During any big news event, Facebook becomes even more of a pit of toxic disinformation than it is on a relatively normal day. That said, there is one particular meme that I saw pop up a few times recently and I can’t stop thinking about it.
(Some context about my feed: I am from rural West Tennessee, so I saw this posted by a couple of folks back home. Please do not come at me—or anyone, really—with talk of ignorant rednecks or country hicks, I will promptly tell you that is some reductive nonsense and it’s not the point I’m making here.)
While both posters in my circles have since deleted the meme, which Facebook has now flagged as “partly false information,” it’s still really important to explain to our readers just why this specific post is completely bogus: For the eternal record contained within the limitless 1s and 0s of the Internet, there is no vaccine for humans who contract the novel coronavirus. This is the reality; it is not an elaborate ploy made up by the media for clicks.
The confusion here rests in the fact that there are several types of the virus. There is even a coronavirus that infects cows. And that is the one that is treated with a vaccine, ScourGard 4K, for “healthy, pregnant cows and heifers as an aid in preventing diarrhea in their calves caused by bovine rotavirus, bovine coronavirus, and enterotoxigenic strains of Escherichia coil,” according to manufacturer Zoetisus. Bovine coronavirus has been around for years. It is not the same as the novel coronavirus causing the current pandemic, it is merely in the same family. As Reuters reports:
According to the CDC, coronaviruses were first identified in the mid-1960s. “Coronavirus” is a term for a group of diseases. Seven different kinds of human coronaviruses exist, including 229E, NL63, OC43 and HKU1. Most human coronaviruses cause “mild to moderate upper-respiratory tract illnesses,” similar to the common cold. In different species, coronaviruses can produce “a wide spectrum of disease syndromes.” The CDC mentions that: “Sometimes coronaviruses that infect animals can evolve and make people sick and become a new human coronavirus. Three recent examples of this are 2019-nCoV, SARS-CoV, and MERS-CoV.”
It makes a lot of sense that in this moment, people are desperately seeking a solution to make them feel safer. But this vaccine ain’t it. And if we’ve learned anything so far this week, it’s that experimenting with medication without the oversight of a physician, even if you’re following the word of our president, is downright dangerous.
President Trump, in the latest signal of his mounting frustration with the economic impact of the coronavirus, is back to inaccurately comparing the death rates of the virus to the seasonal flu in order to justify calling for the reopening of the economy in the near future—possibly as soon as Monday.
“We lose thousands of people a year to the flu, we never turn the country off,” Trump said during Fox News’ Tuesday coronavirus special. “We lose much more than that to automobile accidents. We didn’t call up the automobile companies and say, ‘Stop making cars, we don’t want any cars anymore.’ We have to get back to work.”
Trump then appeared to argue that the economic damage of keeping social distancing measures in place would bring a greater loss of life than the increase of deaths that experts have warned would come after ending the restrictions. “You’re going to lose more people by putting the country into a depression,” he said.
The remarks on Tuesday came as a breathtaking return to Trump’s initial take on the virus—an approach that saw the president repeatedly minimizing its threat and falsely equating it to the flu—before he, after a long delay, adopted a more serious approach, as recommended by public health experts, just last week. That shift finally saw the White House suddenly embracing social distancing measures and attempting to take steps to abate the crisis.
But Trump’s prioritization of the economy threatens to erase hope that the country could dramatically stem the spread of the virus. Experts warn that in the absence of more tests and stricter isolation measures, as seen in countries like South Korea, the US will see deaths skyrocket.
President Trump and members of his coronavirus task force are set to appear on Fox News this afternoon for a virtual town hall discussion on the coronavirus pandemic, a two-hour special that, in giving the president a platform, carries a high risk of spreading misinformation, political attacks, and further confusion on the social distancing measures that are central to efforts to curb the spread of infections.
But while Trump may top the bill, the medical professionals Fox News has enlisted to take part may pose more danger than the president himself. All three—Dr. Mehmet Oz, Dr. Nicole Saphier, and Dr. Marc Siegel—have either had a role in downplaying the threat of the virus or have pushed dangerous information about how to fight it. Their presence on the show threatens to surround Trump’s pronouncement with a false sense of scientific authority.
Let’s roll the tape.
By now, most Americans are acquainted with Oz, the talkshow doctor whose long history of promoting dubious diet products and advice should be familiar to our television obsessed president. (As my colleague Pat Caldwell noted when Oz interviewed Trump in 2016, the president himself once pushed a Trump-branded scheme marketing questionable dietary supplements.) Now, amid a public health crisis, Oz is one of the key voices pushing an unproven malaria treatment that Trump and others have dangerously claimed can cure coronavirus, despite health officials’ warnings that it has yet to be thoroughly tested. Multiple people, including an Arizona man, have since been poisoned after ingesting the chemicals associated with the treatment.
Dr. Oz tells the at-risk Fox & Friends audience that he's going to share "the protocol" a French doctor used for a scientifically unproven coronavirus treatment. pic.twitter.com/uzRyRGq5sE
As for Saphier—who in February incorrectly claimed that the death rates for coronavirus and the flu were similar—the regular Fox News contributor has been busy applying her longstanding anti-big government views to blame millennials and even Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) for supposedly failing to practice social distancing measures.
“I talk about how bad behavior and big government have caused our trillion-dollar health crisis. This is no difference,” Saphier told Fox & Friends last week. “We know that this generation, they like to take it to the streets, as AOC says. They do protest, they feel that they are invincible. Part of this is just being young and not having compassion for those older, but part of that is also their parenting as well.”
Rounding out the trio is Siegel, also a frequent Fox News contributor, who earlier this month spread false information about the virus’s threat to blast the World Health Organization for its dire warnings about the threat of the virus. “They are a bunch of alarmists, they are saber rattlers,” he said during an appearance on March 6. “There’s no reason to believe it’s actually more problematic or deadly than influenza.”
Donald Trump is handling the coronavirus outbreak better than his predecessors addressed earlier emerging contagions, said Dr. Marc Siegel, professor of medicine at New York University. https://t.co/crhSf4shzI
Donald Trump stands for the national anthem alongside Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr., right, during the graduating class commencement ceremony May 13, 2017 in Lynchburg, Virginia.Shealah Craighead/White House/Planet Pix via ZUMA Wire
While schools and college campuses around the country remain closed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, Liberty University is set to allow the return this week of up to 5,000 students. The plan was announced by the private evangelical university’s scandal–plagued president, Jerry Falwell Jr., an ally of President Trump. Trump in recent days has dismayed public health experts by announcing he may push for the lifting of restrictions on businesses to reduce economic damage as soon as next week.
In an interview last week with Fox News Radio’s Todd Starnes, Falwell said it is fortunate that COVID-19 “doesn’t have a high mortality rate for young people because they’re the ones that are not worried about it. And I’m not worried about it.” Falwell said healthy people should stay away from those “who are high risk” and elderly people. But he accused the media of overhyping the disease. “Thank God we have the best president we could possibly have to deal with a crisis like this,” he said. “Shame on the media for trying to fan it up and destroy the American economy. They’re willing to destroy the economy just to hurt Trump.”
This week, Falwell told the Lynchburg, Virginia, News & Advance that “we have a responsibility to our students — who paid to be here, who want to be here, who love it here—to give them the ability to be with their friends, to continue their studies, enjoy the room and board they’ve already paid for and to not interrupt their college life.”
Falwell told the paper that between several hundred to more than 5,000 students will be allowed to return to campus dorms, though they will continue to do work online rather than in classrooms. (Liberty, based in Lynchburg, already caters to a large majority of its students through online courses.) Falwell says he is banning gatherings of more than 10 students.
The News & Advance noted the Liberty students will return even as the Virginia Department of Health announced new coronavirus cases in the Lynchburg area.
In an op-ed Monday in the Washington Post, Marybeth Davis Baggett, an English professor at Liberty, called for the university’s board to override Falwell’s “foolhardy decision.”
“Liberty is not a bubble where the virus would be contained,” Baggett wrote. “Instead, its population comes into regular contact with those in the Lynchburg community, putting their health and lives at risk as well. “It is unconscionable that the leadership of the university is fully implementing Falwell’s politically motivated and rash policy that unnecessarily risks an unmanageable outbreak here in Lynchburg.”
An Alcoholics Anonymous meetingJohn van Hasselt/Getty
On March 14, six days before New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo implemented a shelter-in-place order for the state, effectively shutting down all nonessential services, Reagan Reed was notified that 50 Alcoholics Anonymous meetings had been canceled across New York City’s metropolitan area. As executive director of the Inter-Group Association of AA of New York, an umbrella organization for the area’s 6,000 AA chapters across the five boroughs and surrounding counties, it was her job to update the website’s event page.
Across the city, cancellations of AA meetings climbed to 600—there were so many that Reed had to hire someone to automate the site—as chapters complied with health guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to end large gatherings. The recommendations came in response to the COVID-19 outbreak—a pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus, which has killed 517 and infected more than 40,000 people, 20,000 in New York City alone.
Alcoholics Anonymous was established in 1935 to offer support for alcoholics as they attempt to manage their addiction. It’s the largest alcoholism recovery organization in the United States, including an estimated 1.3 million members and 66,000 chapters. Chapters meet regularly and abide by a recovery program of 12 steps, which focus on introspection and reconciliation, to overcome the desire to return to drinking. AA has spawned numerous other substance abuse support groups, like Narcotics Anonymous. But for recovering alcoholics in the midst of this pandemic, the loss of meetings may lead to damaging social isolation and a dangerous removal of support systems for the participants in the program.
“It’s imperative to us that we meet in person,” Reed says. “Alcoholics are, by nature, isolating people. One of, if not the most important thing, about AA and staying sober is physically bringing yourself to a meeting and putting yourself in a chair, and being in a room full of people who you can physically listen to, and look at, and relate to.”
That may be challenging enough during normal times but it’s impossible during a global pandemic, especially given that the structure of AA meetings could make participants particularly susceptible to being infected. One quarter of its members are over age 60, a group especially vulnerable to the virus’s spread. And many AA meetings take place in church basements or other places where Reed says “the chairs are very close to one another because they’re in small spaces.” Anonymity is key, so contacting those who may have shown signs of infection is nearly impossible. And since groups are autonomous, during the early stages of the epidemic the decision of whether to cancel the meetings or change the format differed from chapter to chapter.
But today there’s an option that has never existed before: Many chapters that canceled meetings have migrated to the digital sphere by using video conference services like Skype or Zoom. NYIG tried to help host meetings and meet the full demand. The organization purchased a Zoom Room video conference space that can “host 500 meetings on the hour, per hour, and up to 1000 participants each.” Later this week, when NYIG plans to get everything up in running, they’ll potentially have the capacity to host 50,000 AA members at a given time, some in meetings as small as 300 and as large as 1,000. Since NYIG will be the host, chapter members won’t need to pay to access meetings.
“We have a format for how we hold AA meetings,” she says, “and we’re sticking to that format online.” The chairperson kicks things off, there’s a preamble, and the opportunity for group discussion. What’s missing is the hugging, the hand-shaking, and the experience of simply being together.
The fundamental, if uneasy, transformation that NYIG is going through to keep resources available to its members is taking place in addiction support groups across the country. Maryland’s Ashley Treatment, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center with three locations across the state, is in the midst of its own transition. This week, most of its nearly 400 out-patients will see their meetings go online. For alumni of the center, who might not be able to access their networks of support, the organization is hosting three digital meetings daily. Its managers also are concerned that changes in the familiar support system could create cracks for people to fall through, especially for those without computers. “For those who can’t access it, it’s on us to think outside the box,” says Alex Denstman, senior vice president at Ashley Treatment.
Accessibility is what members say makes the AA model unique. “The anarchic nature, the ubiquity, means there are meetings anywhere…every hour on the hour,” says Garrett, an AA member—traditionally no last names are ever used—with three years of sobriety. His group, which has also moved online, holds five regular meetings a week. Garrett says the constant availability of physical support is key when someone is trying to get sober. “It is not uncommon to be in meetings where the only thing standing between the person coming to the meeting and drinking was that the meeting was happening at that time,” he says.
Like Reed and Denstman, Garrett understands the importance of self-quarantining, but there is little to substitute for the power of what went on when he first started going to meetings. “A lot of the stuff most helpful for me was kind of that intangible human interaction part,” he says. “I guarantee people will drink because they couldn’t get to a meeting, or the one they usually go to was cancelled and, for whatever reason, they didn’t get notice of that.”
The sudden pivot online threatens to leave some addicts behind, but for others it’s revealed an ease of connectivity whose potential they hadn’t before realized. Susie, a Delaware-based AA member with 18 years of sobriety who helps organize area meetings, was invited to participate as a speaker in her old Washington, DC, chapter’s online meeting. She says the face-to-face nature of meetings is essential to people in recovery, but that in the right context, connection online can become a useful tool for AA members in a wide variety of contexts beyond the current health emergency. “There are meetings for communities that are isolated, or living abroad where there aren’t English speaking meetings,” she says. “There are a variety of online resources that are springing up at the regional level and from the local groups themselves.”
If this pandemic arrived 20 years ago, there wouldn’t have been an alternative venue for entire chapters of recovering alcoholics to access. Though the migration online didn’t happen on anybody’s terms, Denstman, the senior vice president at Ashley Treatment, says he’s “grateful this is happening now, when we can utilize technology and create connections for people.”
House Democrats released their own stimulus plan for coronavirus tonight. It’s bigger and different than the one Mitch McConnell has had voted down twice already.
The Democratic bill was apparently leaked early today and has been, according to Politico, “circulating on K street.” (What hasn’t?)
But is it good, this bill, or is not good? I don’t know.
But here is a one page summary
House Democrats just introduced their $2.5 trillion coronavirus stimulus package.
And here is the entire bill, if you really need something to read.
Here are some tweets about it:
One huge difference between this and Senate GOP plan: It’s universal on the front end, which experts told me makes it easier and quicker to get out: https://t.co/4sSq9XMBtF
And it’s based on 2020 income, which accounts for COVID-19 impact; Senate plan based it on 2018 income. https://t.co/Gs0H2VTQAM
All around Latin America, governments have spent the past few weeks gearing up for an impending wave of coronavirus cases. In El Salvador, President Nayib Bukele closed the borders to foreigners. In Colombia, President Ivan Duque proposed a nationwide quarantine.
Meanwhile, if you’d been listening to Mexico’s president, you’d think that there is no such thing as a coronavirus pandemic—and that while the whole world is taking extreme measures to combat this public health crisis, Mexicans are somehow exempt from the virus. “If we grind to a halt, we don’t do any good,” President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said in a video message Sunday. “Let’s keep going about our lives as normal.”
Ayer, la jefa de gobierno de la #CDMX pidió evitar salir, por su parte, el presidente invita a visitar fondas y restaurantes si el bolsillo lo permite. https://t.co/CkTqaKyGkv
“Don’t stop going out—we’re still only in phase one,” López Obrador said. “If you have the means to do it, continue taking your family out to restaurants and diners. That’s what will strengthen the economy.”
Last week, in a series of events in Mexico, thousands of people gathered in the state of Guerrero, and López Obrador was seen shaking hands and hugging people. A video of the president kissing a young girl on her cheek and receiving kisses from women in a crowd of supporters drew criticism at the same time the World Health Organization was encouraging social distancing. During one of the president’s daily press briefings, a reporter asked López Obrador how he would protect Mexico, and he responded by pulling religious amulets from his wallet and saying those were his protective shields.
Still, there seems to be a disconnect between the president’s public messaging and what his administration is doing. The Department of Education closed public schools nationwide (public and private), the top official in Mexico’s capital asked residents of Mexico City to try to stay home a little more, and the health department started promoting social distancing with an animated heroine cheekily named Susana Distancia.
In a country of 130 million people, state and local governments have been implementing their own measures to help contain the spread of the coronavirus (though many people are still crowding markets, restaurants, and other public places). So far, there have been more than 300 confirmed cases, 800 suspected cases, and three deaths.
Anyway, for the health and safety of Mexicans, including my family (who first thought I was exaggerating when I expressed my concern to them over WhatsApp two weeks ago, but not anymore), let’s hope that López Obrador changes his tune sooner rather than later—and publicly recognizes the risk of pretending that life can and should go on as normal.
As of Monday, there are nearly 40,000 confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States. More than half of them are in New York, making it the epicenter of America’s rapidly developing pandemic. Though New York Gov. Cuomo has long been resistant to ordering a shelter-in-place, last week he issued an executive order advising New Yorkers to “stay home as much as possible,” banning large gatherings and shutting down nonessential businesses. On Monday morning, Gov. Cuomo instructed hospitals to increase capacity by at least 50 percent and requested retired medical professionals temporarily come out of retirement to assist overburdened frontline medical workers.
Throughout all of this, Cuomo is emerging as a national source of guidance. His daily coronavirus press briefings have become “appointment viewing”for New Yorkers and beyond (I stream them from California). Each one runs about an hour, and typically involves Cuomo, with the help of his signature PowerPoint slides, running through the numbers of confirmed cases and hospitalizations, a summary of actions the state is taking to “flatten the curve,” and reassurances that New York—and the country at large—will only be a better place after all of this is over. Then he takes questions from journalists, who sit in chairs strategically placed at least six feet apart.
His calm authority is in direct contrast to President Trump’s tantrum-esque responses to the press when asked about the pandemic, leading one media columnist to describe Cuomo as “The Control Freak We Need Right Now.” Some corners of the internet are even debating whether the tough-talking Queens native, known for bullying his dissidents and most recently, using prison labor to manufacture hand sanitizer, is hot. As Rebecca Fishbein wrote for Jezebel, “when I stream his presser on the governor’s website—every day around 11:30 a.m., complete with a PowerPoint presentation—I feel comforted. I feel alive. I feel protected. I feel… butterflies.”
This is neither the time nor place to litigate whether Cuomo is hot, but it’s worth highlighting how his PowerPoints, complete with reassuring platitudes and some strategic clip art, are oddly charming and a tiny source of comfort while the country scrambles to address a deadly pandemic. Here are a few of my favorite slides:
That didn’t take long. Donald Trump already seems to be growing tired and frustrated with doing the right thing.
After about two months of deadly delays and denials, Trump a week ago finally began pushing a public health initiative to counter the coronavirus pandemic, promoting the White House’s “15 Days to Slow the Spread” campaign, which called for social distancing, teleworking, and limiting social gatherings to 10 or fewer people. This was not as aggressive a stance as some public health experts urged, but it was far better than the message Trump conveyed on March 4, when he told Sean Hannity, “You know, we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better, just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work.”
Yet now it appears that Trump is considering pivoting from the expert-driven plan of containing the virus by minimizing social interactions. On Sunday night, he tweeted, “WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF. AT THE END OF THE 15 DAY PERIOD, WE WILL MAKE A DECISION AS TO WHICH WAY WE WANT TO GO!” This seemed to suggest Trump worried that the strict measures taken to counter the pandemic and save lives might be causing too much economic pain.
Soon after, Trump retweeted a number of conservative activists who explicitly made this troubling point. One declared, “Correct. 15 days, then we keep the high-risk groups protected as necessary and the rest of us go back to work.” Another railed that the current measures were leading to the “Destruction of the economy.” A third said, “Flatten the curve NOT the economy.” And Trump also retweeted an unverified account apparently belonging to a Southern California sex counselor who proclaimed, “The fear of the virus cannot collapse our economy that President Trump has built up. We The People are smart enough to keep away from others if we know that we are sick or they are sick! After 15 days are over the world can begin to heal!” Here was Trump promoting the position that come next week those damn annoying and inconvenient social distancing practices should be dropped and the nation should just depend on citizens being able to sort out, on their own, how to avoid sharing the virus.
Meanwhile, the New York Timesreported that “at the White House, in recent days, there has been a growing sentiment that medical experts were allowed to set policy that has hurt the economy, and there has been a push to find ways to let people start returning to work.” The story noted, “Trump has become frustrated with Dr. [Anthony] Fauci’s blunt approach at the briefing lectern, which often contradicts things the president has just said, according to two people familiar with the dynamic.” Fauci has been saying that severe social distancing measures will likely be required for weeks to come—longer than those 15 days Trump initially called for. That’s not going over well with the boss. And on Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported, “The White House is discussing easing social-distancing guidelines as early as next week as advisers and business leaders push President Trump to boost an economy beset by deepening job losses nationwide.”
Put all this together and a clear and harsh impression emerges: Trump is willing to weaken public health measures in order to try to prevent further economic damage. To put it crassly, he seems to care more about economic metrics than preventing the death of Americans.
Why would that be? It was no secret that until the coronavirus crisis hit, Trump’s primary argument for reelection was based on the economy, which at that point, according to conventional measurements (the stock market, the unemployment rate), was performing well. The pandemic has blasted away this reason for reelection. The current forecasts—up to 30 percent unemployment, GDP contraction by 20 percent—are a nightmare for the nation and for a president facing voters in several months. (And the ongoing economic calamity has had a devastating impact on Trump’s own businesses.)
Trump, in a way, feared this possibility from the start. As the killer virus was gaining a foothold in the United States, he reportedly opposed aggressive testing because that would show higher numbers of infections, and larger numbers were bad for his political prospects. That is, he placed his own personal interests ahead of those of the nation.
Trump is a numbers guy—when they work for him. And in the early weeks of the epidemic, he tried to deploy statistics to downplay the threat. On March 9, long after experts in and out of government were citing the immediate need for widespread and comprehensive action, Trump zapped out a tweet suggesting the coronavirus was no big deal because the flu caused the death of 37,000 Americans in 2019 and the new virus had so far only claimed 22. (“Think about that!” he declared.)
So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!
But now Trump has two sets of numbers to confront. The horrifying daily stats on the spread of COVID-19, including the rising death tally, and the terrifying measurements of the free-falling economy. A narcissist, Trump is more fearful of the second category, which affects his future in a manner he can fully comprehend.
With this latest spout of tweets, Trump is signaling that he’s eager to shout “enough already” regarding the restrictive measures designed to impede the transmission of the virus. He is drawn to the idea of soon easing up and encouraging folks without symptoms to head back into the world. If this occurs, infected people without symptoms will fill streets, offices, shops, mass transportation, schools, churches, restaurants, and other public places. But because there is still no nationwide comprehensive testing system, most of these infected persons will have no idea they are transmitting the virus.
Trump’s endorsement of the magical thinking that Americans can return to work without infecting others is unsettling and alarming. This would place millions of Americans in danger, particularly the most vulnerable: the elderly, the already-sick, and those with limited access to health care. It would mean more death. And such a move would further increase the pressure on the nation’s buckling health care system. That, too, would mean more death.
Trump’s tweets and retweets are a sign he believes the cost to the economy of an effective containment policy is too high. Perhaps partly (or wholly) because that cost also threatens his reelection. Yet health care experts are adamantly saying the current policies need to remain in place for some time—and probably should be tighter. So Trump faces a serious tradeoff. Does he want to follow scientific expertise and do all that is necessary to safeguard Americans? Or does he want to relax restraints in an effort to limit the harm to the economy (even if doing so might allow the pandemic to burn wider and hotter and further threaten the economy)?
It’s true that most Americans do not face a lethal risk from the coronavirus. But many do. (This group is mostly older Americans, but younger citizens are not entirely safe from COVID-19.) How much does Trump care about these people? Is he willing to sacrifice thousands of them—or a lot more—in a (probably) misguided bid to restart the economy because that’s what he deems is best for his reelection campaign? This is a helluva calculation for a politician to make. But Trump’s latest noises are those of a man who believes more deaths are not as bad as more economic hardship—and someone who gives the appearance he is willing to pave the way to electoral victory with the bodies of fallen Americans.
A man at his mother's funeral service in Bergamo, Italy.Piero Cruciatti/Getty
Last Monday, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee issued an order prohibiting most public social gatherings until March 31—including funerals. But at the Barton Family Funeral Service in Kirkland, Washington, funeral services had already essentially stopped before the ban went into effect. “Most families are really really kind and realize this and they want to be careful also in this environment,” says Pat Barton, who has provided services for some of the 35 people associated with the Life Care Center of Kirkland nursing home who have died from COVID-19. She has asked those who want a graveside memorial to keep their numbers small.
“There’s no shaking of hands, there’s no touching,” she says. “That’s been difficult. Because a lot of people, at the time of grief, like to have a handshake. They’d like to have somebody to feel. And that’s not a possibility right now.”
As the coronavirus spreads in the United States, the situation is not nearly as dire as it has been in Italy, where the mounting death toll has overwhelmed some of the country’s morgues, mortuaries, and funeral industry. Italian families largely confined to their homes have postponed or forgone funerals or have asked priests to bless the deceased alone. There has been a shortage of coffins. Last week, a video posted by the newspaper Corriere Della Sera showed a convoy of military trucks transporting about 60 coffins from the overloaded morgues of Bergamo, Italy’s hardest hit city, to cremation sites in other towns.
Yet the American way of death is already changing as communities adopt social distancing measures to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Following the White House’s guidance last week to limit all gatherings to 10 people through the end of the month, the National Association of Funeral Directors is advising its members to consider limiting memorial services to immediate family or livestreaming them. “We know this is a difficult and fluid situation,” Washington’s funeral board wrote in an email to funeral industry workers on March 19, clarifying that funerals were banned under Inslee’s order. “It is also a time to come together to keep our families safe and ensure social distancing to slow the spread of COVID-19.” In the San Francisco Bay Area, which has been under a shelter-in-place order since Tuesday, funeral homes are considered “essential businesses” and are allowed to stay open, and viewings in groups under 10 people have continued in some places.
The concern about funerals is not that the bodies of the people who die from COVID-19 will transmit the virus. The Centers for Disease Control says there is “currently no known risk associated with being in the same room at a funeral or visitation service with the body of someone who died of COVID-19,” though it advises against kissing, washing, or shrouding dead bodies. The risk is that services to remember the dead will become sites of transmission for the virus due to close contact between mourners. There’s at least one example of this happening so far. Public health officials in Doughtery County, Georgia, announced this week that they believed COVID-19 cases in their area were traceable to two funerals held at the Martin Luther King Memorial Chapel.
After learning of Washington’s funeral ban, Nora Menkin, executive director of the nonprofit Co-op Funeral Home in Seattle, had to call a family to cancel a memorial service. “We can only do direct burial or direct cremation without any family presence at all,” she says. “No witnessing, no viewing, no nothing for the time being.”
According to Menkin, a recent client suspected her elderly mother had died of COVID-19. The client wanted to witness her mother’s cremation, but she also knew her family had to self-quarantine. Under those conditions, Menkin’s funeral home was offering to livestream the beginning of the cremation instead of having any family members attend in person. Across the country, funeral homes and religious institutions have been embracing livestreaming, hosting shiva gatherings on Zoom or funerals on Facebook Live. One company that specializes in livestreaming memorials has seen weekly views spike by 60 percent, according to Kaiser Health News.
“We will be trying to think creatively and find ways people can gather and grieve as a community without actually being together in a chapel, as they once were, seated side by side, hugging and crying and sharing boxes of tissues,” says Amy Cunningham, a Brooklyn-based funeral director. Cunningham, who specializes in green funerals, has been researching alternatives to in-person memorials, including streaming services with clergy and closed caskets or using video conferencing for friends and family members to gather online for eulogies, music, and personal tributes. “You could hug pillows together, you could hug yourself on screen, you can relate to each other virtually,” Cunningham says. “We’re going to perhaps need to, for the next couple of months, experiment with that kind of thing. If families are willing to do it.”
In Staten Island, New York, two funeral directors have tested positive for the coronavirus. Some funeral home employees are taking precautions to protect themselves such as making arrangements by phone or email rather than in-person, throwing away pens used to sign legal documents, and stepping up disinfection regimens. Barton’s funeral home is not embalming anyone diagnosed with coronavirus out of an abundance of caution. (The CDC currently says embalming can be conducted safely.) Menkin’s staff is treating every decedent as if they had been exposed to the coronavirus. She is hoping she has enough staff to handle the COVID-19 death toll if it rises to the worst current projections. One of her funeral directors who lives in Kirkland is already self-quarantining.
Will the funeral industry have the capacity to handle surge of deaths from the coronavirus? “That’s the big question,” says Cunningham. But, she adds, “the dead will be lovingly cared for by an industry that’s been practicing this for a long time.” Menkin says her business could take on at least 20 percent more clients. “We physically have more space, and we have more funeral homes that have more capacity than they currently are serving,” she says.
But, she adds after a moment, it will depend on how well communities can slow the spread of the virus so that fewer people are sick the same time—and, correspondingly, so that there are fewer bodies. “If everyone gets it and dies all at once, that’s one thing,” Menkin says. “But the hope with the precautions that everyone taking is that it spreads out over a longer period of time.”
At today’s daily coronavirus task force press conference-slash-MAGA rally, President Trump wouldn’t rule out bailing out his own hotel business with the stimulus funds currently stuck at a Congressional impasse.
“Will you commit publicly that none of that taxpayer money will go toward your own personal properties?” asked a reporter, posing the question on all of our minds, especially as it appears some senators took the opportunity weeks ago of cashing in their knowledge of the outbreak by dumping stock in highly-exposed industries before the crash. The most prominent senator among them, Richard Burr (R–N.C.), says his trades occurred within the context of public news reports, and are now the subject of an ethics probe.
“Everything’s changing, just so you understand. It’s all changing. But I have no idea,” Trump mused. “Let’s just see what happens. Because we have to save some of these great companies.”
To even arrive at that non-response, Trump careened through his typical toxic mix of self-praise and victimhood.
“I committed publicly that I wouldn’t take the $450,000 [presidential] salary. It’s a lot of money,” Trump remarked. “And I did it. Nobody cared—nobody, nobody said, ‘thank you.’”
Watch:
At this afternoon's task force presser, excuse me, MAGA rally, Trump was asked the obvious question, and gave a self-preening, evasive answer.
Can he guarantee the coronavirus stimulus cash won't be used to bail out his properties? pic.twitter.com/2n0g0UaVu8
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) sharply criticized President Trump on Sunday for not using his authority to force manufacturers to make medical supplies and other protective equipment that health care workers are using to fight the coronavirus.
“We cannot wait until people start really dying in large numbers to start production, especially of more complicated equipment like ventilators and hospital beds,” Ocasio-Cortez said on CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.” Ocasio-Cortez said that production was needed right now anticipation for the “for the surge [of cases] that is coming in two to three weeks.”
“There are not enough face masks, gloves, ventilators, hospital beds to get us through this. Many hospitals are already at capacity or are approaching capacity. And there is kind of no real stream in sight from the federal government on where these materials are coming from,” she said describing the situation in hospitals across the country right now.”
Medical workers are resorting to reusing disposable equipment due to mass shortages.
Ocasio-Cortez called on the President to take advantage of power granted to him under the Defense Production Act. The legislation was first passed in the 1950s in the lead-up to the Korean War. It granted the President the authority to compel businesses to produce supplies it needs to weather a medical crisis.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio also hammered the President for not using his powers under the Defense Production Act.
“The president of the United States is from New York City, and he will not lift a finger to help his hometown, and I don’t get it,” he said on Sunday.
Despite increasing pressure from New York Democrats and others Trump has not opted to use the Defense Production Act, on Sunday morning, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) said that the act alone right now was leverage to get companies to produce more medical supplies.
“You know, companies are donating what they can,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “That is great. It is not enough. And the fact that the President has not really invoked the Defense Production Act for the purpose of emergency manufacture is going to cost lives.”
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who tested positive for the coronavirus Sunday, was reportedly at the Senate gym this morning.
According to CNN, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) says senators are seeking medical advice “to determine if any GOP senators need to self-quarantine.”
Sen. Mitt Romney says senators are seeking medical advice to determine if any GOP senators need to self-quarantine with the Rand Paul news. Several senators told CNN Paul was in the gym this morning
A Wall Street Journal reporter noted that Paul had apparently used the pool in the gym. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that there is no evidence that the virus can be spread through pools or hot tubs that are treated with chlorine and bromine. Studies have shown, however, that the virus can survive on some surfaces for days.
Paul’s staff announced his diagnosis on Sunday morning via his Senate Twitter account.
Senator Rand Paul has tested positive for COVID-19. He is feeling fine and is in quarantine. He is asymptomatic and was tested out of an abundance of caution due to his extensive travel and events. He was not aware of any direct contact with any infected person.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on Sunday blasted President Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, saying that his administration has not sufficiently accelerated the production of medical supplies like masks and ventilators, which are essential to stop the spread of the virus.
“The president of the United States is from New York City, and he will not lift a finger to help his hometown, and I don’t get it,” de Blasio said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
De Blasio called for the “military to be mobilized” and the “Defense Production Act to be used to the fullest” to get more ventilators “so people can live who would die otherwise.”
The New York mayor also suggested that members of the military with medical training be deployed to areas most affected by the virus.
“Why are they at their bases? Why are they not being allowed to serve? I guarantee you they are ready to serve, but the president has to give the order,” he said.
The Defense Production Act, first passed in the 1950s in the leadup to the Korean War, gives the President broad authority to compel manufacturers to “prioritize and accept government contracts” and “provide economic incentives” to ensure that the United States has the necessary supply stockpiles for crises.
Despite mounting pressure, Trump has not opted to use the act. On Sunday morning, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) said that Trump had not taken advantage of the act yet, but instead were using it as leverage to compel companies to step up their production. “It’s happening without using that lever,” FEMA administrator Pete Gaynor said, “If it comes to a point we have to pull the lever, we will.”
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) tested positive for Coronavirus, according to his Twitter account on Sunday morning.
Senator Rand Paul has tested positive for COVID-19. He is feeling fine and is in quarantine. He is asymptomatic and was tested out of an abundance of caution due to his extensive travel and events. He was not aware of any direct contact with any infected person.
Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamanei speaks during his meeting with students in Tehran, Iran on October 18, 2017.Photo by Iranian Leader's Press Office - Handout/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Iran’s supreme leader declined US aid in fighting the coronavirus, citing a baseless conspiracy about the American government intentionally creating the virus.
“I do not know how real this accusation is but when it exists, who in their right mind would trust you to bring them medication?” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Sunday on state TV, according to the Associated Press. “Possibly your medicine is a way to spread the virus more.”
It’s unclear what aid is being offered. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said at the end of February that the United States had offered aid to Iran but did not comment on specifics.
He also claimed that the virus “is specifically built for Iran using the genetic data of Iranians which they have obtained through different means.”
“You might send people as doctors and therapists, maybe they would want to come here and see the effect of the poison they have produced in person,” Khamenei continued.
Khamenei was repeating a broader conspiracy theory about the United States engineering the coronavirus as a bioweapon. Iranian state media have embraced this rumor, as have Russian media linked to the Kremlin.
Chinese government spokesman Lijian Zhao also tweeted earlier this month that it “might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe us an explanation!”
Last week, the peer-reviewed scientific journal Nature Medicine debunked this conspiracy theory, concluding that it was “improbable” that the coronavirus had “emerged through laboratory manipulation of a related SARS-CoV-like coronavirus.”
Khamenei’s conspiracy-mongering comes as Iran faces crippling sanctions from the US government, which has economically devastated the country by blocking it from selling oil and trading in international markets.
Iran has been ravaged by the Coronavirus, with more than 21,600 confirmed cases and 1,685 reported deaths.
According to the AP, Iran has been generally suspicious of US aid efforts. Broadly, the Trump administration has shown no interest in letting up on sanctions against Iran and vowed to apply “maximum pressure” after the United States withdrew from a nuclear deal with Iran in 2018.
Pete Gaynor, FEMA Administrator gives remarks on the Coronavirus crisis in the Brady Press Briefing Room in the White House on Saturday.Stefani Reynolds/CNP via ZUMA Wire
On Saturday, Vice President Mike Pence announcedthat the department of Health and Human Services had placed orders through the Federal Emergency Management Agency for hundreds of millions N95 masks that would be distributed to “to health care providers across the country.”
But on Sunday morning, first on ABC’s “This Week” by Mathra Raddatz then on CNN’s “State of the Union” by Jake Tapper, the head of FEMA dodged questions about exactly how many masks are available, and how long they’ll take to get to hospitals.
“It is a dynamic and fluid operation,” Gaynor told Tapper. “The president appointed FEMA five days ago to manage federal operations, and since I’ve been here, we’ve been shipping continuously from federal warehouses, and again, connecting, you know, those governors that need supplies to those who have it in the commercial sector.”
“It makes people concerned that there aren’t masks going out the door,” Tapper responded, asking for even a rough number, which Gaynor didn’t give. “I’m not saying that that’s the case, but without a number, that doesn’t fill people with confidence.”
Gaynor similarly did not respond directly to Raddatz when she asked about how masks were available in a stockpile maintained by the federal government and when that stockpile was to go out to the states.
Pressed on when the national stockpile of masks will be distributed to health care systems, FEMA administrator Pete Gaynor tells @martharaddatz "it is happening," without offering a concrete timeline or quantity currently shipped. https://t.co/v9QowRWPnCpic.twitter.com/O64M5rPmNU
“We are shipping. All those supplies, to all the demands, all the asks, all the governance, every day, we are—we’re prepared to go to zero in the stockpile to meet demand,” Gaynor said on the show.
“You’ve still got some in the stockpile, I wonder why that stockpile hasn’t been depleted? Have you seen the urgent pleas from healthcare workers?” Raddatz pressed.
“We have…I am well aware of the high demand for these items,” Gaynor responded.
As part of proposed legislation being pushed in response to the coronavirus, Trump’s Justice Department has asked Congress to allow the indefinite detention of people during emergencies, according to a Politico report published Saturday.
It’s not likely the House’s Democratic majority will support this proposal, which would give federal judges the authority to pause court proceedings at virtually any stage of a civil or criminal proceeding—even preceding a trial.
“That means you could be arrested and never brought before a judge until they decide that the emergency or the civil disobedience is over,” warns Normal Reimer, the director of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “I find it absolutely terrifying. Especially in a time of emergency, we should be very careful about granting new powers to the government.”
As the coronavirus crisis has spread across the United States, President Trump has repeatedly vowed to use “the full power of the Federal Government” to respond, leading some critics to fear overreach by an executive branch already prone to ignoring congressional subpoenas and other checks and balances. Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor and CNN legal analyst, blasted the proposal.
“Can you imagine being arrested and not brought before a judge indefinitely?” he wrote. “This isn’t how America is supposed to work.”
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost.Justin Merriman/Getty
In the face the worsening coronavirus outbreak, Ohio ordered abortion clinics to stop operating as part of a state clampdown on medical procedures it has deemed “non-essential” or “elective.”
“You and your facility are ordered to immediately stop performing non-essential and elective surgical abortions,” wrote Jonathan Fulkerson, an Ohio deputy attorney general, in a letter sent on Friday to abortion clinics in Dayton, Cleveland, and Cincinnati. The letters, which a spokesperson for Attorney General Dave Yost provided to Mother Jones, warned that “the Department of Health will take all appropriate measures” if the clinics did not immediately comply.
On Tuesday, the Ohio Department of Health ordered the statewide cancellation of non-essential or elective medical procedures in an effort to preserve medical workers’ personal protective equipment. Bethany McCorkle, Yost’s communications director, said in an email that the letters to the abortion providers were written in accordance with the department’s order and did not constitute a shutdown of the clinics. In addition to the three clinics, a urology group was also ordered to stop providing non-essential work.
The news of Yost’s order quickly spread online Saturday, where pro-choice advocates blasted it as a politicized stunt. “Let me clarify this misinformation: abortion is not an elective procedure, it is an essential component of comprehensive health care,” wrote Heidi Sieck, co-founder and chief executive of #VoteProChoice, said in a statement. “It’s insidious for anti-choice lawmakers to use a time of crisis to restrict abortion and reproductive care when every moment matters greatly to the patient’s ability to access the service.”
Connie Schultz, wife of Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), called it an abuse of power.
Last year, Ohio passed one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the United States, banning the procedure around when a fetal heartbeat can be detected, or roughly six weeks in to pregnancy—a time by which most women do not know they are pregnant. Ohio has been at the vanguard of anti-abortion politics for decades, becoming the first state in 1995 to ban so-called “partial-birth abortion,” and requiring patients to have two in-person doctor’s visits before scheduling an abortion.
Yost, a Republican elected as Ohio’s top prosecutor in 2018, said last year that he would “vigorously” defend the state’s restrictive heartbeat bill from a legal challenge. In July, a federal judge in Cincinnati issued an injunction preventing the ban from taking immediate effect.
On Saturday afternoon, President Trump again used the platform of a White House coronavirus briefing to push two unproven drugs as a treatment, feeding into a swirl of medical misinformation and increasing the distance between his ad-hoc views and those of his scientist advisers.
When asked about the anti-malaria drug chloroquine as a possible coronavirus cure, Trump said it, along with the antibiotic azithromycin, could work and suggested they would be shared widely with patients.
“It’s going to be distributed. I think New York is getting 10,000 units,” he said. “We’re going to find out. As the expression goes, ‘What do we have to lose?'”
Trump promoted the drugs at Friday’s briefing and earlier on Saturday morning on Twitter, despite the fact that the Food and Drug Administration has not approved either drug to treat COVID-19, the disease caused by coronavirus. There’s good reason for that. Despite some positive reports stemming from studies with small samples, the untested drug cocktail carries significant risks. As I reported this morning:
When used in conjunction with other medication or in the wrong dosage, taking them can be devastating. In China, officials recommended the use of chloroquine in February after some promising trials, but after a researchers in Wuhan discovered that doubling a daily dose of the drug could lead to death, China quickly “cautioned doctors and health officials about the drug’s lethal side effects and rolled back its usage,” Bloomberg reported. The AFP wire service has reported that social media messages pushing chloroquine have circulated widely in Nigeria, and that health officials there have seen cases of poisoning from the drug.
Trump seemed unconcerned with these inconvenient details. “This would be a gift from heaven, this would be a gift from God if it works,” he said. “So we’re going to pray from God that it does work.”
When pressed by a reporter about the wisdom of Trump pushing an unverified solution, Vice President Mike Pence said, “There is some anecdotal evidence that several existing medicines may have brought relief to patients struggling in China and Europe.” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, used that same word—”anecdotal”—to describe the case for a prescription that Trump, only hours prior to briefing, insisted should be “put in use IMMEDIATELY.”
“The president is talking about hope for people and it’s not an unreasonable thing to hope for people,” Fauci said. “My job as a scientist is to ultimately prove without a doubt that a drug is not only safe but works.”
Can you pitch in a few bucks to help fund Mother Jones' investigative journalism? We're a nonprofit (so it's tax-deductible), and reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget.
We noticed you have an ad blocker on. Can you pitch in a few bucks to help fund Mother Jones' investigative journalism?
