Health care workers protest lack of personal protective equipment in coronavirus pandemic | ABC News

1. five months ago an outbreak of a contagious infection was recorded in china, the uk and usa now find themselves in a situation whereby no one can get anything, its either herd immunity on the quiet or an example of what governments are about, taking your money only.

2. What do want ?
   More paid dance time
   When do we need it ?
   Now

3. USA should invade USA because USA has breached human rights issue that was dictated by USA.

4. We need to bring manufacturing of medical equipment and therapeutic drugs back to the United States.  Outsourcing manufacturing of these vital necessities is a national security threat.

5. when the stock markets sick the money flood gates open but help for heroes falls on deaf ears

6. Lets remix this

7. The United States has registered over 325,000 cases of COVID-19 infections with the number of people who have died approaching 10,000. New York state, and specifically New York City, remains the epicenter of the pandemic, with cases continuing to rise rapidly, further straining an inundated healthcare infrastructure.

   Michigan, New Jersey, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Florida are expected to see surges as the contagion spreads from community to community, hitting the hardest poor communities in large urban centers where access to healthcare was extremely limited before the outbreak. New York City has over 16,000 people hospitalized, over 4,000 in the ICUs, and approximately 1,600 patients intubated.

   It has now been established by several reports that the Trump administration had squandered more than two months’ time in inventorying and updating the national stockpile of medical equipment. Federal agencies waited until the middle of March to begin placing bulk orders for N95 respirators (masks), ventilators, and other necessary personal protective equipment that medical workers have been struggling to obtain.

   Despite daily White House briefings and promises of help on the way, the majority of hospitals across the country are facing a severe shortage of the essential equipment to protect healthcare workers against the extremely contagious and deadly virus. Many ventilators from the National Strategic Stockpile are broken and unusable, while face masks are decades old and dry-rotted.

   According to the National Nurses Union (NNU), only 19 percent of nurses nationwide have enough PPE to protect staff and patients from COVID-19. Only 52 percent have access to N95 respirators nationwide.

   “Our bodies are on the line,” said a sign carried by a protesting New York City nurse demanding their hospitals provide them with protective gear to keep them safe while caring for their patients. Nurses in California, Florida, Kansas, Missouri, Nevada, and Texas have begun protesting their hospitals' lack of preparedness, calling on HCA Healthcare to provide them with appropriate PPEs.

   The National Nurses Union (NNU), which has 10,000 members, is attempting to get ahead and contain the movement of healthcare workers which is exposing the irrationality of a healthcare system based on profit and the criminal indifference of the Trump administration, as well as the union-backed Obama administration.

   Nurses are growing more militant and finding their voice. In the Bronx, New York, last Thursday Montefiore Hospital nurse Victoria Lanquah said, “Management has put it in writing that we are to reuse our masks, gowns and face shields. Reusing contaminated items put me at risk. It puts you at risk. It puts everyone at the healthcare building at risk. We are demanding to invoke the Defense Production Act so that all of our factories can be spinning out PPE for us,” said Lanquah.

   “I feel like we’re all just being sent to slaughter,” said Thomas Riley, a nurse at Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx, who has become infected with COVID-19 and transmitted it to his family. One New York nurse spoke on condition of anonymity that she was told to continue working despite having symptoms of the infection but could not get her facility to test her.

   Angela Davis, an RN in the Medical Intensive Unit at the Research Medical Center, a dedicated COVID-19 unit in Kansas City, Missouri, said, “Protecting our patients is our highest priority, but it becomes much harder when we don’t have the safety protections which puts us in danger of becoming infected. If we are no longer able to be at the bedside, who will be there to care for our patients?”

   On Friday, 35 nurses protested outside of UCI Medical Center in Orange County, California, charging that the medical center is preventing them from using surgical masks during their shifts and will not give them access to N95 respirators. Maria Louviaux, a spokeswoman for the California Nurses Association, told PBS SoCal/KCET, “We are not the only facility going through this. The nurses are extremely concerned. They are telling us they have masks available, but they want to conserve them.”

   At UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center, nurses and their supporters held a protest vigil last week. Although Nashville-based HCA Healthcare made $23 billion in profits over the last decade, nurses at the medical center have fewer N95 respirators and equipment than other hospitals. According to the NNU, only seven percent of nurses at HCA Healthcare facilities have enough PPE, and 35 percent have access to N95 respirators.

   An article on the medical news web site, Medscape, titled “In Memoriam: Healthcare workers who have died of COVID-19,” lists the names of 132 healthcare workers throughout the world who have lost their lives. Twenty-two were in the US, including nine physician assistants or nurses.

   The number of infected healthcare workers across the US has not been uniformly tracked. US News & World Report sent requests for information about the number of infected healthcare workers to all 50 US states but got responses from only 10. In those states, at least 1,119 workers have contracted COVID-19. Nine states are not tracking the infection of healthcare workers at all, despite how widespread it is.

   According to the article, posted last week, “In Pennsylvania, 4.4% of the health care workforce had COVID-19 as of Monday. In Oklahoma, 10.6% of confirmed coronavirus patients worked in health care; in Ohio, that share is roughly 20%. Rhode Island, roughly 70% of COVID-19 tests are going to medical personnel, and they make up a quarter of all confirmed cases in the state.”

   The lack of preparedness on the part of the Trump administration and state and local officials is not due to a failure of oversight, let alone a lack of resources. On the contrary, public health, like every other social need, is subordinated to the profit interests of the corporate and financial oligarchy that rules America and the world.

   The powerful protests by healthcare workers, like the wave of wildcat strikes by Amazon, Whole Foods, Instacart and autoworkers, is the initial response of the working class to the pandemic and the reactionary policies of both corporate-controlled political parties, which have endless resources to bail out Wall Street and the giant corporations while condemning tens of thousands to preventable deaths.

   To take forward this fight, healthcare workers should unite their efforts with workers in all sectors of industry who are also engaged in a life-and-death struggle against being forced to work in infected workplaces to produce corporate profit.

   In every hospital and medical center, nurses and other healthcare workers should form rank-and-file committees, independent of the NNU and the other unions, to mobilize the entire working class to demand full protective gear and the equipment necessary to save as many lives as possible. Instead of bailing out the superrich, trillions must be provided for immediate, universal and free testing, the production and distribution of hundreds of thousands of ventilators and the PPE needed by frontline healthcare workers.

   Nurses should place no confidence in Bernie Sanders, Joseph Biden, Governor Andrew Cuomo or the Democratic Party as a whole, which are all beholden to the capitalist profit system. Instead, the growing movement of healthcare workers and the entire working class must be guided by a politically independent and socialist program, including the nationalization of the giant healthcare, medical equipment, pharmaceutical and insurance industries, and the establishment of a system of socialized medicine.

   Source:https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/04/06/nurs-a06.html

   USA spends trillions of dollars to develop nuclear weapons and maintain a military machine to kill and displace millions of people around the world.. But they haven't built a strong healthcare system to protect their own people.. CAPITALISM is being backfired..

   The COVID-19 pandemic: Capitalism and the making of a catastrophe
   
   https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/03/30/pers-m30.html

8. We used to have a huge stockpile of PPE. In 2008-09 they were used during the H1N1 virus and never replenished. That's why we're out now

9. Well I guess when American companies like 3m are selling your supplies to foreign country's no wonder we have shortages.

10. More like,

    What do you need?!

    Raise!

11. If this isn't good enough reason to start firing those in the CDC and the HHS who have failed to do their jobs, what is?

12. Stark contrast between people in California and people in Montana. When people in California run out of things, they hold a protest and complain. When people in Montana run out of things, they find a way. https://www.makethemasks.com/

13. https://youtu.be/lkpuVdCGEPs

14. what do we want pcp? what's she sayin

15. What is going to happen when all of our health care workers become patients because there was no protective gear for them? These poor people already sacrifice so much to take care of the sick and dying. They need to be as protected as possible to be able to continue.

16. You cannot trust the media but you can trust almighty God

17. trump. Are you listening? Do you still think you are doing s good job?

18. The fall of USA in the making.

19. Their own state is keeping the ppe from them in order to get more money from the federal government!!! The United States is now a COMMUNIST COUNTRY because of THE SEASONAL FLU AND THE DEMOCRAT FAKE NEWS MEDIA!!!

20. Idiots. Some things can't be protested. Like a novel virus.

21. They don't make anything in California. Internet companies and importers.

22. real americans

23. China should send it back!!!…
    Trump sent $100M plus 17.8 tons of protective equipment to China in February
    https://www.rawstory.com/2020/03/trump-sent-17-8-tons-of-protective-equipment-to-china-in-february-after-us-had-first-case-of-covid-19-report/

24. For those who want to know the REAL reason. Here ya go https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kRmZ_6_1FFw

25. Trump said it was a Democrat hoax to bring him down!!

26. You can make a face shield from a transparent bottle…
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1S83fjKY19w
    Some plastics can be pushed in hot water far beyond temperatures which viruses survive for sufficiently long, or you can try alcohol bath and other disinfectants. As long as there aren't enough of them, there is no reason to not reuse face shields as long as viruses can be killed. In normal times nobody would bother with cleaning face shields due to low prices in a similar fashion to plastic forks given to some foods, but again, these aren't normal times…
    If lacking N95 masks you can use half-mask respirators with p3 filters or these hybrids available on eBay and Alibaba (half mask with replaceable n95 cloth filter, not as good as P3 filters in high-end disposable masks and half-masks, but US healthcare system do not use P3 filters as standard nationwide anyway):
    https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/CE-Approval-3200-Half-Mask-Air_62151286284.html?spm=a2700.galleryofferlist.0.0.789f22b35ebXrJ
    As for Ventilators, in some countries using ventilators in combination with transparent hoods to generate overpressure for multiple patients to help them breath better as you can see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_J60fQr0GWo
    Similar results can be potentially achieved by portable PAPR systems with gas masks which are still plenty available on the market:
    Medical PAPR system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9WXDz_1N1k
    Military PAPR system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HRLTWLVYds
    Industrial PAPR system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qO9nZnMH4DQ

27. Most work for private companies. It’s their employees fault. Why are people criticizing the government? Management was being a tard and didn’t prep. Employees were being tards and didn’t check.

28. The current national crisis in the USA and lack of available resource is a preplanned social experiment. There is nothing new under the sun. WW1, WW2, Black Friday, the Great Depression and the housing bubble burst are prime examples of how to profit in time of crisis. Economics 101 class in college teaches that the shortage of medical equipment and funding during a nation crisis is the simple law of supply control, high demand and maximum profit. A nation's reduction in the supply of goods, services, resources or currency in circulation + critical massive demand in the public sector = high profit for those who control the flow of goods, services, resources and currency. The repeated promise to increase flow of critical nerccessities by those in control is classic game of carrot on a stick to induce increased dependency upon the controllers AND the 'learned helplessness' phenomena within the public sector. The Trump administration is the visible puppet on strings for real controllers hiding in the shadows.

29. I can not hear what a girl is said to all

30. You know guys, if you want to help, join the mask making groups! Help people make them and donate them!

    Activated carbon bonds to the virus and does good at filtering it, but it’s not a good long term solution.

    Thick dish towels doubled up and sewed together will create a barrier that’s within a few percent of the n95 masks rating.

    Vacuum cleaner bags are also very close to that of an n95 as long as it is a hepa filtration bag and not just a regular bag.

    Help them make them and stop hoarding them to just sell them for a profit.

Comments are closed.