Clorox has seen 500% increases in demand during the COVID-19 pandemic: CEO


Brian Sozzi Editor-at-Large Yahoo Finance  May 5, 2020


Clorox chairman and CEO Benno Dorer is working nearly around the clock, fitting in a meal or two, squeezing in some family time, getting a wee bit of rest and then rinse and repeating that routine.
WATCH VIDEO 
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/clorox-has-seen-500-increases-in-demand-during-the-covid-19-pandemic-ceo-132530052.html

Suffice it to say, it’s very busy days at 107-year-old bleach and disinfecting wipe maker Clorox as the world continues to battle through the COVID-19 pandemic.

For Clorox, that has meant enduring through insane levels of demand by shoppers for bleach (have to wash those cloth face masks), disinfecting wipes (have to wipe down the counters 25 times a day), Fresh Step cat litter (can’t keep running out for the stuff during stay-at-home orders, and cats have to use the bathroom too during a pandemic) and Hidden Valley salad dressings (yes, Clorox owns that Hidden Valley dressing you have used on some kind of packaged food of late).

Even with factories cranking at full speed and Clorox investing in new capacity, Dorer concedes in an interview with Yahoo Finance that consumer demand continues to outstrip supply. That situation may not stabilize until the summer, Dorer suggests, as households settle into their new disinfecting routines and more steadily buy cleaning products instead of the panic hoarding seen in March and into April at Walmart, Target and on Amazon.

“So if you go to stores, we're shipping to our stores every single day. But what we're shipping is pretty much scooped up right away. So it's gone after a few minutes,” Dorer explains. “Clearly there's an unprecedented demand spike for some of our products, in particular wipes. We've seen spikes of up to 500% in terms of demand and no supply chain in our industry is built to satisfy that demand increase in a short period of time.”

Dorer adds, “We have significantly increased our production we've done so by simplifying our lineup, which allows our lines to run faster, turning out 40% more products last quarter than we did in the previous year’s quarter. We're activating third-party suppliers who produce for us to help us. And we're investing in further capacity. So we continue to find new ways to speed up our lines and find capacity. And we think that there's going to be substantial improvement this summer. It's going to be touch and go until then, unfortunately, but help is on the way and I think should ease up in the next few months.”

Clorox brand products line the shelf of a supermarket in the East Village neighborhood of New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)More

Clorox’s latest financials underscore the new reality it’s navigating. It’s a reality highlighted by consumers paying more attention to personal hygiene and cleanliness standards at home — and using Clorox’s disinfecting products (and yes, those from the likes of P&G, etc.) to do so. It’s a reality where businesses are opening their wallets big-time to disinfect offices to support the return of workers...and ultimately keep them safe and COVID-19 free hopefully for months.

Fiscal third quarter sales exploded 15% from the prior year. Volume surged 18%. Organic sales blew up 17%. Earnings soared 31%. Sales and pre-tax earnings in Clorox’s important cleaning segment increased an impressive 32% and 71%, respectively. These are growth rates that would have been unimaginable at this point last year — but may become the new medium-term norm at a Clorox settling into a post health pandemic world.

For its full fiscal year that ends in June, Clorox sees organic sales growth of 6% to 8%. Earnings are expected to be up 6% to 9%. The probability is high Clorox outlines double-digit growth for sales and earnings for its new fiscal year when it reports earnings again sometime in early August.

Clorox shares have reflected the new world it lives in — the stock is up 30% this year versus the 13% drop for the S&P 500. P&G shares are down 7% year-to-date, whereas Church & Dwight is up only 2%.

JPMorgan analyst Andrea Teixeira believes Clorox will play an “integral” role in fighting off COVID-19 and remains bullish on the stock.

On May 3, Clorox celebrated its 107th birthday. Dorer says the mission of the company is the same today as it was back then — serve the public.

“We have a proud history started by making disinfecting products available to the broad public in service of public health. And never has that mission been clear than it is today,” Dorer points out.

So true indeed.

Chuck Todd video highlight of Trump’s COVID-19 failure in his own words

MAY 4, 2020 BY EGBERTO WILLIES LEAVE A COMMENT

Chuck Todd decimates the president's cognitive dissonance as he continues to claim victory as Americans continue to succumb to COVID-19.

Chuck Todd inflicting "death" by a thousand cuts

Watch the entire episode here.

The corporate media have been getting a bit more responsible with their critiques of the president. Last week Chuck Todd had a striking takedown of the president in the opening of Meet the Press. This week it was a bit more surgical.'

While the president has been constantly pushing governors to get people back to work to rev up the economy, the death toll continues to exceed the new projections. One would think that that would give the president pause about opening up too soon. It did not. It simply meant a higher degree of lying and rosy picture scenarios.

When a reporter asked the president if he would have the millions of tests a Harvard study said was needed, he said he would in front of the glaring cameras of a press conference but had to walk it back in a more intimate press setting. That did not deter him from sending out his canal to all but declare mission accomplished.

Please watch the entire clip in the post. There is much to read between the line and to be concerned about.

This double talk is the standard operating procedure in this administration. Recently on This Week, Mike Pompeo exhibited the same modus operandi as he first lied and then in the same interview told a partial truth when confronted with his lie. These guys want the sound bites that go to their base while the corrected ones are for the consumption of everyone else.

Red State governors to their citizens: Starve to death or risk death working; Antiseptic Slavery!

APRIL 30, 2020 BY EGBERTO WILLIES 

I told many on my media show Politics Done Right that capitalism is a form of antiseptic slavery. Many thought I was insensitive or making inflammatory statements.

Here is a fact. When it is running in a steady-state mode rarely does one see the deficiencies. When there are disruptions, it heals itself by hurting humanity until it reaches equilibrium again. Only the those who own most of the capital and those protecting the owners of said capital do well (titans of capital, executives, and high-level managers).

But capitalism is more efficient than slavery. You see, slaves had to be clothed, fed, and kept relatively healthy because they were someone's property. The workers under capitalism without real regulations are disposable. The worker, read antiseptic slave, does not have to be clothed, fed, or kept healthy. As such no health insurance and many other social services, a humane system should have.

Some would say that the worker has choices. To some extent that is true. But just like slaveowners formed their own cabal, so do corporations. As long as corporations are more powerful than the person, the mom, and pop business, they set the values.

The Red State governors made it clear whose interests they stand for. While they will not use a whip to force you back to work, they have no problem using a virtual whip, your starvation, or inability to live without going back to work for the corporation, read slave master, who cares nothing about your health or well-being.

States tell workers they'll lose unemployment benefits if they refuse to return to jobs | TheHill

Some states that are reopening parts of their economies have warned employees that they'll lose their unemployment benefits if they refuse to go back to work for their employers, even if they're worried about contracting the coronavirus.

"If you're an employer and you offer to bring your employee back to work and they decide not to, that's a voluntary quit," Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) said Friday. "Therefore, they would not be eligible for the unemployment money."

Reynolds also said employers who have workers that refuse to return should file a report with Iowa Workforce Development.

On Monday, the governor announced that she was loosening social distancing restrictions in 77 of Iowa's 99 counties, effective May 1.

"In the 77 counties, the proclamation permits restaurants, fitness centers, malls, libraries, race tracks, and certain other retail establishments to reopen in a limited fashion with public health measures in place," the governor's office said in a statement. ...

The situation is similar for workers in Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott (R) on Monday gave the go-ahead for retail stores, restaurants, movie theaters and malls to reopen on Friday.

Source: States tell workers they'll lose unemployment benefits if they refuse to return to jobs | TheHill

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Pompeo pushes coronavirus lab origin theory before intelligence community issues final assessment

Tim O'Donnell, The Week•May 3, 2020


Members of the Trump administration, including the president, have pushed a theory that the coronavirus originated not in a Wuhan, China, wet market, but a lab. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sunday there is "significant" evidence that is the case, even though the United States intelligence community has yet to release a formal assessment on the matter.

Very noteworthy: Sec Pompeo, frmr CIA director, is leaning into an outcome *before* the IC has a formal assessment. Last wk ODNI said they cannot yet assess if the outbreak "was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan" or began "through contact with infected animals." https://t.co/X2LncSbL1e
— Kylie Atwood (@kylieatwood) May 3, 2020

Pompeo's stances on the location of origin, and China's purported efforts to cover up the epidemic's severity at early stages, were clear, but his responses about whether the virus was man-made waffled.

At first, The Guardian notes, he told the host of ABC's This Week, Martha Raddatz, that he has "no reason to disbelieve" experts who think it was genetically modified. But when Raddatz pointed out the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said the scientific consensus is that the virus was not man-made, Pompeo agreed with that, too. Raddatz tried to clarify one last time, recalibrating the question a bit to see if Pompeo thinks the virus was intentionally released from the lab. The secretary said he doesn't "have anything to say about that."

Critics have pointed out that by leaning into President Trump's rhetoric, Pompeo is setting a potentially worrisome precedent.

This is @SecPompeo saying he wants a particular answer from the IC more than he wants the truth. This creates enormous adverse incentives for people to tell Pompeo and Trump what they want to hear. https://t.co/zxwuqNrCd1
— Jeffrey Lewis (@ArmsControlWonk) May 3, 2020

Pompeo gets caught lying about origins of COVID-19
MAY 3, 2020 BY EGBERTO WILLIES

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo went on This Week and lied to Martha Raddatz about whether COVID-19 was man-made or not. When caught he punted.

Pompeo lied with a straight face unemotionally

Watch the entire episode here.

"Do you believe it was man-made or genetically modified," Martha Raddatz asked.

"The best experts so far seem to think it was man-made," Pompeo replied. I've no reason to disbelieve that at this point."

That was a lie. The best experts do not believe the virus was man-made. And Raddatz confronted him on that.

"Your office of the DNI says the consensus, the scientific consensus," Raddarz pushed back. "Was not man-made or genetically modified."

Watch the bait and switch tactic Pompeo then used with a straight face.

"That's right," Pompeo replied. "I agree with that. Yeah, I've seen their analysis. I've seen the summary that you saw that was released publicly. I have no reason to doubt that that is accurate."

"Okay, so just to be clear," Raddatz interjected. "You do not think it was man-made or genetically modified."

Notice he makes sure never to say what he believes or what he wants out there. He want the whole thing to remain nebulous.

"I've seen what the Intelligence Committee has said," Pompeo said. "I have no reason to believe that they've got it wrong."

WUHAN VIRUS LAB JUST ANOTHER FORM OF THE BIG LIE 
USED AGAINST IRAQ
Leaked intelligence report saying China 'intentionally concealed' coronavirus to stockpile medical supplies draws scrutiny
Jana Winter and Sharon Weinberger Yahoo News•May 4, 2020

WASHINGTON — Amid a concerted push to blame China for the coronavirus pandemic, the Trump administration has issued an intelligence analysis claiming China purposely delayed notifying the World Health Organization about the spread of the contagion in order to stockpile medical equipment, according to two recent government documents obtained by Yahoo News.

The analysis, which some former officials and experts are questioning based on its limited methodology, relies exclusively on trade data to draw its conclusions.

In recent weeks, President Trump and some of his top allies have been pushing a theory being investigated by the intelligence community that the virus originated from a Chinese lab in Wuhan, rather than from a “wet market,” where exotic wildlife is sold. “I can tell you that there is a significant amount of evidence that this came from that laboratory in Wuhan,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in an interview with ABC on Sunday.

A worker sorts masks at Wuhan Zonsen Medical Products Co. (Ng Han Guan/AP)

Just two days before that interview, analysts at the Department of Homeland Security citing a “new analytic technique” concluded that China had, in fact, concealed the spread of the coronavirus in order to hoard medical supplies. Specifically, they looked at Chinese imports and exports of medical equipment, ranging from surgical face masks to ventilators, from October 2019 to February 2020, and then compared that data with statistics from the prior five years.

“We assess the Chinese Government intentionally concealed the severity of COVID-19 from the international community in early January while it stockpiled medical supplies by both increasing imports and decreasing exports,” the analysts wrote in the document, dated May 1. “We further assess the Chinese Government attempted to hide its actions by denying there were export restrictions and obfuscating and delaying provision of its trade data.”

An accompanying “reference aid,” issued the same day as that report, reviews the trade data in more detail, citing the increase and decrease of exports and imports of specific medical equipment.

Both documents are unclassified but marked for official use only. ABC first reported the existence of the intelligence document. Yahoo obtained it and the accompanying reference aid and is publishing them in full.

New Analytic Technique by Sharon Weinberger on Scribd

Nate Snyder, who served as a DHS counterterrorism official during the Obama administration, questioned the purpose of the document, which he called “ridiculous.”

“We know through the intelligence community this was bad, that China was likely downplaying the severity of it, and was attempting to mitigate it themselves quietly,” Snyder said. “Yet we ignored that and all the intel and indicators. So I’m not sure what this product is trying to prove aside from finding convenient open sources to point the finger further at China.”

Snyder was particularly critical of the accompanying reference aid, which includes some of the data DHS uses to back up its claims.

“This thing really isn’t deeply cited,” said Snyder, who worked on similar reference aids during his time at DHS. He noted that the sources cited by the reference aid include a local Maine news site and a blog entry posted by a commercial company.

Snyder said this type of document would be shared throughout the intelligence community and with senior policymakers. “The significance of it is now that it’s out there as a reference point, it can be cited and used in synopsis or arguments within the intelligence community now that it’s got the stamp of approval,” he said. “This is considered an official source.”

Among the examples DHS cites is a 200 percent increase in imports of surgical facial masks in January and February 2020, and then a nearly 50 percent decrease in exports in February. For ventilators, DHS reports that China increased its imports by 54 percent in February and decreased exports of the devices by 45 percent.

Employees of a railway equipment manufacturing company in Nanchang, China, work on a production line of surgical masks for export on April 8. (China Daily via Reuters)

Daniel Hoffman, a retired CIA senior intelligence officer, warned against drawing immediate conclusions about a DHS report based on trade data alone.

“I’d rather hear the [intelligence community’s] analytical judgment, with a low, medium or high level of confidence,” he said. “It’s trade data. That’s not going to answer the question of China’s strategic intent. You need a human source who says this is connected, who can potentially prove intent.”

Hoffman highlighted the challenge of accurately collecting the data on which DHS was relying, given that China has a history of providing unreliable numbers. “China is a ruthless dictatorship, with a long history of not revealing the truth,” he said.

It is unclear precisely what data DHS relied on for the report, since it cites an unspecified “commercial vendor” as the source for data, but says it has “high confidence” in the conclusions about exports and imports.

“This assessment is based on a commercial service that collates world trade data,” the reference aid says. “The data is highly reliable because official U.S. trade data shows similar patterns to the world trade data from the commercial service.”

Joshua Meltzer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who specializes in trade policy, was less critical of the data but warned against drawing too sharp a conclusion. “It doesn’t tell you what is going on; it does support the theory of the case that they were stockpiling,” he said.

“It’s going to give you supporting data for the theory,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s going to be conclusive. It does raise a red flag.”

Trade Data on China and Med... by Sharon Weinberger on Scribd


In the reports, DHS says it has “moderate confidence” in its assessment, which it says also considers the effects of U.S. tariffs that could have also contributed to a decline in exports from China to the United States earlier this year. DHS did not respond to a request for comment.

Retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Robert Spalding said the DHS report likely doesn’t change what the U.S. government already knows about China’s concealment. “I think you can already draw conclusions already based on the timeline of what we know to be true,” he said, pointing to China’s delays in shutting down international travel and informing the WHO on human transmission of coronavirus.

“You don't even need the DHS report to know this was obfuscated on purpose by the Chinese Communist Party,” he said.

Spalding, now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and the author of Stealth War: How China Took Over While America's Elite Slept, points to open source information from January that showed China was hoarding personal protective equipment. “You can look at the records, on social media, you can see pictures of pallets and equipment that essentially have been stockpiled by Chinese companies,” he said.

The trade data is “another fact in the overall understanding of what they did,” he said. “It’s additive — it’s not required to make a determination.”

Hoffman, the former CIA official, says that regardless of the report, China’s efforts to withhold critical information about coronavirus are not in doubt.

“At the end of the day, China saw more value in concealing than in sharing information and revealing they had a problem which was going to impact the rest of the world,” he said. “They should have requested partnership rather than lying.”

BYE BYE NRA
Cuts at powerful pro-Trump political group threaten its influence in 2020 — after it spent more than $30 million to elect the president

May 5, 2020 By Igor Derysh, Salon

The National Rifle Association (NRA) laid off dozens of workers and slashed staff pay after the coronavirus pandemic forced the gun advocacy group to cancel its annual convention and a slew of fundraising events, according to a leaked internal memo obtained by The Associated Press.

The pandemic threatens to weaken the NRA’s influence ahead of the 2020 election after it forced the group to scrap fundraisers and membership events despite facing severe financial difficulties. The NRA has lost about $100 million as it wages a series of legal battles which have bled the group dry and exposed allegations about financial mismanagement by the group’s top executives.

The NRA has laid off or furloughed dozens of its employees, slashed salaries by 20% and imposed a four-day workweek for some of its workers, according to a memo by CEO Wayne LaPierre.

LaPierre said some senior staffers “voluntarily” took bigger pay cuts. The group did not say how much of a pay cut LaPierre would take after recently seeing his salary rise to more than $2 million.

“Defending freedom has never been easy. Over the years, we’ve weathered more tough times than most,” LaPierre said in the leaked memo. “But we will rise from this stronger and well-positioned to lead the fight to protect our Second Amendment, the First Amendment and all our constitutional freedoms during the crucial upcoming elections and for years to come.”

NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam told the AP that the “disruptions” caused by the coronavirus pandemic were the “primary drivers” of the cuts.

“The cancellation of the annual meeting had a significant financial impact, but beyond that, the health crisis has caused us to postpone countless fundraising and membership events along with competitions, training seminars and other revenue streams,” he said. “Like every other business and nonprofit, we are forced to make tough choices in this new economic environment.”

But while the pandemic has upended countless plans, the NRA’s problems have been exacerbated by long-running financial woes that threaten to hurt its influence in the 2020 election cycle.

“The NRA’s real problem is they had real, existing financial problems before this happened,” Robert Spitzer, the chairman of political science at the State University of New York at Cortland, told the AP. “It simply does not bode well for their impact on the upcoming election.”

The NRA, which spent a record $30 million to help President Donald Trump’s election efforts in 2016, has seen its spending decline severely in recent years as it battles its longtime public relations firm Ackerman McQueen, the creators of the now-defunct NRATV channel, and faces a slew of investigations from attorneys general in New York and Washington, as well as Congress.

Wells Fargo CEO Charles Scharf told investors last week that the bank’s relationship with the NRA was “declining,” Reuters reported.

“I don’t think we participate any longer in the organization’s line of credit and mortgage loan commitments,” he told shareholders at a recent meeting.

The financial difficulties have drawn criticism from other gun rights groups.

Save the Second, a group of NRA members pushing for reforms at the organization, disputed LaPierre’s claim that it was the health crisis that led to the financial troubles.

“Mr. LaPierre, if your organization was squeaky clean and ethically ran, we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place,” the group said in an email to supporters, according to the AP.

Trump has also complained that the group is “going bankrupt,” according to The New York Times, and called for it to “get its act together quickly.”

“Donald Trump talks about the Second Amendment, but he doesn’t so much talk about the NRA anymore,” Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, told Salon last week. “Some of the NRA’s own board members have distanced themselves from the NRA and major donors have begun to distance themselves from the NRA, so it’s really not surprising that Donald Trump would as well if he sees them as possibly an albatross around his neck.”

Watts pointed to the NRA’s recent losses in Virginia and in the 2018 midterms.

“If you look at the way this country has been going since the 2016 election, background checks continue to pass, red-flag laws, laws that disarm domestic abusers,” she said. “We have a 90% track record in the last five years of stopping the NRA’s agenda in state houses. So politically, they have not been as successful.”

Trump admits he was briefed on coronavirus before declaring ‘hoax’ and jetting off on golf trips


May 5, 2020 By Igor Derysh, Salon


President Donald Trump admitted that he was briefed about the new coronavirus in January before calling decrying the Democrats’ “hoax” and jetting off to golf trips the following weeks.

Trump made the comment ahead of a Bloomberg News report that the intelligence community briefed the president about the virus twice in January. The Washington Post previously reported that intelligence agencies issued warnings in more than a dozen classified briefings to Trump in January and February.

Despite receiving the briefings, Trump decried media coverage sounding the alarm about the virus to be the Democrats’ “new hoax” in February and continued to travel to golf outings and rallies well into March.

Trump admitted ahead of the report that he was briefed in January, though he claimed that the briefing was not alarming. The president tweeted that he was not briefed until “late into January,” and “they only spoke of the Virus in a very non-threatening, or matter of fact, manner.” He reiterated the claim Sunday in a town hall hosted by Fox News.

“On Jan. 23, I was told that there could be a virus coming in, but it was of no real import,” Trump said. “In other words, it wasn’t: ‘Oh we gotta do something, we gotta do something.’ It was a brief conversation and it was only on Jan. 23.”

Though Trump claimed that he was told “there could be a virus coming in,” the briefing came three days after the U.S. had confirmed its first coronavirus case.

Trump also did not address why, after receiving multiple briefings, he continued to play golf at his resorts until March 8. Trump changed his tune by March 17, claiming that he “felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.”

Trump’s attempt to downplay the intelligence is also contradicted by report in The Post, which revealed that agencies repeatedly highlighted the threat in more than a dozen briefings for the president because of alarm. Officials told The Post that the warnings “reflected a level of attention comparable to periods when analysts have been tracking active terrorism threats, overseas conflicts or other rapidly developing security issues.”

Despite the ongoing warnings, Trump insisted on Feb. 26 that the number of coronavirus cases “within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.”

“It’s like a miracle,” Trump insisted that month. “It will disappear.

A day before the World Health Organization declared the virus a global pandemic on March 11, Trump said: “Just stay calm, it will go away.”

Trump told Fox News on Sunday that as many as 100,000 Americans could die from the virus, which has already killed more than 68,000 people.

“We’re going to lose anywhere from 75, 80 to 100,000 people,” Trump, who last month predicted the death toll would be “substantially below the 100,000” mark, said.

But Trump credited himself with saving millions of lives after the country imposed lockdowns, though he refused to issue any nationwide restrictions.

“If we didn’t do it, the minimum we would have lost was a million two, a million four, a million five — that’s the minimum,” he claimed. “We would have lost probably higher. It’s possible higher than 2.2.”

Even as he praised himself for the lockdowns, Trump insisted that people would be safe without them.

“People are going to be safe. We’ve learned a lot. We’ve learned about the tremendous contagion. But we have no choice: We can’t stay closed as a country. We’re not going to have a country left,” he said. “This virus will pass. It will go. Will it come back? It might. It could. Some people say, ‘Yes.’ But it will pass.”

Working in fear, immigrants keep US poultry plants running

May 5, 2020 By Agence France-Presse

AFP / Eric BARADAT Haitian Nurse Practitioner Nadya Julien tells AFP about the coronavirus spread in the Haitian community working in the local poultry industry in Salisbury, Maryland

Tina says a little prayer every time she heads to work at a Delaware poultry plant, a plea that this will not be the day that the invisible killer picking off her colleagues comes for her.

With the coronavirus shutting down meat plants and threatening the country’s food supply, she would rather not be there at all, but President Donald Trump has designated the sector as strategic, and low-paid workers like her as essential.

The 27-year-old mother works shifts at the Perdue packing plant in Georgetown, a major employer among the thousands of fellow Haitians settled in the area. If she wants to hold on to her job, she feels she has little choice but to clock in for her shifts, despite the risk to her and her family.

“Every day I come, I just pray to God that nothing happens,” said Tina — one of few workers who would agree to speak to a reporters, although even she declined to provide her full name for fear of reprisals.

“I want to go home, I have three kids at home, a baby, but I can’t do that,” she told AFP, speaking behind a mask. “I have no choice, bills are coming from left to right.”

With no way of knowing who might be carrying the virus, “everyone is afraid of getting sick, people still works close together.”

“They don’t tell us who has been tested positive. Was that person beside me, talking to me, you never know.”

Tina believes too little was done, too late, to protect workers like her.

“I just think that they should close a few weeks so they can clean the whole plant,” she said.

The number of coronavirus infections has recently soared in the Delmarva peninsula, which reaches south out of Delaware to eastern Maryland and the northeast of Virginia.

The poultry packing industry has thrived off the cheap labor provided by Haitians and Hispanics, but it also has meant that they have been the first to be cut down by the disease.

– Fear of hospitals-

AFP / Eric BARADAT A sign for the Human Resources department in the parking lot outside the Perdue Farms Chicken and poultry processing factory in Salisbury, Maryland

The small town of Salisbury, the historic base of Perdue, is home to a community of some 5,000 Haitians, at least 40 percent of whom are infected, according to Habacuc Petion, the owner of Oasis radio, which broadcasts in Creole to an estimated 20,000 listeners in the Delmarva area.

Many work for Perdue, and are refusing to stay home for fear of being sacked.

“Even if they have fever, they take a pill and go to work,” said Petion.

“COVID-19 touched home,” said the 45-year-old. “My cousin was 44, working at Perdue plant. Beginning of April, he could not breathe, his wife convinced the medics to take him to the hospital. In less than two weeks he died.”

The disease’s toll has also been boosted by a fear of hospitals and by the language barrier for many Haitians, doctors said.

“When they see people dying in New York hospitals, the lack of material and people put in dumps, they are scared thinking they won’t receive the care they need — and end up dying,” said Nadya Julien, a Haitian nurse practitioner in Laurel, Delaware.

Some who speak Creole but little English have trouble explaining their symptoms, she said.

She herself contracted the disease and was hospitalized for six days in April, a story she tells her patients to help them overcome their fears.

– ‘Temptation’ –

Nurse practitioner Emanie Dorival said she alerted the local authorities very early to the number of cases piling up in her surgery in Seaford, Delaware.

AFP / Eric BARADAT Nurse practioner Emanie Dorival said she alerted the local authorities very early to the number of cases piling up in her surgery in Seaford, Delaware

“We are a rural area,” she said. “We don’t have the capacity in our hospitals if 200 cases show up.”

While she agrees the poultry industry is “essential” she says “there is a way to keep it safe for the workers and the community.”

Several major US plants where farmers send cattle, pigs and poultry have shut due to the rapid spread of COVID-19 between employees, who are often in close proximity on production lines and on breaks.

Faced with the threat of disruption to the nation’s food supply, Trump has ordered meat and poultry plants to remain open during the pandemic that has claimed almost 70,000 lives.

Perdue has said it is doing all it can to ensure workers’ safety, taking temperatures, providing protective equipment and practicing social distancing on the production line. Where it is impossible to keep workers a safe distance apart, it said it has installed screens.

It also increased workers’ wages — which Petion described as “a temptation that a lot of people can’t resist.”

Local health authorities are meanwhile stepping up testing for the virus, with factory workers at the front of the line. In Salisbury, some 1,500 people underwent tests on Friday and Saturday at the town’s sports stadium. The results are expected this week.

France refuses Amazon’s Covid-19 emergency fund request

Issued on: 04/05/2020 

France's labour ministry on May 5, 2020 denied a request by Amazon for emergency coronavirus funds.

Text by:FRANCE 24Follow

France's labour ministry on Monday refused a request by Amazon for emergency funds to pay its employees during the coronavirus crisis, after the retail giant shut its warehouses over a French court ruling ordering the company to deliver only essential goods until its health protocols were revised.

The ministry said Amazon France had asked to benefit from coronavirus crisis funds that cover about 84 percent of net pay for workers facing temporary layoffs because of a drop in business.

Amazon France confirmed it sought the funds to cover salaries for some 10,000 employees at its six main distribution sites in the country.

The online retailer has been locked in a battle with labour unions which say not enough was done to mitigate contagion risk for staff working in close proximity to process a flood of orders amid the nationwide lockdown, which saw traditional shops shuttered.

Last month, an appeals court upheld a ruling that sharply curtailed Amazon's operations and ordered management to review safety measures. The court said only digital products, office equipment, groceries, medical and personal care products could be delivered in the meantime.

But Amazon said it was impossible to comply with the order, and completely shut down the six sites from mid-April until May 5, though it maintained full pay for employees.

All French fulfillment centres shut
"The recent decision by the Court of Versailles has obviously had an impact on our French operations... As a result, we filed for the help that other companies in France have benefited from," the company said in a statement.

"Our logistics operations are technically complex and the court's fine of 100,000 euros ($109,000) for any infraction means that even accidental shipping of non-authorised products, on the order of 0.1 percent of the total, could lead to over one billion euros of fines per week," it said.

The world's largest online retailer is facing mounting scrutiny as it juggles a surge in online orders during government lockdowns to curb the pandemic and employees' safety, and France has become a major battleground.

France is the only country where Amazon has shut all of its so-called fulfillment centres after unions complained that they were still too crowded and filed a legal challenge.

'Absolutely scandalous'

Unions called Amazon's request for employment aid "absolutely scandalous" and accused the firm of getting around the court order by fulfilling French orders from its other warehouses in Europe.

Dozens of employees had staged walkouts at several sites before the ruling to demand better workplace protection during the Covid-19 outbreak.


Amazon reported last week that despite a surge in orders worldwide because of virus lockdowns, its profit dropped 29 percent in the first quarter of this year, to $2.5 billion, because of Covid-19 expenses, including measures for "keeping employees safe".

The company is in the process of recruiting some 175,000 more employees to cope with surging demand.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP and REUTERS)

Top Russian newspaper fights for survival amid censorship row

The staff at "Vedomosti" are defying the paper's new editor-in-chief, who they say is undermining the publication's journalistic independence. Now the conflict is threatening the media outlet's funding as well.


Tensions reportedly started right after the first staff meeting with the new editor-in-chief of Vedomosti. Since Andrey Shmarov started in the job at the end of March, journalists at the paper say he banned them from writing about Vladimir Putin's controversial constitutional reforms, which could keep the Russian president in power far beyond his current term limit. Apparently he also told them not to cite surveys by the independent pollster Levada Center, an accusation Shmarov has denied. The editor has also deleted a column about the Russian oil giant Rosneft and changed the title of another column.

Vedomosti media editor Ksenya Boletskaya tells DW that many of the steps caused a "violent emotional reaction" in the team, which values its editorial independence above all. Vedomosti staff began openly defying Shmarov. In an editorial, staff wrote that his editorial changes "are damaging trust in the publication," accusing Shmarov of censorship. Without the journalistic principles its reputation is based on, they wrote, Vedomosti will become "yet another dependent and controlled media outlet," adding: "There are enough of those already in Russia."

Read more: Death threats against Russian journalist

Boletskaya says that many of the paper's readers have commented under articles that they plan to unsubscribe from Vedomosti because they are no longer sure of its "independence and transparency." Shmarov himself told the Financial Times (FT), which used to co-own the paper along with The Wall Street Journal, that he was not "at war" with staff and hoped he could improve his relationship with his team.

Shmarov was put at the helm of the paper after its publisher made a deal to sell it to new owners. But the FT has cited sources saying the scandal has led one of the buyers to pull out of the deal, which could leave the paper in freefall. So far the lockdown has also delayed paperwork needed to complete the deal.

Now the paper is in a strange sort of limbo. Not only is it no longer clear who owns it, but Vedomosti was recently excluded from a government list of essential companies that will receive support during the crisis caused by the new coronavirus.

Read more: Coronavirus latest: Russia reports record 10,000 new cases

Russia's deputy communications minister Aleksey Volin has said that the decision to exclude the paper from the list was partially to do with the ongoing conflict within the paper. He compared the editorial team with a bus with no driver, where several people are fighting for the wheel. "That is not the symbol of an essential business at all."

According to media expert and publisher Ivan Zassoursky, if Vedomosti has to close, the Russian media would be losing a publication that has been "a rare standout on the media market," a newspaper with "with its own voice, its own editorial policies which are strictly adhered to."

He thinks that with the loud debates about the editorial line and funding of the paper, it "could lose its halo as the main business newspaper." Zassoursky tells DW that receiving government funding could help save the paper, especially as the coronavirus has cut into its income from conferences and events — but it would also harm the independent reputation of Vedomosti.

Vedomosti editor Boletskaya also insists that the paper is an "institution," one of the big players that have access to important government officials but don't dance to their tune.

Vedomosti was founded in 1999 and has since remained independent despite censorship having slowly increased under Vladimir Putin. Television in Russia is almost completely state-controlled and in recent years many media outlets, including Vedomosti's main competitors, like business daily RBC, have seen their editors replaced with more pro-government figures. Last year, another of Russia's big business papers, Kommersant, saw its entire political department walk out after a new editor-in-chief fired two journalists for reporting about a potential reshuffle in Russia's upper house of parliament.

Kremlin control?

When it comes to the sale of Vedomosti, media expert Zassoursky argues that the new owners must be aiming to exert political influence there as well. With the newspaper industry dying, he says he can see no other reason why people would buy a paper like Vedomosti.

With the outrage about the paper's new editor Andrey Shmarov, both the former owners of the paper and the new buyers have refused to take responsibility for hiring him. Meanwhile the critical online platform Meduza has cited sources saying the new editor is a "candidate of the presidential administration."

The Kremlin's spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, has denied this and has said that censorship is unacceptable. "We are interested in the newspaper Vedomosti continuing its work on its current highly professional level."

Ilya Graschenkov of the Center for the Development of Regional Politics tells DW that "this conflict is very uncomfortable for the Kremlin." But the independent political analyst suspects the origins of the conflict over Vedomosti are likely part of a power struggle that does not come directly from the Kremlin.

Meanwhile, Vedomosti editor Boletskaya sees the growing pressure on the paper as part of a wider trend. She says that as many other big liberal media outlets were closed or brought into line, Vedomosti "stood out too much." "We almost look like we are the opposition," she explains, while emphasizing that her opinions don't represent those of the whole team.

Boletskaya says some of her colleagues have already decided to leave the paper. As a media expert, she isn't optimistic about the future of Vedomosti as it faces economic and political pressures. But she is one of many at the paper who are prepared to keep fighting. "We value this newspaper so much — not even for ourselves but for our readers. So we want to do everything to ensure it keeps reporting."

Date 04.05.2020
Author Emily Sherwin

WHO says no proof from US on ‘speculative’ claims virus came from Wuhan lab

TRUMP POMPEO SO INEPT THEY HAVE NO EVIDENCE
 05/05/2020

The World Health Organization (WHO) is "assured that this virus is natural in origin". © Fabrice Coffrini, AFP/File

Text by:NEWS WIRES

The World Health Organization said Monday that Washington had provided no evidence to support "speculative" claims by the US president that the new coronavirus originated in a Chinese lab.

"We have not received any data or specific evidence from the United States government relating to the purported origin of the virus – so from our perspective, this remains speculative," WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan told a virtual briefing.

Scientists believe the killer virus jumped from animals to humans, emerging in China late last year, possibly from a market in Wuhan selling exotic animals for meat.

Top US epidemiologist Anthony Fauci echoed the WHO's statement in an interview published Monday evening by National Geographic.

"If you look at the evolution of the virus in bats and what's out there now, (the scientific evidence) is very, very strongly leaning toward this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated," Fauci told the magazine.

"Everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that (this virus) evolved in nature and then jumped species," he said.

BREAKING: #Fauci in exclusive ⁦@NatGeo⁩ interview today: No scientific evidence the #coronavirus was made in a Chinese lab.He also warns against reopening states too fast, and says we must spend summer prepping tests, ventilators & PPE for fall wave https://t.co/FrCGOhg2gT— Indira Lakshmanan (@Indira_L) May 5, 2020

US President Donald Trump, increasingly critical of China's management of the outbreak, claims to have proof it started in a Wuhan laboratory.

And US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Sunday said "enormous evidence" backed up that claim, although the US intelligence community last week said it would continue to study whether the outbreak stemmed from infected animal contact, or a lab accident.

China has vehemently denied suggestions the lab was the source.

"Like any evidence-based organization, we would be very willing to receive any information that purports to the origin of the virus," Ryan said, stressing that this was "a very important piece of public health information for future control.

"If that data and evidence is available, then it will be for the United States government to decide whether and when it can be shared, but it is difficult for the WHO to operate in an information vacuum in that regard," he added.

Science at the centre

The UN health agency – which has also faced scathing criticism from Trump over accusations it initially downplayed the seriousness of the outbreak to shield China – has repeatedly said the virus clearly appears to have originated naturally from an animal source.

WHO expert Maria Van Kerkhove stressed during Monday's briefing that there were some 15,000 full genome sequences of the novel coronavirus available, and "from all of the evidence that we have seen... this virus is of natural origin."While coronaviruses generally originate in bats, both Van Kerkhove and Ryan stressed the importance of discovering how the virus that causes COVID-19 crossed over to humans, and what animal served as an "intermediary host" along the way.

"We need to understand more about that natural origin, and particularly about intermediate hosts," Ryan said.

It was important to know "so that we can put in place the right public health and animal-human interface policies that will prevent this happening again," he stressed.

>> Covid-19: How scientists are keeping politics out of the global race for a vaccine

The WHO said last week it wanted to be invited to take part in Chinese investigations into the animal origins of the pandemic, which in a matter of months has killed more than 250,000 people worldwide.

"We have offered, as we do with every case in every country, assistance with carrying out those investigations," Ryan said Monday.

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"We can learn from Chinese scientists," he said.

But he warned that if questions about the virus's origin were "projected as aggressive investigation of wrongdoing, than I believe that's much more difficult to deal with. That is a political issue.

"Science needs to be at the centre," he said.

"If we have a science-based investigation and a science-based enquiry as to what the origin species and the intermediate species are, then that will benefit everybody on the planet."

(AFP)

The World Health Organization chief said Monday that the agency had sounded the highest level of alarm over the novel coronavirus early on, but lamented that not all countries had heeded its advice.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus pointed out that the WHO warned the COVID-19 outbreak constituted a 'Public Health Emergency of International Concern' on January 30, when there were only 82 cases registered outside China.

"The world should have listened to WHO then carefully," he told a virtual press briefing.