Tag: pandemic

Add to list Here are rules doctors can follow when they decide who gets care and who dies

Washington Post logoEthicists like me have studied rationing for decades. In a few days, our guidelines will be needed.

Rationing occurs in the United States. Anyone on a waiting list for a kidney or liver transplant knows this. But in just two weeks, the need to select which severely ill coronavirus patients will receive treatment — and which will go without — will be more acute than anything Americans have ever experienced or probably imagined. Even in the most favorable scenario, 39,727 intensive-care-unit beds will be needed on April 15, the projected peak date for the covid-19 pandemic in this country. Only 19,864 such beds will be available. There won’t be enough ventilators, either. These projections, from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, optimistically assume that social distancing measures are maintained for weeks. The actual shortfalls are likely to be worse.

How should these choices be made? There is no authoritative source of ethical wisdom. But the issues have been examined intensively for two decades, initially as a response to the prospect of an avian flu pandemic. That scenario was frightening enough to prompt authorities to convene task forces at the global, national and state levels to survey available resources, identify shortfalls and set priorities. I participated in deliberations at the World Health Organization and in Massachusetts, both of which gave explicit attention not only to equipment stockpiles and treatment protocols but also to identifying and trying to resolve conflicts among values. Clinicians, epidemiologists, patient advocates and ethicists had seats at the table. We’re not bound by any of the recommendations issued by the many task forces, but we’re not starting from scratch.

Bodies like these perform valuable functions, even though they do not always reach similar conclusions. They offer a chance to think critically about difficult choices before crises occur. If adopted, their recommendations and guidelines relieve caregivers of some of the burden of making the determinations themselves, allowing them to focus on how best to implement them, as their training has prepared them to do. And though none of these bodies can claim to represent the publics they serve — they’re not elected, after all — they make clear the importance of devoting time and expertise to studying and debating these questions in depth, well ahead of the need. Continue reading.

Trump berates woman reporter for ‘very nasty tone’ in misogynistic screed

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump unleashed a venomous attack on yet another reporter, a woman as is often the case, and once again used the word “nasty,” which he repeatedly has used as a cudgel against women in his not uncommon misogynistic bashings.

The reporter asked the President about a lie Jared Kushner told reporters on Thursday, which angered so many Americans #JaredKushnerForPrison trended on Twitter.

The reporter, CBS News White House Correspondent Weijia Jiang, directly quoted Kushner, who serves as Senior Advisor to the President and is Trump’s son-in-law. Continue reading.

Inside the coronavirus testing failure: Alarm and dismay among the scientists who sought to help

Washington Post logoOn a Jan. 15 conference call, a leading scientist at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention assured local and state public health officials from across the nation that there would soon be a test to detect a mysterious virus spreading from China. Stephen Lindstrom told them the threat was remote and they may not need the test his team was developing “unless the scope gets much larger than we anticipate,” according to an email summarizing the call.

“We’re in good hands,” a public health official who participated in the call wrote in the email to colleagues.

Three weeks later, early on Feb. 8, one of the first CDC test kits arrived in a Federal Express package at a public health laboratory on the east side of Manhattan. By then, the virus had reached the United States, and the kits represented the government’s best hope for containing it while that was still possible. Continue reading.

Trump selects White House lawyer for coronavirus inspector general

The Hill logoPresident Trump announced Friday that he has selected a member of the White House Counsel’s office to serve as the inspector general overseeing the dispersement of hundreds of billions of dollars in federal funds as part of the coronavirus relief package.

Trump has tapped Brian Miller, who serves as a special assistant to the president and senior associate counsel in the White House Counsel’s office, to serve as the special inspector general for pandemic recovery.

The new position, under the Department of the Treasury, is tasked with tracking loans, loan guarantees and other expenditures made by the department. It was created as part of the $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief bill and is authorized for five years. Continue reading.

Farmworkers, Mostly Undocumented, Become ‘Essential’ During Pandemic

New York Times logoImmigrant field workers have been told to keep working despite stay-at-home directives, and given letters attesting to their “critical” role in feeding the country.

LOS ANGELES — Like legions of immigrant farmworkers, Nancy Silva for years has done the grueling work of picking fresh fruit that Americans savor, all the while afraid that one day she could lose her livelihood because she is in the country illegally.

But the widening coronavirus pandemic has brought an unusual kind of recognition: Her job as a field worker has been deemed by the federal government as “essential” to the country.

Ms. Silva, who has spent much of her life in the United States evading law enforcement, now carries a letter from her employer in her wallet, declaring that the Department of Homeland Security considers her “critical to the food supply chain.” Continue reading.

Social distancing works, but resistance prompts worries of growing crisis

The Hill logoSocial distancing efforts to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus are working, according to preliminary data, but there’s also a problem: There are still communities that aren’t doing enough, and some that started too late.

State and local governments around the country have closed businesses and mandated social distancing for weeks, which experts say is key to slowing the spread of the virus and preventing an influx of patients from overwhelming the health care system.

But the aggressiveness of those measures varies from state to state, and the impact of the coronavirus will be felt at different times in different places across the country.  Continue reading.

Ex-GOP Strategist Says Two Tweets Could Doom Trump In November

When Sen. Elizabeth Warren was surging in the 2020 Democratic primary, Sen. Kamala Harris attacked her during one of the debates for not wanting to urge Twitter to suspend President Donald Trump’s Twitter account. But one of the best arguments against suspending that account is that Trump’s tweets give Democrats ammunition to use against him — and Never Trump conservative Tim Miller, in a new article for The Bulwark, argues that Democrats could doom Trump’s campaign with tweets from earlier this year: one from Trump, the other from Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut.

Warren and Harris, of course, have dropped out of the Democratic presidential primary — which now consists of only two candidates: Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and the frontrunner, former Vice President Joe Biden. And Miller (who served as communications director to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush) asserts that Biden, assuming he is the nominee, could use screenshots of a Murphy tweet from February 5 and a Trump tweet from March 9 to make the case that Trump let his country down horribly during the coronavirus pandemic.

On February 5, both Murphy and Trump were well aware of intel warnings about the deadly potential of coronavirus — which, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, had killed more than 45,000 people worldwide as of early Wednesday afternoon, April 1. But that horrifying figure is low compared to the figures that Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr.  Deborah Birx (two key members of Trump’s coronavirus task force) have stressed this week. Even with aggressive social distancing measures, they warned that coronavirus could, in the weeks ahead, kill 100,000-240,000 people in the U.S. alone. Without social distancing, the death toll could be even worse. Continue reading.

 

CDC recommends face coverings for people leaving home

The Hill logoPresident Trump announced on Friday that his administration would recommend Americans wear homemade masks or face coverings to prevent the spread of COVID-19 — but he repeatedly emphasized that the guidance is “voluntary.”

“It’s going to be really a voluntary thing,” Trump said during a White House briefing with reporters.

“You can do it. You don’t have to do it. I’m choosing not to do it, but some people may want to do it, and that’s OK,” he said. Continue reading.

McConnell says there will be a fourth coronavirus bill

The Hill logoSenate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Friday that there will be a fourth coronavirus bill and that health care should be a top priority as lawmakers draft the legislation.

McConnell, in an interview with The Associated Press, said that “there will be a next measure.”

“[It] should be more a targeted response to what we got wrong and what we didn’t do enough for — and at the top of the list there would have to be the health care part of it,” he said. Continue reading.