Posts Tagged ‘covid19’

Report from Louisiana: Reopening Discontent

Posted: May 4, 2020 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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By:  Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – We broke quarantine yesterday and crossed the border into Texas.  With Louisiana still shut down and under stay-at-home orders for another two weeks, Texas looks pretty good right now.

For weeks the border has been closed to Louisiana residents, but now that has been lifted and Texas shops and restaurants are open, so we headed west.

We headed to Jefferson, Texas, a small, historic town in East Texas. Residents of Marion County supported Trump heavily in the last presidential election with a 71% strong vote over Hilary Clinton (27%).  Many of the people there are thrilled to see Louisiana customers back in Jefferson; the town has a quaint historic district filled with antique shops, specialty fudge shops, and eateries that have suffered financially since the closure. There are a couple of old, historic hotels and at less than an hour away from Shreveport, Jefferson is a popular day trip destination. People in Louisiana spend a lot of tourist dollars in Jefferson, so opening the state back up to travelers was a welcome move. They have been hit hard by the COVID closure.

Shopkeepers, bartenders, servers, residents, literally everyone we talked to, was thrilled that the state is open and people are coming back to spend money and browse the shops. We talked with several people who praised Trump’s COVID response and others who were firmly rooted in the belief that Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards is keeping Louisiana closed only for federal dollars.

The rhetoric in Louisiana circles is becoming more and more divided over the Edwards response. As it turns out, his stay-at-home order was very non-specific and would have allowed many businesses to stay open in some capacity, significantly reducing the large numbers of people forced into unemployment. The original stay-at-home order, issued March 22, specifically closed salons, gyms, tattoo shops, among others. Businesses not specified could stay open with restrictions, however that was never clear. As a result, places like Barnes and Noble, Ulta Beauty, sporting goods stores, craft stores, among others, closed when all along they could have stayed open with restrictions.

It has all been very murky and now the discontent is rising:

The catalyst is Gov. John Bel Edwards’ decision to extend Louisiana’s statewide stay-at-home order through May 15. The Democratic governor said the move is rooted in science and public safety. Republicans are bristling, preferring a parish-by-parish approach to loosening restrictions that have shuttered businesses and forced hundreds of thousands into unemployment.

At stake is “hundreds of millions of federal dollars in disaster aid for businesses and the state.”

Is Edwards playing it safe and only looking out for the health of Louisiana residents? Or is he parlaying the entire situation into a federal dollar windfall for the state? Has he been intentionally vague about his stay at home order? The answers depend on who you ask.

The bottom line is that the longer Louisiana stays closed, and with neighboring states returning to normal, the pressure on Edwards to reopen the state will increase. Louisiana dollars will be spent in the shops, restaurants, and hotels of other states.

Louisiana legislators return to Baton Rouge today, reconvening their session after a COVID hiatus and even the timing of the legislative return has been contentious.

Looks like the new normal in Louisiana is a lot like the old normal.

Pat Austin blogs at And So it Goes in Shreveport and is the author of Cane River Bohemia: Cammie Henry and her Circle at Melrose Plantation. Follow her on Instagram @patbecker25 and Twitter @paustin110.

We must not let politicians use Coronavirus as an excuse to transform the US

Posted: April 30, 2020 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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Just about every day since the Coronavirus crisis began I’ve seen progressive politicians voice the disturbing notion that this is a perfect opportunity to transform the United States in some way.  Always their proposals will make the United States a more progressive nation.  These politicians are nothing but shameful opportunists. We should resist these calls very strenuously.

Several progressive elected officials and Hillary Clinton have proposed that enacting Medicare for all would be a perfect solution our current crisis.  They are living in a fantasy world.  Socialized Medicine has an abysmal track record.  Check out how nations with socialized medicine have fared during this crisis.  The US has preformed far better.  Nothing would destroy the United Sates medical system, which is by far the best in the world, faster. 

Joe Biden, and others, have, proposed enacting the Green New Deal because of Coronavus.  That would destroy our energy sector, which thanks to the efforts of President Trump, made the US a net positive producer of energy.

Universal basic income has been proposed many times, including recently by Nancy Pelosi, as a temporary solution to our crisis.  Once enacted that new entitlement would quickly become permanent.   Nothing would trap generation after generation in poverty more securely than this.

Changes to our electoral system such as voting by mail and vote harvesting are the most dangerous changes proposed by progressives.  If they were enacted progressives would win election after election because of their willingness to use fraud and to deceit to win elections. 

Getting everything back to the way we were before the Coronavirus crisis as quickly as possible is the best and quickest way to restore our economy and standard of living.

Covid-19 and the nursing home ‘death pits’

Posted: April 28, 2020 by chrisharper in Uncomfortable Truths
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By Christopher Harper

Covid-19 has uncovered an incredible dirty secret that nursing home and long-term care facilities are killers.

Not only have roughly 20 percent of the 50,000-plus deaths occurred in these facilities, but the virus has also shown an industry that thrives on death, allowing nearly 400,000 to die each year—often from diseases they get in the homes.

Moreover, many hospitals rejected virus victims during the crisis after they become ill because those in nursing homes are among the most vulnerable because of their age and underlying conditions.

In New Jersey, 17 bodies were piled up in a nursing home morgue, and more than a quarter of a Virginia home’s residents died. At least 24 people at a facility in Maryland have died; more than 100 residents and workers have been infected at another in Kansas; and people have died in centers for military veterans in Florida, Nevada, New York, Maine, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Washington. In the Philadelphia suburbs, a top-rated facility, the Southeastern Veterans’ Center has had nearly 30 people die and expects to see more.

New York officials disclosed the names of 72 long-term care facilities that have had five or more deaths, including the Cobble Hill Health Center in Brooklyn where 55 people died. At least 14 nursing homes in New York City and its suburbs recorded more than 25 coronavirus-related deaths. In New Jersey, officials revealed that infections have broken out in 394 long-term facilities — almost two-thirds of the state’s homes — and that more than 1,500 deaths were tied to nursing facilities, DaTimes reported. See more at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/17/us/coronavirus-nursing-homes.html

“They’re sitting ducks, the veterans,” said one family member told the Philadelphia Inquirer. “They are dying alone, that makes me utterly mad. It’s inhumane. And they’re withholding information about how dire it is.” For more, see https://www.inquirer.com/news/southeastern-veterans-center-coronavirus-chester-county-covid-20200425.html

The center is one of the best in the State of Pennsylvania, with a long waiting list. 

All told, there are about 15,000 nursing homes in the United States, which house about 1.3 million people. 

In Pennsylvania, about 126,000 people live in these facilities. Nearly half of Pennsylvania’s known coronavirus-related deaths have been residents of long-term-care facilities. 

Because one of the first outbreaks of Covid-19 occurred in a Washington nursing home, most facilities were put on notice about the problems. 

But the underlying issues left many facilities unprepared. These problems include a lack of personal protective equipment, the inability to maintain social distancing among residents, inadequate staff, and the failure to act quickly enough when residents exhibited symptoms of the disease.

Many of the staff are paid at the minimum wage and often job at a facility for a short period. 

Moreover, many state agencies fail to enforce local and federal standards on how the facilities should function. 

As the pandemic slows down, investigators should turn their attention to the severe problems that exist in nursing homes and long-term care facilities to protect those who are most likely to die and have no other place to go.

Report from Louisiana: Education Disparity during Covid Closure

Posted: April 27, 2020 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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By:  Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – One of the issues this pandemic has exposed has been the complete and utter lack of preparedness by education systems for such an event. Granted, nobody could have expected a nationwide shutdown of the economy and stay-at-home orders for weeks on end. But, in Louisiana at least, this is not completely without precedent. When Hurricane Katrina decimated New Orleans, we dealt with extended school closures in specific areas of the state. The difference, of course, as far as education goes at least, is that those displaced students had other school systems still in operation where they could transfer. That is not the case now.

What has emerged is a patchwork of fixes and plans between school systems. Each district is working in different ways to educate their students and there is little uniformity between systems much less within each individual district.

The result is that some students are receiving an education and others are not. The Advocate reports on survey results by the state Department of Education:

Educators said the coronavirus pandemic has exposed a national digital divide that is especially jarring in a state like Louisiana, where about two-thirds of students — nearly 500,000 youngsters — live in low-income households.

When the shutdown order came, the school in which I teach, for example, was winding up Spring Break. We walked out of our classrooms that previous Friday fully expecting to return in ten days. My classroom right now is exactly as I left it on March 6.

School districts across the nation scrambled to enact a plan. Nobody knew how long we would be closed. Students did not leave the campus with textbooks, work packets, or technology.

In a Title I school, like mine, the problems are compounded by the fact that many of our students do not have home computers or Wi-Fi.  But, in another school across town, kids have Wi-Fi, strong parental support, and personal computers.  

What were districts to do? How can you level this field over night?

We did the best we could, I guess. We set up dates where students could come to the school and sign out Chromebooks if they needed technology, but that doesn’t solve the Wi-Fi problem. Some students were given copied work packets. We enacted a “do no harm” policy where students can be graded on the work they turn in, but can’t be given a zero for work they don’t do, and overall a student’s grade can not go down from what it was on March 6.

Is this ideal?  Nope. But what’s the answer?

And how do you prepare for something like this?

Some school districts across the country have set up mobile Wi-Fi hotspots in buses parked in the neighborhoods, but obviously this has not been a uniform practice.

According to the survey:

Officials in the East Baton Rouge Parish school district told the state that 55% of their students lack access to a laptop; Central, 50%; Jefferson Parish, 40%; Livingston Parish, 38%; St. John the Baptist Parish, 65%; West Baton Rouge Parish, 65%; and St. Landry Parish, 60%.

At the other end of the spectrum for students lacking laptops is Ascension Parish, 1%; Lafayette Parish, 20%; Orleans Parish, 20%; St. Bernard Parish , 15%; St. Charles Parish, 5%; Plaquemines Parish, 10% and Zachary, 0%.

The shortage is even worse in rural areas, where five mostly north Louisiana school districts say 75% or more of their students lack access to a laptop or tablet at home.

Governor Edwards is planning to begin to reopen Louisiana for business at the end of the week and will announce his plans during a press conference later today. He has cautioned residents to temper their expectations and notes that this will be a very gradual process.

One of the things we certainly must address in the near future is to develop some kind of emergency plan that does not contribute to the already huge disparities in our education systems. While it’s impossible to prepare for what you don’t know, it is possible, now that we DO know, to create some kind of contingency plan for our students.

Pat Austin blogs at And So it Goes in Shreveport and is the author of Cane River Bohemia: Cammie Henry and her Circle at Melrose Plantation. Follow her on Instagram @patbecker25 and Twitter @paustin110.

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