April, 06 2020, 12:00am EDT
U.S. Nurses Unions: 'Our Members Are Dying. We Demand Protections Now!'
As COVID-19 cases continue to skyrocket in the United States, unions representing 230,000 nurses across the country have joined forces to demand hospitals and the government act now to give nurses optimal personal protective equipment (PPE)--including N95 respirators or higher--a demand made more dire due to the fact that nurses are beginning to die of COVID-19.
WASHINGTON
As COVID-19 cases continue to skyrocket in the United States, unions representing 230,000 nurses across the country have joined forces to demand hospitals and the government act now to give nurses optimal personal protective equipment (PPE)--including N95 respirators or higher--a demand made more dire due to the fact that nurses are beginning to die of COVID-19.
National Nurses United (comprising the California Nurses Association, the D.C. Nurses Association, the Minnesota Nurses Association, and National Nurses Organizing Committee-- including RNs in Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Missouri, Texas, West Virginia, and Veterans Affairs facilities in a dozen other states), along with the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) the Massachusetts Nurses Association, and the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals (PASNAP) are calling on employers and the government to stop treating nurses as if their lives are expendable.
"Instead of answering the demands nurses have been making for months to their employers and elected officials to ensure safe workplaces to protect themselves, their patients, and the public, hospitals have instead sent nurses to the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic with bandanas, scarves, and trash bags as protection," said National Nurses United Executive Director Bonnie Castillo, RN. "Now at least 15 nurses across the country have tragically died. How many more nurses have to die before the richest country in the world will act to protect us, so we can protect our patients?"
After losing several nurses fighting this pandemic, NYSNA President Judy Sheridan-Gonzalez, RN said, "We now bear the full brunt of a healthcare system rendered dysfunctional after years of relentless funding cuts for public health, while generating obscene profits for corporate interests. Life-protecting, life-saving equipment should have been assembled, trained practitioners should have been mobilized en masse, infrastructure should have been up and running, arming us with the tools to confront the most devastating crisis of our lifetime. And now, late to the game, we must demand that our government make herculean efforts to prevent its spread, to treat its victims, to protect caregivers who place themselves directly in harm's way, and to pull ourselves out of this abyss--or we are doomed."
"What nurses see is every hospital operating in haphazard fashion," said Minnesota Nurses Association Executive Director Rose Roach. "No hospital is using the same protocols. No hospital is maintaining the same procedures. They operate differently, day to day, and even shift to shift. For the lives of our nurses, for the lives of our patients, we have to provide the optimal protection for healthcare workers. We need the best. Not the second best. We can't afford these chances hospitals are taking with our lives."
"The health of our communities and the lives of our families, friends and neighbors depends on how we protect frontline nurses and healthcare workers right now," said Massachusetts Nurses Association President Donna Kelly-Williams, RN. "Unfortunately, there has been no consistent approach to fighting COVID-19 statewide that takes into account the safest protection standards for our frontline workers. The MNA has been the only organization driving a uniform standard of protection and support recommendations for healthcare workers in Massachusetts, as well as promoting the most effective means for hospitals to organize and provide the care to COVID-19 patients. In the absence of cohesion by the healthcare industry and the state's inability or unwillingness to enforce a consistent approach, the MNA uses a weekly letter to the governor, as well as pressure on the local level at MNA-represented healthcare facilities, to ensure an approach to this crisis that will keep nurses and frontline healthcare workers safely at the bedside and battling this pandemic."
"It is hard to fathom that nurses who have been exposed to patients with the virus are not tested for the virus, are being told to re-use protective gear, and are assigned care to COVID-19 patients without proper protections," said Edward Smith, Executive Director of the District of Columbia Nurses Association. "I find it blatantly irresponsible and a dangerous practice. We see what is happening in other areas of the nation when doctors and nurses contract the disease and are unable to care for patients. If an inordinate number of clinicians become ill in the District, it will result in a tremendous strain on D.C. hospitals to deliver care during this crisis, and we don't want that to occur in the nation's capital."
"Nurses and healthcare professionals are sacrificing greatly to meet the scale of the Covid-19 crisis, but we cannot be left to suffer the ultimate sacrifice, our lives," said PASNAP President Maureen May, RN. "Inaction has put us and our families at risk. Congress and the White House must act now and use the Defense Production Act to get personal protective equipment into our hospitals without further delay."
The unions are demanding employers stop hoarding the protective equipment they do have, keeping it under lock and key in management offices, away from the nurses and other health care workers who need it.
Employers must also adopt PPE standards based on science, not what the hospital industry wants, say nurses, emphasizing that hospital directives to reuse PPE and to downgrade levels of PPE which is antithetical to proper infection control and nurses' ability to slow the spread of the virus.
The country needs more PPE, say the unions, and they collectively demand President Trump use the Defense Production Act to act quickly to implement and increase the mass production of protective equipment for nurses and health care workers.
"Nurses are not willing to unnecessarily lose their lives, leaving their patients and families behind, just because employers and our government would not invest in the highest level of protections," the unions said in a joint statement. "Who will care for America's patients if the nurses are gone? Leaving health care workers to die is immoral, and frankly, criminal. We demand strong and immediate action--now, today--before one more nurse is lost."
National Nurses United, with close to 185,000 members in every state, is the largest union and professional association of registered nurses in US history.
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Biden Contracts Covid Again During Tough Campaign
"President Biden is vaccinated, boosted, and he is experiencing mild symptoms following a positive Covid-19 test," the White House said.
Jul 17, 2024
U.S. President Joe Biden has contracted Covid-19 for the second time and is heading to his home in Delaware to self-isolate, the White House said Wednesday evening.
"President Biden is vaccinated, boosted, and he is experiencing mild symptoms following a positive Covid-19 test," the White House said on social media.
A statement attributed to Biden's doctor said that "the president presented this afternoon with upper respiratory symptoms, to include rhinorrhea (runny nose) and nonproductive cough, with general malaise."
.@POTUS is back on Air Force One and we’re headed to Delaware pic.twitter.com/SLGfL8pcN1
— Nandita Bose (@nanditab1) July 17, 2024
"He felt okay for his first event of the day, but given that he was not feeling better, point-of-care testing for Covid-19 was conducted, and the results were positive for the Covid-19 virus," the statement continued. "Given this, the president will be self-isolating in accordance with [U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] guidance for symptomatic individuals."
The doctor said that Biden—who is 81 years old—is taking the antiviral drug Paxlovid.
Biden previously contracted Covid-19 in July 2022. In what doctors call a "rebound" positive test that affects some people who take Paxlovid, he actually tested positive twice within a two-week period.
The president—who is facing mounting calls to step aside for another Democratic candidate amid concerns over his mental fitness—was scheduled to speak at the UnidosUS Annual Conference in Las Vegas before attending a community event in the important swing state of Nevada.
Biden's positive test comes as the Republican National Convention is happening in Wisconsin, another swing state. Former President Donald Trump this week secured enough delegates to become the GOP nominee and announced Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) as his running mate.
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Peace Group Faces Death Threats After 'False Accusations' by Lawmaker at RNC
"This is a deliberate attempt to scapegoat and incite hate and retaliatory violence against our organization and views."
Jul 17, 2024
CodePink on Wednesday published a recording of a vicious death threat it received after a GOP congressman's dubious assault allegation against one of the peace group's members resulted in her arrest outside the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
According to CodePink, Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.)—a former Navy SEAL—"falsely accused" Nour Jaghama, the group's Palestine campaign coordinator, of assault after he ran into her from behind. Jaghama was arrested and held for 15 hours in a Milwaukee jail before being released. She was charged with battery against a sitting member of Congress.
"CodePink unequivocally states that no one from our organization assaulted anyone," the group said in a statement. "We attended the RNC to deliver a message of peace and disarmament, adhering strictly to nonviolent protest methods."
Van Orden took to social media Tuesday evening to claim he was "assaulted by what appeared to be a member of the pro-Hamas group CodePink" in "an incident of political violence."
"Republicans have been intimidated and targeted for years including the attempted assassination of [former President Donald] Trump and we will no longer stand by and allow lawlessness," the congressman added.
Van Orden has a history of aggressive behavior toward others, including profanity-laced tirades against a fellow congressman and a group of teenage Senate pages, and threatening a librarian over a book about gay rabbits.
Hours after Van Orden's post, CodePink received the following message:
The next Palestinian protest in the street, I'm going to get my semi-truck and run over you fucking faggots and make road pancake out of you, you fucking cunt. I hope you all die, bitch.
"Mere days after a high-profile assassination attempt, [Van Orden] used the same words to describe our peace organization that the nation is using to describe the person who attempted to kill Donald Trump," CodePink said in a statement. "This is a deliberate attempt to scapegoat and incite hate and retaliatory violence against our organization and views. In a heated political moment where people all over the United States are called to unite, Van Orden used the moment to incite hate against nonviolent activists."
CodePink called Van Orden's "pro-Hamas" slur "an obvious example of the racial profiling and anti-Palestinian hatred that has been stoked in this country since October 7."
"Hateful messaging and false accusations against Palestinians led to the killing of Wadea Al Fayoume, a 6-year-old boy in Illinois, the shooting of three Palestinian young men in Vermont, and the attempted drowning of a Palestinian child in Texas," the group added. "This incident is another incitement of violence against Palestinians. The very same rhetoric that leads our elected officials to disregard Palestinian life in Gaza is the rhetoric they use to disregard Palestinian life at home."
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'Disconnection Crisis': Power Shutoffs Put Poor at Risk as Heatwaves Ravage US
"For households who will be shut off from electricity this summer because they cannot afford their bills, even being inside their homes is dangerous," a new report says.
Jul 17, 2024
Low-income Americans face climbing energy costs and the possibility of summertime power shutoffs—even amid a devastating heatwave—if they can't pay their utility bills, thanks to a lack of legal protections in most states, a report issued Tuesday by a pair of advocacy groups warns.
The Center for Energy Poverty and Climate (EPC) and the National Energy Assistance Directors Association (NEADA) released the report, which calls for an increase in federal funding to address the issue, as more than 100 million Americans this week face heat advisories and extreme temperatures driven by climate change become increasingly common.
Many low-income people face the prospect of extreme heat inside their own homes, as 31 states offer no summer shutoff protections, the groups said.
"For households who will be shut off from electricity this summer because they cannot afford their bills, even being inside their homes is dangerous," the report says. "In less extreme situations, a family can ride out a hot day by opening their windows, taking a cool shower, and hoping it cools down at night. But when the heat persists for weeks, or the outside air is dangerous, opening a window will only make things worse."
Millions of US low-income households face power shut-offs amid deadly heat.
Half of Americans live in states without rules restricting disconnections for unpaid or overdue bills, report finds. https://t.co/0WYJHmwJ4e
— Watchdog Progressive (@Watchdogsniffer) July 16, 2024
EPC and NEADA estimated that the average American household will spend $719 on cooling costs between June and September of 2024, an 8.7% increase over last year. The rising costs of basic goods has left low-income households forced to decide between paying for food, energy, rent, and other essentials such as medicine, the report says.
Despite the increased need, federal funding to help low-income Americans cover their energy costs declined in fiscal year 2024. The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program budget was cut significantly—from $6.1 billion to $4.1 billion—and only 12% is estimated to be allotted to summer cooling initiatives.
Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives initiated the cut, which they attempted to make even more dramatic. EPC and NEADA have called for the funding to be restored, and progressive lawmakers have regularly pushed for more funding for the energy needs of low-income Americans in recent years.
Power shutoffs in summer months are common across much of the U.S., and were faced by roughly 1 million customers or more in 2022, according to Sanya Carley and David Konisky, two energy insecurity researchers who wrote about what they call the "disconnection crisis" in The Conversation on Wednesday.
One in four Americans faces energy insecurity—a figure that hasn't improved in the last decade, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The problem is prevalent among people with less than two times the federal poverty line income, and especially common in Black and Hispanic households, a 2021 study in Nature Energy found.
Though data are incomplete, disconnections are known to be high in certain parts of the U.S., including the South. "Large investor-owned utilities in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and Indiana have averaged disconnection rates near 1% of customers, and some city utilities have been even higher," Carley and Konisky wrote.
The monopolistic power that utilities hold, including their influence in state capitals, contributes to the high prices and the lack of protections. "Energy companies are skimming profits from rate hikes," Food and Water Watch wrote in a briefing released Wednesday, citing examples in California, Louisiana, and Florida.
Residents feel the squeeze and are forced into terribly difficult choices—made worse by the extreme weather caused by climate change.
"Aside from unreasonable rate hikes, my May usage was up 10% from last year because of rising heat," David Coleman, a retiree in Florida, told Food and Water Watch. "I pay that bill out of my UnitedHealthcare healthy food benefit. Less for food; more for energy."
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