The New York TimesBlack Families Were Hit Hard by the Pandemic. The Effects on Children May Be Lasting.
Kourtney McGowan was furloughed in March, when the preschool she worked at closed during the coronavirus shutdown. The relationship with her longtime partner quickly crumbled under the pressure. They broke up "due to mental health issues" that she said started to appear with both of them being stressed out and inside all day.McGowan said she waited almost a month to receive unemployment benefits in California, and the financial setback was a huge blow. "Every day I'm trying to play catch-up," she said.As McGowan's workplace prepared to reopen, she met another obstacle many parents are faced with as states loosen restrictions: child care. She called the program her 8-year-old son previously attended, but it had no plans to reopen.Hoping to return to work, McGowan asked her boss for a more flexible schedule. "I can't have my son in my office for eight hours every day," she said. Her boss said no. She had no plan for reliable child care, and her job replaced her.More than 36 million Americans are unemployed in the aftermath of nationwide pandemic shutdowns. McGowan is one of the 1.7 million Black women who was working pre-coronavirus and wants to continue working but is left without a job.According to research from the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University, working-age adults, children and Black Americans will fall below the poverty line at the highest rates as a result of the coronavirus pandemic's economic effects.At the intersection of those vulnerable groups are Black children, who are already disproportionately represented in America's poor. According to data from the American Community Survey and analyzed by the Kids Count Data Center, a nonprofit tracking the well-being of children in the United States, 32% of Black children live in poverty, compared with 11% of white children and 26% of Hispanic or Latino children."The COVID-19 public health and economic crisis certainly is hitting deep within the economy, and it's affecting every single type of American," said Bradley L. Hardy, associate professor of public administration and policy at American University. Though many families will certainly feel the stress, "We have some real concerns for Black families for a whole range of historical reasons," he said.The reasons that are particularly relevant in this moment are the unemployment rate of Black women, the long-term stress of racism on children, and the lack of household wealth that Black families have.The unemployment rate for Black women continues to increase.The most recent jobs report revealed a familiar inequity: Black and Hispanic workers are having a harder time finding jobs. Before the pandemic, black households in particular had higher unemployment rates than white households.Black mothers' workforce participation and earnings are crucial to the economic health of Black children, said Kristen E. Broady, Ph.D., dean of the college of business and professor of economics at Dillard University. The vast majority of Black mothers are the primary breadwinners for their households. They are more than twice as likely as white mothers, and more than 50% more likely than Hispanic mothers, to be either the sole providers in a single-parent household or married and bringing in the same amount or more than their partner, according to analysis from the Center for American Progress, a nonpartisan policy institute.As states open up and workplaces start to bring back employees, the unemployment rate for white men and women and Hispanic men and women is improving, while the unemployment rate for Black women continues to increase.Even these figures may be understating the unemployment problem for Black women, said Jessica Fulton, vice president of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a public policy think tank. "You have to have lost your job and be looking for work," she said. "If you're a single mom, for example, and you are not looking for a job because your kids are at home, you don't get counted.""A lot of Black children are in households where there's just mom working or there are two parents both working in order to make ends meet," Fulton said. "This is potentially going to impact Black children disproportionately."While unemployment is a strong predictor for child poverty, poverty is only one part of the story.Toxic stressors over time can lead to long-term physical and mental health issues.Eileen Condon, Ph.D., a nurse practitioner and postdoctoral associate at Yale University School of Nursing, and her colleagues examined the stressors related to the coronavirus pandemic and how they disproportionately harm disadvantaged and marginalized families.Poverty, food insecurity and housing insecurity are major sources of pervasive stress, Condon said. When a child experiences toxic stress, their stress response is "essentially always activated." "Over time, the inflammation and the adrenaline and all of the things that are going on in the body start to wear and tear on all of the different systems," she explained, "and that is what leads to poor physical and mental health outcomes for children who experience early adversity."Vicarious racism, or secondhand exposure to racism that Black children may experience watching or hearing about the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, is also a source of pervasive stress, Condon said.Hardy said, "We know quite a bit from the child development literature about how these sorts of stressors really impede child development." While these early stressors predated the COVID-19 crisis, the effects of the pandemic and exposure to the deaths of these Black Americans will exacerbate the potential for toxic stress, he said.Black children are also being left behind in the education system at all levels. For children from pre-K through high school, both Broady and Hardy said uninterrupted access to the hardware and internet necessary to successfully participate in online learning is another huge concern. According to data from Pew Research Center, even before education went fully digital because of the pandemic, Black and Hispanic students were unevenly affected by the lack of access to high-speed internet services."Such infrastructure concerns are very real for Black families, and certainly some of them will be fine, but disproportionately, that's going to be a major issue," Hardy said.Black households have less wealth than white households.According to Federal Reserve data, Black households typically have one-tenth of the wealth of a typical white household. The lack of wealth of Black households is an issue for Black children, as any unexpected emergency -- like a pandemic -- can cause food and housing insecurity and stress for children when there is no financial cushion.It's also a concern for the future prospects of Black children. For a 2018 study on racial disparities in economic mobility, economists examined longitudinal data from the U.S. Census Bureau of nearly the entire U.S. population from 1989 to 2015 and found that Black children born into poverty were twice as likely as white children to stay there.Though poverty rates for Hispanic Americans are similar to those of Black Americans, they are almost as likely as white children to move out of poverty as adults. Additionally, the researchers found that Black children born into higher income groups have a harder time staying in those income brackets. The study's authors were careful to note that their findings suggest neither parental marital status, education level nor children's difference in ability could explain away this intergenerational mobility gap."American public policy has made it very difficult for Black Americans to accumulate and sustain wealth in general," Hardy said. The Black-white wealth gap has persisted despite increasing numbers of Black women attaining college degrees. Hardy cited America's well-documented history of segregation, excluding Black Americans from the GI Bill and educational attainment, redlining policies that segregated communities and devalued homes in Black neighborhoods, and "plain racial labor market discrimination" as reasons Black families have less wealth to help protect them from the devastating effects of an economic crisis."If you put it all together," Hardy said, "then Black parents are going to have quite a bit less to leave to their children." The pandemic is exacerbating the existing economic inequalities for Black families and is subsequently worsening the future economic outlook for Black children, despite all best efforts by Black parents like McGowan to work their way up.The prospects aren't great for McGowan, whose certifications are in child care, because service sector jobs in which Black women are overrepresented have had some of the biggest cuts. Her son, who she said seems unaware of their current financial struggles, is suddenly anxious about death and dying. He's in counseling, and she's thinking about going back to college. "We do what we got to do," she said.For now, McGowan said she will see what the future holds. "Raising Black boys is hard in itself," she said. "I'm just trusting God."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
USA TODAYFDA says a coronavirus vaccine would have to be at least 50% effective to be approved
A coronavirus vaccine would ideally be proven to be at least 50% effective for the Food and Drug Administration to approve it.
The New York TimesWhy Surviving the Virus Might Come Down to Which Hospital Admits You
NEW YORK -- In Queens, the New York City borough with the most coronavirus cases and the fewest hospital beds per capita, hundreds of patients languished in understaffed wards, often unwatched by nurses or doctors. Some died after removing oxygen masks to go to the bathroom.In hospitals in impoverished neighborhoods around the boroughs, some critically ill patients were put on ventilator machines lacking key settings, and others pleaded for experimental drugs, only to be told that there were none available.It was another story at the private medical centers in Manhattan, which have billions of dollars in endowments and cater largely to wealthy people with insurance. Patients there got access to heart-lung bypass machines and specialized drugs like remdesivir, even as those in the city's community hospitals were denied more basic treatments like continuous dialysis.In its first four months in New York City, the coronavirus tore through low-income neighborhoods, infected immigrants and essential workers unable to stay home and disproportionately killed Black and Latino people, especially those with underlying health conditions.Now, evidence is emerging of another inequality affecting low-income city residents: disparities in hospital care.While the pandemic continues, it is not possible to determine exactly how much the gaps in hospital care have hurt patients. Many factors affect who recovers from the coronavirus and who does not. Hospitals treat vastly different patient populations, and experts have hesitated to criticize any hospital while workers valiantly fight the outbreak.Still, mortality data from three dozen hospitals obtained by The New York Times indicates that the likelihood of survival may depend in part on where a patient is treated. At the peak of the pandemic in April, the data suggests, patients at some community hospitals were three times more likely to die than patients at medical centers in the wealthiest parts of the city.Underfunded hospitals in the neighborhoods hit the hardest often had lower staffing, worse equipment and less access to drug trials and advanced treatments at the height of the crisis than the private, well-financed academic medical centers in wealthy parts of Manhattan, according to interviews with workers at all 47 of the city's general hospitals."If we had proper staffing and proper equipment, we could have saved much more lives," said Dr. Alexander Andreev, a medical resident and union representative at Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center, a struggling independent hospital in Brooklyn. "Out of 10 deaths, I think at least two or three could have been saved."Inequality did not arrive with the virus. The divide between the haves and the have-nots has long been a part of the web of hospitals in the city.Manhattan is home to several of the world's most prestigious medical centers, a constellation of academic institutions that attract wealthy residents with private health insurance. The other boroughs are served by a patchwork of satellite campuses, city-run public hospitals and independent facilities, all of which treat more residents on Medicaid or Medicare, or without insurance.The pandemic exposed and amplified the inequities, especially during the peak, according to doctors, nurses and other workers.Overall, more than 17,500 people have been confirmed to have died in New York City of COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. More than 11,500 lived in ZIP codes with median household incomes below the city median, according to city data.Deaths have slowed, but with the possibility of a second surge looming, doctors are examining the disparities.At the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, the city's largest private hospital network, 20 doctors drafted a letter in April warning leadership about inequalities, according to a copy obtained by The Times. The doctors had found that the mortality rate at an understaffed satellite was more than twice as high as at a flagship center, despite not treating sicker patients.At NYU Langone Health, another large network, 43 medical residents wrote their own letter to the chief medical officer expressing concerns about disparities in hospital care.Both networks said in statements that they deliver the same level of care at all their locations.Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio have spoken throughout the pandemic of adding hospital beds across the city, transferring patients and sending supplies and workers to community hospitals, implying that they have ensured all New Yorkers with COVID-19 receive the same quality care."We are one health care system," Cuomo said on March 31. The same day, he described the coronavirus as "the great equalizer."In interviews, doctors scoffed at that notion, noting, among other issues, that government reinforcements were slowed by bureaucratic hurdles and mostly arrived after the peak."There was no cavalry," said Dr. Ralph Madeb, surgery director at the independent New York Community Hospital in Brooklyn. "Everything we did was on our own."In a statement, Dani Lever, the governor's communications director, said Cuomo has repeatedly pointed out inequalities in health care. The state worked during the peak to transfer patients so everybody could at least access care, she said."The governor said COVID was the 'great equalizer' in that it infected anyone regardless of race, age, etc. -- not that everyone would receive the same the level of health care," she said. "The governor said we are one health system in terms of ensuring that everyone who needed it had access to a hospital."A spokeswoman for de Blasio, Avery Cohen, said the mayor agreed that the pandemic had exposed inequalities, and the city had worked to address disparities."From nearly tripling hospital capacity at the virus's peak, to creating a massive testing apparatus from the ground-up, we have channeled every possible resource into helping our most vulnerable and remain undeterred in doing so," she said.______New York has never had a unified hospital system. It has several different hospital systems, and in recent years, they have consolidated and contracted, through mergers and more than a dozen hospital closures.Today, most beds in the city are in hospitals in five private networks. NewYork-Presbyterian, which has Weill Cornell and Columbia University Irving Medical Center; NYU Langone; the Mount Sinai Health System; Northwell Health; and the Montefiore Medical Center.These networks are wealthy nonprofits aided by decades of government policies that have steered money to them. They also rake in revenue because, on average, two-thirds of their patients are on Medicare or have commercial insurance, through their employer or purchased privately.Collectively, they annually spend $150 million on advertising and pay their chief executives $30 million, records show. They also pay their doctors the most, and score the highest marks on industry ratings regarding safety, mortality and patient satisfaction.The city has 11 public hospitals. This is the city's safety net, along with the private networks' satellite campuses and a shrinking number of smaller independent hospitals, which have been financially struggling for years.At the safety-net hospitals, only 10% of patients have private insurance. The hospitals provide all the basic services but often have to transfer patients for specialty care.Most of the private networks are based at expansive campuses in Manhattan, as are some of the public hospitals. The hospital closures have largely been in other boroughs, including three beloved safety-net hospitals in Queens in just a few months in 2008-09.There are now five hospital beds for every 1,000 residents in Manhattan, while only 1.8 per 1,000 residents in Queens, 2.2 in Brooklyn and 2.4 in the Bronx, according to government data.Yet in a cruel twist, the coronavirus has mostly clobbered areas outside of Manhattan.Manhattan has only had 16 confirmed cases for every 1,000 residents, while there have been 28 per 1,000 residents in Queens, 23 in Brooklyn and 33 in the Bronx, the latest count shows.These areas have lower median incomes -- $38,000 in the Bronx versus $82,000 in Manhattan -- and are filled with residents whose jobs have put them at higher risk of infection."Certain hospitals are located in the heart of a pandemic that hit on top of an epidemic of poverty and stress and pollution and segregation and racism," said Dr. Carol Horowitz, director of the Institute for Health Equity Research at Mount Sinai.At the pandemic's peak, ambulances generally took patients to the nearest hospital -- not the one with the most capacity. That contributed to crushing surges in hospitals in areas with high infection rates, overwhelming some hospitals and reducing their ability to care for patients.In Manhattan, where many residents fled the city, hospitals also found patient release valves. Mount Sinai sent hundreds to a Central Park tent hospital. NewYork-Presbyterian sent 150 to the Hospital for Special Surgery.In all, the census at some emergency rooms actually declined.At Lenox Hill Hospital, a private hospital on the Upper East Side, Dr. Andrew Bauerschmidt said on April 8 -- near the city's peak in cases -- that the hospital had more patients than usual, but not by much."Nothing dire is going on here, like the stories we've heard at other hospitals," he said.______After weeks battling the virus at the Elmhurst Hospital Center, a public hospital in Queens that was overwhelmed by COVID-19 deaths, Dr. Ravi Katari took a shift at Mount Sinai Hospital.When he arrived at the towering campus just east of Central Park, he was surprised to see fewer patients and more workers than at Elmhurst, and a sense of calm.Katari was a fourth-year emergency medicine resident in a program run by Mount Sinai that rotates residents through different hospitals, to give them varied experiences.In interviews, seven of these residents described vast disparities during the pandemic -- especially in staffing levels.At the height of the crisis, doctors and nurses at every hospital had to care for more patients than normal. But at the safety-net hospitals, which could not deploy large numbers of specialists or students, or quickly hire workers, patient-to-staff ratios spiraled out of control.In the emergency room, where best practices call for a maximum of four patients per nurse, the ratio hit 23-1 at Queens Hospital Center and 15-1 at Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx, both public hospitals, and 20-1 at Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center, an independent facility in Brooklyn, workers said."We could not care for the number of the patients we had," said Feyoneisha McGrath, a nurse at Kingsbrook. "I worked 16 hours a day, and then I got in my car and cried."In intensive-care units, where patients require such close monitoring that the standard ratio is just two patients per nurse, ratios quadrupled at some hospitals, including at Interfaith Medical Center in Brooklyn, an independent facility, and at NewYork-Presbyterian's satellite in Queens, workers said.The city's public hospital system disputed those ratios cited by workers. It added that during the pandemic, it recruited thousands of nurses and streamlined monitoring, including by opening doors to patient rooms. The chief executive of Kingsbrook and Interfaith also disputed the ratios at those hospitals.Research has shown that staffing levels affect mortality, and that may be even more true during this pandemic because many COVID-19 patients quickly deteriorate without warning.At Brookdale, the independent hospital, three doctors said that many patients on ventilators had to remain for days or weeks in understaffed wards because the intensive-care unit was full. Amid shortages in sedatives, some patients awoke from comas alone and, in a reflexive response, removed the tubes in their airways that were keeping them breathing. Alarms rang, and staff rushed to reintubate the patients. But they all eventually died, the doctors said.A hospital spokesman, Khari Edwards, said, "Protocols for sedation of intubated patients are in place and are monitored by our quality improvement processes."Similar episodes occurred at Kingsbrook, the Queens Hospital Center and the Allen Hospital, a NewYork-Presbyterian hospital in Northern Manhattan, according to workers.Dr. Dawn Maldonado, a resident doctor at Elmhurst, described a worrisome pattern of deaths on its understaffed general medicine floors. She said at least four patients collapsed after removing their oxygen masks to try to walk to the bathroom. Workers discovered their bodies later -- in one case, as much as 45 minutes later -- in the bathroom or nearby."We'd call them bathroom codes," Maldonado said.______As the coronavirus raged, Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center in the Bronx kept running into problems with ventilators.Lincoln, a public hospital, had a limited number, and it could not acquire many more, so it had to increasingly use portable ventilators sent by the state. The machines did not have some settings to adjust to patients' breathing, including a high-pressure mode called "airway pressure release ventilation."Virtually every hospital had to use some old ventilators. But at hospitals like Lincoln, almost all patients received emergency machines, doctors said.Safety-net hospitals also ran low on dialysis machines, for patients with kidney damage. Many independent hospitals could not provide continuous dialysis even before the pandemic. At the peak, some facilities like St. John's Episcopal Hospital in Queens had to restrict dialysis even further, providing only a couple hours at a time or not providing any to some patients.While many interventions for COVID-19 are routine, like supplying oxygen through masks, safety-net hospital patients also have not had much access to advanced treatments, including a heart-lung bypass called extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO.For weeks, many independent hospitals did not have remdesivir, the experimental anti-viral drug that has been used to treat COVID-19."We are not anybody's priority," said Dr. Josh Rosenberg of the Brooklyn Hospital Center, a 175-year-old independent facility that took longer than others to gain entry to a clinical trial that provided access to the drug.Historically, safety-net hospitals have not been chosen for many drug trials.Dr. Mangala Narasimhan, a regional director of critical care at Northwell, said just participating in a trial affects outcomes, regardless of whether the drug works."You're super attentive to those patients," she said. "That is an effect in itself."Some low-income patients have even missed the most basic of treatment strategies, like being turned onto their stomach. The technique, called proning, has helped many patients breathe, but because it requires several workers to keep IV lines untangled, some safety-net hospitals have been unable to provide it.Many private centers have beds that automatically turn.______Near the corner of First Avenue and East 30th Street in Manhattan sit two hospital campuses that illustrate the disparities on the most tragic of measures: mortality rate.One is NYU Langone's flagship hospital. So far, about 11% of its coronavirus patients have died, according to data obtained by The Times. The other is Bellevue Hospital Center, the city's most renowned public hospital, where about 22% of virus patients have died.In other parts of the city, the gaps are even wider.Overall, about 1 in 5 coronavirus patients in New York City hospitals has died, according to a Times data analysis. At some prestigious medical centers, it has been as low as 1 in 10. At some community hospitals outside Manhattan, it has been 1 in 3, or worse.Many factors have affected those numbers, including the severity of the patients' illnesses, the extent of their exposure to the virus, their underlying conditions, how long they waited to go to the hospital and whether their hospital transferred healthier patients, or sicker patients.Still, experts and doctors agreed that disparities in hospital care have played a role, too."It's hard to look at the data and come to any other conclusion," said Mary T. Bassett, who led the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene from 2014-18 before joining Harvard University.The data was obtained from a number of sources, including government agencies and the individual hospital systems.Many of the sharpest disparities have occurred between hospitals in the same network.At Mount Sinai, about 17% of patients at its flagship Manhattan hospital have died, a much lower rate than at its campuses in Brooklyn (34%) and Queens (33%).Dr. David Reich, chief executive at the Mount Sinai Hospital and the Queens site, said the satellites were located near nursing homes and transferred out some of their healthy patients, making their numbers look worse. But he added that he was not surprised that large hospitals with more specialists had better morality rates.There have even been differences within the public system, where most hospitals have had mortality rates far higher than Bellevue's.At the Coney Island Hospital, 363 patients have died -- 41% of those admitted.Dr. Mitchell H. Katz, the head of the public system, strenuously objected to the use of raw mortality data, saying it was meaningless if not adjusted for patient conditions. He agreed public hospitals needed more resources, but he defended their performance in the pandemic."I'm not going to say that the quality of care that people got at my 11 hospitals wasn't as good or better as what people got at other hospitals," he said," he said. "Our hospitals worked heroically to keep people alive."______On April 17, NYU Langone employees received an email that quoted President Donald Trump praising the network's response to COVID-19: "I've heard that you guys at NYU Langone are doing really great things."The email, from Dr. Fritz François, the network's chief medical officer, infuriated residents who had worked at both NYU Langone and Bellevue. They believed that if the private network was doing great, it was because of donors and government policies letting it get more funding."When given the ear of the arguably most powerful man in the world -- who has control over essential allocation of resources and government funding -- it is a physician's duty to take this opportunity and to advocate for the resources that all patients need," they responded.At the same time, another conversation was happening. It began in late March, when doctors at the Lower Manhattan Hospital concluded their mortality rate for COVID-19 patients was more than twice the rate at Weill Cornell, a prestigious hospital in its same network, NewYork-Presbyterian.The doctors saw an alarming potential explanation. In a draft letter dated April 11, they said their nurses cared for up to five critically ill patients, while Weill Cornell nurses had two or three. They also noted staffing shortages at the Allen Hospital and NewYork-Presbyterian Queens."What hospital a patient goes to (or that EMS takes them to) should not be a choice that increases adverse outcomes, including mortality," the draft letter said.It is unclear if the doctors sent the letter. But in mid-April, network leaders sent more staff to the Lower Manhattan Hospital and that gap narrowed.Another group of network doctors undertook a deeper study and found that some of the gap was explained by differences in the ages of patients and their health conditions. But even after controlling for those issues, they found a disparity, and they vowed to study it further.In a statement, the network denied that any nurses had to monitor five critically ill patients."Short-term, raw data snapshots do not show an accurate or full picture of the entire crisis," it said.Still, one doctor who works at both hospitals said he was disturbed by one episode during the peak at the Lower Manhattan Hospital.The doctor, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he had been warned against talking to reporters, recalled he had three patients who needed to be intubated. When he called the intensive-care unit, he was told there was only space for one.One man was in his mid-40s, younger than the other two, who were both over 70."Everyone looked bad, but he had the best chance," the doctor said. "The others had to wait."The doctor said he did not know what happened to the patients after he left work. Given the high mortality rate at the hospital, he said he was reluctant to look it up."What good is it going to do me, to know what happened?" he said.--Hospital beds per 1,000 residents Manhattan: 5Bronx: 2.4Brooklyn: 2.2Queens: 1.8Confirmed cases per 1,000 residents Manhattan: 16Bronx: 33Brooklyn: 23Queens: 28Overall, more than 17,500 people have died in New York City of COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. More than 11,500 lived in ZIP codes with median household incomes below the city median, according to city data.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
The Daily BeastFlorida Hospitals Are Flooded With Partying Younger People
A week ago, Jordan Rodriguez and his fiancée met up with two friends for tacos, chicken wings, and pitchers of beer at a local pub in Pembroke Pines, Fla., one of several outings the 38-year-old has enjoyed since the Sunshine State reopened for business in May.“I wouldn’t say I felt safer, but I had started venturing out again a little bit,” Rodriguez told The Daily Beast. “I still wear a face mask whenever I go out and I have always been a germaphobe, so I’m regularly washing my hands with soap.”Little did he know that the coronavirus was likely already gestating inside him. The following morning, Rodriguez felt lousy when he woke up. Initially, he chalked it up to a few too many beers. But as the day progressed, Rodriguez wasn’t feeling better. “I took my temperature and I had a fever of 99.9,” he said. “I knew I had to get tested.”Rodriguez drove to the emergency room of the Cleveland Clinic Florida in nearby Weston, where he took a rapid test confirming he was positive for COVID-19, he recalled. His fiancée and his two friends got tested as well, but came up negative, Rodriguez said. “Since that day, I’ve felt no symptoms. I check my temperature regularly and it hasn’t gone up. But I’ve been quarantined in my bedroom.”With the Sunshine State’s COVID-19 surge gathering strength like a monstrous hurricane, emergency rooms across the pandemic epicenter of South Florida are experiencing more and more patients in their 20s and 30s carrying the coronavirus. That squares with repeated explanations for case surges in the state by Gov. Ron DeSantis—that reckless, often young people are a big part of the problem. While DeSantis does acknowledge they pose a risk to others, the implication of his appraisal, critics say, is that the state’s hospital system is not in danger of being overloaded.But some local hospitals have already reached or are nearing capacity, and these facilities are processing people like Rodriguez who took part in a reopening their government endorsed—only to get infected and exhibit mild symptoms. Such patients are often being quickly discharged, posing that very risk of spreading the deadly respiratory disease to elder family members, significant others, friends, and strangers should they not properly quarantine, health experts warned. In other words, the state’s health-care system isn’t yet underwater. But it could be soon, according to hospital workers, internal correspondence, and experts familiar with state medical data. And the people sending asymptomatic younger people on their way have a front-row seat to the danger wrought by a reopening that, experts say, set the state on course for disaster. Will Florida’s COVID Gamble Drag Down DeSantis and the GOP?“We know from the data that the cases are trending younger and we have a pretty good idea that it is related to the behavior of young folks going out to bars and house parties,” said Cindy Prins, a University of Florida epidemiology professor. “We tend to take more risks and live in the moment when we are younger. They may believe they are not at risk of being hospitalized, but they do pose a risk to others.”When the state was in its version of lockdown mode, Cleveland Clinic had days when not a single person came in with COVID-19 symptoms, according to a nurse in the hospital’s emergency room who asked that their name not be used because they were not speaking on behalf of the hospital. That’s changed.“Now, it’s about 10 a day,” the nurse said. “I had seven the last night I worked. All the ones I’ve treated are in their mid-20s to early-50s.”“They test positive but they are not critical,” the nurse said in a separate interview last month. “We send them home with instructions to take ibuprofen, rest, and quarantine for 14 days.” The hospital’s number of admissions, or people taking up beds, is lower than the number of people coming in to get tested. Cleveland Clinic’s Weston location is admitting an average of about three COVID-19 patients a day and only 20 percent of infected individuals admitted into the hospital were under 40, a spokesperson told The Daily Beast. Still, at a Sunday press conference, Gov. DeSantis said his state’s skyrocketing COVID-19 case count was largely due to young people going out and congregating in large groups without precautions such as face masks and social distancing. (He had also previously insisted the upward track was in part due to an increase in testing, and outbreaks among predominantly Hispanic migrant farming communities.) The governor pointed to statistics showing Floridians aged 18-44 were the primary spreaders of the recent spike. “You can’t control… they’re younger people. They’re going to do what they’re going to do,” DeSantis said.According to the Miami Herald, the Florida Department of Health recorded 43,964 new COVID-19 cases the week of June 21-28—the highest weekly number of infections to date. The state also set records for single day counts over the weekend. The 9,585 new cases on Saturday set a new single-day record that beat the previous record from just 24 hours earlier, when the state reported nearly 9,000 new cases. The latest update from the health department on Tuesday showed 52 percent of Florida’s 149,781 cases were people between the ages of 15 and 44. However, tracking the demographics and the number of infected individuals who need hospital care is trickier. The health department doesn’t publicize the number of people currently hospitalized, providing only the total number of hospitalizations since the pandemic started. (Citing the governor’s office, a Miami Herald reporter tweeted the state will begin compiling and disseminating this data later this week.) Rebekah Jones, the former Florida health department geographer who created the state’s COVID-19 dashboard and who claims she was fired for refusing to manipulate data, told The Daily Beast that the health department’s hospitalization data was not reliable.“The state hasn’t released any criteria or metrics related to how they’re determining whether or not an ICU patient ‘needs intensive care’ and could simply be kicked out of the bed if a sicker patient came along,” she said. A spokesperson for the state health department did not respond to a request for comment for this story.Reopening Gyms Early Is Tearing a South Florida City ApartThe Herald noted that Miami-Dade County, which has the highest number of COVID-19 cases in the state, receives bed count information from local hospitals that are made public, which provides a small glimpse as to whether or not medical facilities are about to get overwhelmed. As of Monday, ICU bed capacity in Miami-Dade area hospitals had hit 70 percent and the number of incoming patients was outpacing the number of patients being discharged, according to the county’s report. For instance, on Saturday and Sunday, 250 new patients were admitted, while 186 were discharged. A few hospitals in the county were veering toward maximum capacity.Homestead Hospital reached capacity last week, according to CBS4 Miami. And its sister facility, Baptist Hospital of Miami, saw its count of positive patients and patients suspected of having COVID-19 rise from 98 to 124 between Sunday and Monday morning, according to an internal memo obtained by The Daily Beast. The memo stated Baptist was actively transferring patients to other facilities in its network, but that all its hospitals were filling up fast.The document also noted that Miami-Dade was converting a shuttered hospital into a facility that will house positive patients, possibly providing relief to Homestead Hospital, which has seen a high number of migrant farm workers testing for COVID-19. That much, at least, was consistent with DeSantis’ line. County spokeswoman Patty Abril said Miami-Dade’s hospital site will only house COVID-19 patients from nursing homes who are being treated in hospitals, which in turn will free up more beds at area hospitals. A spokesperson for DeSantis did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.“We are still at capacity with people waiting for beds,” said a Homestead Hospital nurse who spoke to The Daily Beast on condition of anonymity because their employer, Baptist Health South Florida, has enacted a policy prohibiting staff from speaking to the media. “Most of the people receiving a COVID-positive diagnosis are completely asymptomatic.”A Baptist spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment for this story.At Aventura Hospital, which is located in northern Miami-Dade, first responders are bringing in more patients with COVID-19 symptoms comparable to the numbers during the early days of the pandemic, according to a paramedic who works there who also spoke on the condition of anonymity because Aventura has a no-media policy for employees. “A few of them needed ventilators, but most of them are stable,” the paramedic said, adding that they’ve also transported patients going to the emergency room for non-COVID reasons who still get tested and come back positive. Florida’s Reopening Party Season Is Already a COVID-19 FiascoThe paramedic was sure that the number of infected people would remain high, since individuals were not abiding by social distancing and face mask precautions, as everyone from health experts to DeSantis has said. “We’re seeing a lot of 18-35 year olds getting it,” the paramedic said. “Two of my coworkers are actually out sick now cause they got it… nothing severe, but they have to stay home until they’re negative.” The paramedic hadn’t been tested, but was worried about catching COVID-19. “It’s been hella stressful… I’m starting to feel a little bit more concerned about getting infected simply because I feel like I’m seeing so much more COVID now than before.”Aventura Hospital’s spokesperson did not return two voice messages seeking comment.Beyond the real possibility of infecting loved ones and frontline workers, young people showing mild to no symptoms can also disrupt businesses that have resumed regular work schedules.Karlie McCutcheson, a 23-year-old from Jacksonville, told The Daily Beast said she tested positive on Saturday after feeling run-down the previous week. “I was getting absurdly tired at work,” McCutcheson said. “Even my bosses noticed it. But it wasn’t until Friday night that I really believed I had caught COVID.”She had picked up food from Chipotle, McCutcheson said. “I bit into my food and I couldn’t taste anything,” she said, relaying one of the telltale indicators of COVID-19. When she informed her bosses of her positive test over the weekend, they closed the office, McCutcheson said. “Everyone is working from home and has to get tested,” she said. “Each employee had to come in one by one to get their stuff.”McCutcheson also believes her father and her brother caught COVID-19 from her when they went out to dinner for Father’s Day two Sundays ago. Her dad and sibling also tested positive last week. On Monday, Jacksonville—putative site of President Donald Trump’s Republican Convention acceptance speech at the end of August—adopted a mandatory mask requirement for public and indoor locations to slow the community spread. McCutcheson said she thinks she got COVID-19 from her boyfriend before Father’s Day when they saw each other at her apartment. He tested positive shortly after their encounter. “In Jacksonville, it was like COVID was no longer a big deal,” she said. “Everyone had gone back to living their normal lives.” Back in Pembroke Pines, Rodriguez said he will remain sequestered in his bedroom until he tests negative for COVID-19, noting he doesn’t want to infect his fiancée or her parents, who live with them. “It sucks,” he said. “I’ve just been sitting here reading books, watching YouTube videos and binging on all kinds of TV shows. But I don’t want to be responsible for giving it to anybody.” Editor’s note: After publication, a Cleveland Clinic Florida spokesperson clarified the company intended to respond to questions about admitted patients, or patients who are actually in a hospital bed receiving treatment, rather than patients who are coming in to be tested and are sent home. Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
- USA TODAY
Despite warnings, the US wasn’t prepared with masks for coronavirus. Now it’s too late
How the richest country in the world was so paralyzed by the coronavirus that it ran out of 50-cent masks.