The New York Times - USA (2020-08-03)

THE NEW YORK TIMES, MONDAY, AUGUST 3, 2020 N A

Tracking an OutbreakU.S. Fallout

WASHINGTON — Top Trump
administration officials and law-
makers cautioned on Sunday that
a deal over a new relief package to
help people and businesses
weather the coronavirus crisis re-
mained elusive even as the debate
over the details of the aid was set
to take center stage in the coming
week.
A meeting on Saturday in the
Capitol Hill suite of Speaker
Nancy Pelosi had been the most
productive discussion in recent
days, officials said, but they re-
main divided on a number of is-
sues, including how to revive
lapsed unemployment benefits
for tens of millions of Americans
and how broad any deal should be.
“We still have a long ways to
go,” Mark Meadows, the White
House chief of staff, who is negoti-
ating on behalf of the administra-

tion, said on CBS’s “Face the Na-
tion.” “I’m not optimistic that
there will be a solution in the very
near term.”
He continued to push for Demo-
crats to agree to a stand-alone
measure that would restore the
weekly federal jobless benefits,
which expired on Friday, as a way
to continue providing relief.
But Ms. Pelosi, who is expected
to again meet with administration
officials on Monday, reiterated
that she would reject a so-called
skinny bill in favor of a sweeping
package that includes a national
health strategy to counter the
spread of the virus and extend the
full $600-a-week unemployment
benefit.
She charged that Mr. Meadows
and Steven Mnuchin, the Treas-
ury secretary, remained reluctant
to commit to a strategic health
plan or to address the needs of
American families.

“We have to defeat the virus, and that’s one of the contentious issues that we have to deal with yet,” Ms. Pelosi said on ABC’s “This Week.” “We will be close to an agree- ment when we have an agree- ment,” she added. Lawmakers have already approved spending nearly $3 trillion to address the public health crisis and economic collapse caused by the pandemic, but the two parties remain bitterly divided over the scope and cost of another relief package. Democrats, who remain publicly united behind the $3 trillion stimulus measure the House approved in May, contend that another significant infusion of cash is necessary. But at least 20 Senate Republi- cans are unlikely to support any additional spending, party lead- ers have acknowledged, in part because of concerns over the level of spending and its effect on the national debt. Under a $1 trillion plan Republicans unveiled on Monday — a narrower proposal than the Democrats’ plan — a number of provisions, including the $600 weekly federal unemployment benefit, would be se- verely curtailed. “We have to balance — there’s obviously a need to support work- ers, to support the economy, people who through no fault of their own are shut down because of this terrible disease,” Mr. Mnuchin said on ABC’s “This Week,” re- sponding to criticism that Repub- licans took too long to introduce a proposal. “On the other hand, we have to be careful about not piling on enormous amounts of debt for future generations.” “The president is determined to spend what we need to spend,” he added, though he criticized Demo- crats for pushing for close to $ trillion in new aid to state and local governments. “We’re moving very quickly now.” Ms. Pelosi reiterated on Sunday that her caucus would not accept such a measure, though she indi- cated Democrats would be open to an approach that tied the unemployment benefit to the unemployment rate, lowering the size of the benefit as the number of people returning to the work force be- gins to grow. The Senate is scheduled to leave for a monthlong recess by the end of the week, but it is unclear whether lawmakers will be able to reach a deal by then. “We’re going to work every day until we reach a reasonable agree- ment that’s good for the American public,” Mr. Mnuchin said.

WASHINGTON

Unemployment Aid Stymies

Progress on New Relief Bill

By EMILY COCHRANE

“We still have a long ways to

go,” Mark Meadows said.

MANUEL BALCE CENETA/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the Trump administration’s coronavirus co- ordinator, said on Sunday that the nation was in a “new phase” of the coronavirus epidemic that was much more sprawling across the country than last spring’s outbreaks in major cities like New York and Seattle. She recommended that people living in communities where cases are surging should consider wearing a mask at home, if they live with someone who is espe- cially vulnerable because of age or underlying medical conditions. “What we are seeing today is different from March and April — it is extraordinarily widespread,” she said on CNN’s “State of the Union” news program. “It’s into the rural as equal urban areas. So everybody who lives in a rural area, you are not immune.” Dr. Birx emphasized the signifi- cance of asymptomatic transmis- sion, and said that the White House coronavirus task force was working to make sure Americans in affected communities under- stood this risk. “If you have an outbreak in your rural area or in your city, you need to really consider wearing a mask at home, assum- ing that you’re positive if you have individuals in your home with co- morbidities,” like respiratory problems or diabetes. Dr. Birx said that, in her recent travels, she had seen “all of Amer- ica moving,” making it doubly important for people to understand the attendant risks, given that cases have surged in many popular holiday destinations. “If you’ve chosen to go on vacation into a hot spot, you really need to come back and assume you’re infected,” she said. Infected people without symp- toms can unwittingly seed numer- ous chains of infection. “By the time you wait for someone to come forward to the emergency room, you have widespread com- munity spread,” Dr. Birx said. In some communities seeing recent outbreaks, household trans- mission has been a huge factor, public health experts say. Both she and Adm. Brett Giroir, an assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, emphasized the impor- tance of prevention methods, like wide-scale mask-wearing, hand- washing, and avoiding crowded indoor spaces like bars or restau- rants and mass social gatherings. On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Ad- miral Giroir said on Sunday that some of the efforts seemed to be helping in recent weeks to reduce the number of cases in Arizona, as well as in communities in Texas and Florida — all states that have been hard-hit this summer. He repeatedly pointed to mask- wearing as perhaps the single-

most effective preventive measure in communities experiencing outbreaks. “Wearing a mask is in- credibly important but we have to have like 85 or 90 percent of individuals wearing a mask and avoiding crowds,” he said. “That is essentially — gives you the same outcome as a complete shutdown.” Asked if he was recommending a national mask mandate, Admi- ral Giroir said, “The public health message is we’ve got to have mask-wearing.” He added: “If we don’t do that, and if we don’t limit the indoor crowded spaces, the virus will continue to run.” Another guest on CNN on Sun- day, Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, said that, in many areas where cases are surging, the availability of tests was badly lagging. “In 18, 20 states, the number of tests being done is actually falling and falling because our testing system is under such strain that we just can’t even deliver the test today that we were doing two weeks ago,” he said. “That’s very con-

cerning because when cases are rising, and your number of tests are falling, that’s a recipe for dis- aster.” Admiral Giroir defended the nation’s testing program, noting it has exponentially been increased in recent months although there are still delays in getting results. He said that both testing and contact tracing efforts were crucial responses, but not particularly helpful in large, communitywide outbreaks. “When you have a widespread, multifocal outbreak where many people are asymptomatic, testing and tracing are of limited utility versus public health policy meas- ures like mask-wearing, like clos- ing indoor crowded spaces,” Ad- miral Giroir said. “So, yes, contact tracing is important, but it’s much less important right now than the public policy mitigation meas- ures.” The admiral, a pediatrician, cautioned that there was still plenty of disinformation circulat- ing on social media. Decisions by most doctors who prescribe drugs

were “evidence-based and not in- fluenced by whatever’s on Twitter or anything else,” he said. Asked about hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug that President Trump continues to promote, Dr. Giroir was firm: “At this point in time, there’s been five random- ized control, placebo-controlled trials that do not show any benefit to hydroxychloroquine. So at this point in time, we don’t recom- mend that as a treatment.” He added that it was time to “move on” from hydroxychloroquine, and stressed that there are treatments showing more prom- ise. The antiviral drug remdesivir, for example, has been shown to shorten recovery times in se- verely ill patients, and the steroid dexamethasone lowers the death risk among patients on ventila- tors. Administration officials have also been promoting the use of convalescent plasma as a poten- tial treatment, although it is still unclear whether it will work against the virus, as well as giving billions of federal dollars to sev- eral drug companies that are pur- suing vaccines on an accelerated timetable. Still, despite encouraging signs in some states fighting to contain the recent outbreaks, Admiral Giroir said, the true cost of those infections will only be clear in the weeks to come. “We are very con- cerned and this is a very serious point,” he said, “and deaths will continue to increase for the next few weeks” because deaths tend to lag behind case counts.

A NEW PHASE

Birx Notes Shift: ‘It Is Extraordinarily Widespread’

By BENEDICT CAREY

Dr. Deborah L. Birx, above, and Adm. Brett Giroir on Sun- day emphasized the impor- tance of wearing masks to slow the virus’s now rapid spread.

EVAN VUCCI/ASSOCIATED PRESS

ERIN SCOTT/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, VIA POOL/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

A few months ago, Chelsea
Murgatroyd turned to her local di-
aper bank for a supply of diapers
and wipes. Ms. Murgatroyd, 29,
who has a 4-year-old and 8-month-
old in Austin, Texas, co-owned a
carpet cleaning business with her
husband that opened two years
ago. They worked mostly with ho-
tels, so as soon as the coronavirus
shutdown happened in March, “all
our work was gone,” she said, and
ultimately they had to shutter the
business. Their savings went
quickly. Ms. Murgatroyd found
the Austin Diaper Bank through a
Google search. “We needed help,”
she said. “I have never used a
charity in my life. That was very
different and humbling for me.”
Many families across the coun-
try are turning to diaper banks to
meet basic needs because of pan-
demic-related job losses. More
than 56 million people with chil-
dren under 18 at home say they, or
their household, have lost income
since March 13, according to the
most recent Household Pulse Sur-
vey from the U.S. Census Bureau.
“We’re at about a 300 percent
increase to where we were last
year in terms of families that need
diapers, wipes and period sup-
plies,” said Holly McDaniel, the
executive director of the Austin
Diaper Bank. Troy Moore, the
chief of external affairs for the Na-
tional Diaper Bank Network, said
that across the United States,
their locations are “distributing,
on average, 50 percent more dia-
pers monthly to families in need
than before Covid-19.”
Not being able to provide basics
for your children can have “a cas-
cading effect,” said Myra Jones-
Taylor, the chief policy officer for
Zero to Three, a nonprofit focused
on the well-being of infants and
toddlers. Ms. Jones-Taylor is part
of a national group that has been

tracking emotional well-being during the virus through a weekly survey by the University of Ore- gon. Since April 6, researchers have surveyed 2,400 caregivers across the socioeconomic spec- trum, and, according to Ms. Jones- Taylor, they have found that when “caregivers report financial and material hardship, within a week it leads to caregiver emotional distress,” which can include sleep- lessness and anxiety. By the fol- lowing week, “caregiver emotional distress is linked to child emotional distress.” In the early days of the pandemic, I wrote about how panic- buying left many grocery stores and online retailers out of formula, diapers and wipes. Since then, the supply chains have stabilized for those products and many others, said Karthik Natarajan, an assistant professor of supply chain and

operations at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. Parents may still have issues finding less popular or specialty products, though. Anec- dotally, parents across the country have told me about issues finding preemie diapers, sensitive wipes and their preferred brands in local stores. Panic-buying in March and April was particularly damaging for parents who are part of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, or WIC, because the checks they receive only cover specific products in specific amounts. In late March, I talked to Catie Weimer, 33, a WIC participant in Ogden, Utah, who couldn’t find Al- imentum, a hypoallergenic formula, in the quantities her WIC check would allow her to pur-

chase. When I checked in with Ms. Weimer last week, she said that supplies seem to be back to nor- mal at grocery stores in her area. She also said that WIC had re- structured their checks in a way that made buying the formula eas- ier. Previously, her WIC checks (which she collects every three months) were for two sets of four cans each, so if she could only find two cans at one store, she could not get reimbursed and find the other two cans elsewhere. When Ms. Weimer got her new checks in June, they were split into three checks; two were for two cans, and the third was for three cans. “If there’s a shortage, you can find two cans more easily,” she said. She also has additional backup formula now, because after the ar- ticle was published, many readers tracked her down and sent her supplies. “I have donated so much

to our local mutual aid,” Ms. Weimer said. However, not all supply chain issues have been resolved. The increased need for diapers, wipes and formula is now shifting from stores to diaper banks and other charities. “The people who used to go and probably buy these at a store are now seeking more at food banks and other donation channels. That imbalance, that shift in demand, that could have a huge ripple effect in terms of whether the customer can get products or not,” Mr. Natarajan said. Samantha London, 32, who has a 7-year-old, 5-year-old and 4- month-old and lives in Brooklyn, said that she’s had issues with both finding her preferred baby products and affording them. Her daughter spent time in the NICU because she was only three pounds at birth, and her family could not find preemie diapers at stores nearby. When they tried to find them online, companies were selling them at exorbitant prices

they could not afford. Ms. London is not working right now, as she’s taking care of her baby and her children who are out of school; her husband’s job in construction has slowed down considerably, making their financial circumstances precarious. Ms. London posted on Nextdoor, a social network that connects people by neighborhood, about her challenge to find diapers in the size her daughter needed, and a few of her neigh- bors gave her their extra supplies. She ended up investing in cloth diapers, and her father-in-law drove all the way from New York to Del- aware to find the kind of sensitive wipes her baby needed, for a fair price. Ms. McDaniel of Austin Diaper Bank said she does not see things getting better anytime soon. Her organization is moving as quickly as it can, but it is already strug- gling to meet the demand while keeping their staff and volunteers safe from the virus. “This is going to be long-term chaos,” she said.

ESSENTIAL SUPPLIES

Charities Step In as Parents Struggle to Afford Diapers, Wipes and Baby Formula

By JESSICA GROSE

JENN ACKERMAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Dani Blum contributed reporting.

At left, organizing donations in Minneapolis in June; above, making a delivery in Allentown, Pa. The Austin Diaper bank in Texas has seen a 300 percent increase in need over last year.

MATT ROURKE/ASSOCIATED PRESS

The New York Times - USA (2020-08-03)

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