COVID-19 Update by Chitown Kev
I have to be honest and say that I neglected to have anything prepared for the day so this post will mostly wind up being little more than dopper-type news links with, perhaps, a little bit of commentary.
The news on the COVID-19 pandemic coming out of Albany, Georgia, which is being reported on, to be fair, continues to be, if anything, underreported.
That’s ~72% black Albany, Georgia.
Fellow Kossack eeff did a diary on the unfolding devastation in Albany, Georgia earlier today. The New York Times did an expansive story on the origins of the coronavirus pandemic in Albany, GA yesterday.
Like the Biogen conference in Boston and a 40th birthday party in Westport, Conn., the funeral of Andrew Jerome Mitchell on Feb. 29 will be recorded as what epidemiologists call a “super-spreading event,” in which a small number of people propagate a huge number of infections.
This rural county in southwest Georgia, 40 miles from the nearest interstate, now has one of the most intense clusters of the coronavirus in the country.
With a population of only 90,000, Dougherty County has registered 24 deaths, far more than any other county in the state, with six more possible coronavirus deaths under investigation, according to Michael L. Fowler, the local coroner. Ninety percent of the people who died were African-American, he said.
The region’s hospitals are overloaded with sick and dying patients, having registered nearly 600 positive cases. Last week, Gov. Brian Kemp dispatched the National Guard to help stage additional intensive care beds and relieve exhausted doctors and nurses.
Late last week, one Albany, Ga. nurse’s plea and resignation went viral.
In the meantime, in Mecklenburg County in North Carolina, there is a growing concern that black residents are being disproportionately affected by coronavirus. From The Charlotte Observer
African-Americans in the Charlotte area appear to be disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 illness, according to demographic data released Monday by Mecklenburg County health officials.
Some local black elected leaders say it is a major problem that hasn’t gotten enough attention. Others — including George Dunlap, the chairman of the Mecklenburg County commissioners — said Monday they hadn’t studied data showing the racial breakdown of coronavirus cases, despite health officials having released the information publicly three times in the last week. Another update came Monday.
Data from Mecklenburg County showed black residents accounted for 43.9% of 303 confirmed COVID-19 cases locally through Saturday. By comparison, black residents make up only 32.9% of Mecklenburg County’s population, according to U.S. Census estimates from July 2019.
Dunlap says if black residents are disproportionately represented in the case count, it may be because they’re more often seeking testing. So far, Mecklenburg County Public Health Director Gibbie Harris has not disclosed how many people have been tested for COVID-19 or released demographics for those who had negative test results. It’s not clear, based on information from county officials, whether more black people are being tested.
And that’s on top of the situations in majority black cities like Detroit, MI and New Orleans, LA where there’s not only the spread of the coronavirus, itself, but also the racist inequities within the health care system itself.
HBCU’s could be really hard hit by the pandemic.
Ivory Toldson, professor of counseling psychology at Howard University: In 2008, during the Great Recession, The New York Times published an article that mentioned an old saying: “When America catches a cold, African-Americans catch the flu.” This applies to HBCUs. Disruptions in enrollment and fundraising efforts, as well as closed dorms, prorated rebates, and lost revenue from food services and university bookstores will short-circuit normal streams of revenue for all universities. But HBCUs might see worse effects because they have less money to begin with.
The challenge of abruptly moving to a virtual learning environment may adversely impact HBCUs more than other schools. Most do not have the technical capacity to deliver quality online classes. Even those with the technical capacity will have challenges if their students do not have adequate computers and broadband at home.
So...look...continue to stay indoors, wash your hands according to the CDC guidelines, if you must go out practice physical distancing, don’t hoard the toliet paper, and stay safe…
Remember...Mayor Lori is watching!
Peace.
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NEWS ROUND UP BY DOPPER0189, BLACK KOS MANAGING EDITOR
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More than 10 million women and men in the country survive domestic violence on a daily basis, according to statistics from the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV), and many DV organizations say they are nervous about self-isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on this already vulnerable population, according to various news reports.
Without COVID-19 anxiety, the numbers were already distressful, especially for women of color. According to a 2018 report from the Department of Justice (DOJ), 41 to 60 percent of Asian and Pacific Islander women have reported abuse; 37.5 percent and 23.4 percent of Native American and Latinx women, respectively, said they were victimized by a partner at some point in their lives. Black women experience domestic violence 35 percent more than White women and 2.5 times the rate of other women of color.
When intimate partner violence intersects with race, the current health and economic crises can easily magnify. “Some research has suggested that Black women don’t report because they realize that it will impact job opportunities for Black men,” Rhonda V. Sharpe, founder of WISER Policy, a research center for women of color, told Essence in an article published March 25. Ruth Glenn, CEO of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, told Vox in a March 26 article that “abusers now have another means by which they can abuse someone.”
For immigrant survivors, the Tahirih Justice Center noted that “Threats to kick a victim out of the home, deny access to health care or restrict financial resources will be much more potent if the victim has no access to work.”
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A full day before President Donald Trump declared the coronavirus outbreak a national emergency, the mayor of Flint, Michigan, declared a state of emergency. Mayor Sheldon Neeley could see what was coming. The community has been living in crisis since the city started taking water from the Flint River in 2014, flowing it through corrosive pipes and into homes for drinking even though it was tainted and lead-ridden.
With the coronavirus pandemic sweeping across the country, the newly elected mayor knew it would only be a matter of time before Flint was dealing with an added health crisis. He would be proactive rather than reactive, he decided, for the majority African American community.
“It’s just such a crisis on top of a crisis with a side of crisis,” he told Vox by phone. “So we’re engaging on every level.”
A week before declaring a state of emergency on March 12, the mayor put forth a new 14-day quarantine policy for those returning from travel. The day after the declaration, he limited public gatherings to 30 people. Four days later, he shut down city hall. Before the week was over, he issued a stay-at-home-order. As of March 27, more than 90 people have tested positive in Genesee County where Flint is, according to the state’s count, and a woman in a homeless shelter in the city has tested positive for the virus.
The mayor’s swift actions were necessary in a community as vulnerable as Flint’s: Forty percent of its 95,000 residents live below the poverty line, with nearly two-thirds of its children living in poverty, deepening the void between residents and access to regular health care, food, and clean drinking water. So while coronavirus fears sweep the nation, unlike the Americans who have the time and resources to stockpile toilet paper, Clorox wipes, and pasta, residents of Flint are already lagging.
“Your health care depends on who you are,” a 2014 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation report begins, citing disparities in coverage based on race and ethnicity, while a 2017 Health and Human Services finding ends with: “The death rate for African Americans is generally higher than whites for heart diseases, stroke, cancer, asthma, influenza and pneumonia, diabetes, HIV/AIDS, and homicide.” African Americans are also 4 percent more likely than their white counterparts to be uninsured and 7 percent more likely to fall into a coverage gap, a 2019 Kaiser Health News report found.
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Correctional facilities across the nation have been struggling with the issue of overcrowded prisons. This had been a major problem all on its own, but one that has become exacerbated trough the coronavirus pandemic that threatens inmates and prison staff with exposure to infection.
On Thursday, U.S. Attorney General William Barr ordered the federal Bureau of Prisons to release a number of inmates, specifically those who are sick or elderly, to home confinement.
There are “at-risk inmates who are non-violent and pose minimal likelihood of recidivism and who might be safer serving their sentences in home confinement,” Barr wrote in a two-page memo to the BOP.
It is a measure that is largely welcomed by corrections officials as well as at-risk inmates and their families, but reporters and researchers from The Marshall Project, a non-profit news organization specializing in the U.S. criminal justice system, fear that Barr’s plan may exclude certain prisoners and that those prisoners will likely be disproportionately people of color.
That’s because it instructs the prison system to prioritize for release only those prisoners who receive the minimum possible score on a “risk assessment” algorithm called PATTERN. This computerized rating system, which has never been used before, deems white-collar offenders, who are disproportionately white, generally safe to be let out of prison. But it does not deem safe to release drug addicts with a history of prior arrests, who are disproportionately black due in part to the biased policing practices of the War on Drugs.
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On March 13 in Louisville, Ky, 26-year-old Breonna Taylor was shot to death in what appeared to be a botched police raid as officers from the Louisville Metro Police Department attempted to execute a search warrant at the home of a suspected drug dealer.
Now, WDRB.com reports that the union representing LMPD officers is criticizing a Kentucky judge for releasing from jail Kenneth Walker, the suspect who officers claim initiated the shootout that caused Taylor’s death and put a cop in the hospital.
From WDRB:
Walker, 27, was charged with attempted murder of a police officer after he shot Sgt. John Mattingly in the leg as police were serving a search warrant during a narcotics investigation at an apartment on Springfield Drive at 1 a.m. on March 13, police have said.
A female suspect was shot and killed after three LMPD officers returned fire, Chief Steve Conrad has said.
On Thursday, Jefferson Circuit Court Judge Olu Stevens lowered Walker’s bond from $250,000 cash to home incarceration.
Walker’s attorney Rob Eggert tells a different story regarding the shooting.
Defense attorney Rob Eggert said police burst in Taylor’s home without announcing their presence and fired at least 22 times, with bullets going into neighboring apartments, and “it was incredible that Mrs. Taylor was the only one killed.”
“Had Breonna Taylor been killed by anyone except police, the person or persons responsible for her death would have been charged with a homicide,” Eggert said in a court document, also alleging Walker is a “victim of police misconduct.”
According to Eggert, there were no drugs found in the home and Walker was not the target of the search warrant.
Taylor’s family also paint a different picture characterizing both Taylor and Walker, who are black (I don’t think I need to explain why that’s relevant), as innocent telling reporters they were far from criminals.
“These are two good kids,” said Bianca Austin, Taylor’s aunt. “This is incompetent police work. My niece lost her life over this.” She continued, “These two were not drug dealers. It just don’t make sense to us at all.”
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Foot-plant, cut right, miss. Juke left, accelerate, miss. Just when you think you have her, you don’t. A former track standout turned pro flag football and rugby player, Santia Deck has made a name for herself by leaving defenders standing in cement, going viral with lightning moves and chiseled abs.
In the past, Deck, 28, might have been a sideshow. But thanks to her inexplicably fast feet, social media savvy and timing, Deck is writing a different chapter, signing with the Los Angeles Fames of the Women’s Football League Association (WFLA) for the first multimillion-dollar contract in women’s football history.
“I remember I was just screaming. My friend thought somebody had died or something,” Deck tells me of the life-changing phone call. She’s been fighting a cold while training for the season, but as she recounts the moment, you can see the excitement pulse through her body. “Even to this day, it’s so much happening so fast and I have just been kind of thrown into all this stuff,” she continues. Her phone has been ringing nonstop with congratulations as she trains. The league was going to have its first scrimmage in May but the exhibition season was delayed due to COVID-19.
Though the WFLA won’t begin play until 2021, Deck’s signing marks a watershed moment for women’s pro football. The Women’s Football Alliance (WFA) has been around since 2009 and signed a television deal with Eleven Sports/FTF (For the Fans) Network for the 2020 season. But WFA players have to pay upward of $2,000 a season to play. Similarly, the Legends Football League (LFL) — relaunched this year as the Extreme Football League — doesn’t pay its players or even provide health insurance.
That’s why Deck’s signing — even by an untested league and with the exact amount not disclosed — made so many heads turn. “This was a momentous moment in history,” says Shelley Zalis, founder of The Female Quotient, a company pushing gender equality in the workplace.
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In Uganda, for the first time since 2013, more than three people can legally meet without needing to inform the police. Last week, parts of the Public Order Management Act, a law used to gag political opponents, was declared unconstitutional. But most Ugandans are staying away from crowds and keeping at home to control the spread of coronavirus.
The government moved quickly to close schools and universities. Measures became more and more stringent – closing borders, compulsory quarantine, banning public transport and the sale of non-food items at open markets.
While even the toughest critics of the president, Yoweri Museveni, who has been in power for 34 years, agree that these measures – and even more stringent ones – are necessary, they fear that the government may use coronavirus as an opportunity to clamp down on political freedoms once and for all.
The rest of the world is having a taste of what it feels like to live with human rights limitations. Traditional violators such as Uganda can claim to feel vindicated when they hear that democracies such as the UK have postponed local elections. The world is realising what many African leaders have known all along, they can argue: human rights are overrated and may stand in the way of “efficiency”.
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Sometimes bridging the gap between success and failure, between finishing high school or dropping out, requires a lot of determination and the cost of a cow. Jack Oyugi grew up as the oldest of 14 children to parents tilling an acre of ground in western Kenya. Their crops usually gave them enough to eat—neighbours would feed them if food ran short—but they had little cash. When Mr Oyugi went to secondary school his father sold his only cow to pay the fees. “The neighbours laughed at him,” he says. Now he is having the last laugh. Mr Oyugi went on to university where he studied biotechnology, and then developed a process to make protein-rich animal feed from water hyacinth, an invasive plant on Lake Victoria. He provides jobs for 30 people. Orders for the feed, which is about 30% cheaper than soyabean protein, are coming from as far away as Thailand. As for his father, “I’ve built him a seven-room house and bought him some cows,” he says proudly.
Mr Oyugi is talented and hard-working. But his jump from village to university, from subsistence farming to founding a thriving business, is also one that encapsulates the change that is sweeping across the world’s youngest continent. Almost half of the 1.3bn Africans alive today were born after the terror attacks on America in 2001—the median age of 19 is less than half that of Europe (43).
In 1885, when the colonial powers carved up Africa, it had fewer than 100m people, or about one-third the number in Europe. Today there are almost two Africans for every European. Some outsiders see this rapidly growing population as a recipe for disaster. Although the poverty rate is falling, about a third of children are still malnourished. This leaves many of them with stunted bodies and diminished mental capacities. Every month about one million Africans enter the job market. Many of them do not have the education or skills they need. More than a third of African children do not finish secondary school. In Mozambique and Madagascar that rate jumps to more than half. Extremists find fertile ground in countries with large numbers of poor, unemployed young people.
Unlike other emerging powers such as China and Brazil, Africa is divided into 54 countries, all with their different problems. Two of its biggest economies, South Africa and Nigeria, are barely treading water. Many are riven by tribal divisions and suffer from poor infrastructure, corruption and the legacies of slavery, colonialism and authoritarian rule. Some are challenged by dangerous religious radicalisation that threatens to turn failing states into failed ones. Climate change will make these challenges tougher. In the short term, so will the spread of covid-19.
The continent has disappointed before. Thabo Mbeki, at his inauguration as president of South Africa in 1999, spoke of entering “the African century”. Even after the global financial crisis, rapid growth in Africa gave hope of sustained progress, albeit from a low base. But that was dampened again from mid-2014, when commodity prices fell and African gdp growth slowed considerably.
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WELCOME TO THE TUESDAY’S PORCH
IF YOU ARE NEW TO THE BLACK KOS COMMUNITY, GRAB A SEAT, SOME CYBER EATS, RELAX, AND INTRODUCE YOURSELF.