"As more grocery store workers die, employees call for better protection" by Katie Johnston Globe Staff, April 7, 2020
Grocery workers and others rallied outside the Whole Foods Market in the South End to demand personal protective equipment, added benefits if needed, and hazard pay during the coronavirus pandemic. (Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff)
Several dozen Boston-area grocery store workers and their supporters protested outside the Ink Block Whole Foods in the South End Tuesday, wearing face masks and holding signs such as “Essential not disposable” as they demanded employers provide gloves and masks, additional paid sick leave, and time-and-a-half hazard pay during the coronavirus pandemic.
I'm having a hard time sympathizing, and there is always work at the liquor store.
Grocery stores have become a lifeline at a time when people are largely confined to their homes to keep the highly contagious virus from spreading, and cashiers, baggers, and other employees are exposed to a steady stream of customers with varying degrees of protections.
Could that directive actually be prolonging the "crisis?"
A number of grocery store employees nationwide have died of COVID-19 in recent days, including a Market Basket employee in Salem, the company said Tuesday. It is believed to be the first such death of a grocery store worker in Massachusetts. Two other employees at the store have tested positive and are in quarantine. A handful of employees at other Market Basket stores in the area have also been diagnosed with the virus.
Great, and what they don't tell you is whether the deaths were related to underlying conditions -- the reason being is everything is cause of death COVID-19 until further notice. Then, if lucky, the government will revise the numbers later (an admission of lying if there ever was one).
At least four other grocery store employees have died around the country, according to news reports: two at the same Chicago-area Walmart, one at a Trader Joe’s in Scarsdale, N.Y., and one at a Giant store in Largo, Md. The four chains with employees involved in Tuesday’s protest — Whole Foods, Stop & Shop, Shaw’s, and Trader Joe’s — have all reported positive tests among employees. At Stop & Shop, the majority of COVID-19 cases among the store’s employees are concentrated around New York City, a spokeswoman said.
Now let me think a moment (we had a ray of hope back then?). The new reality of martial law has engendered a sense of doom as I take one last look around at a pivotal moment. You better keep your distance because "a few extra dollars doesn’t change the workers’ fear." They need protecting during this forced labor tran$formation and exercise of evil. The terror is too much, and they now have a look of hate about them. They depend on you for a paycheck, but would rather you stay home when they see you coming. Can't go the the pharmacy, either. That's where you get sick and start feeling ill.
On Tuesday, the United Food & Commercial Workers union and Albertsons Cos., which owns Shaw’s and Star Market, launched a national campaign to have supermarket employees designated as extended first responders or emergency personnel, which would give them priority for coronavirus testing and access to masks and gloves. In several states, including Massachusetts, grocery store workers already have access to emergency child care.
Why not? The militarization of the food chain with will soon be "secured" by the Guard anyway. Tanks in the parking lots real soon because the chain is rapidly breaking down.
The problem with it all is elevating certain groups of workers -- e$$ential -- above the rest of us, with pay and perks privileges to buy 'em off and keep 'em quiet!
Again, what will become of all of us "useless eaters," 'eh?
Lisa Wilson, one of the organizers of Tuesday’s rally in Boston, started working at Shaw’s in Hyde Park a week ago, after getting laid off from her job at a movie theater in downtown Boston, she said. Employees are allowed to wear gloves and masks, but the store doesn’t provide them, she said, and workers get a 5 percent discount on the gloves it sells. Wilson, 20, makes $12.75 an hour and gets one hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours worked, she said.
"There's always a level of fear," she said. "Is today going to be the day that I get sick?"
I was worrying about that anyway.
"There's a bigger fear of how am I going to pay my bills and how am I going to take care of my family?" said Wilson, who is also helping out her parents in Fall River, who are now both out of work.
Many grocery stores have granted workers temporary raises — 10 percent at Stop & Shop, $2 an hour at Whole Foods, Shaw’s, and Trader Joe’s — and are giving workers placed in quarantine or diagnosed with COVID-19 an additional two weeks of paid sick time. Deep cleaning, installing plexiglass guards at checkouts, and limiting the number of people in stores are also becoming commonplace.
Grocery stores initially resisted supplying workers with masks, in line with recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that have since been reversed. Now, Shaw’s and Star Market are in the process of obtaining masks for workers, a spokesman said. At Whole Foods, workers must undergo temperature screenings, and gloves and masks are distributed at the beginning of each shift. Stop & Shop said it has made aisles one way and is procuring KN95 masks for employees.
Trader Joe’s said it is supplying workers with gloves; it had masks made and is in the process of distributing them. In some stores where workers have tested positive or had suspected cases, stores have been shut down for several days for additional cleaning and workers were paid during the closure, a spokesman said. In areas hard hit by the pandemic, the company is scheduling periodic store closures for deep cleaning even if there hasn’t been a diagnosed or suspected case.
I'm sure this is what the people behind this agenda want, but those paragraphs make me want to avoid something that was once one of the few joys of life. Now it is going to be like some bizarre, dystopian haz-mat experience that can only be leading to retinal scan identification -- or the mark of the bea$t Bill Gates gives you.
Wilson, the Hyde Park Shaw’s employee, said management has not been forthcoming about employees testing positive. The store has publicly confirmed cases at the Hyde Park store, and in Easton, but Wilson said her questions about it were deflected. The response made Wilson feel “hands-down scared.”
“The least you can do is inform people,” she said.
Interesting that she should say that:
"Although state officials have begun to release a daily total of confirmed cases in senior housing facilities, they continue to decline to release a list of facilities where the virus is confirmed, leaving terrified families at the mercy of each facility and whether or not it chooses to release the information about their loved ones. State lawmakers on Tuesday pushed for more transparency from state officials about which facilities are dealing with cases and how many residents have died....."
If they aren't going to be honest or release data about our elderly beloveds, one wonders what evil lurks behind the faces of women and men (notice I put you gals first?).
"Coronavirus cases continue their ominous climb in Massachusetts hospitals, though a lack of state data on total admissions on a given day makes it impossible to know just how close the health care system is to being overwhelmed....."
I'm sorry, a lack of what from the state?
"In other cities and states, similar disparities have been clear because public health departments include racial and ethnic information in daily updates charting the impact of the pandemic, but Massachusetts hasn’t publicly released racial and ethnic data for people who have been tested, infected, or killed by the novel coronavirus. That lack of information has hamstrung efforts to combat the virus, particularly in communities that have had a complicated relationship with health care providers or have significant language barriers....."
So the deep-blue, liberal state of Massachusetts isn't keeping track of or is failing to release such data when others are. I never ceased to be amazed at the depravity of this state, folks. They need to up their game on disclosing the data that is all based on modeling!
(COUGH)
"For weeks, public health officials have surmised a link between dirty air and death or serious illness from COVID-19, which is caused by the coronavirus. The Harvard analysis is the first nationwide study to show a statistical link, revealing a “large overlap” between COVID-19 deaths and other diseases associated with long-term exposure to fine particulate matter. “The results of this paper suggest that long-term exposure to air pollution increases vulnerability to experiencing the most severe COVID-19 outcomes,” the authors wrote. Overall, the research could have significant implications for how public health officials choose to allocate resources like ventilators and respirators as the coronavirus spreads. It found that just a slight increase in long-term pollution exposure could have serious coronavirus-related consequences, even accounting for other factors like smoking rates and population density. The study is part of a small but growing body of research, mostly still out of Europe, that offers a view into how a lifetime of breathing dirtier air can make people more susceptible to the coronavirus, which has already killed more than 10,000 people in the United States and 74,000 worldwide....."
I would say that cloud is a limited hangout to deflect attention from 5G and other tech-com $y$tems, and provides the scientists and government a way out of the morass with revised causes of death after the panic has subsided somewhat. Let's hope you don't relapse and need a ventilator.
On Tuesday, the state implemented caps on how many people can be inside a grocery store at one time, issuing an order that limits stores to 40 percent of the capacity listed on their occupancy permits, counting both customers and employees.
Many area supermarkets have already placed caps on the number of customers in a store, letting new ones in only when someone leaves. The new rules are designed to create consistency across the state, said Lieutenant Governor Karyn Polito.
I'm getting to the point where I would rather starve.
This is collapse of the Soviet Union stuff!
"This is about a more uniform distribution across our communities on how to provide a safe environment for customers as well as the workforces," she said Tuesday.
The rules, which take effect immediately, will be enforced by local boards of health, according to the state order. Stores are also encouraged to designate one-way aisles, “where practical” to reduce crowding, to monitor appropriate distance among customers waiting to enter, and to encourage online delivery or curbside pickup.
Another unfunded mandate!
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They can get a mask from the Turks:
"Turkey has ordered all citizens to wear masks when shopping or visiting crowded public places and announced that it will deliver masks to every family, free of charge, as infections increase in the country of 80 million. The order is the latest in a gradual tightening of antivirus measures by a government that has insisted the virus was under control and has resisted a complete lockdown. Turkey has more than 34,000 confirmed cases of the virus and has registered 725 deaths. More than 1,400 patients are in intensive care units and at least 600 medical workers have been infected, according to figures released Tuesday by the Health Ministry. The number of confirmed cases places Turkey among the top 10 currently worst-affected countries and reflects a steep rise since its first confirmed death from the disease on March 17 (New York Times)."
Related:
Due to a lack of goods, like toilet paper, frozen food, and cleaning supplies, many have chosen to go online for their grocery needs. (Associated Press/Kirsty Wigglesworth, File/Associated Press)
It's a File photo?
How busy can those workers be, and who is holding back supplies and where?
No TP is a trauma-inducing incident. Wallowing in your own filth is quite disempowering, did you know that?
Enjoy your preselected gruel:
"Online grocery services struggle to meet spike in demand" by Kelvin Chan Associated Press, April 7, 2020
LONDON — A pandemic forcing everyone to stay home could be the perfect moment for online grocery services. In practice, they’ve been struggling to keep up with a surge in orders, highlighting their limited ability to respond to an unprecedented onslaught of demand.
After panic buying left store shelves stripped of staples like pasta, canned goods, and toilet paper, many shoppers quickly found online grocery delivery lacking as well.
Okay, so they bungled it; the larger agenda being pushed is taking one of the few reason left for leaving the house ever again.
“It’s kind of becoming more challenging to put a meal together,” said Paul Smyth, a software engineer who lives near Manchester, England, where the online groceries industry is particularly advanced. He’s a longtime customer of British online-only supermarket Ocado but hasn’t been able to land a slot since he received his last delivery two weeks ago.
The problem for many delivery services is ramping up staff to pick goods in shops and deliver, but for Ocado, a cutting edge service that relies on warehouse robots, significantly increasing deliveries would mean a big investment in new machinery and warehouses too late to catch the spike in demand.
So the ROBOT will decide which bananas and grapes I get?
Then drop the box off at the door?
Smyth said he’s starting to run low on meat and frozen goods but wants to avoid going to a supermarket because he worries his medical issues are risk factors if he catches the new coronavirus.
“I won’t be panicking for another week, but if I’ve got to wait another two weeks for a delivery slot it’s going to be very close to the bone.’’
The coronavirus crisis is giving the e-commerce industry a boost but troubles at Ocado and other online grocers highlight how hard it is for the industry to quickly scale up online delivery.
In the United States, grocery shopping had only been slowly migrating online, making up 3 percent of the food retail market, according to a report last year by Deutsche Bank.
As the crisis hit, delivery orders surged as millions of Americans stayed home. During the week of March 2, even before some cities and states imposed “stay at home” orders, Instacart, Amazon, and Walmart grocery delivery sales all jumped by at least two-thirds from the year before, according to Earnest Research. Instacart, a platform that partners with more than 25,000 stores in North America, says orders in more recent weeks have surged 150 percent.
As a result, customers in hard-hit New York City are waiting days to schedule deliveries that usually take just hours.
In China, where the outbreak originated early this year, ubiquitous smartphone food apps helped millions get through months of strict lockdown. E-commerce giant Alibaba’s supermarket chain Freshippo reportedly recruited laid-off restaurant workers for temporary staff as more customers shifted to ordering by app and average basket sizes jumped in the first half of February.
Yeah, apps are the answer to everything.
Related:
"In recent days, more shops have reopened, often setting up street-front counters so that customers can buy vegetables, alcohol, cigarettes, and other goods without entering. In parks along the Yangtze River, growing numbers of families have ventured out to take in the sunshine and fresh air. Companies in Wuhan have been cautiously calling their employees back to work, contributing to the revival of city life. Across Wuhan, nearly 94 percent of businesses — almost 11,000 of them in total — have resumed operations, said Hu Yabo, the city’s deputy mayor, at a recent news briefing. For major industrial enterprises, the rate exceeded 97 percent. For service companies, it was 93 percent. It is unclear how much business they are actually doing, however....."
Yeah, I'm sure the Chinese are lying and not my $tink pre$$.
See (my emphasis): "You may be interested to know that here in China it's all over. Shops are all open, the streets are full, and restaurants are again hosting big noisy parties. I've already been to several. Schools open on a staggered basis next week - unis first, then high schools, then primary. Yours truly back to work. Interestingly, my old swine flu question, 'Do you know anyone who has the lurgy?' followed by, 'Do you know anyone who knows anyone who has the lurgy?' still holds water. Everyone I ask it of ends up scratching their head, somewhat uncomfortably I might add given that people here (minor criticisms aside) broadly support their leaders. I am in the second biggest city in the province next to Hubei and in spite of a spectacularly efficient transport system (just like the shinkansen only noisier with trains running like clockwork every ten minutes) delivering thousands of people from Wuhan hither and yon prior to the shutdown, according my journo cousin here we only had a hundred or so people fall ill and that resulting in a single fatality. He didn't reply when I said that that sounds like regular flu. Go figure the logic of thousands of people from Wuhan travelling within China during the given pre-shutdown window resulting in not particularly high figures compared to the tiny numbers of the aforementioned travelling overseas with everyone in those countries going down like ninepins. Like that makes sense? Let the record reflect that the witness is shaking his head in disbelief. Anonymous 30 March 2020 at 20:11"
God, I'm so sick of being lied to.
Britain’s online grocery market, one of the world’s most advanced, is estimated to account for 8.3 percent of all sales in 2020, according to market research firm Mintel. Nevertheless, Ocado and the online arms of bricks and mortar rivals Tesco, Sainsbury’s, and Walmart owned-Asda were all booked up. To be fair, they’re prioritizing slots for vulnerable customers.
Look who is at the head of the table:
"The British government hurtled into uncharted territory Tuesday, with its foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, taking up the day-to-day duties of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who was being treated in an intensive care unit as he battled a worsening case of the coronavirus. Britain, with no written constitution, does not have a codified order of succession. That legal lacuna has prompted questions during prior episodes where prime ministers fell ill or underwent surgery, and now looms large at a time when Britain faces its greatest crisis since World War II. Raab, 46, as first secretary of state, would become the government’s de facto leader if the prime minister could not carry out his duties. He was “deputized” by Johnson on Monday, led the government’s daily meetings about the pandemic, and will probably take on additional duties, with Johnson’s prognosis so uncertain. The government said Johnson, who has suffered symptoms of the virus for 11 days, was moved into intensive care Monday evening after his condition deteriorated sharply. He has received “standard oxygen treatment” but is breathing on his own and has not been put on a ventilator, officials said Tuesday. Nor has he been diagnosed with pneumonia, they said. Still, how the government will function if the prime minister is out for a prolonged period, or dies, is not yet clear. The government will face momentous decisions, including when and how to lift the lockdown on Britain. Johnson, 55, had been leading that process and communicated the government’s measures to the public in daily briefings, where his familiar shambling style gave way to a graver mien. Raab, by contrast, has been a peripheral figure in the government’s response, mostly focusing on organizing evacuation flights to bring back Britons stranded overseas. He is best known for his hard-line views on Brexit, which helped him get his post in Johnson’s pro-Brexit Cabinet. No other Western government has been so ravaged by the virus, and it comes after 3½ years of political upheaval. Even before this crisis, analysts said Johnson’s Cabinet was weak, in part because he purged several senior party members during last fall’s bitter debate over Brexit (New York Times)."
I thought Italy had it worse, and some have suggested Johnson will be sacrificed as a diversion and a sop so that conspiracy theorists are discredited.
Also see:
"AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline, the UK’s two pharmaceutical giants, will collaborate with the University of Cambridge to develop technology to test more of the country’s residents for the deadly coronavirus. The group will begin working at the university’s Anne McLaren laboratory on developing high-throughput screening, according to a statement. One of the key goals is to find tests using alternatives to chemicals that are now in short supply. Ramping up testing is seen as a critical step in understanding how widespread the virus is, and whether people who have recovered from Covid-19 can resume working without risk of transmitting it. The stealthy virus is able to be spread by people who haven’t yet developed symptoms, or won’t at all (Bloomberg News)."
Therefore, everyone must be tested and vaccinated.
Ocado has pioneered online groceries in the UK since 2002 with automated warehouse robots and has licensed its technology to other companies including Kroger. That experience wasn’t enough when its website melted down after traffic quadrupled.
The company battled to get systems back to normal by taking its smartphone app offline and stopping new account signups. It temporarily blocked its website, then made all visitors wait in a virtual queue, alienating long-time users.
“It just felt as if they’d completely abandoned customers,’’ said Smyth, 50, who waited as long as four hours online only to find there were no delivery slots. Ocado now has a new system to allocate slots but Smyth still hasn’t had any luck and is getting by with basic items from a local shop.
The robot hasn't yet delivered?
CEO Melanie Smith e-mailed customers to tell them demand spiked to 10 times the normal level. Her message came after Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced new lockdown rules and urged people to use food delivery services.
Every time the British government announces new measures to fight the virus, she said, “we see a further extraordinary surge of customers.’’
“No matter how hard we work, we will not have enough capacity to serve the unprecedented levels of demand.’’
Ocado operates three warehouses, where cube-shaped robots on wheels zip along vast grids, picking up crates of soda, teabags, or apples and delivering them to “picking stations.’’ There, humans or robot arms put together customer orders to be delivered by a fleet of vans.
The company said it handled 343,000 orders per week in the quarter ending March 1, and sales have since doubled. Analysts note the main factor influencing growth in an automated system like Ocado’s is warehouse capacity.
“There are only so many of those warehouses you can build,” said Simon Bowler, an analyst at Numis Securities. It takes up to two years for Ocado to build a warehouse, so “saying today, we’re going to build a new warehouse, it doesn’t solve the problem here and now.”
I'm sure there will be a lot of empty properties that can easily be repurposed.
Traditional supermarkets have their own less sophisticated online operations, using people to pick items off shelves.
That is “a bit easier to flex to sudden huge increases in demand,” said Bowler — you just need to hire more people.
What if you want to pick your own?
Companies have started doing that. British supermarket Morrison’s is hiring 2,500 extra drivers and pickers. Amazon is looking for 100,000 more staff, while Instacart plans to add 300,000 gig workers.
Still, Instacart’s workers have struggled to meet efficiency targets, as stores impose distancing rules and business surges.
Everything has it bugs except bailout money getting to banks. That goes off without a hitch!
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Maybe you could have the caterers deliver instead:
"EzCater, fast-rising Boston tech company, lays off 400; Corporate catering business declines during COVID-19 pandemic" by Andy Rosen and Shirley Leung Globe Staff and Globe Columnist, April 7, 2020
EzCater, a heavily funded Boston technology firm that helps companies order food for corporate events, said Tuesday that it has laid off 400 staff members as it contends with a huge decline in business during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“There is not enough sugar on the planet to sugarcoat this: we’re a company that feeds meetings, and meetings are not happening much right now,” the company said in a statement.
The layoffs affected employees across the company’s global offices, including in Boston, Denver, Vancouver, and Paris.
A spokesperson for ezCater said the company had over 900 employees before the layoffs. The firm, which was founded in 2007 and has been valued by its investors at more than $1 billion, said last April that it had 600-plus employees — 400 in Boston — and planned to add a few hundred more in the next year. By the time the company moved into a new headquarters at 40 Water St. last summer, its Boston staff had grown to nearly 500.
“Now, we have to scale back until the world returns,” the company’s statement said.
EzCater, which has raised at least $320 million in venture funding over the years, said it hoped to begin growing again when the crisis subsides.
“Coronavirus is accelerating the move of restaurants and catering online," the company said. “EzCater is well-capitalized and remains as ready as ever to help our catering partners grow their business and help our customers succeed.”
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They will have to go back to milkmen:
"Mass. dairy farms hit hard by coronavirus shutdown" by Travis Andersen Globe Staff, April 7, 2020
Francis Gibson recalls stories of relatives who sold coffee and doughnuts to Works Progress Administration workers during the Great Depression to keep the family farm afloat.
Last month, his Gibson’s Dairy Farms in Worcester lost 65 percent of its business overnight when schools shut down and restaurants severely curtailed operations amid the pandemic.
“We don’t think this is anywhere near as tough” as the Depression, said Gibson, whose family has been in the business since 1923. “I think we can make it through this.”
Still, though, the pandemic has hit his farm and others in the state’s dairy industry hard, he said. Shortly after the state closed schools and restricted restaurants to takeout only, he was forced to lay off several employees.
He has since been able to rehire some, and the farm has applied for government loans available to small businesses affected by the pandemic, but harsh economic realities remain, he said.
Did you fill out the proper paperwork?
Wholesale customers, including “school systems, colleges, day-care centers, completely shut down,” Gibson said. “Schools being the biggest. Without them, you don’t have that daily usage every single day. Your restaurants, your caterers, all your events are shut down. It’s not just dairy. All foods are affected.”
Gibson said his farm continues to serve customers, including school systems offering lunches to families, restaurants filling takeout orders, hospitals and nursing homes, and independent markets, and home-delivery orders have “absolutely exploded,” he said.
At the same time, he said, owners of some successful restaurants he services have decided to retire, and smaller places that were struggling even before the pandemic probably aren’t coming back.
“There will definitely be a fallout from this,” Gibson said. “We don’t know the total effect. It depends on how long this lasts.”
Only the $trong will $urvive!
Statewide, tens of millions of dollars key to local economies hang in the balance. More than 200 dairy farms currently operate in Massachusetts, according to the state Department of Agriculture.
“Dairy farming circulates approximately $40 million to local economies," the agency says on its website. “Dairy farmers and their cows work hard every day to produce approximately 246 million pounds of fresh, nutritious milk.”
Not a global pillar like oil, and those Biden protesters must be happy!
Abigail Ames, office manager at Thatcher Farm in Milton, which has been in business since 1891, said they’ve also lost wholesale business.
“We’ve definitely seen an unfortunate decrease in our commercial business” with restaurants scaled back to takeout only, she said, but Ames said the farm’s residential delivery business has been “inundated” with roughly 700 new requests, necessitating a waiting list. Ames said the farm has been able to offset many of the commercial losses with the spike in home deliveries.
“I would say it’s pretty close, because a $15 [home] order has turned into a much higher dollar order,” she said. “I wouldn’t say it’s a complete wash, but it’s definitely helped improve that loss of compensation on the commercial end, which we’re extremely grateful for.”
Though times are challenging, she said, the farm’s owners have been able to provide perspective as a family that’s been in business for well over a century.
“They’ve been able to stay a little more calmer than us younger folks,” she said.
I hope they don't need any tools.
Mark Duffy of Great Brook Farm in Carlisle, a part of the Cabot Cheese cooperative, said his retail stand, which primarily sells ice cream, was forced to close. He said his farm continues to sell dairy products to grocery stores, but the restaurant and food service business has “almost gone away.”
“Good restaurants use butter, sour cream, cheese,” he said, “and the increase in [selling to] grocery stores has not compensated for the loss in food service, unfortunately.”
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Can always eat the cows, but how many will end up homeless?
Related:
"The brewer of Samuel Adams beers, meanwhile, has been hurt by all the restaurant shutdowns, but sales at stores soared as beer drinkers packed their home fridges, according to Nielsen data, [and] an analyst at MKM Partners upgraded the stock, noting that beer tends to hold up well in times of economic weakness. We’ll raise a glass to that — and to getting back to normal soon....."
No pot smoking, though! They remain closed.
Gee, I sure wish I hadn't bought the 2020 Major League Baseball preview, and I never will again! Used to buy one for MLB, NFL, and NBA seasons, but never again!
Time to take your pill and celebrate Passover:
"Three Massachusetts hospitals have received approval to launch the first US clinical trial of a Japanese flu drug that could be used to treat COVID-19, according to a doctor involved in the effort. The trial — which will take place at Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester — was approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration Tuesday. The small, randomized trial of the antiviral drug favipiravir will look to study its effectiveness as a treatment for patients infected with the coronavirus, according to doctors involved in the study. The Japanese government has touted the drug, known by the brand name Avigan, as a possible treatment for COVID-19 Medical authorities in China have called the drug “clearly effective” in treating coronavirus patients after conducting two clinical trials......"
You will have to make an appointment to see a "Dr. Robert W. Finberg, an infectious disease specialist at UMass Memorial, who is the principal investigator on the trial at that hospital, has done previous studies on favipiravir as a treatment for influenza, and has an existing relationship with the drug maker that led to the collaboration for the US coronavirus trial."
Looks rather $elf-$erving to me.
Also see:
"For months, Japan has confounded the world by reporting a relatively low rate of coronavirus infections without imposing the kind of stringent measures used by other nations. As the country now declares a state of emergency in the face of a worrisome rise in cases, medical specialists are wondering whether the move Tuesday has come just in time to avoid calamity, or is too little, too late. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, in announcing that the declaration would apply to Japan’s biggest population centers for the next month, painted an optimistic picture. By asking citizens to significantly reduce human-to-human contact, he said, “the expansion of infections can be turned to a decline in two weeks,” but some specialists said the state of emergency amounted to a tacit admission that the approach the country had stood by for months was no longer working, as Japan reached 3,906 confirmed cases Tuesday, exactly double the number a week earlier (New York Times).
They have since shut down all businesses, and Sweden is next.
"As Passover begins, a new meaning to an ancient story" by Gal Tziperman Lotan Globe Staff, April 7, 2020
As Jewish families and religious leaders across the world prepare for the holiday that starts Wednesday evening, many are finding their traditions upended in ways both painful and somewhat lovely. Holiday meals are being held via Zoom and other online platforms. Extended families are unable to gather in person, but in some cases, far-flung relatives will be included for the first time, and, religious leaders say, in many ways the Passover story of persistence and resilience in the face of sorrow has never seemed more relevant.
For Rabbi Mendy Uminetr of the Chabad Center at Chestnut Hill, though, the stay-at-home order has brought to light hardship, and on Passover, he said, he’ll be focusing on the positive and thinking of freedom.
Of course, yes. Chabads are Jewish supremacists, and he has the chutzpah to declare the lockdown as freedom!
No worries about Zoom, huh?
Help is available for people struggling with organizing their first-ever virtual seder, said JulieSue Goldwasser of Needham, who is putting together a Zoom celebration with the parent-teacher organization at the Rashi School, a Reform Jewish independent school in Dedham. “Everything is different, but the seder remains the same,” said Goldwasser, who has a 9-year-old son and a 7-year-old daughter.
Goldwasser has found YouTube videos of people singing “Ma Nishtana,” the song that asks how Passover night is different from the rest, for people who don’t want to sing by themselves; online Haggadahs for anyone who can’t get a physical copy; and a variety of video-chatting platforms, from Zoom to Google to Skype. Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston even has a timely guide called “How to Host a Virtual Seder During a Pandemic," and organized seder-to-go boxes.
“These Zoom seders, they’re not going to feel like a normal seder, but it’s going to put smiles on all our faces, fill our spiritual buckets, and give us a little more motivation to move forward through this,” Goldwasser said.
I'm just going to passover the bad Friday. It will make my life much easier.
So much of the seder is about the bittersweet, said Rabbi Elaine Zecher at Temple Israel of Boston. Part of the tradition is placing some bitter herbs between two pieces of matzoh — unleavened flatbread — and dipping the whole thing in charoset, a sweet paste typically made with apples, nuts, and wine.
“To find the sweetness in the bitterness, and to understand the bitterness in the sweetness. We can have them both, and one doesn’t cancel out the other,” Zecher said.
This year, Temple Israel of Boston will livestream its seder on the synagogue website for anyone around the world who wants to join, Zecher said.
I hope it works better than the state website.
She encouraged people to hold onto hope, even during difficult moments. That could mean remembering that families who usually live far apart can celebrate together this year by phone or video. It could mean checking in on neighbors and loved ones, and remembering what that sense of community feels like after the pandemic has passed.
It could also mean still opening the door mid-dinner for Elijah, the prophet who, according to lore, stops by every seder table to take a sip of wine from a cup specifically reserved for him.
“Elijah, who heralds in a time when things are better. How amazing is that?” Zecher said. “We open the door to remind ourselves that there will be a time that we will open our door and others will come in.”
Zecher focused on the words that traditionally end the seder: Next year in Jerusalem.
People don’t have to interpret that literally, she said, but they can hope that next year will bring more unity, more health, more joy than this year.
“There’s a lot of hope that happens in spring, a lot of growth that happens and a lot of possibility,” Zecher said. “Redemption is possible, even when we might be convinced that it won’t be.”
Can you eat that?
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Too bad Grandma couldn't make it:
"Five coronavirus deaths at Newton assisted living facility; 36 residents and 10 staff infected; The number of cases in Massachusetts nursing homes rose by more than 100 on Tuesday" by Shelley Murphy and Laura Krantz Globe Staff, April 7, 2020
The number of coronavirus cases in Massachusetts nursing homes rose by more than 100 on Tuesday, underscoring the daunting challenge facing these facilities as they try to protect the state’s most vulnerable residents. There are now 958 cases among staff and residents in 129 long-term care facilities, according to data from the Department of Public Health.
The fast-growing case count among nursing home residents and those who care for them is likely due at least in part to an increase in testing, thanks to a new program run by the Massachusetts National Guard, but it is still almost certainly vastly below the actual number of cases because testing, a key component to curbing the spread, remains widely unavailable, and although state officials have begun to release a daily total of confirmed cases in senior housing facilities, they continue to decline to release a list of facilities where the virus is confirmed, leaving terrified families at the mercy of each facility and whether or not it chooses to release the information about their loved ones.
Why is the National Guard doing the testing?
In one of the latest grim updates, The Falls at Cordingly Dam, an assisted living facility in Newton, said Tuesday that five residents had died recently of complications linked to the virus, and dozens more have tested positive. An additional 36 residents and 10 workers have tested positive for the virus. One of the residents who died had been in hospice care.
Representative Ruth Balser, a Newton Democrat, filed a bill that would require the state to report the weekly toll of COVID-19 deaths in long-term care facilities, something it currently does not do. House Speaker Robert DeLeo signaled his support for the bill, saying in a joint statement with Balser that “we need prompt information on how COVID-19 affects those in our long-term care facilities."
Coronavirus continues to attack residents in all corners of the state.
In Western Massachusetts, at the Williamstown Commons nursing home, 34 residents have tested positive for the virus and an additional 12 have died, a spokeswoman for that facility said Tuesday. The nursing home, part of Berkshire Health Systems, is awaiting the results of 75 additional test.
Meanwhile, Mandy Greenfield reports that the stages are going dark in the Berkshires as well.
In Agawam, 28 patients at Heritage Hall West, a nursing home, have tested positive along with six staff members, according to spokeswoman Lori Mayer. One patient at the 164-bed facility has passed away, she said.
At Life Care Center of Nashoba Valley, in Littleton, so far five residents have passed away.
Berkshire Health Systems had been in talks with state officials to make another of its facilities, Fairview Commons in Great Barrington, available to the state as a COVID-19 recovery facility for patients after they leave the hospital, but it tested all its residents via the National Guard program and abandoned the plan after five of the approximately 100 residents tested positive.
On Tuesday, National Guard members were deployed Tuesday to a nursing home in Chelmsford after several residents tested positive. The assistance came after “numerous” residents at Palm Center, a nursing home, tested positive for COVID-19, according to the town’s police chief, James M. Spinney.
How frightening that must be for old people.
The testing was done out of an “abundance of caution” and does not suggest wider danger in Chelmsford as a whole, Spinney said in a statement.
Bruce Weinstein, whose 98-year-old mother is a resident in the memory care unit at Chestnut Park at Cleveland Circle, a Benchmark facility located in Brighton, said he has been unsuccessfully lobbying the company and state and city health officials to test all residents and workers at the facility for more than a week.
On March 29, a nurse who worked on his mother’s floor tested positive for the virus; then on April 3 Benchmark told families that a resident and another worker also tested positive, Weinstein said.
“It’s as if they are waiting for a time bomb to explode before they will test all people,” Weinstein said. “You need to test the staff and the people in that building so it doesn’t spread more."
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It should be called Jewton, not Newton, as the most vulnerable among us are made even more so:
"Italian authorities said Tuesday they were investigating the country’s biggest nursing home where 70 residents died last month, in a stark reminder of the difficulties Europe faces in accurately counting its pandemic victims, particularly among the elderly Lombardy regional Governor Attilio Fontana said he had opened a commission of inquiry into the deaths at Milan’s Pio Albergo Trivulzio home, given published assertions by a doctor and a union leader that management downplayed the risk of infection and wrongly attributed the causes of death. La Repubblica newspaper said Milan prosecutors had opened a criminal investigation. The Trivulzio home, which has 1,000 residents, disputed the Repubblica report, saying it had abided by all health care precautions, that COVID-19 tests simply weren’t available for its sick residents, and that the number of dead was in line with its 2019 toll. Nursing home deaths have come to represent a significant hidden toll from the pandemic in Europe, since many elderly were never tested for the coronavirus, were never hospitalized, and their deaths were never counted in official virus tolls (Associated Press)."
UPDATE: State moving forward with nursing home relocation, despite problems
