus. With demand soaring, some front-line healthcare workers have resorted to wearing cloth coverings over their faces because they’re unable to obtain N95s.
“I’m reading in the news about how hard N95s are to come by,” Coleman, who is also the president of the prison’s union for correctional officers and staff, told VICE News. “We only had like 60 left on hand. Then all of a sudden they said, ‘We’re getting thousands of masks in.’ I’m like, where are we getting these? I think y’all getting hustled.”
When Coleman got a look at the new masks last week, he didn’t like what he saw. They were KN95s, a controversial Chinese-made version of the N95. While KN95s can be a suitable alternative, the U.S. market has been flooded by knockoff versions made from low-quality materials that aren’t certified by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The FDA has created a special process to verify KN95 masks and updates a list of permitted manufacturers almost daily. But Coleman said his mask resembles one on a different list: a list of suspected fakes, maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“This is a counterfeit mask,” Coleman recalled thinking. “This mask is from China. It’s not approved. This is what they're sending our law enforcement officers? They’re using us to test masks? That’s not good.”
Staff and union officials are furious at the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ leadership, alleging that the lack of preparation and disjointed response has led to dangerous working conditions and allowed the coronavirus outbreak to spiral out of control in prisons. Nearly 500 inmates and more than 300 staff have tested positive for COVID-19 at 59 BOP facilities across the country. Twenty-two inmates have died.
Initially, BOP staff allege, some staff were ordered not to wear any masks at all. Then when masks became required, there weren’t enough to go around. Now, workers claim, staff have been given dubious KN95s rather than trusted N95s.
Even “hotspot” prisons still don’t have enough respirators — even KN95s — and other PPE, said Joe Rojas, the Southeast regional vice president for the Council of Prison Locals C-33, a branch of the American Federation of Government Employees that represents more than 30,000 unionized federal prison staffers.
At FCC Yazoo City in Mississippi, where at least 71 inmates and four staff members are infected, Rojas said some correctional officers are still being issued regular surgical masks, which offer nowhere near the same level of protection as respirators.
“It’s an F-rated failure,” Rojas said of the BOP’s coronavirus response. “It’s disgusting, it’s reckless, and it’s a failure.”
Do you know something about the Bureau of Prisons? We'd love to hear from you. Contact the reporter at keegan.hamilton@vice.com or keegan.hamilton@protonmail.com.
Government contracting records show the BOP began shopping for KN95s in early April, shortly after the FDA cleared KN95s for use in healthcare settings — if the manufacturer provides verification that the respirators are functional.
Coleman shared photos of his mask with VICE News, including a label that says it was manufactured in March by Hunan Royal Crown Medical Products Co. Ltd. That company does not appear on the FDA’s list of Chinese companies that have authenticated their KN95s. Coleman says the KN95 he was given resembles one listed by the CDC as fake, but Hunan Royal Crown is not listed among the CDC’s suspected counterfeit respirator manufacturers.
“The quality is terrible,” Coleman said. “You can just feel it. I don’t even know where they got ’em from.”
LEFT: THE MASK GIVEN TO RAY COLEMAN. RIGHT: THE LABEL ON COLEMAN'S MASK.
There’s virtually no information available online about Hunan Royal Crown, and Chinese corporate registry information reviewed by VICE News indicates the company was created barely a month ago for the sole purpose of manufacturing masks. The CDC and FDA did not immediately respond to questions about whether the Hunan Royal Crown mask appears on the CDC's counterfeit list, and the company was not reachable for comment.
Many similar manufacturers have sprung up across China to fill the demand, and U.S. buyers have struggled to confirm the quality of their products.
Some 48,000 KN95s sent to first responders in Missouri were recalled earlier this month after testing proved they didn't meet safety standards. And in Illinois, officials reversed course after buying $17 million worth of KN95s, warning that KN95 masks “may not meet performance standards” and counterfeits are “flooding the marketplace.” The state’s health department is now recommending agencies stop distributing KN95s that are not explicitly FDA-approved.
READ: Trump blacklisted this Chinese company. Now it’s making coronavirus masks for U.S. hospitals.
Coleman filed a complaint against FCI Tallahassee with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration on April 14 stating that employees had been sounding the alarm about PPE shortages for over a month. The complaint alleges that staff transporting sick inmates to the hospital were not provided with N95 masks. One staff member at FCI Tallahassee has tested positive for COVID-19, according to the BOP.
“Masks have not been issued to employees who are charged with the 24/7 monitoring of the quarantine and isolation of nearly 70 inmates,” Coleman wrote. “Instead the agency is forcing staff to dispose of N95s after fit-testing.”
The national president of the union for BOP staff filed a separate OSHA complaint on March 31, also alleging that the agency “failed to provide the proper N95 masks to staff,” including instances when officers were around sick inmates. Three employees at FCI Oakdale in Louisiana, where seven inmates have died from COVID-19, have joined a class-action lawsuit against the federal government, alleging they were exposed to the virus because they lacked proper gear. One Oakdale officer alleges he was only issued gloves — no mask — when transporting a sick prisoner to the hospital for testing. That prisoner later died from COVID-19.
With N95s in short supply, several federal prisons turned to KN95 masks. Yazoo City bought 30,000 “KN95 disposable facemasks, one-size fits all,” for $98,700 from a company named ML Click Marketing on April 6. Aaron Tucker, the Phoenix-based company’s vice president, told VICE News he also sold KN95 masks to Coleman’s prison in Tallahassee.
But Tucker isn’t sure the masks he sold the prisons are the same ones employees are complaining about. That’s because Tucker has never actually seen the masks. His company serves as a middleman, sending stock directly from manufacturers to the prisons, he said.
Tucker's company, which also goes by the trade name True Uniform, usually sells items like T-shirts, boxer shorts, socks, and soap to federal prisons and other government entities. But as the coronavirus crisis worsened, he said, his customers started asking for masks just as his trusted suppliers told him they could source KN95s from manufacturers in China.
“We'd never sold masks until this thing came out,” Tucker said. “People started asking around whether or not we could get them, and the answer was yes.”
Tucker’s suppliers provided him with FDA certification documents for mask manufacturers that bear a name different than “Hunan Royal Crown.”( He declined to provide that name, the certificates, or contact information for his supplier.) But Tucker now wonders whether he’s fallen victim to a “bait and switch” — or if the prisons got these KN95 masks elsewhere.
“We're kind of learning this as we go,” he said. “It was just the Wild West out there for the first, you know, couple of weeks. People were scrambling to find anything. I plan on reaching out to the representatives at Tallahassee to ask if we have a problem.”
Federal contracting records show ML Click selling around $311,000 worth of “COVID-19 PPE” to the BOP’s Northeast Regional Office on April 1, but a union official told VICE News that staff in that region has not yet reported receiving KN95 masks.
ML Click also received a contract worth nearly $49,000 to supply “hand sanitizer and KN95 face masks” to the BOP’s Federal Transfer Center in Oklahoma City, which is a hub for inmates being moved around the country. The staff union president at the facility was not aware of the purchase and said workers have not been issued KN95 masks and were instead wearing another type of respirator when interacting with sick inmates.
The U.S. Marshals Service, which transports federal prisoners, placed an order for around $1,000 worth of KN95s on April 1 from a company called Buy Smart LLC, which advertises office supplies and cleaning products on its website. The company did not respond to multiple calls from VICE News.
The Department of Justice did not respond to an inquiry from VICE News asking whether any steps had been taken to verify the authenticity of KN95 supplied to federal law enforcement agencies, and whether other agencies beyond the BOP and Marshals Service had bought them.
BOP spokesperson Sue Allison responded to a detailed list of questions about the KN95 purchases and other issues with the agency’s PPE supply by saying the agency “began issuing masks/face coverings to all institution staff and fit-testing for use of N-95 masks” on April 4, after the CDC recommended wearing masks in public.
“Let me assure you, we have a sufficient quantity of personal protective equipment,” Allison said. “Staff have been advised to follow procedures and be responsible in how and when we use it. We are monitoring the inventory closely.” She added, “Our contracting staff continue to make purchases daily to ensure we maintain our inventories.”
As Chinese manufacturers have ramped up production of respirator masks, U.S. regulators have struggled to keep pace. As previously reported by VICE News, the first KN95 manufacturer certified by the FDA was BYD, a Chinese electric-vehicle company with a history of supplying allegedly defective products to U.S. taxpayers, as well as possible links to forced labor, though BYD denies both claims and is not linked to the masks sent to U.S. prisons. VICE News also documented how Chinese drug traffickers are getting into the mask game by using phony FDA certificates to dupe would-be customers.
“It was just the Wild West out there for the first, you know, couple of weeks. People were scrambling to find anything.”
Matthew Solomon, an FBI special agent who supervises a task force that investigates fraud and other economic crimes, said the agency has received over a thousand complaints about bogus PPE and other coronavirus-related scams since the outbreak began.
When VICE News described the situation with ML Click and the KN95s supplied to the BOP, Solomon replied, “If there was some sort of ‘bait and switch’ where perpetrators were offering a mask or PPE that was certified by one of the major providers that are based in the U.S. and it turned out not to be that, of course the FBI would be interested.”
The DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General is reportedly investigating the BOP’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak, and U.S. lawmakers are also demanding answers. In an April 13 letter to Attorney General William Barr and BOP Director Michael Carvajal, Florida Reps. Val Demings and Debbie Mucarsel-Powell said they had received “alarming reports” about federal prisons not providing PPE to staff and “ignoring basic guidance” from the CDC.
“Employees at correctional institutions in Florida have conveyed that there is a shortage of gloves and the supply of available masks severely lacking,” Demings and Mucarsel-Powell wrote, noting that Congress recently allocated $100 million to the BOP specifically to buy PPE and respond to the outbreak.
Rep. Karen Bass, a California Democrat who has criticized the BOP’s handling of the outbreak, said that without Congress in session, “we're having a real problem with oversight right now.”
“I'm worried that after having worked so many years on criminal justice reform, that we're getting ready to reduce our prison population, but we're going to reduce our prison population through death,” Bass said. “And I just think that is just completely unacceptable.”
Some BOP staffers say they were under orders not to wear any masks at all until early April. VICE News obtained a letter sent from a correctional officer to the warden of U.S. Penitentiary Coleman, part of a large federal prison complex in Florida, in which the officer says his captain told him not to wear an N95 on duty. The officer expressed concern about contracting the virus and bringing it home to family members with underlying medical conditions.
“I’m only doing what any responsible person would do,” the officer wrote. “I’m taking extra precautions not to bring anything in or out of the facility. I was told I could not work while wearing the mask. Being proactive should not be a punishment.”
At least one inmate and three staff members at the Coleman complex have tested positive for COVID-19 and 1,000 inmates at the low-security facility there are currently under quarantine after possible virus exposure, according to an email to prison staff obtained by VICE News.
One staff member at FCC Coleman told VICE News they were instructed last month by the complex warden to remove their mask while working at the facility. A regional BOP official said the policy against wearing masks came from “Central Office” or agency headquarters in Washington, according to a text message exchange obtained by VICE News.
The FCC Coleman staff member, who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media, said the deputy attorney general sent a memo to DOJ employees last week reversing the policy and mandating the use of masks, but the change came too late.
“It could have been prevented,” the FCC Coleman staffer said. “If they would have let us wear masks when we wanted to, the inmates wouldn’t have gotten sick. The inmates didn't get it from visitors. We’re the ones going to stores. We're not socializing, but we're out in society.”
FCC Coleman recently received a shipment of 4,000 KN95 masks, the source said, but could not offer any details about cost or model.
Charles Jones, a correctional officer at FCI Marianna, a medium-security prison in Florida, said his facility also received KN95 masks in recent weeks. A photo he sent of the packaging indicates the masks were made by a company not listed by the FDA as a certified manufacturer of KN95 respirators.
Jones, who serves as the local union president, does fit-testing of staff for respirators and expressed concern about the new masks. “They’re saying they’re FDA-approved, but it’s got this Chinese label on it, and we don’t know what the standard is,” he said. “They say it’s OK, but there's no real way to verify what the quality is of these respirators.”
Jones said the BOP isn’t providing proper PPE to staff being sent to “hot zones,” which he worries will cause the virus to spread into new prisons and ultimately into neighboring communities. He said those who are issued respirators are being told to wear the same mask for an entire workweek, which is longer than recommended safety standards. There weren’t even enough N95s for all staff members to undergo the mandatory fit-testing, he said, so he’d started fit-testing with the one-size-fits-all KN95s instead.
“They’re saying they've been preparing for this since December or January, but I just don't understand how we don’t still have masks,” Jones said. “They weren't even trying to get masks back then. They're saying there was a plan, but obviously there isn’t one if we still don't have enough N95s in stock.”
A day after VICE News sent an inquiry to the BOP about the use of KN95 masks, staff at Marianna received an email from prison officials saying that respirator fit-testing had been halted. On a subsequent conference call, Jones said, staff were told not to wear the masks until further notice.
At FCI Tallahassee, Coleman said his warden told him he “didn’t know who authorized the purchases” of the KN95s, and that the matter was being investigated. In the meantime, Tallahassee acquired new N95s from another federal prison in Florida. Coleman still wishes he’d kept the expired N95 that he was forced to throw away after fit-testing, though. He knows the new stash isn't going to last forever, and worries KN95s are going to be back on the table.
“I’d rather give somebody a decent mask that’s expired than one of these masks,” he said.
Coleman knew there was a national shortage of N95 respirators, which are the best-known protection against inhaling the coronavirus. With demand soaring, some front-line healthcare workers have resorted to wearing cloth coverings over their faces because they’re unable to obtain N95s.
“I’m reading in the news about how hard N95s are to come by,” Coleman, who is also the president of the prison’s union for correctional officers and staff, told VICE News. “We only had like 60 left on hand. Then all of a sudden they said, ‘We’re getting thousands of masks in.’ I’m like, where are we getting these? I think y’all getting hustled.”
When Coleman got a look at the new masks last week, he didn’t like what he saw. They were KN95s, a controversial Chinese-made version of the N95. While KN95s can be a suitable alternative, the U.S. market has been flooded by knockoff versions made from low-quality materials that aren’t certified by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The FDA has created a special process to verify KN95 masks and updates a list of permitted manufacturers almost daily. But Coleman said his mask resembles one on a different list: a list of suspected fakes, maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“This is a counterfeit mask,” Coleman recalled thinking. “This mask is from China. It’s not approved. This is what they're sending our law enforcement officers? They’re using us to test masks? That’s not good.”
Staff and union officials are furious at the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ leadership, alleging that the lack of preparation and disjointed response has led to dangerous working conditions and allowed the coronavirus outbreak to spiral out of control in prisons. Nearly 500 inmates and more than 300 staff have tested positive for COVID-19 at 59 BOP facilities across the country. Twenty-two inmates have died.
Initially, BOP staff allege, some staff were ordered not to wear any masks at all. Then when masks became required, there weren’t enough to go around. Now, workers claim, staff have been given dubious KN95s rather than trusted N95s.
Even “hotspot” prisons still don’t have enough respirators — even KN95s — and other PPE, said Joe Rojas, the Southeast regional vice president for the Council of Prison Locals C-33, a branch of the American Federation of Government Employees that represents more than 30,000 unionized federal prison staffers.
At FCC Yazoo City in Mississippi, where at least 71 inmates and four staff members are infected, Rojas said some correctional officers are still being issued regular surgical masks, which offer nowhere near the same level of protection as respirators.
“It’s an F-rated failure,” Rojas said of the BOP’s coronavirus response. “It’s disgusting, it’s reckless, and it’s a failure.”
Do you know something about the Bureau of Prisons? We'd love to hear from you. Contact the reporter at keegan.hamilton@vice.com or keegan.hamilton@protonmail.com.
Government contracting records show the BOP began shopping for KN95s in early April, shortly after the FDA cleared KN95s for use in healthcare settings — if the manufacturer provides verification that the respirators are functional.
Coleman shared photos of his mask with VICE News, including a label that says it was manufactured in March by Hunan Royal Crown Medical Products Co. Ltd. That company does not appear on the FDA’s list of Chinese companies that have authenticated their KN95s. Coleman says the KN95 he was given resembles one listed by the CDC as fake, but Hunan Royal Crown is not listed among the CDC’s suspected counterfeit respirator manufacturers.
“The quality is terrible,” Coleman said. “You can just feel it. I don’t even know where they got ’em from.”
LEFT: THE MASK GIVEN TO RAY COLEMAN. RIGHT: THE LABEL ON COLEMAN'S MASK.
There’s virtually no information available online about Hunan Royal Crown, and Chinese corporate registry information reviewed by VICE News indicates the company was created barely a month ago for the sole purpose of manufacturing masks. The CDC and FDA did not immediately respond to questions about whether the Hunan Royal Crown mask appears on the CDC's counterfeit list, and the company was not reachable for comment.
Many similar manufacturers have sprung up across China to fill the demand, and U.S. buyers have struggled to confirm the quality of their products.
Some 48,000 KN95s sent to first responders in Missouri were recalled earlier this month after testing proved they didn't meet safety standards. And in Illinois, officials reversed course after buying $17 million worth of KN95s, warning that KN95 masks “may not meet performance standards” and counterfeits are “flooding the marketplace.” The state’s health department is now recommending agencies stop distributing KN95s that are not explicitly FDA-approved.
READ: Trump blacklisted this Chinese company. Now it’s making coronavirus masks for U.S. hospitals.
Coleman filed a complaint against FCI Tallahassee with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration on April 14 stating that employees had been sounding the alarm about PPE shortages for over a month. The complaint alleges that staff transporting sick inmates to the hospital were not provided with N95 masks. One staff member at FCI Tallahassee has tested positive for COVID-19, according to the BOP.
“Masks have not been issued to employees who are charged with the 24/7 monitoring of the quarantine and isolation of nearly 70 inmates,” Coleman wrote. “Instead the agency is forcing staff to dispose of N95s after fit-testing.”
The national president of the union for BOP staff filed a separate OSHA complaint on March 31, also alleging that the agency “failed to provide the proper N95 masks to staff,” including instances when officers were around sick inmates. Three employees at FCI Oakdale in Louisiana, where seven inmates have died from COVID-19, have joined a class-action lawsuit against the federal government, alleging they were exposed to the virus because they lacked proper gear. One Oakdale officer alleges he was only issued gloves — no mask — when transporting a sick prisoner to the hospital for testing. That prisoner later died from COVID-19.
With N95s in short supply, several federal prisons turned to KN95 masks. Yazoo City bought 30,000 “KN95 disposable facemasks, one-size fits all,” for $98,700 from a company named ML Click Marketing on April 6. Aaron Tucker, the Phoenix-based company’s vice president, told VICE News he also sold KN95 masks to Coleman’s prison in Tallahassee.
But Tucker isn’t sure the masks he sold the prisons are the same ones employees are complaining about. That’s because Tucker has never actually seen the masks. His company serves as a middleman, sending stock directly from manufacturers to the prisons, he said.
Tucker's company, which also goes by the trade name True Uniform, usually sells items like T-shirts, boxer shorts, socks, and soap to federal prisons and other government entities. But as the coronavirus crisis worsened, he said, his customers started asking for masks just as his trusted suppliers told him they could source KN95s from manufacturers in China.
“We'd never sold masks until this thing came out,” Tucker said. “People started asking around whether or not we could get them, and the answer was yes.”
Tucker’s suppliers provided him with FDA certification documents for mask manufacturers that bear a name different than “Hunan Royal Crown.”( He declined to provide that name, the certificates, or contact information for his supplier.) But Tucker now wonders whether he’s fallen victim to a “bait and switch” — or if the prisons got these KN95 masks elsewhere.
“We're kind of learning this as we go,” he said. “It was just the Wild West out there for the first, you know, couple of weeks. People were scrambling to find anything. I plan on reaching out to the representatives at Tallahassee to ask if we have a problem.”
Federal contracting records show ML Click selling around $311,000 worth of “COVID-19 PPE” to the BOP’s Northeast Regional Office on April 1, but a union official told VICE News that staff in that region has not yet reported receiving KN95 masks.
ML Click also received a contract worth nearly $49,000 to supply “hand sanitizer and KN95 face masks” to the BOP’s Federal Transfer Center in Oklahoma City, which is a hub for inmates being moved around the country. The staff union president at the facility was not aware of the purchase and said workers have not been issued KN95 masks and were instead wearing another type of respirator when interacting with sick inmates.
The U.S. Marshals Service, which transports federal prisoners, placed an order for around $1,000 worth of KN95s on April 1 from a company called Buy Smart LLC, which advertises office supplies and cleaning products on its website. The company did not respond to multiple calls from VICE News.
The Department of Justice did not respond to an inquiry from VICE News asking whether any steps had been taken to verify the authenticity of KN95 supplied to federal law enforcement agencies, and whether other agencies beyond the BOP and Marshals Service had bought them.
BOP spokesperson Sue Allison responded to a detailed list of questions about the KN95 purchases and other issues with the agency’s PPE supply by saying the agency “began issuing masks/face coverings to all institution staff and fit-testing for use of N-95 masks” on April 4, after the CDC recommended wearing masks in public.
“Let me assure you, we have a sufficient quantity of personal protective equipment,” Allison said. “Staff have been advised to follow procedures and be responsible in how and when we use it. We are monitoring the inventory closely.” She added, “Our contracting staff continue to make purchases daily to ensure we maintain our inventories.”
As Chinese manufacturers have ramped up production of respirator masks, U.S. regulators have struggled to keep pace. As previously reported by VICE News, the first KN95 manufacturer certified by the FDA was BYD, a Chinese electric-vehicle company with a history of supplying allegedly defective products to U.S. taxpayers, as well as possible links to forced labor, though BYD denies both claims and is not linked to the masks sent to U.S. prisons. VICE News also documented how Chinese drug traffickers are getting into the mask game by using phony FDA certificates to dupe would-be customers.
“It was just the Wild West out there for the first, you know, couple of weeks. People were scrambling to find anything.”
Matthew Solomon, an FBI special agent who supervises a task force that investigates fraud and other economic crimes, said the agency has received over a thousand complaints about bogus PPE and other coronavirus-related scams since the outbreak began.
When VICE News described the situation with ML Click and the KN95s supplied to the BOP, Solomon replied, “If there was some sort of ‘bait and switch’ where perpetrators were offering a mask or PPE that was certified by one of the major providers that are based in the U.S. and it turned out not to be that, of course the FBI would be interested.”
The DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General is reportedly investigating the BOP’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak, and U.S. lawmakers are also demanding answers. In an April 13 letter to Attorney General William Barr and BOP Director Michael Carvajal, Florida Reps. Val Demings and Debbie Mucarsel-Powell said they had received “alarming reports” about federal prisons not providing PPE to staff and “ignoring basic guidance” from the CDC.
“Employees at correctional institutions in Florida have conveyed that there is a shortage of gloves and the supply of available masks severely lacking,” Demings and Mucarsel-Powell wrote, noting that Congress recently allocated $100 million to the BOP specifically to buy PPE and respond to the outbreak.
Rep. Karen Bass, a California Democrat who has criticized the BOP’s handling of the outbreak, said that without Congress in session, “we're having a real problem with oversight right now.”
“I'm worried that after having worked so many years on criminal justice reform, that we're getting ready to reduce our prison population, but we're going to reduce our prison population through death,” Bass said. “And I just think that is just completely unacceptable.”
Some BOP staffers say they were under orders not to wear any masks at all until early April. VICE News obtained a letter sent from a correctional officer to the warden of U.S. Penitentiary Coleman, part of a large federal prison complex in Florida, in which the officer says his captain told him not to wear an N95 on duty. The officer expressed concern about contracting the virus and bringing it home to family members with underlying medical conditions.
“I’m only doing what any responsible person would do,” the officer wrote. “I’m taking extra precautions not to bring anything in or out of the facility. I was told I could not work while wearing the mask. Being proactive should not be a punishment.”
At least one inmate and three staff members at the Coleman complex have tested positive for COVID-19 and 1,000 inmates at the low-security facility there are currently under quarantine after possible virus exposure, according to an email to prison staff obtained by VICE News.
One staff member at FCC Coleman told VICE News they were instructed last month by the complex warden to remove their mask while working at the facility. A regional BOP official said the policy against wearing masks came from “Central Office” or agency headquarters in Washington, according to a text message exchange obtained by VICE News.
The FCC Coleman staff member, who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media, said the deputy attorney general sent a memo to DOJ employees last week reversing the policy and mandating the use of masks, but the change came too late.
“It could have been prevented,” the FCC Coleman staffer said. “If they would have let us wear masks when we wanted to, the inmates wouldn’t have gotten sick. The inmates didn't get it from visitors. We’re the ones going to stores. We're not socializing, but we're out in society.”
FCC Coleman recently received a shipment of 4,000 KN95 masks, the source said, but could not offer any details about cost or model.
Charles Jones, a correctional officer at FCI Marianna, a medium-security prison in Florida, said his facility also received KN95 masks in recent weeks. A photo he sent of the packaging indicates the masks were made by a company not listed by the FDA as a certified manufacturer of KN95 respirators.
Jones, who serves as the local union president, does fit-testing of staff for respirators and expressed concern about the new masks. “They’re saying they’re FDA-approved, but it’s got this Chinese label on it, and we don’t know what the standard is,” he said. “They say it’s OK, but there's no real way to verify what the quality is of these respirators.”
Jones said the BOP isn’t providing proper PPE to staff being sent to “hot zones,” which he worries will cause the virus to spread into new prisons and ultimately into neighboring communities. He said those who are issued respirators are being told to wear the same mask for an entire workweek, which is longer than recommended safety standards. There weren’t even enough N95s for all staff members to undergo the mandatory fit-testing, he said, so he’d started fit-testing with the one-size-fits-all KN95s instead.
“They’re saying they've been preparing for this since December or January, but I just don't understand how we don’t still have masks,” Jones said. “They weren't even trying to get masks back then. They're saying there was a plan, but obviously there isn’t one if we still don't have enough N95s in stock.”
A day after VICE News sent an inquiry to the BOP about the use of KN95 masks, staff at Marianna received an email from prison officials saying that respirator fit-testing had been halted. On a subsequent conference call, Jones said, staff were told not to wear the masks until further notice.
At FCI Tallahassee, Coleman said his warden told him he “didn’t know who authorized the purchases” of the KN95s, and that the matter was being investigated. In the meantime, Tallahassee acquired new N95s from another federal prison in Florida. Coleman still wishes he’d kept the expired N95 that he was forced to throw away after fit-testing, though. He knows the new stash isn't going to last forever, and worries KN95s are going to be back on the table.
“I’d rather give somebody a decent mask that’s expired than one of these masks,” he said.
---30---
Nearly 50% of Twitter Accounts Talking about Coronavirus Might Be Bots
Twitter is dealing with a pandemic of bots jamming the platform with misinformation about COVID-19.
By Tess Owen Apr 23 2020
Nearly half the “people” talking about the coronavirus pandemic on Twitter are not actually people, but bots, according to new research from Carnegie Mellon University.
And many of those bots are rapidly feeding Twitter with harmful, false story lines about the pandemic, including some inspiring real-world activity, such as the theory that 5G towers cause COVID-19, or state-sponsored propaganda from Russia and China that falsely claims the U.S. developed the coronavirus as a bioweapon or that American politicians are issuing “mandatory” lockdowns.
“We do see that a lot of bots are acting in ways that are consistent with the story lines that are coming out of Russia or China,” said Kathleen Carley, professor at Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science’s Institute for Software Research.
Researchers there found that 45.5% of users tweeting about the coronavirus have the characteristics of bots, such as tweeting more frequently than is humanly possible, or appearing to be in one country and then another a few hours later.
Carley says that’s a massive jump from the 20% she’d expected based on previous analyses of bot activity around other major global news events and national disasters.
The Carnegie Mellon team identified more than 100 false narratives relating to coronavirus worldwide, which they divided into six different categories: cures or preventative measures, weaponization of the virus, emergency responses, the nature of the virus (like children being immune to it), self-diagnosis methods, and feel-good stories, like dolphins returning to Venice’s canals.
They found the largest number of different narratives in the cures or preventative measures category — 77 in total. Carley said those ranged from the downright silly, like Corona beer cures coronavirus, to the downright deadly, like drinking bleach cures coronavirus (this was touted by the pro-Trump group QAnon). Disinformation in this category was the most likely to travel internationally, Carley said.
Disinformation about the coronavirus erodes trust in institutions and makes the public less likely to comply with scientifically informed government measures needed to curb the spread of the virus, like lockdowns and social distancing.
"The real goal of those running these disinformation campaigns is about creating distrust in the overall ecosystem and institutions. It’s not so much about picking a side as it is about creating confusion and doubt and distrust of authority,” said Jevin West, who runs the Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington.
Bot or not?
Carley and her team rely on a “bot hunter” tool that they developed, which uses artificial intelligence to process account information from users on Twitter to determine who is or who isn’t a bot.
The bot hunter looks at information like number of followers, the things they tweet about, the frequency of tweeting, language, the types of accounts they retweet, and their mentions network.
To analyze bot activity around the pandemic, the tool examined all tweets discussing coronavirus or COVID-19 — that ended up being about 67 million tweets between January 29 and March 4, and after that about 4 million tweets on average each day, from more than 12 million users.
Carley’s findings, which will be laid out in an upcoming paper, are in keeping with reports that China and Russia have launched massive disinformation campaigns around the coronavirus pandemic directed at the U.S.
Reuters got their hands on a European Union document last month alleging that the Kremlin had mounted a “significant disinformation campaign” against the West with the goal of sowing panic and distrust.
In mid-March, the White House’s National Security Council had to put out an announcement via Twitter denying social media reports that President Donald Trump was about to lock down the entirety of the U.S. According to the New York Times, that narrative was pushed by Chinese agents. And earlier this month, the Justice Department said it was investigating coronavirus disinformation campaigns originating from China and Russia.
While some bots fit the profile of state-sponsored disinformation campaigns, Carley said it’s hard to say definitively where they came from or who made them. “We can’t prove attribution,” she said.
Removing tweets
A spokesperson for Twitter told VICE News that they’re “prioritizing the removal of COVID-19 content when it has a call to action that could potentially cause harm,” a policy that they adopted on March 18. Since then, they’ve removed more than 2,200 tweets.
“As we’ve said previously, we will not take enforcement action on every tweet that contains incomplete or disputed information about COVID-19,” the spokesperson said. “As we’ve doubled down on tech, our automated systems have challenged more than 3.4 million accounts that were targeting discussions around COVID-19 with spammy or manipulative behaviors.”
Carley has described bot detection as a game of cat-and-mouse: Bots are constantly becoming more sophisticated to evade social media crackdowns, and so the software needed to catch them has to be regularly updated.
At the moment, Twitter says they’re not seeing any kind of coordinated platform-manipulation effort with regards to coronavirus. They also cautioned that not all bots are created equal — and not all bots are bad. If they were, Twitter says, they’d be in violation of their company policy.
#KAKISTOCRACY
'Don't You Have a Bat to Eat?' New HHS Spokesman Made Racist Remarks About Chinese People on Twitter
Michael Caputo deleted the comments on Twitter before he was named assistant secretary for public affairs at HHS last week.
By Emma Ockerman -VICE-Apr 23 2020
![]()
MARK WILSON/GETTY IMAGES
Cover: Newly-appointed spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services Michael Caputo arrives at the Hart Senate Office building to be interviewed by Senate Intelligence Committee staffers, on May 1, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images
The Department of Health and Human Services’ new spokesman tweeted — and then deleted — racist comments about Chinese people in March, and accused reporters critical of President Trump’s labeling of COVID-19 as the “the Chinese Virus” of “carrying water for the Chinese Community Party.”
Michael Caputo’s since-deleted tweets, archived online and first reported by CNN, came before he was appointed as the assistant secretary for public affairs at HHS last week. (HHS hasn’t commented on Caputo’s tweets to CNN, and did not respond to a VICE News request for comment.)
HHS is among the agencies currently attempting to fight off the coronavirus pandemic. Caputo previously worked for Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
In early March — just as COVID-19 was starting to sweep across the U.S., and shelter-in-place orders were being issued — Caputo responded to a tweet about the conspiracy theory that the U.S. government brought the coronavirus to Wuhan, where the outbreak first emerged.
Foreign Ministry spokesman and Chinese diplomat Zhao Lijian tweeted the conspiracy theory, saying “US owe us an explanation!”
“This virus originated in Wuhan. You own it, and you know why. Nobody believes your bullshit. Take your lumps and clean up your act so you don’t kill the world,” Caputo responded.
When another Twitter user asked how Caputo knew the virus originated in Wuhan, Caputo responded: “Sure, millions of Chinese suck the blood out of rabid bats as an appetizer and eat the ass out of anteaters, but some foreigner snuck in a bottle of the good stuff. That's it.”
He responded to other people critical of him, too, saying to one user: “Don’t you have a bat to eat?” And another: “You’re very convincing, Wang.”
Caputo was apparently referencing the fact that researchers believe coronavirus was transmitted from bats to other wild animals possibly sold to humans at a wet market in Wuhan.
And as Trump was being criticized for labeling COVID-19 as “the China Virus” — saying it wasn’t racist — Caputo tweeted “#ChineseVirus” 20 times in a row on March 17. He also tweeted that Democrats and members of the Media were acting too favorably to Beijing.
“The Chinese Communist Party has always been adept at lying to cover their murders. What's remarkable here is the US Democrats and their conjugal media repeating CCP propaganda because they hate Trump more than they love America. The Wuhan virus has exposed them,” Caputo tweeted.
The next day, March 18, Caputo said on Twitter that “leftists lost the true meaning of ‘racism’ long ago,” suggesting that people “double down on #ChineseVirus.” He then said that reporters were “carrying water for the Chinese Communist party.”
Separately, Caputo suggested several times that Democrats would celebrate coronavirus deaths and an economic collapse, because it would look as if Trump had failed to handle the crisis.
"How many Americans must die to feed Democrat powerlust? 100K? 1M? More??," Caputo said in a tweet March 22. "How much economic destruction is the Democrat goal? 100% unemployment?'"
'Don't You Have a Bat to Eat?' New HHS Spokesman Made Racist Remarks About Chinese People on Twitter
Michael Caputo deleted the comments on Twitter before he was named assistant secretary for public affairs at HHS last week.
By Emma Ockerman -VICE-Apr 23 2020
MARK WILSON/GETTY IMAGES
Cover: Newly-appointed spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services Michael Caputo arrives at the Hart Senate Office building to be interviewed by Senate Intelligence Committee staffers, on May 1, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images
The Department of Health and Human Services’ new spokesman tweeted — and then deleted — racist comments about Chinese people in March, and accused reporters critical of President Trump’s labeling of COVID-19 as the “the Chinese Virus” of “carrying water for the Chinese Community Party.”
Michael Caputo’s since-deleted tweets, archived online and first reported by CNN, came before he was appointed as the assistant secretary for public affairs at HHS last week. (HHS hasn’t commented on Caputo’s tweets to CNN, and did not respond to a VICE News request for comment.)
HHS is among the agencies currently attempting to fight off the coronavirus pandemic. Caputo previously worked for Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
In early March — just as COVID-19 was starting to sweep across the U.S., and shelter-in-place orders were being issued — Caputo responded to a tweet about the conspiracy theory that the U.S. government brought the coronavirus to Wuhan, where the outbreak first emerged.
Foreign Ministry spokesman and Chinese diplomat Zhao Lijian tweeted the conspiracy theory, saying “US owe us an explanation!”
“This virus originated in Wuhan. You own it, and you know why. Nobody believes your bullshit. Take your lumps and clean up your act so you don’t kill the world,” Caputo responded.
When another Twitter user asked how Caputo knew the virus originated in Wuhan, Caputo responded: “Sure, millions of Chinese suck the blood out of rabid bats as an appetizer and eat the ass out of anteaters, but some foreigner snuck in a bottle of the good stuff. That's it.”
He responded to other people critical of him, too, saying to one user: “Don’t you have a bat to eat?” And another: “You’re very convincing, Wang.”
Caputo was apparently referencing the fact that researchers believe coronavirus was transmitted from bats to other wild animals possibly sold to humans at a wet market in Wuhan.
And as Trump was being criticized for labeling COVID-19 as “the China Virus” — saying it wasn’t racist — Caputo tweeted “#ChineseVirus” 20 times in a row on March 17. He also tweeted that Democrats and members of the Media were acting too favorably to Beijing.
“The Chinese Communist Party has always been adept at lying to cover their murders. What's remarkable here is the US Democrats and their conjugal media repeating CCP propaganda because they hate Trump more than they love America. The Wuhan virus has exposed them,” Caputo tweeted.
The next day, March 18, Caputo said on Twitter that “leftists lost the true meaning of ‘racism’ long ago,” suggesting that people “double down on #ChineseVirus.” He then said that reporters were “carrying water for the Chinese Communist party.”
Separately, Caputo suggested several times that Democrats would celebrate coronavirus deaths and an economic collapse, because it would look as if Trump had failed to handle the crisis.
"How many Americans must die to feed Democrat powerlust? 100K? 1M? More??," Caputo said in a tweet March 22. "How much economic destruction is the Democrat goal? 100% unemployment?'"
The Biggest Environmental Disaster in U.S. History Never Really Ended
Cleanup workers on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill are still suffering 10 years later.
By Agnes Walton and Jana Lerner Apr 21 2020
When the Deepwater Horizon oil rig blew up 41 miles off the Louisiana coast in April 2010, 11 workers died in the explosion, and over the next three months, 210 million gallons of oil poured from the ruptured well into the Gulf of Mexico, unleashing the biggest environmental disaster in U.S. history.
Ten years later, local fisheries are still feeling the impact.
Like thousands of other fishers, Kindra and David Arnesen found themselves without work as Gulf fisheries shut down. Unlike other fishers, Kindra Arnesen very publicly took on British Petroleum for their part in the spill, campaigning for a fair settlement long after the media lost interest.
Today, with fisheries on a slow path to recovery, she still sees no reason to celebrate.
“I think to call this an anniversary is a slap in the face to the families that lost a man on that rig. An anniversary is something you celebrate. I don't think we should celebrate this,” she said. “We're still living with it. And we'll continue to live with this for the rest of our lives.”
After the spill, thousands of oilfield workers, fishers, and coastal residents stepped in to help with the cleanup. Many of those workers were not fitted with appropriate personal protective equipment like respirators, and were exposed to crude oil and to a potentially hazardous chemical product called Corexit.
Corexit is a dispersant. It breaks up the oil, removing it from the surface, and it’s approved for use in oil spill emergencies by the EPA. But its effects on humans weren’t well studied before BP applied at least 1.8 million gallons of the product above and below the ocean’s surface.
David Arnesen was exposed to Corexit when he went on a last shrimping trip before oil flooded the fishery.
“16 crewmen went out. Most of them returned home before the fishing hours were over because they were becoming ill from smelling it. David got sick after that trip.”
Those acute short-term reactions turned into long-term problems.
Thousands of Gulf Coast residents and cleanup workers have alleged in lawsuits against BP that they, too, suffered health problems as a result of the exposure to oil and Corexit. Ten years later, many are still waiting for answers and, as new health problems emerge, so do new lawsuits.
“We kind of learned to live sick in our community,” said Arnesen. “As for most people, they've given up on [litigation] at this point.”
But Kindra Arnesen hasn’t given up on litigation entirely. Along with Alaskans who say they’re still feeling the fallout from the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989, and the dispersants used to clean it up, she joined a lawsuit this year against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Their aim is to get the agency to revise its contingency plan for oil spills and find a safer product than Corexit to use in the future. A court is expected to rule shortly on whether the plaintiffs’ claims can move forward.
“They're trying to expand oil and gas drilling all over the place. So it's not if it's when this comes to a shoreline near you,” said Arnesen.
British Petroleum and Nalco Water, the manufacturer of Corexit, did not respond to requests for comment.
Cleanup workers on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill are still suffering 10 years later.
By Agnes Walton and Jana Lerner Apr 21 2020
When the Deepwater Horizon oil rig blew up 41 miles off the Louisiana coast in April 2010, 11 workers died in the explosion, and over the next three months, 210 million gallons of oil poured from the ruptured well into the Gulf of Mexico, unleashing the biggest environmental disaster in U.S. history.
Ten years later, local fisheries are still feeling the impact.
Like thousands of other fishers, Kindra and David Arnesen found themselves without work as Gulf fisheries shut down. Unlike other fishers, Kindra Arnesen very publicly took on British Petroleum for their part in the spill, campaigning for a fair settlement long after the media lost interest.
Today, with fisheries on a slow path to recovery, she still sees no reason to celebrate.
“I think to call this an anniversary is a slap in the face to the families that lost a man on that rig. An anniversary is something you celebrate. I don't think we should celebrate this,” she said. “We're still living with it. And we'll continue to live with this for the rest of our lives.”
After the spill, thousands of oilfield workers, fishers, and coastal residents stepped in to help with the cleanup. Many of those workers were not fitted with appropriate personal protective equipment like respirators, and were exposed to crude oil and to a potentially hazardous chemical product called Corexit.
Corexit is a dispersant. It breaks up the oil, removing it from the surface, and it’s approved for use in oil spill emergencies by the EPA. But its effects on humans weren’t well studied before BP applied at least 1.8 million gallons of the product above and below the ocean’s surface.
David Arnesen was exposed to Corexit when he went on a last shrimping trip before oil flooded the fishery.
“16 crewmen went out. Most of them returned home before the fishing hours were over because they were becoming ill from smelling it. David got sick after that trip.”
Those acute short-term reactions turned into long-term problems.
Thousands of Gulf Coast residents and cleanup workers have alleged in lawsuits against BP that they, too, suffered health problems as a result of the exposure to oil and Corexit. Ten years later, many are still waiting for answers and, as new health problems emerge, so do new lawsuits.
“We kind of learned to live sick in our community,” said Arnesen. “As for most people, they've given up on [litigation] at this point.”
But Kindra Arnesen hasn’t given up on litigation entirely. Along with Alaskans who say they’re still feeling the fallout from the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989, and the dispersants used to clean it up, she joined a lawsuit this year against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Their aim is to get the agency to revise its contingency plan for oil spills and find a safer product than Corexit to use in the future. A court is expected to rule shortly on whether the plaintiffs’ claims can move forward.
“They're trying to expand oil and gas drilling all over the place. So it's not if it's when this comes to a shoreline near you,” said Arnesen.
British Petroleum and Nalco Water, the manufacturer of Corexit, did not respond to requests for comment.
Is There Any Better Time Than Now For a General Strike?
May Day offers a perfect opportunity to reshape labor relations during this pandemic.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought into stark relief the inequalities baked into the U.S.’s capitalist system—one that deems nurses and grocery workers “essential,” but leaves them with just as few rights and privileges as they had before the crisis struck. The scenario before us, where society depends more than ever on the bottom rung of the working class, offers a perfect storm for these “essential workers” to use their leverage and demand better protections for themselves now and in the future. This perfect storm may well unfold on May 1—a day with historic roots in the U.S., marked by workers all around the world to demand their labor rights.
For those of us considered “non-essential workers,” May 1, 2020, also offers an opportunity to say a resounding “no” to President Donald Trump, who is desperate to salvage his flagging shot at reelection and demanding that people return to work at the beginning of May. Trump has made clear that his needs are more important than ours in defying health experts who agree that May 1 is far too early to return to “normal.” He has claimed “total” authority over lifting state and citywide quarantines during the pandemic. A general strike on May 1 would lay waste to his wishful thinking for totalitarianism.
Kali Akuno, the co-founder and co-director of Cooperation Jackson, laid out his organization’s call for a May Day strike this year and shared with me in an interview that, “we are calling on all workers to come as one, in particular the essential workers to strike for their lives.” He explained that, “If Trump is calling for businesses to return to normal, if that is allowed to proceed without the personal protective gear being in place for every single one of our essential workers, we’re just going to create a calamity and keep this crisis going further.”
Workers deemed “essential” have been forced to work in order to keep their jobs but offered little recompense or even protection from the virus.
Workers deemed “essential” have been forced to work in order to keep their jobs but offered little recompense or even protection from the virus.
Akuno also sees the pandemic as a turning point where workers can send a message of refusing to “go back to business-as-usual”—the status quo where a massive underclass of working people are living paycheck-to-paycheck without adequate health care, paid leave, childcare for their dependents, or decent wages is no longer acceptable. “It was business-as-usual that allowed this to roll out in the way that it has,” he said.
Workers deemed “essential” have been forced to work in order to keep their jobs but offered little recompense or even protection from the virus. A supermarket worker at Tem’s Food Market in Macon, Mississippi, found my personal mask-making project on social media and begged me to make 20 masks for her colleagues and her. In the early days of the crisis, not only were grocery workers like her not provided with protective gear, but many were also stunningly not allowed to wear their own safety equipment such as masks and gloves. My own cousin, a grocery store manager in Boston, Massachusetts, responded to my worried queries about his health and safety saying that upper management was not permitting him and others to wear masks at work until recently. This was corroborated by supermarket analyst Phil Lempert who told the Washington Post, “One of the biggest mistakes supermarkets made early on was not allowing employees to wear masks and gloves the way they wanted to.”
It is no wonder that the workers we rely on to feed and care for us are falling ill from the virus and dying. Thousands of grocery workers have already tested positive for COVID-19 and as of mid-April more than 40 have died. Although such “essential workers” are naturally terrified of catching the virus in their workplace, their vulnerable socioeconomic status also means they cannot afford to quit. The pressure to conform and fall in line with the demands of corporate America are all too real as workers face a choice between accepting their oppression or being fired. More than 16 million Americans have already lost their jobs, and beyond a $1,200 payout from the federal government and hard-to-access unemployment benefits, there is little else to compensate them.
Still, in the face of such an untenable situation, workers are already agitating for their rights with walkouts and protests. The New York Times’ labor writer Steven Greenhouse explained that, “Fearing retaliation, American workers are generally far more reluctant to stick their necks out and protest working conditions than are workers in other industrial countries.” However, now, “with greater fear of the disease than of their bosses, workers have set off a burst of walkouts, sickouts and wildcat strikes.” Whole Foods workers had planned an action for May Day but moved up their “sick out” to March 31 to demand better conditions and pay. Amazon workers at a warehouse in Staten Island, New York, organized a walkout, but the world’s largest retail giant simply fired the organizer. The person ultimately responsible for overseeing workers at Whole Foods and Amazon is Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man who personally racked up an extra $24 billion this year alone largely as a result of the pandemic. Bezos’s wealth and power, when contrasted with the harsh conditions under which his employees work, are an appropriate symbol for a general strike on May Day as the best chance for workers to demand their rights.
On its website, Akuno’s organization Cooperation Jackson spells out the demands it is making for May Day in encouraging workers to not show up for their jobs, and for all Americans to collectively refuse to shop for a day. These include not only short-term demands for personal protective equipment for all essential workers, but also long-term demands for a Universal Basic Income, health care for all, housing rights, and a Green New Deal.
Americans are perhaps more receptive to the idea of a general strike than they have been in a century. Alongside the hashtag #NotDying4WallStreet are calls on social media for a #GeneralStrike2020. High-profile left thinkers like Naomi Klein have already embraced the idea of a general strike. But Akuno admits that a strike will not work if only small numbers of Americans participate, saying, “we need to reach people in the hundreds of millions,” and “we have to organize in such a way where we change the fundamental dynamics of labor, how it’s valued, how it’s treated.” In other words, there is the potential for transformative change in this crisis—but only if we can seize the moment.
Sonalie Kolhatkar
Independent Media Institute
Independent Media Institute
Sonali Kolhatkar is the founder, host and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations.
This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
Covid-19 and the Wasting Disease of Normalcy
“But what of the price of peace?” asked Jesuit priest and war resister Daniel Berrigan, writing from federal prison in 1969, doing time for his part in the destruction of draft records. “I think of the good, decent, peace-loving people I have known by the thousands, and I wonder. How many of them are so afflicted with the wasting disease of normalcy that, even as they declare for the peace, their hands reach out with an instinctive spasm in the direction of their loved ones, in the direction of their comforts, their home, their security, their income, their future, their plans — that twenty-year plan of family growth and unity, that fifty-year plan of decent life and honorable natural demise.”
From his prison cell in a year of mass movements to end the war in Vietnam and mobilizations for nuclear disarmament, Daniel Berrigan diagnosed normalcy as a disease and labeled it an obstacle to peace.
From his prison cell in a year of mass movements to end the war in Vietnam and mobilizations for nuclear disarmament, Daniel Berrigan diagnosed normalcy as a disease and labeled it an obstacle to peace.
From his prison cell in a year of mass movements to end the war in Vietnam and mobilizations for nuclear disarmament, Daniel Berrigan diagnosed normalcy as a disease and labeled it an obstacle to peace. “’Of course, let us have the peace,’ we cry, ‘but at the same time let us have normalcy, let us lose nothing, let our lives stand intact, let us know neither prison nor ill repute nor disruption of ties.’ And because we must encompass this and protect that, and because at all costs — at all costs — our hopes must march on schedule, and because it is unheard of that in the name of peace a sword should fall, disjoining that fine and cunning web that our lives have woven… because of this we cry peace, peace, and there is no peace.”
Fifty one years later, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the very notion of normalcy is being questioned as never before. While Donald Trump is “chomping on the bit” to return the economy to normal very soon based on a metric in his own head, more reflective voices are saying that a return to normal, now or even in the future, is an intolerable threat to be resisted. “There is a lot of talk about returning to ‘normal’ after the COVID-19 outbreak,” says climate activist Greta Thunberg, “but normal was a crisis.”
In recent days even economists with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and columnists in the New York Times have spoken about the urgent necessity of reordering economic and political priorities to something more human- only the thickest and cruelest minds today speak of a return to normal as a positive outcome.
Early in the pandemic, the Australian journalist John Pilger reminded the world of the baseline normal that COVID-19 exacerbates: “A pandemic has been declared, but not for the 24,600 who die every day from unnecessary starvation, and not for 3,000 children who die every day from preventable malaria, and not for the 10,000 people who die every day because they are denied publicly-funded healthcare, and not for the hundreds of Venezuelans and Iranians who die every day because America’s blockade denies them life-saving medicines, and not for the hundreds of mostly children bombed or starved to death every day in Yemen, in a war supplied and kept going, profitably, by America and Britain. Before you panic, consider them.”
I was starting high school when Daniel Berrigan asked his question and at the time, while there obviously were wars and injustices in the world, it seemed as though if we did not take them too seriously or protest too strenuously, the American Dream with its limitless potential was spread before us. Play the game, and our hopes would “march on schedule” was an implied promise that in 1969 looked like a sure thing, for us young white North Americans, anyway. A few years later, I abandoned normal life, dropped out after a year of college and joined the Catholic Worker movement where I came under the influence of Daniel Berrigan and Dorothy Day, but these were privileged choices that I made. I did not reject normalcy because I did not think that it could deliver on its promise, but because I wanted something else. As Greta Thunberg and the Friday school strikers for climate convict my generation, few young people, even from previously privileged places, come of age today with such confidence in their futures.
The pandemic has brought home what the threats of global destruction by climate change and nuclear war should have long ago- that the promises of normalcy will never deliver in the end, that they are lies that lead those who trust in them to the ruin. Daniel Berrigan saw this a half century ago, normalcy is an affliction, a wasting disease more dangerous to its victims and to the planet than any viral plague.
Author and human rights activist Arundhati Roy is one of many who recognizes the peril and the promise of the moment: “Whatever it is, coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could. Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to ‘normality’, trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture. But the rupture exists. And in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality. Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.”
“Every crisis contains both danger and opportunity,” said Pope Francis about the present situation. “Today I believe we have to slow down our rate of production and consumption and to learn to understand and contemplate the natural world. This is the opportunity for conversion. Yes, I see early signs of an economy that is less liquid, more human. But let us not lose our memory once all this is past, let us not file it away and go back to where we were.”
“There are ways forward we never imagined – at huge cost, with great suffering – but there are possibilities and I’m immensely hopeful,” said Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, on Easter. “After so much suffering, so much heroism from key workers and the NHS (National Health Service) in this country and their equivalents all across the globe, once this epidemic is conquered we cannot be content to go back to what was before as if all was normal. There needs to be a resurrection of our common life, a new normal, something that links to the old but is different and more beautiful.”
In these perilous times, it is necessary to use the best social practices and to wisely apply science and technology to survive the present COVID-19 pandemic. The wasting disease of normalcy, though, is the far greater existential threat and our survival requires that we meet it with at least the same courage, generosity and ingenuity.
Brian Terrell
Brian Terrell is a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence and is quarantined on a Catholic Worker farm in Maloy, Iowa
Coronavirus Is the Perfect Disaster for ‘Disaster Capitalism’
Naomi Klein explains how governments and the global elite will exploit a pandemic.
By Marie Solis Mar 13 2020 VICE US
The coronavirus is officially a global pandemic that has so far infected 10 times more people than SARS did. Schools, university systems, museums, and theaters across the U.S. are shutting down, and soon, entire cities may be too. Experts warn that some people who suspect they may be sick with the virus, also known as COVID-19, are going about their daily routines, either because their jobs do not provide paid time off because of systemic failures in our privatized health care system.
Most of us aren’t exactly sure what to do or who to listen to. President Donald Trump has contradicted recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and these mixed messages have narrowed our window of time to mitigate harm from the highly contagious virus.
These are the perfect conditions for governments and the global elite to implement political agendas that would otherwise be met with great opposition if we weren’t all so disoriented. This chain of events isn’t unique to the crisis sparked by the coronavirus; it’s the blueprint politicians and governments have been following for decades known as the “shock doctrine,” a term coined by activist and author Naomi Klein in a 2007 book of the same name.
History is a chronicle of “shocks”—the shocks of wars, natural disasters, and economic crises—and their aftermath. This aftermath is characterized by “disaster capitalism,” calculated, free-market “solutions” to crises that exploit and exacerbate existing inequalities.
Klein says we’re already seeing disaster capitalism play out on the national stage: In response to the coronavirus, Trump has proposed a $700 billion stimulus package that would include cuts to payroll taxes (which would devastate Social Security) and provide assistance to industries that will lose business as a result of the pandemic.
“They’re not doing this because they think it’s the most effective way to alleviate suffering during a pandemic—they have these ideas lying around that they now see an opportunity to implement,” Klein said.
VICE spoke to Klein about how the “shock” of coronavirus is giving way to the chain of events she outlined more than a decade ago in The Shock Doctrine.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Let’s start with the basics. What is disaster capitalism? What is its relationship to the “shock doctrine”?
The way I define disaster capitalism is really straightforward: It describes the way private industries spring up to directly profit from large-scale crises. Disaster profiteering and war profiteering isn’t a new concept, but it really deepened under the Bush administration after 9/11, when the administration declared this sort of never-ending security crisis, and simultaneously privatized it and outsourced it—this included the domestic, privatized security state, as well as the [privatized] invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.
The “shock doctrine” is the political strategy of using large-scale crises to push through policies that systematically deepen inequality, enrich elites, and undercut everyone else. In moments of crisis, people tend to focus on the daily emergencies of surviving that crisis, whatever it is, and tend to put too much trust in those in power. We take our eyes off the ball a little bit in moments of crisis.
Where does that political strategy come from? How do you trace its history in American politics?
The shock-doctrine strategy was as a response to the original New Deal under FDR. [Economist] Milton Friedman believes everything went wrong in America under the New Deal: As a response to the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, a much more activist government emerged in the country, which made it its mission to directly solve the economic crisis of the day by creating government employment and offering direct relief.
If you’re a hard-core free-market economist, you understand that when markets fail it lends itself to progressive change much more organically than it does the kind of deregulatory policies that favor large corporations. So the shock doctrine was developed as a way to prevent crises from giving way to organic moments where progressive policies emerge. Political and economic elites understand that moments of crisis is their chance to push through their wish list of unpopular policies that further polarize wealth in this country and around the world.
Right now we have multiple crises happening: a pandemic, a lack of infrastructure to manage it, and the crashing stock market. Can you outline how each of these components fit into the schema you outline in The Shock Doctrine ?
The shock really is the virus itself. And it has been managed in a way that is maximizing confusion and minimizing protection. I don’t think that’s a conspiracy, that’s just the way the U.S. government and Trump have utterly mismanaged this crisis. Trump has so far treated this not as a public health crisis but as a crisis of perception, and a potential problem for his reelection.
The shock doctrine was developed as a way to prevent crises from giving way to organic moments where progressive policies emerge.
It’s the worst-case scenario, especially combined with the fact that the U.S. doesn’t have a national health care program and its protections for workers are abysmal. This combination of forces has delivered a maximum shock. It’s going to be exploited to bail out industries that are at the heart of most extreme crises that we face, like the climate crisis: the airline industry, the gas and oil industry, the cruise industry—they want to prop all of this up.
How have we seen this play out before?
In The Shock Doctrine I talk about how this happened after Hurricane Katrina. Washington think tanks like the Heritage Foundation met and came up with a wish list of “pro-free market” solutions to Katrina. We can be sure that exactly the same kinds of meetings will happen now— in fact, the person who chaired the Katrina group was Mike Pence. In 2008, you saw this play out in the original [bank] bail out, where countries wrote these blank checks to banks, which eventually added up to many trillions of dollars. But the real cost of that came in the form of economic austerity [later cuts to social services]. So it’s not just about what’s going on right now, but how they’re going to pay for it down the road when the bill for all of this comes due.
Is there anything people can do to mitigate the harm of disaster capitalism we’re already seeing in the response to the coronavirus? Are we in a better or worse position than we were during Hurricane Katrina or the last global recession?
When we’re tested by crisis we either regress and fall apart, or we grow up, and find reserves of strengths and compassion we didn’t know we were capable of. This will be one of those tests. The reason I have some hope that we might choose to evolve is that—unlike in 2008—we have such an actual political alternative that is proposing a different kind of response to the crisis that gets at the root causes behind our vulnerability, and a larger political movement that supports it.
This is what all of the work around the Green New Deal has been about: preparing for a moment like this. We just can’t lose our courage; we have to fight harder than ever before for universal health care, universal child care, paid sick leave—it’s all intimately connected.
If our governments and the global elite are going to exploit this crisis for their own ends, what can people do to take care of each other?
”'I’ll take care of me and my own, we can get the best insurance there is, and if you don't have good insurance it's probably your fault, that's not my problem”: This is what this sort of winners-take-all economy does to our brains. What a moment of crisis like this unveils is our porousness to one another. We’re seeing in real time that we are so much more interconnected to one another than our quite brutal economic system would have us believe.
We might think we’ll be safe if we have good health care, but if the person making our food, or delivering our food, or packing our boxes doesn’t have health care and can’t afford to get tested—let alone stay home from work because they don’t have paid sick leave—we won’t be safe. If we don’t take care of each other, none of us is cared for. We are enmeshed.
We’re seeing in real time that we are so much more interconnected to one another than our quite brutal economic system would have us believe.
Different ways of organizing society light up different parts of ourselves. If you’re in a system you know isn’t taking care of people and isn’t distributing resources in an equitable way, then the hoarding part of you is going to be lit up. So be aware of that and think about how, instead of hoarding and thinking about how you can take care of yourself and your family, you can pivot to sharing with your neighbors and checking in on the people who are most vulnerable.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)