#Also the lack of Atlanta is a travesty
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Kids Already Coping With Mental Disorders Spiral as Pandemic Topples Vital Support Systems
This story is part of a reporting partnership that includes NPR, Illinois Public Media and KHN. It can be republished for free.
A bag of Doritos, that’s all Princess wanted.
Her mom calls her Princess, but her real name is Lindsey. She’s 17 and lives with her mom, Sandra, a nurse, outside Atlanta. On May 17, 2020, a Sunday, Lindsey decided she didn’t want breakfast; she wanted Doritos. So she left home and walked to Family Dollar, taking her pants off on the way, while her mom followed on foot, talking to the police on her phone as they went.
Lindsey has autism. It can be hard for her to communicate and navigate social situations. She thrives on routine and gets special help at school. Or got help, before the coronavirus pandemic closed schools and forced tens of millions of children to stay home. Sandra said that’s when their living hell started.
“It’s like her brain was wired,” she said. “She’d just put on her jacket, and she’s out the door. And I’m chasing her.”
On May 17, Sandra chased her all the way to Family Dollar. Hours later, Lindsey was in jail, charged with assaulting her mom. (KHN and NPR are not using the family’s last name.)
Lindsey is one of almost 3 million children in the U.S. who have a serious emotional or behavioral health condition. When the pandemic forced schools and doctors’ offices to close last spring, it also cut children off from the trained teachers and therapists who understand their needs.
As a result, many, like Lindsey, spiraled into emergency rooms and even police custody. Federal data shows a nationwide surge of kids in mental health crisis during the pandemic — a surge that’s further taxing an already overstretched safety net.
‘Take Her’
Even after schools closed, Lindsey continued to wake up early, get dressed and wait for the bus. When she realized it had stopped coming, Sandra said, her daughter just started walking out of the house, wandering, a few times a week.
In those situations, Sandra did what many families in crisis report they’ve had to do since the pandemic began: race through the short list of places she could call for help.
First, her state’s mental health crisis hotline. But they often put Sandra on hold.
“This is ridiculous,” she said of the wait. “It’s supposed to be a crisis team. But I’m on hold for 40, 50 minutes. And by the time you get on the phone, [the crisis] is done!”
Then there’s the local hospital’s emergency room, but Sandra said she had taken Lindsey there for previous crises and been told there isn’t much they can do.
That’s why, on May 17, when Lindsey walked to Family Dollar in just a red T-shirt and underwear to get that bag of Doritos, Sandra called the last option on her list: the police.
Sandra arrived at the store before the police and paid for the chips. According to Sandra and police records, when an officer approached, Lindsey grew agitated and hit her mom on the back, hard.
Sandra said she explained to the officer: “‘She’s autistic. You know, I’m OK. I’m a nurse. I just need to take her home and give her her medication.'”
Lindsey takes a mood stabilizer, but because she left home before breakfast, she hadn’t taken it that morning. The officer asked if Sandra wanted to take her to the nearest hospital.
The hospital wouldn’t be able to help Lindsey, Sandra said. It hadn’t before. “They already told me, ‘Ma’am, there’s nothing we can do.’ They just check her labs, it’s fine, and they ship her back home. There’s nothing [the hospital] can do,” she recalled telling the officer.
Sandra asked if the police could drive her daughter home so the teen could take her medication, but the officer said no, they couldn’t. The only other thing they could do, the officer said, was take Lindsey to jail for hitting her mom.
“I’ve tried everything,” Sandra said, exasperated. She paced the parking lot, feeling hopeless, sad and out of options. Finally, in tears, she told the officers, “Take her.”
Lindsey does not like to be touched and fought back when authorities tried to handcuff her. Several officers wrestled her to the ground. At that point, Sandra protested and said an officer threatened to arrest her, too, if she didn’t back away. Lindsey was taken to jail, where she spent much of the night until Sandra was able to post bail.
Clayton County Solicitor-General Charles Brooks denied that Sandra was threatened with arrest and said that while Lindsey’s case is still pending, his office “is working to ensure that the resolution in this matter involves a plan for medication compliance and not punitive action.”
Sandra isn’t alone in her experience. Multiple families interviewed for this story reported similar experiences of calling in the police when a child was in crisis because caretakers didn’t feel they had any other option.
‘The Whole System Is Really Grinding to a Halt’
Roughly 6% of U.S. children ages 6 through 17 are living with serious emotional or behavioral difficulties, including children with autism, severe anxiety, depression and trauma-related mental health conditions.
Many of these children depend on schools for access to vital therapies. When schools and doctors’ offices stopped providing in-person services last spring, kids were untethered from the people and supports they rely on.
“The lack of in-person services is really detrimental,” said Dr. Susan Duffy, a pediatrician and professor of emergency medicine at Brown University.
Marjorie, a mother in Florida, said her 15-year-old son has suffered during these disruptions. He has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and oppositional defiant disorder, a condition marked by frequent and persistent hostility. Little things — like being asked to do schoolwork — can send him into a rage, leading to holes punched in walls, broken doors and violent threats. (Marjorie asked that we not use the family’s last name or her son’s first name to protect her son’s privacy and future prospects.)
The pandemic has shifted both school and her son’s therapy sessions online. But Marjorie said virtual therapy isn’t working because her son doesn’t focus well during sessions and tries to watch TV instead. Lately, she has simply been canceling them.
“I was paying for appointments and there was no therapeutic value,” Marjorie said.
The issues cut across socioeconomic lines — affecting families with private insurance, like Marjorie, as well as those who receive coverage through Medicaid, a federal-state program that provides health insurance to low-income people and those with disabilities.
In the first few months of the pandemic, between March and May, children on Medicaid received 44% fewer outpatient mental health services — including therapy and in-home support — compared to the same time period in 2019, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. That’s even after accounting for increased telehealth appointments.
And while the nation’s ERs have seen a decline in overall visits, there was a relative increase in mental health visits for kids in 2020 compared with 2019.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that, from April to October last year, hospitals across the U.S. saw a 24% increase in the proportion of mental health emergency visits for children ages 5 to 11, and a 31% increase for children ages 12 to 17.
“Proportionally, the number of mental health visits is far more significant than it has been in the past,” said Duffy. “Not only are we seeing more children, more children are being admitted” to inpatient care.
That’s because there are fewer outpatient services now available to children, she said, and because the conditions of the children showing up at ERs “are more serious.”
This crisis is not only making life harder for these kids and their families, but it’s also stressing the entire health care system.
Child and adolescent psychiatrists working in hospitals around the country said children are increasingly “boarding” in emergency departments for days, waiting for inpatient admission to a regular hospital or psychiatric hospital.
Before the pandemic, there was already a shortage of inpatient psychiatric beds for children, said Dr. Christopher Bellonci, a child psychiatrist at Judge Baker Children’s Center in Boston. That shortage has only gotten worse as hospitals cut capacity to allow for more physical distancing within psychiatric units.
“The whole system is really grinding to a halt at a time when we have unprecedented need,” Bellonci said.
‘A Signal That the Rest of Your System Doesn’t Work’
Psychiatrists on the front lines share the frustrations of parents struggling to find help for their children.
Part of the problem is there have never been enough psychiatrists and therapists trained to work with children, intervening in the early stages of their illness, said Dr. Jennifer Havens, a child psychiatrist at New York University.
“Tons of people showing up in emergency rooms in bad shape is a signal that the rest of your system doesn’t work,” she said.
Too often, Havens said, services aren’t available until children are older — and in crisis. “Often for people who don’t have access to services, we wait until they’re too big to be managed.”
While the pandemic has made life harder for Marjorie and her son in Florida, she said it has always been difficult to find the support and care he needs. Last fall, he needed a psychiatric evaluation, but the nearest specialist who would accept her commercial insurance was 100 miles away, in Alabama.
“Even when you have the money or you have the insurance, it is still a travesty,” Marjorie said. “You cannot get help for these kids.”
Parents are frustrated, and so are psychiatrists on the front lines. Dr. C.J. Glawe, who leads the psychiatric crisis department at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, said that once a child is stabilized after a crisis it can be hard to explain to parents that they may not be able to find follow-up care anywhere near their home.
“Especially when I can clearly tell you I know exactly what you need, I just can’t give it to you,” Glawe said. “It’s demoralizing.”
When states and communities fail to provide children the services they need to live at home, kids can deteriorate and even wind up in jail, like Lindsey. At that point, Glawe said, the cost and level of care required will be even higher, whether that’s hospitalization or long stays in residential treatment facilities.
That’s exactly the scenario Sandra, Lindsey’s mom, is hoping to avoid for her Princess.
“For me, as a nurse and as a provider, that will be the last thing for my daughter,” she said. “It’s like [state and local leaders] leave it to the school and the parent to deal with, and they don’t care. And that’s the problem. It’s sad because, if I’m not here …”
Her voice trailed off as tears welled.
“She didn’t ask to have autism.”
To help families like Sandra’s and Marjorie’s, advocates said, all levels of government need to invest in creating a mental health system that’s accessible to anyone who needs it.
But given that many states have seen their revenues drop due to the pandemic, there’s a concern services will instead be cut — at a time when the need has never been greater.
This story is part of a reporting partnership that includes NPR, Illinois Public Media and Kaiser Health News.
Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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This story can be republished for free (details).
Kids Already Coping With Mental Disorders Spiral as Pandemic Topples Vital Support Systems published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/
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Kids Already Coping With Mental Disorders Spiral as Pandemic Topples Vital Support Systems
This story is part of a reporting partnership that includes NPR, Illinois Public Media and KHN. It can be republished for free.
A bag of Doritos, that’s all Princess wanted.
Her mom calls her Princess, but her real name is Lindsey. She’s 17 and lives with her mom, Sandra, a nurse, outside Atlanta. On May 17, 2020, a Sunday, Lindsey decided she didn’t want breakfast; she wanted Doritos. So she left home and walked to Family Dollar, taking her pants off on the way, while her mom followed on foot, talking to the police on her phone as they went.
Lindsey has autism. It can be hard for her to communicate and navigate social situations. She thrives on routine and gets special help at school. Or got help, before the coronavirus pandemic closed schools and forced tens of millions of children to stay home. Sandra said that’s when their living hell started.
“It’s like her brain was wired,” she said. “She’d just put on her jacket, and she’s out the door. And I’m chasing her.”
On May 17, Sandra chased her all the way to Family Dollar. Hours later, Lindsey was in jail, charged with assaulting her mom. (KHN and NPR are not using the family’s last name.)
Lindsey is one of almost 3 million children in the U.S. who have a serious emotional or behavioral health condition. When the pandemic forced schools and doctors’ offices to close last spring, it also cut children off from the trained teachers and therapists who understand their needs.
As a result, many, like Lindsey, spiraled into emergency rooms and even police custody. Federal data shows a nationwide surge of kids in mental health crisis during the pandemic — a surge that’s further taxing an already overstretched safety net.
‘Take Her’
Even after schools closed, Lindsey continued to wake up early, get dressed and wait for the bus. When she realized it had stopped coming, Sandra said, her daughter just started walking out of the house, wandering, a few times a week.
In those situations, Sandra did what many families in crisis report they’ve had to do since the pandemic began: race through the short list of places she could call for help.
First, her state’s mental health crisis hotline. But they often put Sandra on hold.
“This is ridiculous,” she said of the wait. “It’s supposed to be a crisis team. But I’m on hold for 40, 50 minutes. And by the time you get on the phone, [the crisis] is done!”
Then there’s the local hospital’s emergency room, but Sandra said she had taken Lindsey there for previous crises and been told there isn’t much they can do.
That’s why, on May 17, when Lindsey walked to Family Dollar in just a red T-shirt and underwear to get that bag of Doritos, Sandra called the last option on her list: the police.
Sandra arrived at the store before the police and paid for the chips. According to Sandra and police records, when an officer approached, Lindsey grew agitated and hit her mom on the back, hard.
Sandra said she explained to the officer: “‘She’s autistic. You know, I’m OK. I’m a nurse. I just need to take her home and give her her medication.'”
Lindsey takes a mood stabilizer, but because she left home before breakfast, she hadn’t taken it that morning. The officer asked if Sandra wanted to take her to the nearest hospital.
The hospital wouldn’t be able to help Lindsey, Sandra said. It hadn’t before. “They already told me, ‘Ma’am, there’s nothing we can do.’ They just check her labs, it’s fine, and they ship her back home. There’s nothing [the hospital] can do,” she recalled telling the officer.
Sandra asked if the police could drive her daughter home so the teen could take her medication, but the officer said no, they couldn’t. The only other thing they could do, the officer said, was take Lindsey to jail for hitting her mom.
“I’ve tried everything,” Sandra said, exasperated. She paced the parking lot, feeling hopeless, sad and out of options. Finally, in tears, she told the officers, “Take her.”
Lindsey does not like to be touched and fought back when authorities tried to handcuff her. Several officers wrestled her to the ground. At that point, Sandra protested and said an officer threatened to arrest her, too, if she didn’t back away. Lindsey was taken to jail, where she spent much of the night until Sandra was able to post bail.
Clayton County Solicitor-General Charles Brooks denied that Sandra was threatened with arrest and said that while Lindsey’s case is still pending, his office “is working to ensure that the resolution in this matter involves a plan for medication compliance and not punitive action.”
Sandra isn’t alone in her experience. Multiple families interviewed for this story reported similar experiences of calling in the police when a child was in crisis because caretakers didn’t feel they had any other option.
‘The Whole System Is Really Grinding to a Halt’
Roughly 6% of U.S. children ages 6 through 17 are living with serious emotional or behavioral difficulties, including children with autism, severe anxiety, depression and trauma-related mental health conditions.
Many of these children depend on schools for access to vital therapies. When schools and doctors’ offices stopped providing in-person services last spring, kids were untethered from the people and supports they rely on.
“The lack of in-person services is really detrimental,” said Dr. Susan Duffy, a pediatrician and professor of emergency medicine at Brown University.
Marjorie, a mother in Florida, said her 15-year-old son has suffered during these disruptions. He has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and oppositional defiant disorder, a condition marked by frequent and persistent hostility. Little things — like being asked to do schoolwork — can send him into a rage, leading to holes punched in walls, broken doors and violent threats. (Marjorie asked that we not use the family’s last name or her son’s first name to protect her son’s privacy and future prospects.)
The pandemic has shifted both school and her son’s therapy sessions online. But Marjorie said virtual therapy isn’t working because her son doesn’t focus well during sessions and tries to watch TV instead. Lately, she has simply been canceling them.
“I was paying for appointments and there was no therapeutic value,” Marjorie said.
The issues cut across socioeconomic lines — affecting families with private insurance, like Marjorie, as well as those who receive coverage through Medicaid, a federal-state program that provides health insurance to low-income people and those with disabilities.
In the first few months of the pandemic, between March and May 2020, children on Medicaid received 44% fewer outpatient mental health services — including therapy and in-home support — compared to the same time period in 2019, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. That’s even after accounting for increased telehealth appointments.
And while the nation’s ERs have seen a decline in overall visits, there was a relative increase in mental health visits for kids in 2020 compared with 2019.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that, from April to October 2020, hospitals across the U.S. saw a 24% increase in the proportion of mental health emergency visits for children ages 5 to 11, and a 31% increase for children ages 12 to 17.
“Proportionally, the number of mental health visits is far more significant than it has been in the past,” said Duffy. “Not only are we seeing more children, more children are being admitted” to inpatient care.
That’s because there are fewer outpatient services now available to children, she said, and because the conditions of the children showing up at ERs “are more serious.”
This crisis is not only making life harder for these kids and their families, but it’s also stressing the entire health care system.
Child and adolescent psychiatrists working in hospitals around the country said children are increasingly “boarding” in emergency departments for days, waiting for inpatient admission to a regular hospital or psychiatric hospital.
Before the pandemic, there was already a shortage of inpatient psychiatric beds for children, said Dr. Christopher Bellonci, a child psychiatrist at Judge Baker Children’s Center in Boston. That shortage has only gotten worse as hospitals cut capacity to allow for more physical distancing within psychiatric units.
“The whole system is really grinding to a halt at a time when we have unprecedented need,” Bellonci said.
‘A Signal That the Rest of Your System Doesn’t Work’
Psychiatrists on the front lines share the frustrations of parents struggling to find help for their children.
Part of the problem is there have never been enough psychiatrists and therapists trained to work with children, intervening in the early stages of their illness, said Dr. Jennifer Havens, a child psychiatrist at New York University.
“Tons of people showing up in emergency rooms in bad shape is a signal that the rest of your system doesn’t work,” she said.
Too often, Havens said, services aren’t available until children are older — and in crisis. “Often for people who don’t have access to services, we wait until they’re too big to be managed.”
While the pandemic has made life harder for Marjorie and her son in Florida, she said it has always been difficult to find the support and care he needs. Last fall, he needed a psychiatric evaluation, but the nearest specialist who would accept her commercial insurance was 100 miles away, in Alabama.
“Even when you have the money or you have the insurance, it is still a travesty,” Marjorie said. “You cannot get help for these kids.”
Parents are frustrated, and so are psychiatrists on the front lines. Dr. C.J. Glawe, who leads the psychiatric crisis department at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, said that once a child is stabilized after a crisis it can be hard to explain to parents that they may not be able to find follow-up care anywhere near their home.
“Especially when I can clearly tell you I know exactly what you need, I just can’t give it to you,” Glawe said. “It’s demoralizing.”
When states and communities fail to provide children the services they need to live at home, kids can deteriorate and even wind up in jail, like Lindsey. At that point, Glawe said, the cost and level of care required will be even higher, whether that’s hospitalization or long stays in residential treatment facilities.
That’s exactly the scenario Sandra, Lindsey’s mom, is hoping to avoid for her Princess.
“For me, as a nurse and as a provider, that will be the last thing for my daughter,” she said. “It’s like [state and local leaders] leave it to the school and the parent to deal with, and they don’t care. And that’s the problem. It’s sad because, if I’m not here …”
Her voice trailed off as tears welled.
“She didn’t ask to have autism.”
To help families like Sandra’s and Marjorie’s, advocates said, all levels of government need to invest in creating a mental health system that’s accessible to anyone who needs it.
But given that many states have seen their revenues drop due to the pandemic, there’s a concern services will instead be cut — at a time when the need has never been greater.
This story is part of a reporting partnership that includes NPR, Illinois Public Media and Kaiser Health News.
Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
USE OUR CONTENT
This story can be republished for free (details).
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Workers Filed More Than 4,100 Complaints About Protective Gear. Some Still Died.
COVID-19 cases were climbing at Michigan’s McLaren Flint hospital. So Roger Liddell, 64, who procured supplies for the hospital, asked for an N95 respirator for his own protection, since his work brought him into the same room as COVID-positive patients.
But the hospital denied his request, said Kelly Indish, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 875.
On March 30, Liddell posted on Facebook that he had worked the previous week in both the critical care unit and the ICU and had contracted the virus. “Pray for me God is still in control,” he wrote. He died April 10.
Roger Liddell(Courtesy of Bill Sohmer)
The hospital’s problems with personal protective equipment (PPE) were well documented. In mid-March, the state office of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) received five complaints, which described employees receiving “zero PPE.” The cases were closed April 21, after the hospital presented paperwork saying problems had been resolved. There was no onsite inspection, and the hospital’s written response was deemed sufficient to close the complaints, a local OSHA spokesperson confirmed.
The grief and fear gripping workers and their families reflect a far larger pattern. Since March, more than 4,100 COVID-related complaints regarding health care facilities have poured into the nation’s network of federal and state OSHA offices, which are tasked with protecting workers from harm on the job.
A KHN investigation found that at least 35 health care workers died after OSHA received safety complaints about their workplaces. Yet by June 21, the agency had quietly closed almost all of those complaints, and none of them led to a citation or a fine.
The complaint logs, which have been made public, show thousands of desperate pleas from workers seeking better protective gear for their hospitals, medical offices and nursing homes.
The quick closure of complaints underscores the Trump administration’s hands-off approach to oversight, said former OSHA official Deborah Berkowitz. Instead of cracking down, the agency simply sent letters reminding employers to follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, said Berkowitz, now a director at the National Employment Law Project.
“This is a travesty,” she said.
A third of the health care-related COVID-19 complaints, about 1,300, remain open and about 275 fatality investigations are ongoing.
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During a June 9 legislative hearing, Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia said OSHA had issued one coronavirus-related citation for violating federal standards. A Georgia nursing home was fined $3,900 for failing to report worker hospitalizations on time, OSHA’s records show.
“We have a number of cases we are investigating,” Scalia said at the Senate Finance Committee hearing. “If we find violations, we will certainly not hesitate to bring a case.”
Texts between Barbara Birchenough and her daughter, (in blue) Kristin Carbone.(Courtesy of Kristin Carbone)
A March 16 complaint regarding Clara Maass Medical Center in Belleville, New Jersey, illustrates the life-or-death stakes for workers on the front lines. The complaint says workers were “not allowed to wear” masks in the hallway outside COVID-19 patients’ rooms even though studies have since shown the highly contagious virus can spread throughout a health care facility. It also said workers “were not allowed adequate access” to PPE.
Nine days later, veteran Clara Maass registered nurse Barbara Birchenough texted her daughter: “The ICU nurses were making gowns out of garbage bags. … Dad is going to pick up large garbage bags for me just in case.”
Kristin Carbone, the eldest of four, said her mother was not working in a COVID area but was upset that patients with suspicious symptoms were under her care.
In a text later that day, Birchenough admitted: “I have a cough and a headache … we were exposed to six patients who we are now testing for COVID 19. They all of a sudden got coughs and fevers.”
“Please pray for all health care workers,” the text went on. “We are running out of supplies.”
By April 15, Birchenough, 65, had died of the virus. “They were not protecting their employees in my opinion,” Carbone said. “It’s beyond sad, but then I go to a different place where I’m infuriated.”
OSHA records show six investigations into a fatality or cluster of worker hospitalizations at the hospital. A Labor Department spokesperson said the initial complaints about Clara Maass remain open and did not explain why they continue to appear on a “closed” case list.
Nestor Bautista, 62, who worked closely with Birchenough, died of COVID-19 the same day as she did, according to Nestor’s sister, Cecilia Bautista. She said her brother, a nursing aide at Clara Maass for 24 years, was a quiet and devoted employee: “He was just work, work, work,” she said.
Barbara Birchenough(Courtesy of Kristin Carbone)
Nestor Bautista(Courtesy of Cecilia Bautista)
Responding to allegations in the OSHA complaint, Clara Maass Medical Center spokesperson Stacie Newton said the virus has “presented unprecedented challenges.”
“Although the source of the exposure has not been determined, several staff members” contracted the virus and “a few” have died, Newton said in an email. “Our staff has been in regular contact with OSHA, providing notifications and cooperating fully with all inquiries.”
Other complaints have been filed with OSHA offices across the U.S.
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Twenty-one closed complaints alleged that workers faced threats of retaliation for actions such as speaking up about the lack of PPE. At a Delaware hospital, workers said they were not allowed to wear N95 masks, which protected them better than surgical masks, “for fear of termination or retaliation.” At an Atlanta hospital, workers said they were not provided proper PPE and were also threatened to be fired if they “raise[d] concerns about PPE when working with patients with Covid-19.”
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Of the 4,100-plus complaints that flooded OSHA offices, over two-thirds are now marked as “closed” in an OSHA database. Among them was a complaint that staffers handling dead bodies in a small room off the lobby of a Manhattan nursing home weren’t given appropriate protective gear.
More than 100 of those cases were resolved within 10 days. One of those complaints said home health nurses in the Bronx were sent to treat COVID-19 patients without full protective gear. At a Massachusetts nursing home that housed COVID patients, staff members were asked to wash and reuse masks and disposable gloves, another complaint said. A complaint about an Ohio nursing home said workers were not required to wear protective equipment when caring for COVID patients. That complaint was closed three days after OSHA received it.
It remains unclear how OSHA resolved hundreds of the complaints. A Department of Labor spokesperson said in an email that some are closed based on an exchange of information between the employer and OSHA, and advised reporters to file Freedom of Information Act requests for details on others.
“The Department is committed to protecting America’s workers during the pandemic,” the Labor Department said in a statement. “OSHA has standards in place to protect employees, and employers who fail to take appropriate steps to protect their employees may be violating them.”
The agency advised its inspectors on May 19 to place reports of fatalities and imminent danger as a top priority, with a special focus on health care settings. Since late March, OSHA has opened more than 250 investigations into fatalities at health care facilities, government records show. Most of those cases are ongoing.
According to the mid-March complaints against McLaren Flint, workers did not receive needed N95 masks and “are not allowed to bring them from home.” They also said patients with COVID-19 were kept throughout the hospital.
Patrick Cain and his wife, Kate(Courtesy of Kelly Indish)
Filing complaints, though, did little for Liddell, or for his colleague, Patrick Cain, 52. After the complaints were filed, Cain, a registered nurse, was treating people still awaiting the results of COVID-19 diagnostic tests — potentially positive patients ― without an N95 respirator. He was also working outside a room where potential COVID-19 patients were undergoing treatments that research supported by the University of Nebraska has since shown can spread the virus widely in the air.
At the time, there was a debate over whether supply chain breakdowns of PPE and weakened CDC guidelines on protective gear were putting workers at risk.
Cain felt vulnerable working outside of rooms where COVID patients were undergoing infection-spreading treatments, he wrote in a text to Indish on March 26.
Texts between union president Kelly Indish and Patrick Cain (right)(Courtesy of Kelly Indish)
“McLaren screwed us,” he wrote.
He fell ill in mid-March and died April 4.
McLaren has since revised its face-covering policy to provide N95s or controlled air-purifying respirators (CAPRs) to workers on the COVID floor, union members said.
A spokesperson for the McLaren Health Care system said the OSHA complaints are “unsubstantiated” and that its protocols have consistently followed government guidelines. “We have always provided appropriate PPE and staff training that adheres to the evolving federal, state, and local PPE guidelines,” Brian Brown said in an email.
Separate from the closed complaints, OSHA investigations into Liddell and Cain’s deaths are ongoing, according to a spokesperson for the state’s Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity.
Nurses at Kaiser Permanente Fresno Medical Center also said the complaints they aired before a nurse’s death have not been resolved. (KHN is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.)
On March 18, nurses filed an initial complaint. They told OSHA they were given surgical masks, instead of N95s. Less than a week later, other complaints said staffers were forced to reuse those surgical masks and evaluate patients for COVID without wearing an N95 respirator.
Several nurses who cared for one patient who wasn’t initially suspected of having COVID-19 in mid-March wore no protective gear, according to Amy Arlund, a Kaiser Fresno nurse and board member of the National Nurses Organizing Committee board of directors. Sandra Oldfield, a 53-year-old RN, was among them.
Arlund said Oldfield had filed an internal complaint with management about inadequate PPE around that time. Arlund said the patient’s illness was difficult to pin down, so dozens of workers were exposed to him and 10 came down with COVID-19, including Oldfield.
Sandra Oldfield(Courtesy of Lori Rodriguez)
Lori Rodriguez, Oldfield’s sister, said Sandra was upset that the patient she cared for who ended up testing positive for COVID-19 hadn’t been screened earlier.
“I don’t want to see anyone else lose their life like my sister did,” she said. “It’s just not right.”
Wade Nogy, senior vice president and area manager of Kaiser Permanente Fresno, confirmed that Oldfield had exposure to a patient before COVID-19 was suspected. He said Kaiser Permanente “has years of experience managing highly infectious diseases, and we are safely treating patients who have been infected with this virus.”
Kaiser Permanente spokesperson Marc Brown said KP “responded to these complaints with information, documents and interviews that demonstrated we are in compliance with OSHA regulations to protect our employees.” He said the health system provides nurses and other staff “with the appropriate protective equipment.”
California OSHA officials said the initial complaints were accurate and the hospital was not in compliance with a state law requiring workers treating COVID patients to have respirators. However, the officials said the requirement had been waived due to global shortages.
Kaiser Fresno is now in compliance, Cal/OSHA said in a statement, but the agency has ongoing investigations at the facility.
Arlund said tension around protective gear remains high at the hospital. On each shift, she said, nurses must justify their need for a respirator, face shield or hair cap. She expressed surprise that the OSHA complaints were considered “closed.”
“I’m very concerned to hear they are closing cases when I know they haven’t reached out to front-line nurses,” Arlund said. “We do not consider any of them closed.”
from Updates By Dina https://khn.org/news/osha-investigations-workers-filed-nearly-4000-complaints-about-protective-gear-some-still-died/
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Sifting Through Bad Takes to Explain Why U.S. Soccer Failed
There’s a lot to parse after Tuesday night’s embarrassment but I’ll start with this: That team was not prepared to play and looked like it didn’t even give a shit.
I’ve never seen a more appalling display of effort in 27 years of watching United States soccer, and that was a constant theme throughout this debacle of a qualifying cycle.
That’s on head coach Bruce Arena, who was equally casual in his post game press conference, claiming that no drastic changes needed to be made after a country of 300,000,000 people was just eliminated from the World Cup by an island nation of 1.3 million.
He should be canned for that offensive nonchalance alone.
The next thing to do is fire U.S. Soccer President Sunil Gulati and move on from the aging veterans who no longer have a future on the national team. It’s a sad way to see the likes of Clint Dempsey and Tim Howard to go out, but the silver lining is that this pathetic charade is over and we can now focus on fixing the problems.
Let’s do this:
I’m gonna cobble together all of the 24-hour hot takes that I read from soccer experts and national idiots alike, and we’ll just go down the list determining whether each one contains any sort of validity.
1. MLS is to blame for the decline of the USMNT
Yes and no.
The first thing to understand is that MLS growth has improved our regional opponents.
Honduras, Panama, and Trinidad & Tobago all have a significant number of guys playing club soccer in the United States. Two goals in the Panama/Costa Rica game were scored by MLS players, and the third goal was scored by a former MLS player. Honduras got two goals from Houston Dynamo attackers and one of the guys who scored for fucking Mexico will play for an MLS expansion team next season.
On the flip side, six of the 11 U.S. starters are current MLS players. Three of those guys, Michael Bradley, Tim Howard and Paul Arriola, played in foreign leagues before returning to the United States. You can say that Bradley and Howard got worse when they came home, but they also got older. Tim Howard played more than 10 years in England, so don’t tell me he sucked last night because he now plays in MLS.
Eight of 11 U.S. starters last night had some sort of experience playing outside of America, so I don’t buy the “blame MLS” excuse.
If anything, we’re in a weird catch 22/transitional period.
If our best players go to Europe, MLS doesn’t improve
If our best players stay in MLS, they aren’t competing against the world’s best
Translation: What’s best for MLS isn’t necessarily best for U.S. Soccer, and vice versa.
We’re right in the middle of that right now, where we want MLS to take the next step but we also want our best young talent to thrive in the world’s best leagues (Christian Pulisic). It’s gonna be a bit rocky until we find a balance there.
2. This failure will affect the popularity of soccer
No.
Last night’s travesty is an indictment on U.S. Soccer, not the popularity of the sport in this country.
See, most of the people who watch the World Cup every four years go back to watching football, basketball, baseball, and hockey after the tournament is over.
The main reason they watch is because:
there’s an element of nationalism involved (rah rah go USA!)
there’s nothing else to watch in July
Some casuals might become interested enough to consume more soccer after the WC, but the sport continues to grow in non-World Cup years because of the strength of now-available foreign broadcasts and the growth of MLS.
Atlanta United, an expansion team, set a single-game attendance record this year when they shoved 70,000 people into their stadium (they share it with the Falcons). Your hometown Philadelphia Union were really bad (again), but continued to draw 12,000 to 15,000 fans to CHESTER every weekend.
The popularity of the English Premier League and Champions League has skyrocketed on the strength of NBC and FOX broadcasts. You’ll find a lot of people who watch EPL with their kids on Saturday morning, then flip on college football or Phillies baseball later in the day.
If anything, U.S. soccer is on a trajectory that is incongruous with the overall growth of the sport here. We have millions of people in this country who love soccer, but couldn’t give a shit about the USMNT or MLS, which is an ongoing struggle.
Plus, the World Cup isn’t even the “Super Bowl” of soccer. The apex of competitive global soccer is the annual Champion’s League final.
3. This generation of players just isn’t that good
Correct.
We failed to qualify for two Olympic games and a couple of other tournaments as well, which had a cascade effect on the performance in other competitions.
There are some success stories, I think. Jorge Villafana might be the left back of the future. DeAndre Yedlin is still young and getting Premier League playing time. I’d cut ties with most of the rest of the team and start handing out caps to guys like Josh Sargent (Werder Bremen), Weston McKennie (Schalke), and Tyler Adams (NY Red Bulls).
Next friendly. Just do it, man. Clear it out. Have fun. Be weird. http://pic.twitter.com/DaY63JxcK2
— Will Parchman (@WillParchman) October 11, 2017
Let’s get the kids out there and get ahead of the curve right now. I don’t need to see more of Chris Wondolowski, Darlington Nagbe, Michael Bradley, Matt Besler, Graham Zusi, and blah blah blah etc.
4. Independent youth clubs are ruining our development
Correct.
We’re the only country in the world where soccer is a sport for suburban white kids with money.
You pay your club team, something with a stupid name like “Doylestown United Rage 1997,” a bunch of cash just so you can schlep your kids to Tuckahoe Turf Farm every other weekend for day-long tournaments in 95 degree heat.
Meantime, the urban minority soccer loving kids are just sort of falling through the cracks.
True story: the Philadelphia Union’s first academy success was an African immigrant who came to America at age 14. He joined a local club that scrimmaged a Union youth team, and that’s how he was identified and brought into the academy setup.
So it’s important to get into urban communities and identify where these kids are playing.
I used to referee at a place called “Sofive” in Elkins Park, where 95% of the players were “foreigners.” I reffed Brazilians, Mexicans, Uzbeks, Jamaicans, and Africans (not African-Americans, Africans who just got here). I guarantee that no one is scouting those kids or even paying attention. The next U.S. Soccer star is probably playing there, not at Boyertown Junior High School East.
Now, some clubs obviously want to hang on to their best players, and they aren’t crazy about becoming a “feeder” for the local MLS team, but that’s the model we’re heading towards. Individual MLS teams have their own academies. There used to be one national academy in Florida, and that’s where guys like Landon Donovan came from. In 2017, each MLS team is trying to produce its own regional domestic talent.
That relationship between longstanding clubs and these nascent MLS academies needs to be streamlined. A lot of youth soccer forces are working against each other, which is why we aren’t developing these kids from start to finish.
Here’s a valid take from an English guy who now covers MLS:
Thing about soccer in the US compared to other countries I've worked in is that game run almost like a private members club.
— Simon Evans (@sgevans) October 11, 2017
Ding ding ding! We have a winner!
But wait, here’s another take from a different ex-pat Englishman who now does play-by-play for the Colorado Rapids:
When youth soccer clubs offer 'financial aid' for parents to be able to pay for their kids to play, then that should be a concern.
— Richard Fleming (@FlemingSport) October 11, 2017
Holy shit these guys are on fire!
Maybe the Brits do know the sport better than we do…
Anyway, it also doesn’t help that some parents see sports as a gateway to a free college ride, but that’s an intrinsically American problem. Foreign kids are identified at ages five and six and stay in the same academy for their entire youth.
Here, we send kids to college from ages 18 to 22, then they don’t play pro ball until age 23 (Keegan Rosenberry). Imagine if Lionel Messi didn’t turn pro until age 23. We need our kids on MLS fields at ages 17, 18, and 19, and not wasting prime years playing meaningless ball in Chapel Hill or College Park.
And more money needs to be allocated to U.S. subsidized youth development, which needs to be restructured.
Of that $26M, $9M went to Development Academy. ~$11M went to youth team ops. $2.75M to technical advisers.
Just $2M to scouting. http://pic.twitter.com/zSz9B039WV
— Dan Dickinson (@GothamistDan) October 11, 2017
5. “If our best athletes played soccer”
Of course it would be amazing if Odell Beckham, Jr. had stuck with soccer, and he was paired up top with Lebron James in a 4-4-2.
But we’re one of the biggest countries on the planet Earth. We have enough talent here to be the best at every sport. This line of thinking is valid, but it’s not the reason for our failures. Iceland just qualified for the World Cup and their entire country has fewer people than Bucks County.
6. Our coaches aren’t good enough
This is true at every level. Same with refs.
I’ve been around some youth coaches who yell at 12-year-old children with non-instructions:
run harder!
get the ball!
kick it!
And the parents are just as bad, because they don’t understand the rules of the game and yell equally absurd things at their own children.
It happens at the top, too. The Union hired a very young Jim Curtin who has had to learn on the job during three full losing seasons. He was also given zero resources to work with, which is another story entirely.
We definitely need to emphasize coaching education and raise the standards here.
7. A lack of promotion and relegation hurts domestic competition
No, it doesn’t.
The standard of MLS play continues to grow without pro/rel. There are problem owners, like our very own Jay Sugarman, who hurt individual clubs, but there are organic ways to remove those obstacles without installing a crippling pro/rel system.
We’re just not ready for it yet, nor do we need it to be successful. U.S. Soccer didn’t fail because fourth-division Stockade FC was disenfranchised.
8. We deserve this because we voted for Donald Trump
Meh.
It’s true that some Mexican players said they were extra motivated to beat the United States because of comments our president made about their country.
But here’s the thing; if you need extra motivation to play against your arch rival in World Cup qualifying, then you’re not worthy of wearing an El Tri shirt in the first place.
We didn’t qualify for the World Cup because we’re in a weird transitional phase affecting both U.S. Soccer and MLS. A generational gap is partly due to a broken development system that needs to be reworked. We have three-hundred million people in this country and should not be losing to tiny island nations like Trinidad and Tobago. But we also have to admit that our regional opponents are improving.
That’s about it. It’s not the end of the world. It’s actually a good wake up call, because sometimes you have to hit rock bottom before realizing how bad it is. We’ll figure it out.
If you didn’t read any of the article, but want a summary instead, click on this:
Here's the full Taylor Twellman rant: http://pic.twitter.com/3YOAQrTKmY
— Max Wildstein (@MaxWildstein) October 11, 2017
Sifting Through Bad Takes to Explain Why U.S. Soccer Failed published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv
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AUGUST 2017
*****Bill Murray and the rest of the Murray brothers are opening a Caddyshack themed restaurant in the Plaza hotel in Rosemont, Il. They opened a similar eatery in Florida in 2001.** Bill Murray also got the ESPY for Chicago cubs best moment. Michelle Obama honored Eunice Kennedy Shriver at the ESPY’s for the Special Olympics.
***** Tarantino is doing the next Manson movie!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
*****Dec. 2017: Psych the movie. YES!
*****Some republicans are working on introducing a bill that would force future Presidents to release their tax returns.
*****Alice Cooper discovered he had a Warhol, “little electric chair”, 40 years after the fact. The find was rolled up in a tube in a storage locker.
*****It is so funny how Kelly Ripa looks so happy and bright when Anderson Cooper is on but not so much when that boar Seacrest is next to her.
*****Days alert: Sami will be back in the fall and look for her and Nicole to clash. We will see more of Xander but Dario is headed out of our lives. Chad and Gabby are over and look for Chad and Abigail to reunite if she survives. Is Ben Weston back in town or just in Abby’s mind? Did she see him the night of Deimos’ murder? Could she be the killer and could Chad be protecting her as she has been protecting him?
*****Another victim of John Wayne Gacy was recently identified as Jimmy Haakenson, a Minnesota runaway.
*****The Rockford Peaches are being celebrated . July 27 brought hundreds of girls and women to Beyer stadium in Rockford to play. Some of the 40’s and 50’s peaches were in the movie “A League of Their own” ,that sparked a resurgence in interest. Also in the works just across the street is The International Women’s Baseball Center.
***** Did you ever notice how often Kroger products are used on television? I am forever seeing their store brand in scenes across many networks in many scenes. I think it is because they have a very generic look.
*****It sounds like the Richard Pryor story will come to the screen. It should be exciting with Tracy Morgan as Redd Foxx and Oprah as Pryor’s Grandmother.
*****CBS and the BBC are joining forces in the tradition of Edward R. Morrow who used to report from the BBC.
*****Two topless women jumped on stage in Germany to protest Woody Allen as he played clarinet. The women read a letter Dylan Farrow once wrote to her father that alleged sexual abuse. Security guards took them away amid boo’s from the audience. Allen called the incident “stupid.”
*****Steve Martin and the Steep canyon rangers have a new album, ‘The long awaited album.’
*****Bill Brady is the newest state senator in Illinois. Is there finally an end to the budget crisis in the state? Several states have these issues but Illinois has been at the bottom of the heap, rated junk. Now that a few republicans have crossed the line to come to an agreement, can they start to pay all the bills they owe?**Chris Christie has helped to lead New Jersey to the bottom as well. They closed parks and beaches due to financial constraints. He used a beach that had been closed to the rest of the state for his 4th of July celebrating. He basically told the people that if they were Mayor, they could use the mayoral house to do it themselves but they aren’t. The only good it seemed to do was the fallout helped him reach a decision about the budget so things could reopen.
*****Jawara Mcintosh, son of Peter Tosh, is in a coma after being beaten in a New Jersey jail.
*****OMG: Does everyone know that the NRA lobbied to be sure that there is no central electronic database for gun records? When police are requesting registration on a gun after an incident, the centers 50 employees must search thru microfilm or boxes of paperwork. How do they sneak this stuff in without alarms being raised? We must pay attention!! Let’s change this for the cats at the ATF tracing center.
*****Germany has legalized same sex marriage.
*****VP Pence tells us: “Under President Trump, American security will be as dominant in the heavens as we are here on earth.”
*****Hobby lobby owners are putting together a Bible museum. They were caught smuggling black market antiquities out of ISIS territory. They claim stupidity but were warned before they even started this venture. Luckily, the artifacts were intercepted by the government and returned.
*****Hooray for Ronan Farrow and others who are working hard on the voter ID mess. Conservative politicians need to quit targeting minorities and the poor and just let us all vote. Let’s just keep things fair, is that too much to ask?
*****I am intrigued by the ads for the new show Guest Book on TBS.** People of Earth is back!!
*****The Government ethics director, Walter Shaub resigned. He claims there were many conflicts of interest and the White house fought him every step of the way. He has seen nothing like it in any republican or democrat administration.
*****HBO’s tour de Pharmacy was funny and had so many famous faces. The faux doc included references from Arby’s to a small misshapen penis and was narrated by Jon Hamm. The cast includes Mike Tyson, Will Forte, Orlando Bloom, Kevin Bacon, Maya Rudolph, Jeff Goldblum, Danny Glover, Freddie Highmore and Julia Ormand. I was a bit uncomfortable at the Lance Armstrong stuff. He was worth a chuckle at first but it got old. I admit that he is not my favorite person. I guess you gotta take the $ where you can.
*****The History channel ran a doc about Amelia Earhart. The claim was that there was a pic that may be Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan after she disappeared. This leads one to believe that they were taken prisoner by the Japanese. A history blogger disagrees , saying that the photo is from a book published 2 years before they were lost in 1937.
*****The impeachment marches seemed to get zero coverage. There were a few small mentions a couple of days later but for the most part they were ignored. I am so glad I was there. The people are speaking. The media needs to stop bending over backwards not to poke the bear and let us speak! I am glad the media is making us aware of all the lies going on in the White house. It would be refreshing to get away from the talking heads once in a while and take it to the grass roots resistance growing. Hasn’t this been part of the problem all along? Isn’t this what everyone bitched about right after the election?
*****Volvo will go totally electric or hybrid starting 2019.
***** The Emmy noms have been announced with some surprises. The biggest travesty is no nod for Michael Mckean for Better Call Saul. Some nominations were well deserved though. Lead actress drama should go to Keri Russell but Elisabeth Moss and Viola Davis are awesome as well. Some of my other faves were Bob Odenkirk and Matthew Rhys for actor in a drama. Big little lies brought 2 lead actress picks for Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon but Feud has to win for either Jessica Lange or Susan Sarandon or both. Feud is loaded with noms for costumes, director, music, hair, and supporting actor for Stanley Tucci, Alfred Molina, Judy Davis and Jackie Hoffman. Rupaul is the only thing going in the reality category. In comedy there is Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin as well Julia Louis Dreyfuss and a lot more for Veep and Atlanta. Jeffrey Tambor, Zack Galifinakis and Donald Glover are my tops for comedy acting. The best in drama are Better Call Saul, Stranger Things , The Americans and The Handmaids tale. Variety is a tough category with Full Frontal, Kimmel, the Late Show, the late late show, Last week tonight and Real Time. The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks and Dolly’s Christmas movie are both up for a vote. Voice animation has Kevin Kline, Kristen Schaal and Nancy Cartwright. Animated shows include Archer, Bob’s Burgers and the Simpson’s. Bill Nye saves the world, Drunk History , SNL and Portlandia are up for production design. American Horror Story: Roanoke only got a couple for hairstyling, sound editing and prostetic makeup. Supporting acting comedy is hard to pick with Louie Anderson, Tony Hale and Alec Baldwin for the men and Vanessa Bayer, Leslie Jones, Kate Mckinnon, Judith Light, Kathryn Hahn and Anna Chlumsky for the women. What? Another travesty, o love for Keenan Thompson? Guest actor include Carrie Fisher, Melissa McCarthy, Wanda Sykes, Tom Hanks, Dave Chappelle and Matthew Rhys.I am all the way with Alison Wright for guest acting in drama. The host category has Snoop and Martha, Alec Baldwin , Rupaul and W. Kamau Bell. Variety specials and sketch shows are filled with genius like Louis C.K., Sarah Silverman, Colbert’s election night and Documentary now! In the documentary category there is The Beatles :8 days a week from Ron Howard. Informational specials Inside the actors studio, Leah Remini: scientology and star talk: Neil deGrasse Tyson are nominated. Good luck to all!
*****Ken Burns is bringing us The Vietnam war in September which took 10 years to make.
*****Kid Rock has announced a senate run.
*****Jimmy Carter is out of the hospital after he suffered from dehydration. He was working on a house in Canada for habitat for humanity.
*****Word is that the ratings for the new Kelly and Ryan show are not too good, the same with Megyn Kelly’s new NBC show.
*****Sturgis is back on August 4 in South Dakota.
*****HBO is bringing us a doc on Steven Spielberg that is narrated by the man himself. Susan Lacy is director and producer of the project.
*****If you haven’t seen the funny or die with Al Franken and David Letterman, you must check it out. Look up years of living dangerously: Boiling the frog.
*****Fox likes to pretend that scary clown is more of a leader than he really is. They kept running a scroll across the bottom as the G-20 was going on that ‘Trump presses Putin on meddling.’ Did he really? We will never really know and if he did, it was just for show because he is adamant that he just wants to move on. Putin tells us that Trump accepted his version of events. This is really no surprise since scary clown attacked his own intelligence community on foreign soil and said that he was honored to meet Putin. The man is SO Putin’s bitch.**After Trump tweeted that he and the Russian President had talked of a joint impenetrable cyber security unit, he got much backlash. John McCain and Kyle Griffin both stated that Putin should be good at that since he is the one doing the hacking. The President talked a lot about faith in his speech in Poland. As he gets older does he think more about these things as age can make you do or does he shield himself with it? **Ivanka sat in for her Father at some of the summit. It did not seem that the other leaders were too big on seeing him anyway. I don’t think Trump has the confidence to talk with the big timers anyway. He seems to be more of a one on one guy which was what he was doing.**Of course we then learn that there was a second private meeting and who knows what that was about.**On June 25th the House backed a new package of sanctions against Moscow, North Korea and Iran. The bill prohibits scary clown from waiving penalties.** Russia has already retaliated by seizing American diplomatic properties and ordering the U.S. embassy to reduce staff.
*****Don Jr. has now been caught in multiple lies about the Russian lawyer they met with on trying to find dirt on Hillary. How many times will this family and their team lie to us?? There were more people there than they originally told us including a lobbyist that was ex counter intelligence. They claim that candidate Trump had no idea of the situation. Do they think we will believe that? We are in fact now hearing that he orchestrated his son’s response. Is Trump that stupid or does he just play an idiot on tv? Will he sacrifice his own son? Why is it that Manafort and Kushner are never far away from the trouble? The team tries to act like this Russian mess is something anyone would do. They are so far removed from honor and decency that they do not seem to know any better. They have no idea how real people operate.** We have soldiers on the Russian border that are protecting people from Russia and these yahoos think it is perfectly fine to work with them to fuck up our democracy.** BTW, The President can’t pardon someone on state or foreign charges but he can pardon on federal charges . Could all of the liars get away it? ** How long will the “we are stupid and know what we do” excuse work for these Trump voters? Who can still support a family that just keeps lining their own pockets with their clout? ** The Don Jr. legal fees are being paid in part by the 2020 Trump campaign funds. The President wants the RNC to pay the rest. ** Kushner has now been speaking casually with the feds. He came out to make a small speech after the first day that told us how innocent he was. Scary clown and his fam seem to love the country waiting for their every move.
*****Saw this on a site and wanted to share:
Parable of the talents by, Octavia E. Butler
Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought
To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears.
To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool.
To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen.
To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies.
To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.
*****Teen birth rates have declined 9%, the lowest ever.** About 3 ,000 women from other states come to Illinois each year for abortions.
*****Jodie Whittaker will be the first female Dr. Who as she becomes the 13th Doc.
*****I hear that the packet received when someone takes the oath to become an American citizen still has a letter from Obama. I guess the new administration hasn’t had time to think about welcoming new Americans.
*****The hit show, Insecure is back for another season.
*****PBS has a new season of Finding your Roots. They have already revealed that Larry David finds out that Bernie Sanders is his distant cousin.
*****Employees in a Ford plant in Ohio found a mil in weed from cars that were assembled in Mexico.
*****A show on the History channel is trying to answer the questions that have come up in recent years about H.H. Holmes being Jack the Ripper. The grandson of America’s first serial killer is leading the charge and he seems a bit disappointed whenever they hit a wall. I guess if you already know that your Grandfather was a killer, what’s a few more? The program drags everything out as these History channel shows tend to do as they repeat themselves over and over. Sometimes when they get some info, I wonder why they only follow part of it. For instance, they tested the DNA which MIGHT have belonged to a victim. The DNA did not match the grandson but did they put their findings in a database to see if there is some familial match elsewhere? They could possibly find out this way if the scarf was indeed at the crime or if the DNA belonged to later handlers of the scarf.
*****Joel Clement, former director of the office of policy analysis and the U.S. interior has been moved to the advisory office of natural resources revenue. He is one of fifty who this administration moved on June 15. He is a scientist who helps endangered Alaskan communities. Joel speaks out publically about climate change and believes this is an open and deliberate effort to silence scientists and eliminate employees that disagree with them. He is now officially a whistle blower.** It seems to me that having Trump as President is like having a really shitty Father. The family just has to go out and find their own way and we must keep trying to get him out. Until then, the Governors, the Mayors and the rest of us have to figure out our own ways to save the planet and help others in spite of him. We must counteract all the damage he is causing. Think of the children that will be scarred with all this chaos by these ‘children’ that are trying to run the country.
*****So, again there have been alleged shady police doings. Every time a cop plants evidence or does not turn on a bodycam we lose faith. Law enforcement has such a hard job and we want to believe they will be there for us. They are supposed to be taking care of us and I am sure most officers are people we can look up to but these bad seeds must be made to pay.
*****It is so strange that John McCain is fighting for his life as we are tackling this whole health care mess. He has great health care and we all wish him well. Do he and his Republican cohorts want us to have the same? Why don’t we all deserve the same chance? A perfect example is right in front of them and they should all pay attention. I think most of them believe in God. Could this have been sent as an example? The ACA has worked wonders, let’s fix what isn’t working and quit obsessing over repeal and replace. Many Democratic senators are trying to get to infrastructure and other bills. It is unbelievable that we pay these people and give them awesome insurance while they have been obsessed with this health care subject and losers in it for all these years. Who keeps voting them in??** Before they all get their long August vacations , our lawmakers voted to begin debate for repeal and replace. In the end all their votes failed and McCain cast the decisive ‘no.!’ We must not forget to thank Collins and Murkowski who were in there all the way. If it somehow hurts their manhood to call something that may be a good thing, ’Obamacare,’ then call it the ACA. History will give Obama credit even if they don’t want to and I don’t think he will care what it is called now as long as it helps people.** Word is coming out that Republicans used tax payer funds to denigrate Obama’s health care bill.
*****People of Earth is back from Conaco on TBS.
*****The podcast ‘You must remember this” is concentrating on Jean Seberg and Jane Fonda this season and their similar lives. It is a fascinating look at the beautiful and talented actresses.
*****Norm Macdonald’s podcast recently featured a great interview with Letterman.
*****The Borg/McEnroe movie starring Shia LaBeouf will open the Toronto film fest.
*****The new obsession for Trump is the incompetence of Jeff Sessions.
*****Do you ever think about the fate of the many extras/actors that we’ve seen a thousand times in the opening credits of famous shows? How about the nurses running in M*A*S*H or the people on the streets of Chicago on The Bob Newhart show? We see them again and again from the singing and dancing on The Drew Carey show to the photos on Law and Order. We do not know these people but they are a part of our life? Hats off to them!
*****American Horror Story : CULT will premiere on Sept. 5. Season 7 will add Billy Eichner, Billie Lourd and Lena Dunham along with regulars Evan Peters and Sarah Paulson, Mare Winningham and Frances Conroy. Twisty the clown is back in a story inspired by the 2016 election. The first teaser was fab and a bit Pink Floyd: the Wallish and is set in Michigan.
*****Kevin Spacey will play Gore Vidal.
*****People have been talking a lot about the recent viral videos of a woman killing her sister and the boys who let a man drown while making fun of him. These things have been around forever with “entertainment” like Faces of Death and snuff films. Things have become more main stream with social media but one can’t help but think of the final Seinfeld episode. The prosecution of the Seinfeld four when they laughed at the fat man getting robbed was like seeing the future.
*****A lot of military personnel are claiming there is a lot of extra training going on. Is something big being planned as we argue about the other stuff in front of us? ** Scary clown tweeted to us all about how transgender military personnel have no business being there. He talked with his Generals but he did not say they agreed with him. He complained of the “tremendous” medical costs but studies show that 5 times as much is spent on Viagra.
*****OJ Simpson was moved to a more secure part of the prison after he learned he would be set free later this year. Rumors are spreading that he will tour with his former victim that spoke at his hearing.
*****Sean Spicer resigned after Anthony Scaramucci (who some call a cartoon Guido) was named communications director. Ivanka and Trump met with ‘the Mucc’ for an hour and a half and then Trump called him many time before this all came down. Sara Huckabee Sanders is the new press secretary. A friend said that if Melissa McCarthy took on Spicer on SNL then it makes sense that a man should do Sara. BTW, what was with Scaramucci giving Sara hair and makeup advice? WTF? Word is that Preibus fought it all the way but he is kissing ass all over the place now. The whole affair got us our first on air briefing in 22 days. I can’t help but wonder how Spicer feels to be a lil’ blip of a joke in history. **Scaramucci deleted many old tweets he had praising Hillary and supporting stronger gun laws as well as putting down Trump and climate deniers. He is also kissing his new Messiahs bottom all over the place. The new guy acts just like his boss with an expletive filled interview that puts down everyone around him. I don’t feel a bit sorry for Priebus or Sessions, they knew what they were in for. These tactics make the loyal evangelicals look like the mob. They will sell their soul and put up with this crap to get rid of the transgender soldiers and Planned Parenthood. Trump seems to like an opportunist and is probably happy to have a new hate buddy.** This month in the circular firing squad, part of Trump’s legal team , Mark Corallo was out then Sr. asst. press secretary Michael Short was out, then Reince Preibus was out . General john Kelly is the new White House chief of staff after Preibus served the shortest term I history. Kelly was first offered the position in May.** As I post this, we have learned that Scaramucci is out.
*****Some Scary clown supporters are crowing about low gas prices and low unemployment numbers but who do they think set all that in motion. Some would argue that Presidents don’t often have much to do with gas prices. But I wish they would say what we all know , that Obama was the one who sorted out the last Republican fallout. ** And right wing pundits.. Could I ask you to please stop calling the middle of the country ‘Trump country?’ We are smarter and more diverse than you think.** BTW, heard a great line this week which is essentially the meaning of the word bully. “Trump acts like a weak man thinks a strong man should act.” I thought that hit the nail on the head.
*****They say Trump is looking into the pardon process and exactly what his limits might be in other areas as President. The conclusions of Ken Starr’s office about Presidential prosecution say, “It is proper, constitutional and legal for a federal grand jury to indict a sitting President for serious criminal acts that are not part of, and are contrary to the President’s official duties. In this country no one is above the law.” Noting the constitution’s speech or debate clause: “If the framers of our constitution wanted to create a special immunity for the President they would have written the relevant clause.”
*****Dhani Harrison will release a solo album on Oct. 6.
*****Mick Jagger turned 74 with the release of 2 new songs, Gotta get a grip and England lost. He needed to get out his own anxieties about the new world we are all living in.** Publisher John Blake claims he has an 80’s memoir written by Mick but that he is not allowed to publish it.
*****Sarah Silverman is bringing ‘I love you America’ to Hulu on Oct. 12.
*****Scary Clown 45 promised to bomb the shit out of ISIS. He has been doing a lot of air attacks which are not much talked about. In these attacks almost as many civilian deaths have occurred as in all of Obama’s time in office.** We are only 5% of the world population, quit acting like we own the fuckin’ universe!
*****American white supremacists are funding Europe’s white nationalists to try to take over border control themselves. A ship was chartered called the C-star by a group calling themselves Generation Identity. The group claims they want to deliver Muslim immigrants from the Mediterranean back to the Middle East. Beginning in France, the group has spread to Italy, the Netherlands, Austria and Germany. They say they want to defend Europe and Davis Duke has tweeted out a link to their fund raising page. They are using maritime law as an excuse to come to the “aid” of the immigrant boats.
*****How creepy was this whole Boy Scout jamboree speech? It does not get more wrong than that.
*****NBC Sports has signed Dale Jr. as a commentator.
*****Paris Jackson and Macauley Culkin got matching tattoos the other day.
*****2018 will bring us new comics of Nightmare before Christmas.
*****R.I.P Loren James, John Blackwell Jr., Nelsan Ellis, Sheila Michaels, Theresa Poehlman, Fresh Kid Ice, Maryam Mirzak Hani, Neil Welch, George Romero, Martin Landau, Chester Bennington, Liu Xiaobo, Irina Ratushinskaya , Michael Johnson, Leonard Landy, June Foray, Barbara Sinatra, Stubbs the cat (Mayor of Talkeetna, Ala.), Jeanne Moreau, Sam Shepard and John Heard.
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All I Need is for Radiohead to Come to Atlanta
Written by Maegan Macias
And they are.
Last week, Radiohead announced several new tour dates including our very own Philips Arena on April 1, 2017. I Might Be Wrong, but we all know April 1 is April Fools and if that’s what’s on Radiohead’s agenda, I will be figuring out very quickly How To Disappear Completely. However, I have faith that they would never do that to us and that True Love Waits at the doors of that concert.
Now, I would like to formally apologize for the travesty that just occurred in the previous paragraph. Conversely, however, I have no regrets. For those of you who don’t know, Radiohead hasn’t performed a concert in Atlanta for 5 years. The last performance being March 1, 2012, at the Philips Arena. Given that information, it’s obvious that for us Georgians, an appearance by Radiohead is somewhat of a rarity. Unfortunately, tickets for the show have quickly skyrocketed to easily over $100 and seat options will probably be limited to the higher altitude- loss of oxygen- nosebleed section.If you’ve been having an internal dilemma between your passion for Radiohead and lack of money, I understand. However, I was fortunate enough to be present at their show in 2012, and it was quite incredible. Each masterly crafted song was correlated with an equally as impressive light show which resulted in an immersion of both visual and auditory magic. What I’m trying to get at here, is that if you’re going to fork out the money on a concert, it should probably be Radiohead.
As of right now, I have secured some tickets to the show by knowing a guy who knows a guy who can “hook us up.” If everything works out, then I will be sure to update everyone with a detailed recollection of the concert. If not, then I will be sure to update everyone with a detailed recollection of how I sat in bed alone watching some sad movie while crying over some form of junk food and wondering why the world is against me.
If you haven’t listened to Radiohead I would adamantly recommend you to do so. For me, the beauty of Radiohead lies in how wonderfully different each one of their albums are, because of this, if you don’t like one album, the next is a fresh start. Also, on their latest album they have a song called Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Rich Man Poor Man Beggar Man Thief, so you have to at least check that out.
I’ll leave you all with this picture I took during the concert in 2012 on my sleek BlackBerry Torch which was really cool because it had a touchscreen and a sliding keyboard and I just don’t know what else you would need from a cellular device.
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Kids Already Coping With Mental Disorders Spiral as Pandemic Topples Vital Support Systems
This story is part of a reporting partnership that includes NPR, Illinois Public Media and KHN. It can be republished for free.
A bag of Doritos, that’s all Princess wanted.
Her mom calls her Princess, but her real name is Lindsey. She’s 17 and lives with her mom, Sandra, a nurse, outside Atlanta. On May 17, 2020, a Sunday, Lindsey decided she didn’t want breakfast; she wanted Doritos. So she left home and walked to Family Dollar, taking her pants off on the way, while her mom followed on foot, talking to the police on her phone as they went.
Lindsey has autism. It can be hard for her to communicate and navigate social situations. She thrives on routine and gets special help at school. Or got help, before the coronavirus pandemic closed schools and forced tens of millions of children to stay home. Sandra said that’s when their living hell started.
“It’s like her brain was wired,” she said. “She’d just put on her jacket, and she’s out the door. And I’m chasing her.”
On May 17, Sandra chased her all the way to Family Dollar. Hours later, Lindsey was in jail, charged with assaulting her mom. (KHN and NPR are not using the family’s last name.)
Lindsey is one of almost 3 million children in the U.S. who have a serious emotional or behavioral health condition. When the pandemic forced schools and doctors’ offices to close last spring, it also cut children off from the trained teachers and therapists who understand their needs.
As a result, many, like Lindsey, spiraled into emergency rooms and even police custody. Federal data shows a nationwide surge of kids in mental health crisis during the pandemic — a surge that’s further taxing an already overstretched safety net.
‘Take Her’
Even after schools closed, Lindsey continued to wake up early, get dressed and wait for the bus. When she realized it had stopped coming, Sandra said, her daughter just started walking out of the house, wandering, a few times a week.
In those situations, Sandra did what many families in crisis report they’ve had to do since the pandemic began: race through the short list of places she could call for help.
First, her state’s mental health crisis hotline. But they often put Sandra on hold.
“This is ridiculous,” she said of the wait. “It’s supposed to be a crisis team. But I’m on hold for 40, 50 minutes. And by the time you get on the phone, [the crisis] is done!”
Then there’s the local hospital’s emergency room, but Sandra said she had taken Lindsey there for previous crises and been told there isn’t much they can do.
That’s why, on May 17, when Lindsey walked to Family Dollar in just a red T-shirt and underwear to get that bag of Doritos, Sandra called the last option on her list: the police.
Sandra arrived at the store before the police and paid for the chips. According to Sandra and police records, when an officer approached, Lindsey grew agitated and hit her mom on the back, hard.
Sandra said she explained to the officer: “‘She’s autistic. You know, I’m OK. I’m a nurse. I just need to take her home and give her her medication.'”
Lindsey takes a mood stabilizer, but because she left home before breakfast, she hadn’t taken it that morning. The officer asked if Sandra wanted to take her to the nearest hospital.
The hospital wouldn’t be able to help Lindsey, Sandra said. It hadn’t before. “They already told me, ‘Ma’am, there’s nothing we can do.’ They just check her labs, it’s fine, and they ship her back home. There’s nothing [the hospital] can do,” she recalled telling the officer.
Sandra asked if the police could drive her daughter home so the teen could take her medication, but the officer said no, they couldn’t. The only other thing they could do, the officer said, was take Lindsey to jail for hitting her mom.
“I’ve tried everything,” Sandra said, exasperated. She paced the parking lot, feeling hopeless, sad and out of options. Finally, in tears, she told the officers, “Take her.”
Lindsey does not like to be touched and fought back when authorities tried to handcuff her. Several officers wrestled her to the ground. At that point, Sandra protested and said an officer threatened to arrest her, too, if she didn’t back away. Lindsey was taken to jail, where she spent much of the night until Sandra was able to post bail.
Clayton County Solicitor-General Charles Brooks denied that Sandra was threatened with arrest and said that while Lindsey’s case is still pending, his office “is working to ensure that the resolution in this matter involves a plan for medication compliance and not punitive action.”
Sandra isn’t alone in her experience. Multiple families interviewed for this story reported similar experiences of calling in the police when a child was in crisis because caretakers didn’t feel they had any other option.
‘The Whole System Is Really Grinding to a Halt’
Roughly 6% of U.S. children ages 6 through 17 are living with serious emotional or behavioral difficulties, including children with autism, severe anxiety, depression and trauma-related mental health conditions.
Many of these children depend on schools for access to vital therapies. When schools and doctors’ offices stopped providing in-person services last spring, kids were untethered from the people and supports they rely on.
“The lack of in-person services is really detrimental,” said Dr. Susan Duffy, a pediatrician and professor of emergency medicine at Brown University.
Marjorie, a mother in Florida, said her 15-year-old son has suffered during these disruptions. He has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and oppositional defiant disorder, a condition marked by frequent and persistent hostility. Little things — like being asked to do schoolwork — can send him into a rage, leading to holes punched in walls, broken doors and violent threats. (Marjorie asked that we not use the family’s last name or her son’s first name to protect her son’s privacy and future prospects.)
The pandemic has shifted both school and her son’s therapy sessions online. But Marjorie said virtual therapy isn’t working because her son doesn’t focus well during sessions and tries to watch TV instead. Lately, she has simply been canceling them.
“I was paying for appointments and there was no therapeutic value,” Marjorie said.
The issues cut across socioeconomic lines — affecting families with private insurance, like Marjorie, as well as those who receive coverage through Medicaid, a federal-state program that provides health insurance to low-income people and those with disabilities.
In the first few months of the pandemic, between March and May 2020, children on Medicaid received 44% fewer outpatient mental health services — including therapy and in-home support — compared to the same time period in 2019, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. That’s even after accounting for increased telehealth appointments.
And while the nation’s ERs have seen a decline in overall visits, there was a relative increase in mental health visits for kids in 2020 compared with 2019.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that, from April to October 2020, hospitals across the U.S. saw a 24% increase in the proportion of mental health emergency visits for children ages 5 to 11, and a 31% increase for children ages 12 to 17.
“Proportionally, the number of mental health visits is far more significant than it has been in the past,” said Duffy. “Not only are we seeing more children, more children are being admitted” to inpatient care.
That’s because there are fewer outpatient services now available to children, she said, and because the conditions of the children showing up at ERs “are more serious.”
This crisis is not only making life harder for these kids and their families, but it’s also stressing the entire health care system.
Child and adolescent psychiatrists working in hospitals around the country said children are increasingly “boarding” in emergency departments for days, waiting for inpatient admission to a regular hospital or psychiatric hospital.
Before the pandemic, there was already a shortage of inpatient psychiatric beds for children, said Dr. Christopher Bellonci, a child psychiatrist at Judge Baker Children’s Center in Boston. That shortage has only gotten worse as hospitals cut capacity to allow for more physical distancing within psychiatric units.
“The whole system is really grinding to a halt at a time when we have unprecedented need,” Bellonci said.
‘A Signal That the Rest of Your System Doesn’t Work’
Psychiatrists on the front lines share the frustrations of parents struggling to find help for their children.
Part of the problem is there have never been enough psychiatrists and therapists trained to work with children, intervening in the early stages of their illness, said Dr. Jennifer Havens, a child psychiatrist at New York University.
“Tons of people showing up in emergency rooms in bad shape is a signal that the rest of your system doesn’t work,” she said.
Too often, Havens said, services aren’t available until children are older — and in crisis. “Often for people who don’t have access to services, we wait until they’re too big to be managed.”
While the pandemic has made life harder for Marjorie and her son in Florida, she said it has always been difficult to find the support and care he needs. Last fall, he needed a psychiatric evaluation, but the nearest specialist who would accept her commercial insurance was 100 miles away, in Alabama.
“Even when you have the money or you have the insurance, it is still a travesty,” Marjorie said. “You cannot get help for these kids.”
Parents are frustrated, and so are psychiatrists on the front lines. Dr. C.J. Glawe, who leads the psychiatric crisis department at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, said that once a child is stabilized after a crisis it can be hard to explain to parents that they may not be able to find follow-up care anywhere near their home.
“Especially when I can clearly tell you I know exactly what you need, I just can’t give it to you,” Glawe said. “It’s demoralizing.”
When states and communities fail to provide children the services they need to live at home, kids can deteriorate and even wind up in jail, like Lindsey. At that point, Glawe said, the cost and level of care required will be even higher, whether that’s hospitalization or long stays in residential treatment facilities.
That’s exactly the scenario Sandra, Lindsey’s mom, is hoping to avoid for her Princess.
“For me, as a nurse and as a provider, that will be the last thing for my daughter,” she said. “It’s like [state and local leaders] leave it to the school and the parent to deal with, and they don’t care. And that’s the problem. It’s sad because, if I’m not here …”
Her voice trailed off as tears welled.
“She didn’t ask to have autism.”
To help families like Sandra’s and Marjorie’s, advocates said, all levels of government need to invest in creating a mental health system that’s accessible to anyone who needs it.
But given that many states have seen their revenues drop due to the pandemic, there’s a concern services will instead be cut — at a time when the need has never been greater.
This story is part of a reporting partnership that includes NPR, Illinois Public Media and Kaiser Health News.
Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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This story can be republished for free (details).
Kids Already Coping With Mental Disorders Spiral as Pandemic Topples Vital Support Systems published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/
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Workers Filed More Than 4,100 Complaints About Protective Gear. Some Still Died.
COVID-19 cases were climbing at Michigan’s McLaren Flint hospital. So Roger Liddell, 64, who procured supplies for the hospital, asked for an N95 respirator for his own protection, since his work brought him into the same room as COVID-positive patients.
But the hospital denied his request, said Kelly Indish, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 875.
On March 30, Liddell posted on Facebook that he had worked the previous week in both the critical care unit and the ICU and had contracted the virus. “Pray for me God is still in control,” he wrote. He died April 10.
Roger Liddell(Courtesy of Bill Sohmer)
The hospital’s problems with personal protective equipment (PPE) were well documented. In mid-March, the state office of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) received five complaints, which described employees receiving “zero PPE.” The cases were closed April 21, after the hospital presented paperwork saying problems had been resolved. There was no onsite inspection, and the hospital’s written response was deemed sufficient to close the complaints, a local OSHA spokesperson confirmed.
The grief and fear gripping workers and their families reflect a far larger pattern. Since March, more than 4,100 COVID-related complaints regarding health care facilities have poured into the nation’s network of federal and state OSHA offices, which are tasked with protecting workers from harm on the job.
A KHN investigation found that at least 35 health care workers died after OSHA received safety complaints about their workplaces. Yet by June 21, the agency had quietly closed almost all of those complaints, and none of them led to a citation or a fine.
The complaint logs, which have been made public, show thousands of desperate pleas from workers seeking better protective gear for their hospitals, medical offices and nursing homes.
The quick closure of complaints underscores the Trump administration’s hands-off approach to oversight, said former OSHA official Deborah Berkowitz. Instead of cracking down, the agency simply sent letters reminding employers to follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, said Berkowitz, now a director at the National Employment Law Project.
“This is a travesty,” she said.
A third of the health care-related COVID-19 complaints, about 1,300, remain open and about 275 fatality investigations are ongoing.
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During a June 9 legislative hearing, Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia said OSHA had issued one coronavirus-related citation for violating federal standards. A Georgia nursing home was fined $3,900 for failing to report worker hospitalizations on time, OSHA’s records show.
“We have a number of cases we are investigating,” Scalia said at the Senate Finance Committee hearing. “If we find violations, we will certainly not hesitate to bring a case.”
Texts between Barbara Birchenough and her daughter, (in blue) Kristin Carbone.(Courtesy of Kristin Carbone)
A March 16 complaint regarding Clara Maass Medical Center in Belleville, New Jersey, illustrates the life-or-death stakes for workers on the front lines. The complaint says workers were “not allowed to wear” masks in the hallway outside COVID-19 patients’ rooms even though studies have since shown the highly contagious virus can spread throughout a health care facility. It also said workers “were not allowed adequate access” to PPE.
Nine days later, veteran Clara Maass registered nurse Barbara Birchenough texted her daughter: “The ICU nurses were making gowns out of garbage bags. … Dad is going to pick up large garbage bags for me just in case.”
Kristin Carbone, the eldest of four, said her mother was not working in a COVID area but was upset that patients with suspicious symptoms were under her care.
In a text later that day, Birchenough admitted: “I have a cough and a headache … we were exposed to six patients who we are now testing for COVID 19. They all of a sudden got coughs and fevers.”
“Please pray for all health care workers,” the text went on. “We are running out of supplies.”
By April 15, Birchenough, 65, had died of the virus. “They were not protecting their employees in my opinion,” Carbone said. “It’s beyond sad, but then I go to a different place where I’m infuriated.”
OSHA records show six investigations into a fatality or cluster of worker hospitalizations at the hospital. A Labor Department spokesperson said the initial complaints about Clara Maass remain open and did not explain why they continue to appear on a “closed” case list.
Nestor Bautista, 62, who worked closely with Birchenough, died of COVID-19 the same day as she did, according to Nestor’s sister, Cecilia Bautista. She said her brother, a nursing aide at Clara Maass for 24 years, was a quiet and devoted employee: “He was just work, work, work,” she said.
Barbara Birchenough(Courtesy of Kristin Carbone)
Nestor Bautista(Courtesy of Cecilia Bautista)
Responding to allegations in the OSHA complaint, Clara Maass Medical Center spokesperson Stacie Newton said the virus has “presented unprecedented challenges.”
“Although the source of the exposure has not been determined, several staff members” contracted the virus and “a few” have died, Newton said in an email. “Our staff has been in regular contact with OSHA, providing notifications and cooperating fully with all inquiries.”
Other complaints have been filed with OSHA offices across the U.S.
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Doctors, nurses, home health aides and hospital cleaners have lost their lives during the coronavirus outbreak. Meet these essential caretakers.
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Twenty-one closed complaints alleged that workers faced threats of retaliation for actions such as speaking up about the lack of PPE. At a Delaware hospital, workers said they were not allowed to wear N95 masks, which protected them better than surgical masks, “for fear of termination or retaliation.” At an Atlanta hospital, workers said they were not provided proper PPE and were also threatened to be fired if they “raise[d] concerns about PPE when working with patients with Covid-19.”
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Of the 4,100-plus complaints that flooded OSHA offices, over two-thirds are now marked as “closed” in an OSHA database. Among them was a complaint that staffers handling dead bodies in a small room off the lobby of a Manhattan nursing home weren’t given appropriate protective gear.
More than 100 of those cases were resolved within 10 days. One of those complaints said home health nurses in the Bronx were sent to treat COVID-19 patients without full protective gear. At a Massachusetts nursing home that housed COVID patients, staff members were asked to wash and reuse masks and disposable gloves, another complaint said. A complaint about an Ohio nursing home said workers were not required to wear protective equipment when caring for COVID patients. That complaint was closed three days after OSHA received it.
It remains unclear how OSHA resolved hundreds of the complaints. A Department of Labor spokesperson said in an email that some are closed based on an exchange of information between the employer and OSHA, and advised reporters to file Freedom of Information Act requests for details on others.
“The Department is committed to protecting America’s workers during the pandemic,” the Labor Department said in a statement. “OSHA has standards in place to protect employees, and employers who fail to take appropriate steps to protect their employees may be violating them.”
The agency advised its inspectors on May 19 to place reports of fatalities and imminent danger as a top priority, with a special focus on health care settings. Since late March, OSHA has opened more than 250 investigations into fatalities at health care facilities, government records show. Most of those cases are ongoing.
According to the mid-March complaints against McLaren Flint, workers did not receive needed N95 masks and “are not allowed to bring them from home.” They also said patients with COVID-19 were kept throughout the hospital.
Patrick Cain and his wife, Kate(Courtesy of Kelly Indish)
Filing complaints, though, did little for Liddell, or for his colleague, Patrick Cain, 52. After the complaints were filed, Cain, a registered nurse, was treating people still awaiting the results of COVID-19 diagnostic tests — potentially positive patients ― without an N95 respirator. He was also working outside a room where potential COVID-19 patients were undergoing treatments that research supported by the University of Nebraska has since shown can spread the virus widely in the air.
At the time, there was a debate over whether supply chain breakdowns of PPE and weakened CDC guidelines on protective gear were putting workers at risk.
Cain felt vulnerable working outside of rooms where COVID patients were undergoing infection-spreading treatments, he wrote in a text to Indish on March 26.
Texts between union president Kelly Indish and Patrick Cain (right)(Courtesy of Kelly Indish)
“McLaren screwed us,” he wrote.
He fell ill in mid-March and died April 4.
McLaren has since revised its face-covering policy to provide N95s or controlled air-purifying respirators (CAPRs) to workers on the COVID floor, union members said.
A spokesperson for the McLaren Health Care system said the OSHA complaints are “unsubstantiated” and that its protocols have consistently followed government guidelines. “We have always provided appropriate PPE and staff training that adheres to the evolving federal, state, and local PPE guidelines,” Brian Brown said in an email.
Separate from the closed complaints, OSHA investigations into Liddell and Cain’s deaths are ongoing, according to a spokesperson for the state’s Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity.
Nurses at Kaiser Permanente Fresno Medical Center also said the complaints they aired before a nurse’s death have not been resolved. (KHN is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.)
On March 18, nurses filed an initial complaint. They told OSHA they were given surgical masks, instead of N95s. Less than a week later, other complaints said staffers were forced to reuse those surgical masks and evaluate patients for COVID without wearing an N95 respirator.
Several nurses who cared for one patient who wasn’t initially suspected of having COVID-19 in mid-March wore no protective gear, according to Amy Arlund, a Kaiser Fresno nurse and board member of the National Nurses Organizing Committee board of directors. Sandra Oldfield, a 53-year-old RN, was among them.
Arlund said Oldfield had filed an internal complaint with management about inadequate PPE around that time. Arlund said the patient’s illness was difficult to pin down, so dozens of workers were exposed to him and 10 came down with COVID-19, including Oldfield.
Sandra Oldfield(Courtesy of Lori Rodriguez)
Lori Rodriguez, Oldfield’s sister, said Sandra was upset that the patient she cared for who ended up testing positive for COVID-19 hadn’t been screened earlier.
“I don’t want to see anyone else lose their life like my sister did,” she said. “It’s just not right.”
Wade Nogy, senior vice president and area manager of Kaiser Permanente Fresno, confirmed that Oldfield had exposure to a patient before COVID-19 was suspected. He said Kaiser Permanente “has years of experience managing highly infectious diseases, and we are safely treating patients who have been infected with this virus.”
Kaiser Permanente spokesperson Marc Brown said KP “responded to these complaints with information, documents and interviews that demonstrated we are in compliance with OSHA regulations to protect our employees.” He said the health system provides nurses and other staff “with the appropriate protective equipment.”
California OSHA officials said the initial complaints were accurate and the hospital was not in compliance with a state law requiring workers treating COVID patients to have respirators. However, the officials said the requirement had been waived due to global shortages.
Kaiser Fresno is now in compliance, Cal/OSHA said in a statement, but the agency has ongoing investigations at the facility.
Arlund said tension around protective gear remains high at the hospital. On each shift, she said, nurses must justify their need for a respirator, face shield or hair cap. She expressed surprise that the OSHA complaints were considered “closed.”
“I’m very concerned to hear they are closing cases when I know they haven’t reached out to front-line nurses,” Arlund said. “We do not consider any of them closed.”
Workers Filed More Than 4,100 Complaints About Protective Gear. Some Still Died. published first on https://smartdrinkingweb.weebly.com/
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Workers Filed More Than 4,100 Complaints About Protective Gear. Some Still Died.
COVID-19 cases were climbing at Michigan’s McLaren Flint hospital. So Roger Liddell, 64, who procured supplies for the hospital, asked for an N95 respirator for his own protection, since his work brought him into the same room as COVID-positive patients.
But the hospital denied his request, said Kelly Indish, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 875.
On March 30, Liddell posted on Facebook that he had worked the previous week in both the critical care unit and the ICU and had contracted the virus. “Pray for me God is still in control,” he wrote. He died April 10.
Roger Liddell(Courtesy of Bill Sohmer)
The hospital’s problems with personal protective equipment (PPE) were well documented. In mid-March, the state office of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) received five complaints, which described employees receiving “zero PPE.” The cases were closed April 21, after the hospital presented paperwork saying problems had been resolved. There was no onsite inspection, and the hospital’s written response was deemed sufficient to close the complaints, a local OSHA spokesperson confirmed.
The grief and fear gripping workers and their families reflect a far larger pattern. Since March, more than 4,100 COVID-related complaints regarding health care facilities have poured into the nation’s network of federal and state OSHA offices, which are tasked with protecting workers from harm on the job.
A KHN investigation found that at least 35 health care workers died after OSHA received safety complaints about their workplaces. Yet by June 21, the agency had quietly closed almost all of those complaints, and none of them led to a citation or a fine.
The complaint logs, which have been made public, show thousands of desperate pleas from workers seeking better protective gear for their hospitals, medical offices and nursing homes.
The quick closure of complaints underscores the Trump administration’s hands-off approach to oversight, said former OSHA official Deborah Berkowitz. Instead of cracking down, the agency simply sent letters reminding employers to follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, said Berkowitz, now a director at the National Employment Law Project.
“This is a travesty,” she said.
A third of the health care-related COVID-19 complaints, about 1,300, remain open and about 275 fatality investigations are ongoing.
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During a June 9 legislative hearing, Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia said OSHA had issued one coronavirus-related citation for violating federal standards. A Georgia nursing home was fined $3,900 for failing to report worker hospitalizations on time, OSHA’s records show.
“We have a number of cases we are investigating,” Scalia said at the Senate Finance Committee hearing. “If we find violations, we will certainly not hesitate to bring a case.”
Texts between Barbara Birchenough and her daughter, (in blue) Kristin Carbone.(Courtesy of Kristin Carbone)
A March 16 complaint regarding Clara Maass Medical Center in Belleville, New Jersey, illustrates the life-or-death stakes for workers on the front lines. The complaint says workers were “not allowed to wear” masks in the hallway outside COVID-19 patients’ rooms even though studies have since shown the highly contagious virus can spread throughout a health care facility. It also said workers “were not allowed adequate access” to PPE.
Nine days later, veteran Clara Maass registered nurse Barbara Birchenough texted her daughter: “The ICU nurses were making gowns out of garbage bags. … Dad is going to pick up large garbage bags for me just in case.”
Kristin Carbone, the eldest of four, said her mother was not working in a COVID area but was upset that patients with suspicious symptoms were under her care.
In a text later that day, Birchenough admitted: “I have a cough and a headache … we were exposed to six patients who we are now testing for COVID 19. They all of a sudden got coughs and fevers.”
“Please pray for all health care workers,” the text went on. “We are running out of supplies.”
By April 15, Birchenough, 65, had died of the virus. “They were not protecting their employees in my opinion,” Carbone said. “It’s beyond sad, but then I go to a different place where I’m infuriated.”
OSHA records show six investigations into a fatality or cluster of worker hospitalizations at the hospital. A Labor Department spokesperson said the initial complaints about Clara Maass remain open and did not explain why they continue to appear on a “closed” case list.
Nestor Bautista, 62, who worked closely with Birchenough, died of COVID-19 the same day as she did, according to Nestor’s sister, Cecilia Bautista. She said her brother, a nursing aide at Clara Maass for 24 years, was a quiet and devoted employee: “He was just work, work, work,” she said.
Barbara Birchenough(Courtesy of Kristin Carbone)
Nestor Bautista(Courtesy of Cecilia Bautista)
Responding to allegations in the OSHA complaint, Clara Maass Medical Center spokesperson Stacie Newton said the virus has “presented unprecedented challenges.”
“Although the source of the exposure has not been determined, several staff members” contracted the virus and “a few” have died, Newton said in an email. “Our staff has been in regular contact with OSHA, providing notifications and cooperating fully with all inquiries.”
Other complaints have been filed with OSHA offices across the U.S.
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Twenty-one closed complaints alleged that workers faced threats of retaliation for actions such as speaking up about the lack of PPE. At a Delaware hospital, workers said they were not allowed to wear N95 masks, which protected them better than surgical masks, “for fear of termination or retaliation.” At an Atlanta hospital, workers said they were not provided proper PPE and were also threatened to be fired if they “raise[d] concerns about PPE when working with patients with Covid-19.”
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Of the 4,100-plus complaints that flooded OSHA offices, over two-thirds are now marked as “closed” in an OSHA database. Among them was a complaint that staffers handling dead bodies in a small room off the lobby of a Manhattan nursing home weren’t given appropriate protective gear.
More than 100 of those cases were resolved within 10 days. One of those complaints said home health nurses in the Bronx were sent to treat COVID-19 patients without full protective gear. At a Massachusetts nursing home that housed COVID patients, staff members were asked to wash and reuse masks and disposable gloves, another complaint said. A complaint about an Ohio nursing home said workers were not required to wear protective equipment when caring for COVID patients. That complaint was closed three days after OSHA received it.
It remains unclear how OSHA resolved hundreds of the complaints. A Department of Labor spokesperson said in an email that some are closed based on an exchange of information between the employer and OSHA, and advised reporters to file Freedom of Information Act requests for details on others.
“The Department is committed to protecting America’s workers during the pandemic,” the Labor Department said in a statement. “OSHA has standards in place to protect employees, and employers who fail to take appropriate steps to protect their employees may be violating them.”
The agency advised its inspectors on May 19 to place reports of fatalities and imminent danger as a top priority, with a special focus on health care settings. Since late March, OSHA has opened more than 250 investigations into fatalities at health care facilities, government records show. Most of those cases are ongoing.
According to the mid-March complaints against McLaren Flint, workers did not receive needed N95 masks and “are not allowed to bring them from home.” They also said patients with COVID-19 were kept throughout the hospital.
Patrick Cain and his wife, Kate(Courtesy of Kelly Indish)
Filing complaints, though, did little for Liddell, or for his colleague, Patrick Cain, 52. After the complaints were filed, Cain, a registered nurse, was treating people still awaiting the results of COVID-19 diagnostic tests — potentially positive patients ― without an N95 respirator. He was also working outside a room where potential COVID-19 patients were undergoing treatments that research supported by the University of Nebraska has since shown can spread the virus widely in the air.
At the time, there was a debate over whether supply chain breakdowns of PPE and weakened CDC guidelines on protective gear were putting workers at risk.
Cain felt vulnerable working outside of rooms where COVID patients were undergoing infection-spreading treatments, he wrote in a text to Indish on March 26.
Texts between union president Kelly Indish and Patrick Cain (right)(Courtesy of Kelly Indish)
“McLaren screwed us,” he wrote.
He fell ill in mid-March and died April 4.
McLaren has since revised its face-covering policy to provide N95s or controlled air-purifying respirators (CAPRs) to workers on the COVID floor, union members said.
A spokesperson for the McLaren Health Care system said the OSHA complaints are “unsubstantiated” and that its protocols have consistently followed government guidelines. “We have always provided appropriate PPE and staff training that adheres to the evolving federal, state, and local PPE guidelines,” Brian Brown said in an email.
Separate from the closed complaints, OSHA investigations into Liddell and Cain’s deaths are ongoing, according to a spokesperson for the state’s Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity.
Nurses at Kaiser Permanente Fresno Medical Center also said the complaints they aired before a nurse’s death have not been resolved. (KHN is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.)
On March 18, nurses filed an initial complaint. They told OSHA they were given surgical masks, instead of N95s. Less than a week later, other complaints said staffers were forced to reuse those surgical masks and evaluate patients for COVID without wearing an N95 respirator.
Several nurses who cared for one patient who wasn’t initially suspected of having COVID-19 in mid-March wore no protective gear, according to Amy Arlund, a Kaiser Fresno nurse and board member of the National Nurses Organizing Committee board of directors. Sandra Oldfield, a 53-year-old RN, was among them.
Arlund said Oldfield had filed an internal complaint with management about inadequate PPE around that time. Arlund said the patient’s illness was difficult to pin down, so dozens of workers were exposed to him and 10 came down with COVID-19, including Oldfield.
Sandra Oldfield(Courtesy of Lori Rodriguez)
Lori Rodriguez, Oldfield’s sister, said Sandra was upset that the patient she cared for who ended up testing positive for COVID-19 hadn’t been screened earlier.
“I don’t want to see anyone else lose their life like my sister did,” she said. “It’s just not right.”
Wade Nogy, senior vice president and area manager of Kaiser Permanente Fresno, confirmed that Oldfield had exposure to a patient before COVID-19 was suspected. He said Kaiser Permanente “has years of experience managing highly infectious diseases, and we are safely treating patients who have been infected with this virus.”
Kaiser Permanente spokesperson Marc Brown said KP “responded to these complaints with information, documents and interviews that demonstrated we are in compliance with OSHA regulations to protect our employees.” He said the health system provides nurses and other staff “with the appropriate protective equipment.”
California OSHA officials said the initial complaints were accurate and the hospital was not in compliance with a state law requiring workers treating COVID patients to have respirators. However, the officials said the requirement had been waived due to global shortages.
Kaiser Fresno is now in compliance, Cal/OSHA said in a statement, but the agency has ongoing investigations at the facility.
Arlund said tension around protective gear remains high at the hospital. On each shift, she said, nurses must justify their need for a respirator, face shield or hair cap. She expressed surprise that the OSHA complaints were considered “closed.”
“I’m very concerned to hear they are closing cases when I know they haven’t reached out to front-line nurses,” Arlund said. “We do not consider any of them closed.”
Workers Filed More Than 4,100 Complaints About Protective Gear. Some Still Died. published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/
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