Longer Looks: COVID In Detention Facilities; Health Care Workers And Protests; And Pandemic Escapism
Each week, KHN finds interesting reads from around the web.
The New York Times:
Fear, Illness And Death In ICE Detention: How A Protest Grew On The Inside
The tightly rolled piece of lined notebook paper had ‘important’ written on the outside in Spanish. Nilson Barahona-Marriaga, almost six feet tall with a scruffy beard and a shaved head, an immigrant from Honduras who had lived in Georgia for 20 years, unfurled it as if it were a precious scroll and began to read: “We wanted to tell you that we are going to go on a hunger strike. We ask you to join us.” Hours earlier on April 9, a woman on her work shift in the laundry room slipped the letter into the fold of a clean piece of clothing bound for the Echo-7 unit, a men’s section of Irwin County Detention Center, in south Georgia, where Barahona and 30 other immigrants detained by ICE were held. (Wessler, 6/4)
Politico:
Suddenly, Public Health Officials Say Social Justice Matters More Than Social Distance
For months, public health experts have urged Americans to take every precaution to stop the spread of Covid-19—stay at home, steer clear of friends and extended family, and absolutely avoid large gatherings. Now some of those experts are broadcasting a new message: It’s time to get out of the house and join the mass protests against racism. “We should always evaluate the risks and benefits of efforts to control the virus,” Jennifer Nuzzo, a Johns Hopkins epidemiologist, tweeted on Tuesday. “In this moment the public health risks of not protesting to demand an end to systemic racism greatly exceed the harms of the virus.” (Diamond, 6/4)
The Atlantic:
Role-Play Facebook Groups Provide Pandemic Escapism
“Has anyone seen my friend Josh?” a man at a crowded concert asked last week. “I went to the bar for beers and now I can’t find him.” “Josh? Where are youuu,” a woman chimed in. “I brought enough earplugs for everyone! I know it seems lame, but you’ll hear the show a lot better and undistorted,” another attendee offered shortly after. Losing track of a friend in a packed bar or screaming to be heard over a live band is not something that’s happening much in the real world at the moment, but it happens all the time in the 2,100-person Facebook group “a group where we all pretend we’re in the same venue.” So does losing shoes and Juul pods, and shouting matches over which bands are the saddest, and therefore the greatest. Even the awkwardness of daily life is re-created in the virtual music venue, through posts such as “holds an empty cup the whole show because I don't know what else to do with my hands” and the riffing comments beneath them. (Tiffany, 6/4)
Undark:
Government’s Use Of Algorithm Serves Up False Fraud Charges
In 2014, Carmelita Colvin was living just north of Detroit and taking classes at a local college, when she received a letter from the Michigan Unemployment Insurance Agency. The letter stated that she’d committed unemployment fraud and that she owed over $13,000 in repayment of benefits and fines. Colvin’s reaction, she recalled, was: “This has got to be impossible. I just don’t believe it.” She’d collected unemployment benefits in 2013 after the cleaning company she worked for let her go, but she’d been eligible. She couldn’t figure out why she was being charged with fraud. What Colvin didn’t realize at the time was that thousands of others across the state were experiencing the same thing. The agency had introduced a new computer program — the Michigan Integrated Data Automated System, or MiDAS — to not only detect fraud, but to automatically charge people with misrepresentation and demand repayment. (Wykstra, 6/1)
The New York Times:
‘There Is Nothing’: When The Slots Go Dark In A Casino Mecca
Now is usually when Atlantic City stirs back to life as winter’s sleepy tourist trade gives way to beachgoers and gamblers eager to spend time and money. Not this year. The boardwalk and beaches are almost empty, save for people fishing. And the casinos, whose very design is meant to lure gamblers inside and keep them there, now have security guards posted outside fenced-off entrances. “Atlantic City is a summertime city, it’s when we all make money,” said Benjamin Stevens, 26, a bartender at the Hard Rock Hotel Casino. “You usually work a lot in the summer to get through the wintertime.” (Yalkin and Gonzalez, 6/2)
