Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
False Claims About COVID, Conspiracy Theories Hinder Latinos' Medical Care
AP: Distrust Of Authority Fuels Virus Misinformation For Latinos
When Claudia Guzman suspected she had caught the coronavirus, her friends and family were full of advice: Don’t quarantine. Don’t get tested. A homemade tea will help cure you. “They were saying, ‘Don’t go to the hospital,’ because supposedly, if you are admitted into the hospital, they administer the virus into your body,” said Guzman, who was born in Chicago to parents from Mexico and now lives in Memphis, Tennessee. (Klepper, Sainz and Garcia Cano, 8/13)
WBUR: COVID-19 Death Rate For Black Americans Twice That For Whites, New Report Says
Black Americans are becoming infected with the coronavirus at a rate three times that of whites and they are twice as likely to die from COVID-19, according to a new report from the National Urban League, based partly on data from Johns Hopkins University. A key focus of Thursday's report is the impact of the pandemic and how the disease has followed the contours of the larger society in falling especially hard on Blacks, Latinos and Indigenous people. (Neuman, 8/13)
The Wall Street Journal: A Deadly Coronavirus Was Inevitable. Why Was No One Ready?
Hunkered around conference tables at the World Health Organization’s Geneva headquarters, a group of scientists debated which of the world’s most frightening epidemic diseases deserved the greatest attention. Ebola, a ferocious killer that drains its victims of bodily fluids, made the list. So did Nipah, which makes the brain swell before most of its victims die. So, too, did severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, which burrows into the lungs, leaving the sick gasping for air. At the end of the two-day gathering in February 2018, the group topped the list off with the most terrifying entry of all: Disease X. (McKay and Dvorak, 8/13)
The New York Times: One I.C.U., Five Patients: A Different View Of The Virus’s Toll
A hospital is an invaluable vantage point from which to understand an epidemic. It provides a glimpse of the severity of an illness in a geographic area, a sense of whether cases are going up or down, insights on which segments of the population are most affected and clues to how well the health care infrastructure is holding up.S oon after coronavirus cases began emerging in the United States, my editor, Rebecca Corbett, suggested reporting from within a hospital, to bring to bear my training as a physician and my prior work as a reporter on infectious disease outbreaks. (Fink, 8/14)
Kaiser Health News: Back To Life: COVID Lung Transplant Survivor Tells Her Story
Mayra Ramirez remembers the nightmares.During six weeks on life support at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, Ramirez said, she had terrifying nightmares that she couldn’t distinguish from reality. “Most of them involve me drowning,” she said. “I attribute that to me not being able to breathe, and struggling to breathe.” (Herman, 8/14)
COVID-19 continues to take an economic toll —
ABC News: ‘When Are We Going Home?’ Families Share Their Struggle To Stay Afloat Without Federal Aid
Latrish Oseko says her 4-year-old daughter Ka’laya asks a lot of questions, but one of them is particularly hard to answer: “When are we going home?” Right now, Oseko, her boyfriend and Ka’laya are living in a motel room in Newark, Delaware. Their new situation is a result of the economic crisis and chaos stemming from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. (Kim, Walker and Yang, 8/13)
The New York Times: Despite The Law, New Jersey Gym Owners Are Desperate To Reopen
In an act of defiance, Joe Logue, a retired Marine, affixed a military gas mask and headphones before beginning his chest-and-arm workout at a New Jersey gym that had gone rogue. It is illegal for health clubs to be open for anything other than private training sessions in New Jersey, one of only seven states where gyms have been deemed to be so high risk for spreading the coronavirus that they remain either fully or partially closed. (Tully and Armstrong, 8/13)
WBUR: Remote Work Has Cushioned The Pandemic's Blow, But WBUR Poll Reveals Inequalities
When the whole work from home thing started, Kass Burrowes had concerns. He works in marketing; his wife works in health care. Could they do those jobs in the same house, without driving each other nuts? (Ma, 8/14)
