Thanks for stopping by for my weekly column. As always, I welcome your tips and comments, and you can follow me through the week on the twitters. Here we go.
1) The good news, according to Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, is that Rhode Islanders’ compliance with social distancing has reduced the potential impact of the coronavirus. But things could change for the worse if residents relax their approach in the coming weeks, as Raimondo repeats on a regular basis, and even the state’s more optimistic projection predicts a possible 2,000 deaths through the end of October. (Some other models predict less of a toll.) Regardless, the surge is drawing closer, and Rhode Island has gained time to prepare. Raimondo said she believes there are enough existing hospital beds to meet a projected demand of 2,000+ plus hospitalizations in the coming weeks, even if doing that won’t be easy. And on Friday, the governor said she’ll speak next week about when people can start going back to work. This comes amid the increasing pressure to reopen the economy, mostly due to the stress caused by lost jobs and lost income. Rhode Island has made progress in boosting its testing capacity, one of the elements needed to make further strides. But reopening the economy will be a gradual process even under a best-case scenario. In Michigan this week, a few thousand cars flooded the streets near the Capitol to protest stay-at-home orders. To critics, these demonstrators are ignoring science and they risk making a bad situation worse. Yet Raimondo and her counterparts throughout the country face a daunting challenge: trying to walk a tightrope of restoring economic and social activity without igniting a resurgence of infections.
2) The World Health Organization’s six conditions for ending a lock down: “1. Disease transmission is under control; 2. Health systems are able to ‘detect, test, isolate and treat every case and trace every contact;’ 3. Hot spot risks are minimized in vulnerable places, such as nursing homes; 4. Schools, workplaces and other essential places have established preventive measures; 5. The risk of importing new cases ‘can be managed’; 6. Communities are fully educated, engaged and empowered to live under a new normal.”
3) Residents of congregate living center like nursing homes represent more than 80 percent of the coronavirus-associated deaths in Rhode Island, so this has become a heightened focus for the state. Health Director Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott said ‘strike teams’ are being assembled to increase testing and check protocols for nursing home residents. Meanwhile, nursing home workers – among a variety of previously unsung workers taking on heightened importance during the crisis – are pressing for hazard pay. In related news, Gov. Raimondo announced Friday that Beacon Mutual will expedite worker’s compensation insurance for infected front-line workers, with an assumption that their infection occurred on the job.
4) By the numbers: As TGIF was going to press on Friday, Rhode Island had 4,177 confirmed cases of coronavirus, up from 2,015 at this time last week, and 711 the week before that. The deaths of 118 people are attributed to the virus, up from 49 a week ago, and 14 the week before that. And a key indicator, the number hospitalized, has climbed over the last three weeks from 72 to 169 to 252. You can find a lot more data for RI and MA on our updates page, and the RI Department of Health’s expanded dashboard has additional details.
5) How does the toll of COVID-19 compare to the seasonal flu? The Health Department tells me there have been 18 flu-associated deaths in the 2019-2020 season, and that there were 39 such deaths in the 2018-2019 season. (Note: I’ve heard from a few smart sources who think these numbers are low. I’m seeking more information from the Health Department.)
6) As I reported this week, a former RI GOP chairman, Mark Smiley of Warren, shared a Facebook meme of the Auschwitz concentration camp to express his frustration with the coronavirus lock down, and its effect on the economy. Smiley took the meme down after it provoked criticism, and he said he was not aware the image in question was a concentration camp. One of the five or so people who liked the meme when Smiley initially shared it on Facebook, RI GOP First Vice Chair Gina Catalano, responded to my story by pointing on Twitter to how Lauren Niedel, Democratic committeewoman in District 40 (who recently made her tweets private), had previously tweeted her hope that President Trump gets the coronavirus.
7) A lot of the Rhode Island reporters who regularly cover the Statehouse aren’t super-happy with some of the process involving Gov. Raimondo’s daily briefings, particularly what had been an inability to ask follow-up questions. To their credit, the governor’s comms staff responded by adding a 15-minute post-briefing conference call, which provides time to ask more questions. The downside is that multiple reporters try to get questions in at the same time, so it’s a bit unruly. On the plus side, the governor’s staff has deliberately avoided playing favorites; the questions asked during the briefing are based on the order in which they come in, and the amount of time allotted for this is roughly comparable to a traditional news conference. The downside: if you don’t get your question submitted in three, four or maybe five seconds after the window opens at the conclusion of the governor’s remarks, it will be too late to get selected. I was a bit slow in figuring this out, so shame on me. Meanwhile, independent reporter Steve Ahlquist contends larger news organizations like the ProJo and WPRI are advantaged in the process since they sometimes have multiple reporters asking questions. But Ahlquist hasn’t had trouble getting questions in – he had the first one on consecutive days this week. (An informal ground rule against asking questions on consecutive days got little adherence for a while.) Adding to the fray, the governor’s briefings are a big source of daily news and easy to cover remotely, so lots of people who don’t normally cover the Statehouse are among those asking questions. Is this process frustrating at times? Sure. Are the questions asked by the various participants mostly relevant and good? Yes. Is there a better way of doing all this, during a time of social distancing? I’m not sure that there is. Bottom line: the process, however flawed, is serving the public interest, in the midst of a global crisis.
8) What’s wrong with this picture? The Pew Research Center finds that 76 percent of adults in the Providence area think that the local news media covers stories thoroughly, 76 percent say the news is reported accurately, and 75 percent credit us with keeping an eye on local political leaders, but only 14 percent (!!) of these adults had paid for news in the last year. (PS, we know it’s a tough time for a lot of people. But The Public’s Radio is here for you 24/7/365, so if you can afford to make a contribution, we’d greatly appreciate it.)
9) General Assembly Republicans have raised concerns about the electronic tracking of coronavirus cases in Rhode Island. In a letter this week to Gov. Raimondo and Director Alexander-Scott, they praised their leadership while adding that the tracking “raises profound privacy, civil liberty and legal concerns.” The governor’s office has responded by saying that the tracking would be done on an opt-in basis.
10) Imagine returning from seven months in space to a world consumed by pandemic. That’s something being experienced by Brown University alum Jessica Meir. She spoke earlier this week with NPR’s David Greene: “Once we get home, normally we have, you know, a little bit of a quarantine period, which is – has been a little bit soft in the past in terms of we can still kind of go about our daily routine. But because one of the hallmarks of spaceflight, physiologically, is actually a dysregulation (ph) of our immune system, we actually can come back potentially a bit immunocompromised. So of course, that makes everybody at NASA concerned, and they want to make sure that they keep us safe and healthy. So we’ll have a more strict quarantine this time, where we’ll be actually staying and living at NASA for at least a week after we land with very limited access to make sure that we remain healthy as well.”
11) U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse was selected this week for a White House panel on reopening the American economy. In a statement, he said, “I hope this panel will be a good-faith bipartisan effort informed by science and best practices. Ignoring public health experts and governors to prematurely end stay-at-home orders would lead to more infections and could further hurt our economy. With that in mind, I look forward to working with my colleagues and the White House to determine how to guide our nation through this challenging time.”
12) NPR’s Brian Naylor profiles former Providence and then RI EMA head Pete Gaynor, now head of FEMA: “Leading the Federal Emergency Management Agency during the coronavirus pandemic may be one of the most thankless jobs in government right now. Governors are clamoring for more supplies, like ventilators and face masks. The president engages in public feuds with those governors. And other administration officials work back channels to acquire their own stockpiles of supplies. And in the middle of all this is Pete Gaynor, a former Marine and former head of the Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency who now directs FEMA.” Gaynor would not talk for the story, but Angel Taveras offers some enthusiastic praise of him.
13) Common Cause of RI is having a virtual session this Sunday, from 7-8:30 pm, on how to preserve voting rights and public health.
14) Related: In his weekly commentary, Scott MacKay calls early voting and mail ballots a necessity: “Amid this pandemic, we must establish a principle: That no one should have to choose between their health and democracy. Perhaps not for all time, but for now, states must move to early-voting and mail ballots. Rhode Island Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea has a plan that’s a good start: Conducting the June presidential primary by mail. This is the perfect trial run to determine how to run such a system. It’s not much of a contest — Trump will obviously win on the Republican side. Joe Biden will carry the Democrats; all of his serious challengers for the nomination have dropped out and endorsed him.”
15) Listen to this interview. Teaser: “Two years ago, science writer Ed Yong wrote an article for The Atlantic in which he warned that a new global pandemic was inevitable — and that the world would be unprepared for it when it arrived. Now, with the outbreak of COVID-19, much of what Yong warned about in his reporting has come true.”
16) Rep. Deborah Ruggiero (D-Jamestown) points to the pandemic as a good reason for Rhode Island to have statewide broadband: “Since we are all engaged in remote working, distance learning, tele-health and social distancing, we’ve never been more dependent on high-speed internet,” she wrote in an op-ed. “We need the internet to apply for unemployment benefits and small business loans, connect with our friends and family and conduct our business meetings as our kids sit in the kitchen accessing remote classroom learning.” Interestingly, lawyer-lobbyist Matt Jerzyk advocated for statewide broadband in a piece he wrote for me at The Providence Phoenix more than 12 years ago.
17) The Public’s Radio is looking forward to welcoming in June our first Newport-based reporter, Antonia Ayres-Brown, a Yale grad who is currently a statehouse intern with the Chicago Tribune. She’ll be based in an office in the Newport Opera House Theater and Performing Arts Center on Touro Street.
18) One of the silver linings of the pandemic: more people are getting dogs, including one of our former news directors, Anthony Brooks, now with WBUR, and his family.
