Six on CoronaVirus: Coronavirus has exposed New York’s two societies; one rich, one poor; Life and Death in the ‘Hot Zone’; fCoronavirus rocks the NYC’s teacher’s union; alse hope: How an obscure drug became a coronavirus 'cure'; Some Doctors Moving
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“Every nook and cranny of the emergency department was full of patients attached to portable oxygen tanks, people so sick they needed beds. The stretchers filled the room and spilled down the corridors, 10 patients in just one hallway,” he said.
The dreadful sounds of sickness filled the room. “It’s like a chorus, a cacophony of coughing.”
Petty, a pediatric emergency nurse who now spends much of his time caring for adults with coronavirus, could not help envisaging the thousands of contagious micro-droplets being expelled into the air with all that coughing. “I felt like I was walking into a cloud of poison,” he said.
Coronavirus has exposed New York’s two societies; one rich, one poor
Petty is on the frontline of the frontline: New York City. The metropolis has become the focus of the worldwide coronavirus pandemic, just as in 2001 it became the focus of the worldwide al-Qaida terrorist threat on 9/11.
Day by day, the statistics tell their own grim story. On Tuesday, the New York City death toll overtook that of 9/11 and now stands at 3,602 (2,753 died in the city in the 2001 terrorist attacks). On Wednesday, it was announced that New York had suffered its highest number of fatalities in a 24-hour period – 806 lives snuffed out in just one day.
The attack is coming in waves – not just on one sunny morning in September as when the Twin Towers came down, but over days and relentless weeks. There are Ground Zeros dotted throughout the city, like Jacobi, one of 11 major public hospitals that are all now pushed to, and beyond, the limit.
As the crisis thickens, a picture of how the virus is ravaging the city has come into view carrying with it a sobering realization. Coronavirus may not in itself discriminate, but its outcomes certainly do. It has inflicted its terrible toll not so much on New York City, but on the two cities it contains.
“Coronavirus has exposed New York’s two societies,” Jumaane Williams, the public advocate who acts as the official watchdog for New Yorkers, told the Guardian. “One society was able to run away to the Hamptons or work from home and have food delivered to their door; the other society was deemed ‘essential workers’ and made to go out to work with no protection.”
Different boroughs, even different neighborhoods within each borough, are experiencing coronavirus almost as though it were two different contagions. In wealthier white areas the residential streets are empty; parking spots that are fought over in normal times now stand vacant following an exodus to out-of-town weekend homes or Airbnbs.
We have almost 100% people of color in our emergency room.
Sean Petty
In places like the Bronx – which is 84% black, Latino or mixed race – the sidewalks are still bustling with people making their way into work. There is still a rush hour. “We used to call them ‘service workers’,” Williams said. “Now they are ‘essential workers’ and we have left them to fend for themselves.”
The public advocate pointed out that 79% of New York’s frontline workers – nurses, subway staff, sanitation workers, van drivers, grocery cashiers – are African American or Latino. While those city dwellers who have the luxury to do so are in lockdown in their homes, these communities have no choice but to put themselves in harm’s way every day."
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"Over the course of only a few weeks, posts online, the media and politicians turned chloroquine from an unknown drug to a “100% coronavirus cure,” misleading the public on its effectiveness and engendering unintended but negative consequences.
Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine as treatments for covid-19 are not yet backed by reliable scientific evidence. In a pandemic, it’s important for everyone to follow the lead of scientists. Rumors on the Internet are the least reliable source of information. And politicians are not qualified to provide scientific advice, despite even the best intentions.
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In particular, Trump’s incorrect comments on the drugs and his role in advocating for their use, based on minimal and flimsy evidence, sets a bad example. His advocacy for this unproven treatment provides potentially false hope and has led to shortages for people who rely on the drugs. The president earns Four Pinocchios."
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"Generally speaking, 40% to 50% of patients with severe respiratory distress die while on ventilators, experts say. But 80% or more of coronavirus patients placed on the machines in New York City have died, state and city officials say.
Higher-than-normal death rates also have been reported elsewhere in the U.S., said Dr. Albert Rizzo, the American Lung Association’s chief medical officer."
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"When Andre Ross gets home from his shift at Southern California Hospital at Hollywood, he immediately strips off his scrubs, puts them in a bag and runs to the washing machine.
He showers as fast as he can. He disinfects the bathroom.
Ross, 30, is terrified of catching the novel coronavirus at work and spreading it to other tenants of his South Los Angeles apartment building.
As the number of coronavirus-related hospitalizations and deaths skyrocket across the U.S., the experience of doctors and nurses has been rightfully framed within the context of a great war to save lives while not being sickened or killed by COVID-19.
Hospitals across the country have scrambled for personal protective equipment and other gear in short supply. Nurses and doctors have pleaded for donations online, telling stories of reusing masks and rigging trash bags as gowns.
One emergency room doctor at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, who spoke to The Times on the condition of anonymity out of concern for his job, said he is fearful for the minimum-wage support staff there who are facing many of the same potential risks as higher-paid medical professionals.
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Nonclinical hospital staffers “likely face similar to higher risks as others who still have to report to work,” said Steven Wallace, a professor in the community health sciences department at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health."
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