All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

Coronavirus surges across midwest as Trump attacks health professionals | World news | The Guardian

“More and more facilities are requesting [personal protective equipment],” said Dr Shikha Gupta, executive director of Get Us PPE, a non-profit which supplies healthcare facilities with PPE, when they cannot find equipment through suppliers. “We are deeply unprepared for what that’s going to bring as hospitals reach capacity across the US with surging caseloads.”

Nursing homes, where less than 1% of Americans live but which account for 41% of Covid-19 deaths, also remain extremely vulnerable to outbreaks.

“We lack personal protective equipment, we lack comprehensive surveillance and testing, and, to be honest, a number of nursing homes still struggle with infection control,” David C Grabowski, a health policy professor at Harvard Medical School, said. “We’ve seen this play out now twice.”

Nancy Roberts, a respiratory therapist at St Luke’s, said she had seen Covid-19-positive patients come in, “and they’re on just a little bit of oxygen, and in 24 hours they could be intubated and on a ventilator, and they’re terrified.

“For somebody to not believe this is happening, it blows my mind. I cannot personally wrap my head around that,” Roberts said. ‘One death is one too many deaths from this virus.”

Source: Coronavirus surges across midwest as Trump attacks health professionals | World news | The Guardian

Mask mandates: Why every state should have one, in 4 charts – Vox

As it turns out, North Dakota, which doesn’t require masks anywhere, had the lowest mask-wearing rate in the country in October, according to survey data. It also had 146 coronavirus cases per 100,000 as of November 2, the highest per capita rate of any state in the county, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

North Dakota is not the only state without a mask policy in the throes of a major outbreak, however: Eight out of the top 10 states that saw the highest new cases per capita in October do not have a mask mandate, as the chart below shows. (Several of these Great Plains and Midwestern states were spared significant outbreaks of the virus until the fall.)

Source: Mask mandates: Why every state should have one, in 4 charts – Vox

Federal Judge Blocks Trump Rule Designed To Impede Immigrants Seeking Green Cards : NPR

U.S. District Judge Gary Feinerman in Chicago, Ill., rejected a rule Monday implemented by the Trump administration that aimed to deny green cards to immigrants utilizing food stamps and other public benefits. The decision applies nationwide, not just in the state of Illinois.

Source: Federal Judge Blocks Trump Rule Designed To Impede Immigrants Seeking Green Cards : NPR

Joe Biden Personal Essay – How Joe Biden Comforted Me After My Son’s Diagnosis

One Sunday morning a few weeks after the interview, before the issue had even gone to press, my son, almost 7, awoke with a headache. His eyes began to close. It got worse quickly, and within an hour he was airlifted to a children’s hospital. My wife, Sarah, rode with him in the helicopter, and our other son and I drove 90 on the highway.

There was a brain surgery he almost didn’t survive. Then another. Doctors said words to us, and we tried to make sense of them.

Leukemia…aggressive…there was a hemorrhage…craniotomy…we just don’t know…

Sometime during the fever dream of that first week, an email came through: a PDF of the Biden interview, ready for the printer—these get sent around to the staff automatically. I read it, twice.

“We’ve always taken care of each other.”

Late at night, lying awake on the pull-out hospital bed, I sent a note to Hunter. I thanked him and his dad—their candor that day in Maryland, and the things they said, were replaying in my head. It was helping, and I just wanted him to know. I was trying to mute the terrifying words we were hearing in the hospital by amplifying their stories of getting back up again and again and again.

The next day I was sitting alone in my son’s room on the ICU—Sarah had gone for soup. His head was wrapped in gauze, his eyes swollen shut. Machines beeped softly around him, and he lay perfectly still under the hospital sheets.

Just then, my phone rang: a weird number. I answered. It was the sitting vice president of the United States.

“Ryan, it’s Joe Biden. Dammit I’m so sorry. What happened?”

I told him, as best I could, functioning as I was on little food or sleep. He spoke in detail of the brain aneurysm he had suffered in 1988, how it felt, what the doctors had done for him, and whether there were any similarities here. He offered to put me in touch with experts in the fields of cancer and brain injury. He was searching, asking questions, trying to be of use.

“I’m s’damn sorry, Ryan.”

The next day, he called again, this time with the name of someone he thought might be helpful.

A couple of months later, I got another call: The vice president was going to be in New York, and wanted to know whether it would be convenient for my wife and me to see him. Our son had been transferred to Memorial Sloan-Kettering for treatment, and one or both of us was with him day and night. But the nurses said they would look after him for an hour while we went across town to see Joe Biden.

We found ourselves in a small room off a ballroom at a hotel where he had just given a speech. There was no one in there, really—a couple of Secret Service agents, his scheduling person, a few others. He saw us, strode over, and the first thing he did was just hug us. Both of us at once, his long arms around us, tight, three people standing there as one for a good minute.

Our arms loosened, we stood back. His suit jacket was a little rumpled.

We waited for him to talk first. His eyes were wet, and he said, “How’s your boy?” Joe Biden was crying for us, because he knew how it was when the pain feels like it will never end.

There were no cameras. There was no one filming. He wasn’t running for anything. He was just doing what you do, as a human, even when no one’s watching.

Source: Joe Biden Personal Essay – How Joe Biden Comforted Me After My Son’s Diagnosis

How the legacy of George Floyd could impact the U.S. election – National | Globalnews.ca

“There was a photo I took on the first day of protesting at the third precinct when the police arrived and they started tear-gassing people.  The group of protesters stood in the tear gas, holding hands as the cops formed a line in front of them,”  he recalled.

“After taking that photo my eyes were burning, my nose was burning, but to see people stand in that for as long as they did just shows the passion and dedication people have for what they’re out here for.”

Rogers believes that passion and dedication will now be carried to the polls.  Four years ago, voter turnout among African Americans dropped sharply across the country.

Source: How the legacy of George Floyd could impact the U.S. election – National | Globalnews.ca

Climbing COVID-19 cases hurt hope for faster L.A. reopening – Los Angeles Times

Hopes that a wider reopening of Los Angeles County’s economy could come in time for the holidays appear to be fading, as the region continues to see a steady uptick in the average number of daily coronavirus infections.

While the spike is nowhere near as severe as those in other parts of the country, L.A. County’s seven-day average has increased from 940 new cases a day in early October to more than 1,275 each day as of last week, health officials said.

L.A. County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer announced 1,406 new COVID-19 cases Monday, following 1,590 on Sunday. The county’s total now tops 310,000.

Source: Climbing COVID-19 cases hurt hope for faster L.A. reopening – Los Angeles Times

Photo of Biden without mask, shared by Trump’s former National Intelligence director, was taken in 2019 | KTLA (GOP Faux news)

Why wasn’t Biden, who has made a point to put on a facial covering throughout the campaign, wearing a mask? Because the photo was taken in November 2019, before the first case of the new coronavirus was reported, and months before global health officials began urging people to wear masks in order to stop the spread of the virus.

The image was shared on Twitter by Trump’s former acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, where it was liked and shared from his account more than 50,000 times. Grenell, who currently serves as special presidential envoy for Serbia and Kosovo peace negotiations, was a U.S. ambassador to Germany for two years before resigning in June.

Source: Photo of Biden without mask, shared by Trump’s former National Intelligence director, was taken in 2019 | KTLA