Day: June 15, 2020

A Teen’s Death From COVID

By Sandra R. Nicholson 4 weeks ago

INDIANAPOLIS — It started as a normal day. Dawn Guest, 54, got up and headed out to her job as a nurse around 5 a.m. She heard her 16-year-old son, Andre, stirring in his room, but he had always been an earlier riser, even when his school was shut for COVID-19. Later that day she would get a call from her husband, telling her there was something wrong with their son.

That call would be the beginning of a 12-day journey that would end in tragedy.

“I can’t tell you how a perfectly healthy 16-year-old boy can be making his own peanut butter sandwich late Wednesday night, getting his own tea out the fridge, and head up to bed like any other teenager in the state or in the country is doing. And then within 24 hours is fighting for his life,” Dawn said.

The Marion County Northeast Special Olympics

… Read More

At A Time Of Great Need, Public Health Lacks ‘Lobbying Muscle’

By Sandra R. Nicholson 4 weeks ago

SACRAMENTO — If there were ever a time for more public health funding, health experts say, it’s now.

Yet California Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state’s Democratic-controlled legislature are expected to reject a plea from local public health officials for an additional $150 million a year to battle the COVID-19 pandemic and protect against future public health threats.

“I’m not holding my breath,” said Riverside County Public Health Director Kim Saruwatari. “Right now, more than ever, the gaps that we have in our public health infrastructure have been exposed.”

Public health officials vow to continue making their case. But persuading lawmakers to increase spending in a time of cuts will be even more difficult because public health doesn’t carry the same political clout in the Capitol as other power players such as hospitals, doctors or public employee unions, which plow millions of dollars into lobbying each year.

“I’ve not met

… Read More

White House Left States On Their Own To Buy Ventilators. Inside Their Mad Scramble.

By Sandra R. Nicholson 4 weeks ago

Fearful that New Orleans would run out of ventilators by early April as the number of COVID-19 patients rose by the hundreds, even thousands, per day, Louisiana officials set out to get every device they could find. At the time, that meant securing an additional 14,000.

Within days of President Donald Trump’s urging states to get their own supplies because it would “be faster if they can get them directly,” Louisiana sought only a fraction of them from the federal government and turned to private companies for the rest, having little confidence one supplier would give the state all it needed.

“If I knew for a fact that I could get all that I wanted from one vendor, I wouldn’t be ordering from another,” Gov. John Bel Edwards said March 31.

Louisiana set out to buy 9,000 from the private sector, where each device can cost tens of thousands of

… Read More