BREAKING: AP Exclusive: Emails show top White House officials buried CDC report, then ordered pieces revived after AP story. https://t.co/q2xFOSqjzD
— The Associated Press (@AP) May 8, 2020
… The files also show that after the AP reported Thursday that the guidance document had been buried, the Trump administration ordered key parts of it to be fast-tracked for approval.
The trove of emails show the nation’s top public health experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spending weeks working on guidance to help the country deal with a public health emergency, only to see their work quashed by political appointees with little explanation…
The 17-page version later released by the AP and other news outlets was only part of the actual document submitted by the CDC, and targeted specific facilities like bars and restaurants. The AP obtained a copy Friday of the full document. That version is a more universal series of phased guidelines, “Steps for All Americans in Every Community,” geared to advise communities as a whole on testing, contact tracing and other fundamental infection control measures…
As businesses reopen, what everyday activities are safe? @jpinsk consulted several experts for this guide to living safely in the next phase of the pandemic. I found this very helpful: https://t.co/hgdxGP0pDH
— McKay Coppins (@mckaycoppins) May 8, 2020
‘Found Unresponsive at Home’: Grim Records Recount Lonely Deaths https://t.co/bTWIg2Geyo
— delthia ricks ?? (@DelthiaRicks) May 8, 2020
Trigger warning: This is a difficult read…
MIAMI — A 71-year-old woman with nausea who was sent home from the emergency room, even though a doctor wanted to admit her. A 63-year-old nurse who was self-isolating while she waited for results from her coronavirus test. A 77-year-old man who was prescribed antibiotics by a doctor in another state for his fever and dry cough…
Florida has some of the strongest laws in the nation protecting the public’s right to view government records. Complete information from medical examiners on deaths has never before been kept secret. But the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has not been eager to release some coronavirus records. The state also initially refused to release information on nursing homes where outbreaks occurred.
Though large parts of the documents released this week were redacted, the text could nevertheless be extracted, copied and pasted into another file so that it could be read in full, The Times found. The spreadsheet did not include first or last names; each person was identified only as “the decedent.”…
The probable causes of death, in each case linked to the coronavirus, are the same, over and over again: Pneumonia. Acute respiratory distress syndrome. Complications from Covid-19. A significant number of people had underlying conditions such as hypertension, diabetes or obesity.
Each person’s story, though, is a little different, often in heartbreaking ways.
A 77-year-old man in Collier County died less than a month after his son and granddaughter visited from New Jersey, after which he and they had tested positive. A 59-year-old woman in Lake County fell ill after a family reunion in Tennessee that also sickened her sister. A 78-year-old man who worked at the port of Miami and his wife, also 78, were admitted to the hospital within 48 hours of each other and intubated. They died on the same day.
An 83-year-old man in Broward County was intubated and waiting for a consultation on whether he should be admitted to hospice care. But a decision could not be made in time because his son, who was his caregiver, had contracted the virus and been admitted to the same hospital.
“There’s a family member behind every one of those numbers,” Dr. Stephen J. Nelson, the chairman of the Florida Medical Examiners Commission, said on Thursday, before the death toll had climbed to 1,600…