President Trump is many things—businessman, reality TV host, expert on Robert Pattinson’s relationship choices—but one thing he most certainly is not is a medical authority. Remember: This is the same person who refuses to exercise because he thinks it exhausts the body’s finite amount of energy.
With that context, let’s examine the latest piece of dangerous misinformation to emerge from Trump’s Twitter feed:
The two drugs Trump is referring to here—chloroquine, which has been used to treat malaria, and an antibiotic known as azithromycin—have been floated as possible ways to fight COVID-19, but not without significant reservations. Despite the president’s tagging of the Food and Drug Administration and its commissioner, neither drug has been approved by the federal government to treat the virus. 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.
Those notes of caution have not prevented Trump and some of Twitter’s loudest voices from pushing the untested drugs. Tesla’s chief executive, Elon Musk, drew widespread attention to one of the drugs on Monday when he tweeted, “Maybe worth considering chloroquine for C19.” But Trump has quickly became the drug’s most prominent booster, after falsely saying at a Friday White House press briefing that it had been approved. That mention prompted considerable angst from Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who cautioned that Trump while “feels optimistic about something,” he, as a doctor, was only saying “it may be effective.”
All the talk about chloroquine has led to shortages, the New York Times reported, leading to problems for patients who were already taking it for other conditions like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. “There is a run on it and we’re getting calls every few minutes, literally, from patients who are trying to stay on the drug and finding it in short supply,” Dr. Michael Lockshin, of Manhattan’s Hospital for Special Surgery, told the newspaper.
Even the evidence Trump cited on Twitter is far from definitive. On Twitter, Trump referred to a study released by French researchers earlier this week that suggested that the drug combination could be effective at treating COVID-19. But the study only looked at 20 patients. As several experts have noted on Twitter. Without more verified information, it’s irresponsible for patients to view these drugs as a fail-safe solution to the virus.
Please don't take hydroxychloroquine (Plaquenil) plus Azithromycin for #COVID19 UNLESS your doctor prescribes it. Both drugs affect the QT interval of your heart and can lead to arrhythmias and sudden death, especially if you are taking other meds or have a heart condition.
Despite warnings from senior advisors, President Trump spent months downplaying the threat of the coronavirus and avoiding taking action to prevent its spread in the United States, according to a bombshell Washington Post report published late Friday. “Donald Trump may not have been expecting this, but a lot of other people in the government were—they just couldn’t get him to do anything about it,” a US official told the Post. “The system was blinking red.”
Rather than take responsibly for their deadly missteps, in recent days, Trump and his deputies have targeted their ire at China for suppressing evidence of the outbreak in its early days and mishandling the response as it spread. Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have taken to using the phrase “China virus” to describe the strain; one White House staffer even called it the “Kung-Flu” when speaking with an Asian-American journalist. While China did struggle to respond effectively, censoring experts who tried to draw attention to the worsening disease, the Post story documents how Trump dragged his feet in January and February, even as “a majority of the intelligence reporting included in daily briefing papers” was about COVID-19. (As president, Trump has scheduled far fewer intelligence briefings than his predecessors and tends to avoid reading lengthy reports.)
When administration officials were able to directly bring the virus to his attention, it seems he would change the subject. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar first got Trump on the phone about the coronavirus on January 18—three weeks after US officials became aware of the outbreak in China. He “couldn’t get through to Trump” until then, the Post reported; once he did, “the president interjected to ask about vaping and when flavored vaping products would be back on the market.”
Even after White House officials became more cognizant of the virus’s threat could pose to US health and safety—and Trump’s reelection chances—the president still showed minimal interest. In early February, days after then-acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney began holding meetings devoted to the coronavirus, Trump predicted the virus would go away by April and even praised Chinese President Xi Jinping’s response as “strong, sharp and powerfully focused.”
Part of Trump’s reticence to acknowledge the scale of the crisis came from his personal relationship with Xi, a strongman leader who he “believed was providing him with reliable information about how the virus was spreading in China, despite reports from intelligence agencies that Chinese officials were not being candid about the true scale of the crisis,” the Post reported.
Even after infections spread to the United States, Trump continued to downplay the threat and showed concern with the effect widespread panic could have on the stock market. He was especially upset when CDC official Nancy Messonnier told reporters on February 25 that “disruption to everyday life might be severe” as the virus worsened. At the time, only 14 Americans had been diagnosed with COVID-19. According to the Post, “Trump called Azar on his way back from a trip to India and complained that Messonnier was scaring the stock markets.”
Well, I woke up this morning with the sundown shining in. Kenny Rogers, the country artist behind an array of popular crossover tunes, has died at 81 years old.
You may choose to remember him from hits like “The Gambler,” “Lucille,” or with, Dolly Parton, “Islands in the Stream.” However, I, as an American male who attended college just after the turn of the millennium, will remember him best for contributing to the soundtrack of the Coen brothers film The Big Lebowski, where his first big hit “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)” scored a wordless surrealist Busby Berkeley dreamscape.
With minds on the coronavirus, the lyrics’ talk of “condition” can’t help but take on a somewhat depressing medical cast. But on deeper consideration, the medical condition the song is linked to in the movie is quintessentially life affirming, where it backdrops a dance number that not-so-subtly plants the seed for the birth of a “little Lebowski”—the core of Sam Elliott’s direct to camera soliloquy that ends the film. In dark days, let’s enjoy it together, in honor of Mr. Rogers:
Death, birth: that’s the way the whole darn human comedy keeps perpetuating itself. I don’t know about you, but on this shut-in Saturday, I take comfort in that.
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainee listens to a fellow detainee, a Pentacostal preacher, in a chapel at a for-profit jail in Louisiana in September.Gerald Herbert/AP
On Wednesday, as experts warned that hospitals could soon be overwhelmed, a Cuban doctor was stuck inside a for-profit detention center. Like many people in immigration jails, she was afraid of what would happen if the new coronavirus entered the facility. For the past three weeks, she and nearly 50 women have been quarantined because of recurring bouts of the flu at GEO Group’s Basile, Louisiana, detention center.
On Wednesday night, Immigration and Customs Enforcement said it would scale back arrests in response to the pandemic. But the agency said nothing about releasing people who are already in ICE custody, one of experts’ top recommendations for preventing the virus from spreading within immigration jails and other detention facilities. In response to questions about whether ICE plans to let anyone out—particularly those who are vulnerable to the effects of the virus—an agency official said, “There has been no announcement related to releasing individuals that are currently detained.”
Data released by ICE on Wednesday night shows that the agency is keeping detention numbers high. As of Saturday, ICE had 37,311 people in custody, down only slightly from 37,888 the week before. More than 60 percent of those detainees—22,936 people—do not have criminal convictions. Among the 38 percent of detainees who do have criminal convictions, many have only committed minor offenses like crossing the border without authorization.
Nearly 6,000 of the people in ICE’s custody have established a significant possibility of being persecuted or tortured in their home countries. Instead of letting them live with relatives or others who are willing to house them, ICE is holding them in places that are often notorious for unsanitary conditions and inadequate medical attention.
As Eunice Cho, a senior staff attorney and detention expert at the American Civil Liberties Union, told me last week, ICE has broad authority to release people in its custody. “The question,” she said, “is whether the government will actually exercise this and mitigate what continues to be a very foreseeable disaster.” So far, attorneys in Louisiana say ICE appears set on keeping people in detention.
In a letter published on Thursday, Carlos Franco-Paredes, a professor in the University of Colorado School of Medicine’s infectious diseases division, painted a grim picture of how the coronavirus could affect people in detention:
For an immigration detention center that holds 1500 detainees, we can estimate that 500-650 may acquire the infection. Of these, 100 to 150 individuals may develop severe disease potentially requiring admission to an intensive care unit. Of these, 10-15 individuals may die from respiratory failure.
The new detention data, which ICE updates on its website each week, also shows that the agency did not significantly reduce arrests between the first and second weeks of March. It’s unclear how much will change after Wednesday’s announcement that ICE “will focus enforcement on public safety risks and individuals subject to mandatory detention based on criminal grounds.” Ken Cuccinelli, the Department of Homeland Security’s acting deputy director, posted tweets on Thursday that downplayed the significance of the shift.
The data also shows that ICE detainees continue to spend far longer in detention than they once did. People without criminal records who are stopped at the border now end up detained for an average of two months. That’s up from as few as 17 days last spring, when a dramatic increase in border crossings limited the agency’s ability to subject people to indefinite mandatory detention.
The Cuban doctor, who requested anonymity because she fears retaliation, has been detained for eight months. Despite that, she’s still awaiting an initial decision in her asylum case. ICE has denied her request to be released on parole multiple times. ICE considers her a flight risk because she lacks immediate family in the United States, she said.
Before coming to the US, she spent nine years in Cuba studying to become a doctor of general medicine and hopes to keep doing that work in the United States. “I love my career,” she said. “I want to keep being a doctor for my whole life.”
For now, she and other women who’ve called me from Basile say that even basic hygiene can be a luxury, explaining that they don’t have access to hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes. The doctor said they’re provided 12 ounces of liquid soap one week, then four the next. She said it isn’t enough. They have to use the soap while shaving, showering, and, most important these days, washing their hands. If they run out, bars of soap at the commissary cost about $2. Most of the women can’t afford that, the doctor said. Thanks to the money her family sends, she could. (Christopher Ferreira, a GEO Group corporate relations manager, said soap and other hygiene products are free and readily available at the company’s ICE detention centers; he didn’t reply when asked if the company sells those products in its commissaries.)
From inside detention, the women have been watching the news on Telemundo and Univision. They see President Trump declare the pandemic a national emergency, and listen to calls for social distancing while stuck in a large room with about 45 other people. Relatives and volunteers cannot console them in person: ICE has banned social visits for the time being.
The husband of one of the women quarantined at Basile—Elio Almaguer-Guerra—called me with concerns about his wife, Katherine Ramírez-Escalona. He is an agricultural engineer, and she was studying medicine before the two of them left Cuba together last year. They arrived at the US-Mexico border in May, where they had to wait about six months to be allowed to request asylum in the United States. From there, he was sent to New Mexico, while she went to Louisiana. In January, Almaguer-Guerra was released on parole to live with his wife’s cousin in Miami.
But ICE’s New Orleans office, known for being one of the harshest in the nation, has refused to let Ramírez-Escalona join her husband and live with her cousin. Almaguer-Guerra feels hopeless and doesn’t know how much more either of them can bare. He contemplates dramatic measures—a protest in front of the White House or a hunger strike mounted on her behalf.
When the doctor and I spoke again on Thursday, she passed the phone to Leidy Vazquez-Moreno, a Cuban accountant who’s been practicing English while working in the detention center’s library. “We are very scared about this situation,” she said in English. “I know the situation of the country, and I know we are only immigrants, but we are humans asking [for] help.”
The US government, Vazquez-Moreno continued, didn’t have to be paying to keep them in detention when they had family members who’ve offered to take care of them. The money being used to detain them, she noted, would be better spent responding to the pandemic.
As the economy is sputtering under the weight of the coronavirus’ shutdown, the Trump administration has pushed for direct cash assistance for Americans to prevent them from being thrown out of their homes. Somecities and the Housing and Urban Development Department have announced moratoriums on evictions. But meanwhile, a very large landlord who happens to have the president’s ear is conspicuously quiet.
Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, is Trump’s go-to man for everything from Middle East peace to the opioid crisis, and, lately, coronavirus response. But he also owns a sizeable chunk of a company that boasts of owning more than 23,000 apartments across five states. Kushner’s residential real estate empire has come under intense scrutiny over the years, with rent-controlled tenants in New York City accusing his companies of systematic harassment in order to push them out, and complaints from low-income Maryland renters about his management companies using dubious methods to rack up fees and pursue them in court, sometimes years after the fact. That tactic has been documented in depth by ProPublica’s Alec MacGillis and others; Kushner’s broader history as a landlord was explored in a recently-released installment of Netflix’s “Dirty Money” docuseries titled “Slumlord Millionaire,” in which he’s described as a “tier-one predator.”
The White House did not respond to questions about Kushner’s role in shaping Trump administration policies on coronavirus related mortgage and rent relief programs. The Kushner company did not respond to several requests for comment about how it planned to address financially struggling renters during the coronavirus crisis. In February 2017 the White House told the Baltimore Sun that Kushner would recuse himself from any policy discussions related to federal rental assistance.
While Kushner and his family have sold many of the apartments they’ve owned over the last decade or so, at one time his father, Charlie, was one of the largest landlords in New Jersey, having “amassed about 25,000 middle-and-working-class apartments,” according to a 2017 Bloomberg article. That same year, MacGillis reported that even as Kushner had stepped down as the chief executive of Kushner Companies in January 2017, he remained a major stakeholder in the company. At the time, the Sun reported that at least three of the Kushner Company’s Baltimore-area apartment complexes are “HUD-assisted,” meaning the federal housing agency pays a portion of the rent of qualified tenants.
In 2019, the Sun obtained data showing that three of the company’s Maryland complexes had received $6.1 million in federal rent subsidies in the last four years. The paper also reported that between 2013 and 2017, the company and its affiliates had filed at least 1,250 legal actions, leading to $5.4 million in awarded judgments against tenants who owed an average of $4,400 after original debts, court fees, lawyers’ fees and interest. In nearly all such cases, judges approved garnishment of tenants’ wages and property, the paper reported. Those Maryland properties reportedly generate $90 million in revenue annually.
In October 2019 Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh sued one of Kushner’s companies, alleging it and past owners of complexes it had owned failed to address rodent and vermin infestations and mold growth, while forcing tenants and apartment applicants to pay illegitimate and excess fees.
As infection rates of the new coronavirus in the United States mount, the pandemic has upended daily life around the world, causing soaring unemployment, school and business closures, and forcing the governors of New York and California to order everyone but essential workers indoors.
The Trump administration has been criticized for its response, which included first downplaying the severity of the situation, trafficking in conspiracy theories about the virus being a media plot to derail the 2020 election, and delaying any mobilization of public health resources which caused testing shortages and made it nearly impossible to determine the true number of cases nationwide. By Friday afternoon, there have been nearly 17,000 confirmed cases and 229 deaths in the US. As the situation became increasingly dire, Congress has moved to pass emergency funding to respond to the catastrophe—but some of the most vulnerable among us are still excluded.
As I’ve been reporting throughout the coronavirus crisis, the stay-at-home edicts coming from state and local officials and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is easier said than done for the homeless community. The more than half a million unhoused people in the US are at an extreme risk of contracting the coronavirus, and the only way to ensure their safety is with help from Congress.
In order to understand what’s at stake and what Congress should be doing right now, I spoke with Diane Yentel, the CEO and President of the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
What are the inherent risks at shelters right now?
People who are homeless are at a higher risk than people in the general population. They tend to be, on average, sicker. They have underlying conditions and are also very vulnerable to catching and spreading disease because of the very nature of living in a shelter or homeless encampment. There are no opportunities to implement social distancing.
What challenges are shelter workers facing right now?
Shelter providers are really struggling right now. They have limited resources and they lack any kind of safety and protective measures. They don’t have hand sanitizer, gloves, masks, or any of the equipment they need. Some staff are getting sick or are taking care of someone who is sick. Volunteers are not showing up; a lot of them are retired seniors so they rightly don’t want to put themselves at risk.
I know of about 15 shelters that have closed their doors entirely or cut back services substantially. For shelters that are doing their best to implement social distancing, that means taking out half the beds so they can space them it. That means serving half as many people and not taking in any new residents.
Some shelters are only open at night, during the day people who are homeless have to find some place to be, but then come back at night and sleep in close quarters.
There is some disagreement on whether unhoused people should be moved into shelters—which can be crowded and have no place for quarantine—or whether workers should bring critical supplies to them.
The only reason that’s an issue at all is because there are not sufficient places to put people. There’s no doubt that someone who is vulnerable and is living on a sidewalk would be much better in a hotel room, but for places where there aren’t any sufficient alternatives, ensuring that people at least have their basic needs met like hand sanitizer and hand-washing stations is better. But we should all be working to towards getting people off the streets and into hotels.
Where is that happening?
In California, the governor has a contract with 900 hotels. He’s being very aggressive and for good reason: there are 108,000 people without shelter and 150,000 homeless total. New York should do the same.
What does medical care look like inside of a shelter?
There are communities that have plans, but they don’t have the resources in place. In places where the health care systems are going to be overwhelmed, it doesn’t bode well for homeless people. But there are ways to address this. There are ways to use trailers, hotel rooms, and to build out new wings of shelters for people to quarantine in and also for people to receive on-site assistance. But Congress is not providing the funds they need.
What should Congress be doing right now?
Congress should immediately provide between $10 and $14 billion in emergency solutions grants. These are grants that could help meet all of the needs we just talked about like finding the space to do social distancing and quarantines, providing medical care, hand sanitizer, and hand-washing stations. The ESG program is the way to get money quickly. Unfortunately, the first two [coronavirus aid] packages have had $0 for homeless and the eight million people right on the cusp of being homeless. These families are one financial emergency away from eviction—coronavirus will be that financial emergency unless we do something quickly.
Do you feel like there is a sense that widespread transmission among the unsheltered population will not just be an issue for that community but for all of us?
It’s never been as clear as it is right now that housing is healthcare and our collective health depends on our ability to stay at home. If we don’t have homes to stay in we put people at an immediate and extreme risk, and we risk the health of entire communities. As long as there are people who don’t have homes to isolate in, we are not truly containing this pandemic.
A close up of President Donald J. Trumps notes shows where Corona was crossed and replaced with Chinese Virus during a March 19 press briefing.The Washington Post via Getty Images
On Wednesday, PBS NewsHour‘s Yamiche Alcindor asked President Donald Trump if his use of the term “Chinese virus” to refer to Covid-19 puts Asian Americans at risk. Trump responded: “Not at all, I think they probably would agree with it 100%.”
That was obviously false. Many Asian Americans are amongthechorus of critics who have noted that Trump’s words may incite racist attacks. (Trump seemsto bepurposely courting this controversy to distract from his administration’s response to the public health crisis.)
A better question might be whether any Asian-Americans support Trump’s use of the phrase. I asked Cliff Li, a Chinese American businessman who heads the National Committee of Asian American Republicans, what he thinks. The group, which supported Trump in 2016 and is likely, Li said, to do so again this year, boasts 10 chapters around the country and has helped the campaigns of GOP candidates, in particular in Florida.
Li was careful to note that he does not think Trump is racist and believes Trump’s intent is to “remind the American people of long-term threats from China.” He said he understands where Trump “is coming from.”
Yet even Li would not say he agrees with Trump’s words. “I wish he didn’t say that, because it could cause some racists in the country to misread it,” Li said, echoing the concern raised by Alcindor. “I disagree with that if [that is] the result.”
Li said he is bothered by some Americans tendency to confuse “Chinese-American” with “Chinese” and is concerned that Trump’s words won’t help. “I don’t think it’s the President’s intention to hurt Chinese-Americans, however that is actually the part that worries me,” Li said.
“We want to condemn any racists attack on Chinese-Americans due to the coronavirus,” Li said. “We definitely condemn that.”
As countries around the world scramble to stem the economic fallout from the coronavirus crisis, the United Kingdom appears to be setting the pace with one of the most impressive relief packages yet, with the government, in a quest to limit layoffs and firings, pledging on Friday to cover 80 percent of employers’ wage bills up for up to £2,500 for each worker monthly.
Coming just days after announcing a £350bn bailout package of loans and government grants to help businesses cope with the lockdown of large parts of the economy, the chancellor said his plan was one of the most comprehensive in the world and “unprecedented in British history”.
“We are starting a great national effort to protect jobs,” he said. “It’s on all of us.”
Sunak said there would be no limit on the funding available to pay people’s wages.
It’s a colossal, unprecedented plan of government intervention—and it’s no small thing that this is coming from Boris Johnson, the leader of Britain’s Conservative party. Meanwhile, in the United States, Democrats are slamming Republicans’ $1 trillion stimulus bill for prioritizing corporations over American workers. That plan includes just a one-time $1,200 payment to workers earning less than $99,000 annually.
If you were writing the next Hollywood disaster movie, you could construct a first act more or less by scanning the headlines from the past few weeks. We’ve got it all: workaday scientists racing to sound the alarm about a looming existential threat. Science-denying government officials ignoring those alarms. Heroes and helpers amidst the uncertainty. Gal Gadot singing for some reason.
Watch our video above to see how eerily similar Trump’s approach has been to climate-denying officials in The Day After Tomorrow, the captain of the Titanic, and the spineless apparatchiks in charge of the response to Chernobyl.
Thankfully we’ve begun to see a shift in some of the most visible skeptics. But remember: That’s only the start of Act Two. We still have a long way to go.
Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) denied he had done anything wrong by dumping stocks days before the market crashed due to the coronavirus pandemic. On Thursday, Burr and two other Republican senators were revealed to have sold millions of dollars in stock in late January and early February, around the time members of Congress began receiving in-depth briefings on the potentially cataclysmic effects of the outbreak. Burr, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, sold between $628,000 and $1.7 million in publicly traded stocks—and didn’t buy any new ones—starting on February 13.
Under the 2012 STOCK Act, members of Congress are held to the same insider-trading standards as corporate executives—they are prohibited from making any trades based on their information that isn’t publicly available—and this could potentially apply to Burr, whose committee received classified briefings on the spread of the coronavirus starting in early February. On Thursday night, after Open Secrets and ProPublica reported on Burr’s stock sales, Fox News host Tucker Carlson called for the senator to resign and face prosecution.
“There is no greater moral crime than betraying your country in a time of crisis, and that appears to be what happened,” Carlson told his viewers.
Tucker Carlson calls for Senator Burr to resign and await prosecution for insider trading if he cannot provide a reasonable explanation for his actions. He goes on to say it appears that Senator Burr betrayed his country in a time of crisis pic.twitter.com/q7yJa5wjuA
Burr’s Senate office initially appeared to blow off the accusations. It did not respond to requests for comment from Mother Jones on Thursday evening, and Burr’s spokesperson simply emailed “lol” in reply to questions from NPR. But by Friday morning, Burr changed his tone, defending his sales as proper—he says he made the decision to sell the shares based on what he was seeing on CNBC, not any inside information—and called himself for an investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee in the spirit of “full transparency.”
Burr’s suggested course of action is a far cry from what Carlson and others are suggesting. Senate Ethics Committee investigations are conducted in secret and can be concluded at any time if the target of the investigation steps down. They are also notoriously slow, taking months or even years to meander to completion.
On Thursday, the Daily Beast also reported that Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) and her husband—Jeffrey C. Sprecher, who is chair of the New York Stock Exchange—may have made improper trades. Starting on January 24, the day the committee she chairs received a briefing on the coronavirus, Loeffler and Sprecher reported they made 24 stock sales, worth millions. The couple also made only two purchases, including buying shares in Citrix, a company that specializes in telework software. Loeffler denied she had done anything wrong, saying her investment decisions are made by “third-party advisers.”
This is a ridiculous and baseless attack. I do not make investment decisions for my portfolio. Investment decisions are made by multiple third-party advisors without my or my husband's knowledge or involvement.
— Senator Kelly Loeffler (@SenatorLoeffler) March 20, 2020
Essentially, the sales and purchases are a coincidence, Loeffler is arguing.
Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe was also cited by the New York Times on Thursday for his sale of as much as $400,000 in stock on January 27. On Friday, he denied having attended the January 24 briefing on the coronavirus and said he had previously instructed his financial advisor to sell off all of his stocks.
Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein and her husband also reported a large stock sale in late January, shedding between $500,000 and $1 million of shares in a cancer therapy research company. Feinstein said her assets are in a blind trust, which gives her no control over their sale, and that she did not attend the January 24 briefing. Feinstein’s stock sale occurred on the day the company had hit what was then its lowest share price of the year.
Actual health workers testing for COVID-19 in Florida. Wilfredo Lee/AP
At this point, it should be no surprise that there are people out there trying to profit off of the coronavirus pandemic. Some of them are more shameless in their efforts than others. But reports of a new scam happening during this time of great fear and uncertainty takes it to a new level: People are knocking on doors, impersonating Centers for Disease Control and Prevention workers, offering to test people for COVID-19 for money.
The office of New York’s Attorney General, Letitia James, sent out a release on Thursday evening alerting people to the new scam, which her office says has been happening to residents in the upstate New York county of Otsego, which includes Cooperstown. But the problem doesn’t seem to be limited to one county in New York. Local police departments in Ohio and Florida have received similar reports of a people knocking on doors, dressed in white lab coats, masks, and gloves claiming to be officials from the CDC or the Department of Health and offering to test people for COVID-19 for money.
#SCAM#ALERT There is no door-to-door Coronavirus testing. Call the police if someone visits you offing a test. Testing will only be done at govn' designated sites. Restricting movement will slow the spread of the virus. #StayHomepic.twitter.com/oTa0JalWyZ
Though drive-through COVID-19 testing centers are starting to pop up around the country, the best way to be tested is to follow the guidelines provided by the CDC. “New Yorkers should know that no one from the CDC, or any other health agency, is knocking on doors to provide tests for the coronavirus for a fee,” James said in a statement. “We must remain vigilant against any scam designed to exploit people’s anxiety, especially during a global pandemic.”
Editor’s Note: The data here does not include all medical facilities and is a baseline look at hospital capacity based on available federal data. This story will be updated as we hear from locals who help fill in information gaps missing in the data.
As the Western United States continues to see a rise in COVID-19 cases, it’s important to get a sense of the region’s health-care capacity. Identifying underserved areas and connecting outbreaks to regional resources can help cities and counties prepare as the virus spreads. These maps and charts, compiled by Megan Lawson of Headwaters Economics, help give a snapshot* of hospital bed capacity around the West. Please note this information should be considered a jumping-off point for larger discussions about health-care infrastructure, not a resource for people in need of medical care.
The data collected here from the Department of Homeland Security and Commerce Department shows glaring deficiencies in capacity for many regions and unexpected trends regarding where hospital beds are available. For example, on average, rural areas in the West actually have more hospital beds per person than urban areas.
One reason rural areas have maintained this capacity is through a 1997 federal program that provides special funding to keep hospitals running in remote areas. This program has helped some rural hospitals keep their doors open, and yet many parts of the Western US still lack access to health care. That can be especially challenging for people over 65 who often face additional challenges reaching the nearest hospital even as they face higher risk of extended hospitalization and death from COVID-19. In Idaho, Oregon, Colorado and New Mexico, more than 19,000 citizens over the age of 65 live in counties without hospital beds.
In the Seattle area, the first epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US, King and Snohomish counties combined have just more than 4,900 hospital beds. As of March 18, the two counties have 828 confirmed cases of COVID-19. While not every case will require hospitalization, it’s easy to see how the further spread of the virus could overwhelm medical facilities. This expected shortage is leading King County to build a temporary 200-bed hospital on a soccer field.
In Riverside County, California, the popular retirement community of Palm Springs has issued a shelter-in-place order. The county, home to more than 300,000 people over 65, has 1.1 beds for every 100 senior citizens. In Blaine County, Idaho, where three of the first nine confirmed cases in the state occurred, there is one hospital and 3,800 senior citizens.
In Idaho, many counties in rural parts of the state have no hospitals. More than 123,000 Idahoans live in counties without hospital beds.
Custer County, Colorado, is home to the largest senior population in the West living in a county without hospital beds. The Custer County Medical Center provides health care for area residents Monday through Friday.
Although some rural areas lack local access to hospitals, rural areas as a whole have more hospital beds per person than urban areas in the Western US.
More than 570,000 people in 11 Western states live in counties without hospitals. The majority of those residents are in Idaho, Colorado, New Mexico and Oregon.
We want to hear about your experience dealing with COVID-19. Are hospitals being stretched too thin and is greater capacity needed in your area? Are people finding creative solutions to help care for each other amid this pandemic? Even as we stay home and do our part to stay socially distant, we want to make sure we are connecting as much as possible with the High Country News community. Please consider sharing with us via this secure tip form. You can also share confidential information through this page.
* A note on the data from Headwaters Economics: “This analysis includes general acute-care hospitals and critical access hospitals in the US It does not include military, children’s, women’s, long term care, psychiatric, rehabilitation, or chronic disease facilities that are already being repurposed in some areas.”
President Trump's Mar-a-Lago resortAlex Brandon/AP
On Tuesday afternoon, Donald Trump sat down with hotel executives who pleaded with the president to assist the beleaguered hospitality industry with a multibillion-dollar bailout. The meeting, also attended by Vice President Mike Pence and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, highlighted a massive conflict of interest: Trump derives much of his fortune from hotels and golf clubs, and his properties have been battered by the coronavirus outbreak. If he bails out the hotel industry, he will also be bailing out himself.
Trump has made money many different ways over the years—or tried to—but since taking office, his hotels and resorts have been the mainstay of his personal wealth. Though Trump made big bucks in the last decade selling condos and other properties, that business has almost entirely dried up since he became president. His once-lucrative reality TV career is also on hold. But Trump’s 11 hotels and 16 golf resorts have continued to produce revenue in recent years. Of the $434 million in revenue the president disclosed in 2018, at least $336 million came from his hotels, resorts, and golf clubs.
It’s still too early in the year for the full impact of the coronavirus on the golf industry to be determined. A number of Trump courses are located in areas where the golf season hasn’t even started. But according to the hotel industry leaders who met with Trump, their properties are already being decimated by the crisis. In the meeting, the hotel execs asked for a $150 billion bailout.
Christopher Nassetta, chief executive officer of Hilton Worldwide, one of the world’s largest hotel chains, told the president that his company planned to close, at least temporarily, almost all of its operations in major cities. “Hilton’s been around 100 years—we’ve never closed a hotel that wasn’t going to be demolished or rebuilding,” Nassetta said. “The bulk of our hotels in the major cities are closing as we speak.” Nassetta estimated that occupancy rates for hotels globally could fall to 10 to 15 percent.
To put that in context, Jan A. deRoos, a professor emeritus of hotel finance and real estate at Cornell University, told Mother Jones that high-end hotels (like those the Trump Organization operates) require somewhere around a 60 percent occupancy rate to break even. The sunk costs of running a hotel are huge, he explained. They include keeping the building open and employing housekeeping and maintenance staff ,whether rooms are full or not. If a hotel maintains a good occupancy rate, it can be extremely profitable. If it doesn’t, deRoos said, it can go downhill fast.
The outbreak is already hitting Trump properties—and hard. And many weren’t faring too well already. Business at the Trump Doral golf resort in Florida slumped 18 percent between 2015 and 2017, for instance. But the pandemic is now slamming some of Trump’s most reliable moneymakers. That includes Trump’s luxury hotel in DC, which earned $40.2 million in revenue in 2018. That figure includes sales at the hotel’s popular steakhouse and its Benjamin Bar & Lounge, a pricey hangout popular with Beltway conservatives, lobbyists, and various Trumpworld figures. The hotel is still open for business, but DC Mayor Muriel Bowser has ordered that all restaurants and bars close through the end of the month (except for takeout or delivery), effectively shuttering this conservative clubhouse.
Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort has been another stalwart in his portfolio. In 2018, it earned $22.6 million in revenue, in no small part because of the president’s habit of visiting it nearly every weekend throughout the winter. But Trump’s insistence on using Mar-a-Lago as the “Winter White House” also brought coronavirus right to his door. Last week, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro visited Mar-a-Lago accompanied by three people who later tested positive for the virus. As a result, Trump was tested for the virus. (He was negative, according to the White House doctor.) The club closed on Monday for a deep clean. On Wednesday, it told members it would temporarily close its main dining services, spa, gym, and guest rooms. Other parts of the club will remain open, but under state restrictions limiting its capacity.
The club’s lucrative sideline as a location for galas and large events also seems to be on pause (the Trump Organization did not respond to requests for comment). A fundraiser scheduled for this weekend (and described as the largest daytime event the club hosts each year) was postponed indefinitely. And the president himself has said that Americans should limit gatherings to no more than 10 people.
On Tuesday, the general manager of Trump’s Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club, where the president likes to spend many of his summer weekends, announced it would close its facilities with the exception of one its golf courses—which can be utilized only if players walk the course (instead of using shared golf carts) and carry their own bags.
“These are unusual times, stay safe, and we will update you as events develop. If we can do anything for you please let us know. Wash your hands!” wrote David Schutzenhofer, the club’s manager.
Mother Jones contacted the White House and the Trump Organization to see whether Trump’s company would participate in any potential hotel industry bailout and whether Trump was taking any steps to deal with this potential conflict of interest. Neither responded.
In the final days before the coronavirus pandemic crashed fully onto American shores, Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, publicly tried to paint a rosy picture of our chances to fight the virus. He wrote op-eds and released statements, even going so far as to say the US was “lucky” to have a framework “that has put us in a better position than any other country to respond to a public health threat, like the coronavirus.” But, as first reported by NPR on Thursday, he was telling well-connected constituents that the United States was going to get clobbered.
But that’s not all Burr was doing.
According to reports Thursday afternoon from campaign finance watchdog Open Secrets and ProPublica, Burr and his wife also began selling stocks on February 13. A lot of stocks, in fact. According to OpenSecrets, the Burrs sold between $581,000 and $1.5 million in publicly traded stocks—and didn’t buy any new ones. And they didn’t sell just any stocks. They unloaded huge chunks of shares in companies that would soon see their stock prices crater as a result of the coronavirus chaos. As Open Secrets reports:
Between the Burrs’ two accounts, they sold up to $150,000 worth of stock in Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, which lost almost two-thirds of its market value since Feb. 13. They sold up to $150,000 in Extended Stay America, another hotel company that lost half its value over the last month. Burr also sold between $15,001 and $50,000 of stock in Park Hotels & Resorts, which saw its stock price drop from nearly $24 to under $5. The hotel industry is asking President Donald Trump for a bailout as Americans increasingly avoid travel.
Of course, Burr isn’t the only investor who decided to get out of the market at that point, but his position as Senate Intel chairman does give him access to a great deal of information not publicly availably, and his sales were extremely well-timed. According to ProPublica‘s reporting, Burr’s committee had begun receiving daily briefings on the coronavirus at some point in February, and just a week after his sales, the stock market began its steep decline. “Burr’s Feb. 13 selling spree was his largest stock selling day of at least the past 14 months, according to a ProPublica review of Senate records,” the story notes. “Unlike his typical disclosure reports, which are a mix of sales and purchases, all of the transactions were sales.”
One of Burr’s interests while in Congress has been pandemics, so he’s certainly no stranger to what they can mean for the economy. He was even one of the authors of the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act, the major piece of legislation that guides the nation’s response to events like the spread of the coronavirus. Given this expertise and his chairmanship, Burr’s money moves certainly don’t look great. They may also be illegal. Like corporate insiders, members of Congress are prohibited from trading on information they have access to that the public wouldn’t. Craig Holman, a government ethics expert for watchdog group Public Citizen, says that Burr’s trades may have violated the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act of 2012.
“This has every appearance of insider trading and an egregious violation of the STOCK Act by Sen. Burr,” Holman says.
Holman adds that the information that Burr was sharing with the constituents in the late February meeting included information that was not publicly available.
“His speech before a small group of paying constituents on February 27 painted a dire picture for the economy, while the administration and Burr were both publicly proclaiming a nonchalant, if not rosy picture. The information that Burr related to the small group was not general public information,” Holman says. “Burr apparently took his nonpublic information on the impact of the pandemic very serious, making 33 transactions in a single day on February 13, selling off his stocks to the tune of anywhere between $782,033 and $1.96 million. Burr recouped a fortune, while the rest of us continue to lose stock values.”
ProPublica notes that Burr was one of just three US Senators to oppose the passage of the STOCK Act in 2012. At the time he said the bill “wasted … taxpayer time and money.”
Burr’s Senate office did not immediately respond to requests for comment on his trades or concerns that they may have violated the STOCK Act.
Update: March 19, 9:30 pm.: Conservative FOX News host Tucker Carlson blasted Burr and suggested that the senator either explain his trades or leave office.
“Maybe there’s an honest explanation for what he did, if there is, he should share it with the rest of us immediately, otherwise he must resign from the Senate and face prosecution for insider trading,” Carlson said.
Tucker Carlson calls for Senator Burr to resign and await prosecution for insider trading if he cannot provide a reasonable explanation for his actions. He goes on to say it appears that Senator Burr betrayed his country in a time of crisis pic.twitter.com/q7yJa5wjuA
President Donald Trump has drawn widespread condemnation for his new use of the racist label “Chinese Virus” when referring to the novel coronavirus, language experts warn could incite violence against Asians around the world.
The president’s decision to go all-in on the xenophobic language—which erases his praise for China’s handling of the virus just a few short weeks ago—is predictable; a way of hoping to distract attention from his mishandling of a catastrophic public health crisis. If you needed any more evidence that this is a deliberate strategy, take a look at this photo the Washington Post’s Jabin Botsford snapped inside the briefing room on Thursday:
The photo, which shows the word “corona” crossed out with a sharpie, all but confirms Trump appealing to his base with bigotry. He knows it’s red meat for his supporters, who despite their rabid support, may have come to realize in recent days that the president had misled them about the seriousness of the disease and maybe even exacerbated a public health emergency.
Medical personnel leaving the emergency room at New York-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital on WednesdayMary Altaffer/AP
Beyond social distancing and washing our hands, how can we prevent the worst-case coronavirus scenario? Trevor Bedford, the superstar epidemiologist who figured out how the virus spread in Washington state, has some ideas in this thread:
I've been mulling over the @MRC_Outbreak modeling report on #COVID19 mitigation and suppression strategies since it was posted on March 16. Although mitigation through social distancing may not solve things I believe we can bring this epidemic under control. 1/19
The upshot: The only way we’re really going to flatten the curve is:
a) a massive at-home testing effort
b) using cell phone location data to tell people who may have been exposed to self-isolate
c) allowing people who have known immunity (from having had it) back into the workforce once we know via blood test that they can’t get it or spread it anymore. That way, they can keep everything running while others fall sick.
Bedford based this plan on models in the sobering recent WHO report. The at-home testing component was part of South Korea’s successful response; the cell phone location part comes in part from work by infectious disease modeler Christophe Fraser.
Would Bedford’s plan take massive government coordination and cooperation by the American people? Sure. But it might be a lot better than the alternatives: complete lockdown or widespread disease.
“This is the Apollo program of our times,” Bedford writes. “Let’s get to it.”
Riverside, California: Meals on Wheels volunteer Anny Delance (left) practices social distancing after delivering a lunch to Riverside resident Paula Carns, 79, Wednesday morning.Will Lester/Orange County Register/ZUMA
The coronavirus pandemic is causing massive social upheaval: school closures, health scares, and widespread lockdowns. But in the face of the real threat of system breakdown, communities across the country are banding together, stepping up to volunteer, organize, and strategize how to immediately help those who need it most.
So we asked Mother Jones readers and listeners: How are you helping others during the coronavirus crisis? We heard from people who are livestreaming storytime; helping local musicians by hosting online gigs; organizing donations and grocery deliveries; scrambling to convert class materials into virtual teaching aids; and giving everyone a smile.
Here are some of their stories, which we have edited for length and clarity:
Donnie Adison is a 47-year-old e-commerce shopper at a grocery store chain in Macon, Georgia. She’s trying to stay calm and picking up extra shifts at the store. She’s also been shopping for family and friends who aren’t mobile right now.
“I’ve been picking up extra shifts. We need a lot of help—cleaning, stocking. I’m just really trying to stay positive and always give everybody a smile, because people are so harried right now. I worry every day about all the people I’m coming into contact with, but I’m just not at the point right now where I can afford not to go to work. I also have a friend who I recently was reconnected with who finally got clean from drugs. She has a five-month-old. She’s in an outpatient program. And she’s not mobile. She doesn’t have a car. So, I got a list together of things she needed: Pampers, and body wash, some glasses for her kitchen. I’m just really trying to be part of the group of people that helped during the crisis, and not harmed.”
One listener, who preferred to stay anonymous, works at the Marshall Steam Museum in Hockessin, Delaware. She’s decided to take their storytime program online. Normally this program costs money on-site, but they’re making it a free resource for the community:
“We’re going to read a book every morning and post a video of it. And then any accompanying crafts or activities, for parents and their children, they can use as well. Sort of providing this free resource to our community, hoping that it helps. Hopefully even though it’s a few minutes long it helps with boredom. And I think it’s important that we still connect with each other and find ways to do that. We’re just looking to provide something free for our community, and something that hopefully they find useful.”
Mary Weller, 31, and her partner are active in the local music scene in Portland, Oregon. Live shows are the lifeblood of their community, but they’re taking preemptive measures to limit social gatherings to keep people safe:
“We’re basically constantly going out to shows, either shows that we are involved in, or shows to support our friends. It’s a huge part of our life, and it has been basically completely shut down because of the coronavirus. And there are several different musicians who are working on ways to start live streaming their shows as a way to keep our community connected to each other and keep encouraging people to stay home and stay safe. One person in particular, an electronic musician, is streaming things over vernsw0rld, which is their Twitch page, and they are planning on doing a show series and trying to use their platform to let other people stream over it as well. So it can be a place where people can reliably come to listen to music and connect with each other and not feel so isolated.”
Andrea Gladson is a pilot for American Airlines living in Norco, California. She runs a local Facebook group called “News for Norco,” which she’s been using as a platform to help others in her community:
“I put a post up asking for seniors, what their needs might be and how we can help, and see if we can connect them with help. Put a post up asking families with small children how we might be able to help. For example, somebody might have size 2 diapers that are opened, or formula that they don’t use, and somebody else might be able to use that. Also put a post up about how we can support our small businesses. So one of the things I suggested is that we use a platform like Groupon to try to find opportunities to purchase in advance, and also go and use gift cards at our local restaurants are businesses. And brainstorming all the ways we can figure out how keep our small town alive and connected and not adversarial, because certainly with politics that’s happened a lot in the last couple of years.”
One caller, who wished to remain anonymous, works at Trader Joe’s. Grocery stores are on the frontlines of the public health crisis right now. She is trying to stay positive in the face of panic-shopping and interactions with potentially infected people all day:
“We are trying to keep our best faces on: the brave face, the happy face, just trying to keep everybody’s morale up. But it’s hard. It’s exhausting. I’ve worked three days, 5:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., Friday, Saturday, and [Monday]. I go back in and I do it again tomorrow. I’ve read what the coronaviruses do to your lungs, and I don’t want that irreparable damage. I don’t want the risk of dying from it. I don’t want my family to get it. But I still have to go to work and earn that paycheck, and make sure that the people of Los Angeles are fed. Right now we’re switching over to hourly detailed cleaning of all the cash registers and limiting how many customers are allowed to enter the stores to about 50 to 100. And it’s just a lot of cleaning.”
Marianne Love teaches fourth grade in Salt Lake City. She called into the Mother Jones Podcast the night before her classes went online.
“Today all of us went to school, six feet apart, and we figured out how we’re going to do this for our kids. And we made videos, and we figured out how to reach them in a world that is so uncertain. I don’t know how many times I’ve cried today…In this time of uncertainty, figuring out how to be close to each other is such a great thing. Right now I’m gonna put on some music, and maybe read and book or two, and then I’m going to go to sleep. Tomorrow I’m going onto Zoom to meet my students one-on-one. We’re going to figure out how to do this shit in this time of uncertainty.”
Ann Marie Carlton, 46, is an associate professor of chemistry at the University of California, Irvine. She says she’s working on a model that could help predict the spread of the disease and trying to make her chemistry classes distance-learning friendly.
“What me and my colleagues are working to do, frantically, is we want to continue instruction for our students. We’re all furiously translating our courses to online courses. And in chemistry, where there’s a lot of labs, this can be very much a challenge. Some of my colleagues are very creative and were using Google Forms to make these choose-your-own-adventure online modules. I actually built a simplified model using Google Trends and air quality data, and I think that I’m able to predict the spread of disease in places where there’s no tests at all. And I want to work on that, but I feel my primary responsibility is to train the next generation of scientific leaders. I’m torn behind wanting to work on that model and wanting to teach and inspire my students so they can make their own better models one day.”
You can hear more on this week’s episode of the Mother Jones Podcast:
Shawn Lynch, assistant manager of a grocery store in Brattleboro, Vermont, restocks cases of water during an overnight shift. His team worked through the night to make sure the shelves were full for the next day's shoppers to buy supplies during the coronavirus outbreak.Kristopher Radder/The Brattleboro Reformer via AP
As the rapidly spreading coronavirus pandemic closes schools across the country, more and more parents are juggling working from home with caring full-time for their children. But working from home isn’t possible for emergency personnel like paramedics, nurses, and public health workers who are on the front lines of the fight against the virus. Some states and cities are providing child care for emergency workers so they can do their jobs.
Minnesota and Vermont have now officially designated another group of workers as emergency personnel: grocery clerks. This means the workers hurrying to stock shelves and check out customers in those states will also receive free child care.
.@GovTimWalz has classified “food distribution workers,” which is store clerks, stockers, etc, as Tier 2 emergency works. This allows frontline workers childcare as they serve and feed Minnesotans. Thank you @GovTimWalz for supporting our industry during this challenging time!
The directive from Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz came as part of an order for “Care for Children of Families of Emergency Workers,” which instructs closed schools to continue to provide care for children of emergency personnel who are “critical to the response of COVID-19.” Under the order, grocery workers are considered “essential tier 2 workers.” “Districts should make every effort to provide care for school-age children” of these workers, the order states. (People caring for the children of emergency personnel are also considered emergency personnel.)
The state of Vermont is developing a plan to reimburse private child care centers for providing care to essential workers. Public safety commissioner Michael Schirling told VTDigger that his office would add grocery store workers to the list of essential employees who would receive services like child care.
San Francisco, which is under a shelter-in-place order, limits its emergency child care to first responders, including hospital staff, public health employees, and disaster service workers. On Tuesday, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced the state would open emergency child care centers for children of health, safety, and “essential service” workers, though the definition of “essential service” was not immediately clear.
Grocery clerks are often underpaid and underappreciated. As they brave the daily crowds of people rushing to stock up their pantries, and risk infecting themselves through contact with so many customers, their essential role in a functioning society has become clearer than ever. Designating them emergency workers and providing them child care is the least we can do.
President Donald Trump embraces Paula White, chair of the White House evangelical advisory board.Chip Somodevilla/Getty
On Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin warned senators that the outbreak of Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, and the massive recession that likely will take place might cause the unemployment rate to balloon to 20 percent. (He later walked back that dire prediction.) The same day, the president’s spiritual adviser, Paula White asked her followers for private donations to bankroll her private church, which she described as a “hospital to the sick”—the metaphysically sick, that is.
Since October, White has served as the special adviser to the Center for Faith and Opportunity Initiatives in the Trump Administration. During a coronavirus-themed “prayer session” that she delivered to her online congregation, she conflated the coronavirus outbreak—a quickly-spreading pandemic which has infected more than 6,000 Americans and by Wednesday had killed 146—with the fundraising needs of the City of Destiny, an Apokpa, Florida, church in which she holds a prominent position.
Trump's "spiritual adviser" (and head of the White House's "Faith and Opportunity Initiative" program) Paula White asked for cash during a coronavirus-related prayer session this afternoon.
"Maybe you’d like to sow a $91 seed… Or maybe $9. Or whatever God tells you to do." pic.twitter.com/zUoeufRhda
Though she clarified that donations wouldn’t actually go to help those infected, White used medical imagery to add urgency to her fundraising plea during a pandemic. “Every single day we are a hospital to the sick, not necessarily the physically sick,” she said. “But we are a hospital for those who are soul sick, those who are spiritually sick.” White went on to suggest that contributors offer a $91 donation, citing Psalm 91, or “maybe $9 or whatever God tells you to do.”
White’s career as a religious figure has long featured the solicitation of money from followers in exchange for her intervention in expediting their access to God—money that has gone on to finance her lucrative lifestyle. As Mother Jones’ Stephanie Mencimer reported in February:
“A Senate report found that White’s personal ministry and the church she ran with her now ex-husband used tax-exempt ministry funds to pay nearly $900,000 one year for the Whites’ waterfront mansion. It paid over a million dollars in salaries to family members and kept the Whites in the air with a private jet. White and her church refused to cooperate with the investigation and in 2011, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), issued a report outlining the committee’s findings but took no other action.”
Now from Trump’s pulpit—a ripe opportunity for more lucrative gains—White’s financial requests are more visible than ever. Plus, they’re wrapped in the implicit endorsement by the president by virtue of her close association to him. As Mencimer wrote:
The melding of White’s public and private jobs is nearly seamless, as she invokes her relationship with Trump in her sermons and fundraising pitches, even as she wields her spiritual authority to defend the president. But experts say the arrangement raises significant conflict of interest questions, concerns about her compliance with tax laws banning nonprofit churches from endorsing candidates. And there’s the more fundamental question as to whether by installing her in a White House job, Trump has put the government’s stamp of approval on a religious ministry that includes faith healing and preying on vulnerable people for money.
One thing is clear: The donations that White is soliciting won’t be heading towards the real hospitals serving those in need at the frontline of the coronavirus pandemic.
Telemedicine—in which doctors administer medication via webcam and a remotely-controlled drawer—has become an easy target for anti-abortion legislators who try to claim it is dangerous and limits physician oversight. But the coronavirus pandemichighlights precisely why access to medication abortion through telemedicine is so crucial.
And now, abortion providers and advocatesare calling for states to suspend bans on telemedicine in cases of medication abortion.
There’s the obvious social distancing it allows (though states have different regulations regarding where telemedicine appointments can take place and who must be present to preside over them). But Dr. Daniel Grossman, the director of the research group Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, points out another key, though less readily apparent benefit: In a pandemic, hospitals in particular are forced to prioritize infected patients, which may mean abortion care gets de-prioritized, despite the time-sensitive nature of the procedure. Telemedicine allows abortion providers to bridge the gap.
In an interview, Grossman called telemedicine “the perfect solution” for women looking to terminate early pregnancies. “Unfortunately,it’s burdened by the restrictions in 18 states that completely ban telemedicine abortion care and then it’s also restricted due to the risk evaluation and mitigation strategy for mifepristone, which limits the possibility of doing direct to patient telemedicine,” Grossman said, referencing the Food and Drug Administration’s classification ofmifepristone, the first of two medications taken to induce abortion, as a high-risk drug, despite its extraordinarily high safety profile.
Telemedicine is a great innovation that ensures more patients are able to get the care they need, but because it has that power, that's why they're specifically banning the use of it for abortion, despite it being just as safe: https://t.co/KJ05IRObpt
Dr. Ghazelah Moayedi, an abortion provider in Texas, echoes this broad sentiment: “We should be moving anything we can to telemedicine right now.” Anything that requires unnecessary human contact should be suspended, she says—which also includes some of the onerous regulations surrounding abortion, including the 24-to-72-hour waiting period restrictions that require a pregnant person to attend two appointments with the same provider over some number of days.
Now is the time for states to recognize the safety of both telemedicine for abortion care, as well as medication abortion itself. Medication abortion, which is approved for patients who are up to 10 weeks pregnant, accounts for approximately 40 percent of abortion procedures and has a more than 95 percent success rate when used correctly. Serious complications occur in fewer than 0.4 percent of cases. As I reported at the time, a 2017 study found that telemedicine for abortion care is just as safe as in-person visits; it also increased access to medication abortion for rural pregnant people in Iowa, which meant fewer abortions later in pregnancy.
Still, telemedicine bans in abortion care are often justified with claims that it’s not safe. Unfortunately, following the lead of the 18 states Grossman referenced, Ohio is currently considering its own ban on telemedicine abortion care.
Meanwhile, in Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott lifted restrictions on telemedicine in the state over the weekend—but the rule does not apply to abortion care.
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