In Brief: May 10, 2020

A distinct possibility: ‘Temporary’ layoffs may be permanent

WASHINGTON — In late March, Britney Ruby Miller, co-owner of a small chain of steakhouse restaurants, confidently proclaimed that once the viral outbreak had subsided, her company planned to recall all its laid-off workers.

Now? Miller would be thrilled to eventually restore three-quarters of the roughly 600 workers her company had to let go.

“I’m being realistic,” she said. “Bringing back 75% of our staff would be incredible.”

Call it realism or pessimism, but more employers are coming to a reluctant conclusion: Many of the employees they’ve had to lay off in the face of the pandemic might not be returning to their old jobs anytime soon. Some large companies won’t have enough customers to justify it. And some small businesses won’t likely survive at all despite aid provided by the federal government.

If so, that would undercut a glimmer of hope in the brutal April jobs report the government issued Friday, in which a record-shattering 20.5 million people lost jobs: A sizable majority of the jobless — nearly 80% — characterized their loss as only temporary.

2 members of White House virus task force in quarantine

WASHINGTON — Two members of the White House coronavirus task force placed themselves in quarantine after contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19, another stark reminder that not even one of the nation’s most secure buildings is immune from the virus.

Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, will be “teleworking for the next two weeks” after it was determined he had a “low risk exposure” to a person at the White House, the CDC said in a statement Saturday evening. The statement said he felt fine and has no symptoms.

Just a few hours earlier, the Food and Drug Administration confirmed that FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn had come in contact with someone who tested positive and was in self-quarantine for the next two weeks. He tested negative for the virus.

Both men were scheduled to testify before a Senate committee on Tuesday, along with infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, also a task force member. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., the chairman of the panel, said the White House will allow the two men to testify by videoconference, a one-time exception to the administration’s policies on hearing testimony.

GOP in power grab to rein in Dem governors on virus response

MADISON, Wis. — Republican-controlled legislatures are increasingly trying to strip Democratic governors of their executive authority to close businesses and schools, a power grab by lawmakers that channels frustration over the economic toll of the coronavirus pandemic but could come with long-term consequences for how their states fight disease.

The efforts to undermine Democratic governors who invoked stay-at-home orders are most pronounced in states such as Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, all three of which have divided government and are key to President Donald Trump’s path to reelection. Democratic governors there face lawsuits, legislation and other moves by Republicans trying to seize control of the response to the virus. All three states have also been hotbeds of right-wing protest pushing for a faster reopening.

The GOP lawmakers’ strategy echoes earlier attempts in some states to curb the powers of Democratic governors. But this round comes with added health and political risk. By pressing for a faster reopening and seeking to override their governors, Republicans are betting that Americans are ready to restart economic activity — even if that risks steady infection rates and death in the months leading to the November election.

From wire sources

The moves come despite a recent survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research that found a wide share of Americans say they are in favor of requiring people to stay at home, except for essential errands. But Republicans are mindful of other data, such as unemployment spiking toward 15 percent and higher — levels not seen since the Great Depression.

“A lot of people have this idea that we can just wait until it’s gone. … We’ve got to live with this thing and you can’t live on unemployment forever, you can’t live on federal stimulus forever,” said Pennsylvania Republican state Rep. Russ Diamond, who boasted on social media of shopping without a mask this past week.

Obama lashes out at Trump in call with supporters

WASHINGTON — Former President Barack Obama harshly criticized President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic as an “absolute chaotic disaster” during a conversation with ex-members of his administration, according to a recording obtained by Yahoo News.

Obama also reacted to the Justice Department dropping its criminal case against Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, saying he worried that the “basic understanding of rule of law is at risk.”

More than 78,400 people with COVID-19 have died in the United States and more than 1.3 million people have tested positive, according to the latest estimates from the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

Obama’s comments came during a Friday call with 3,000 members of the Obama Alumni Association, people who served in his administration. Obama urged his supporters to back his former vice president, Joe Biden, who is trying to unseat Trump in the Nov. 3 election.

“What we’re fighting against is these long-term trends in which being selfish, being tribal, being divided, and seeing others as an enemy — that has become a stronger impulse in American life. And by the way, we’re seeing that internationally as well. It’s part of the reason why the response to this global crisis has been so anemic and spotty,” Obama said, according to Yahoo News.

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NY priest on virus front lines with embattled congregation

NEW YORK — Raul Luis López never had the chance to say goodbye.

López was hospitalized for COVID-19 on April 3 before succumbing nearly three weeks later. The 39-year-old native of Oaxaca, Mexico, suffered from diabetes which worsened his illness. The day he left for treatment was the last time his wife, Sara Cruz, saw him.

Now López’s family, clad in surgical masks and gloves, was gathered in the widow’s living room in the Corona neighborhood of Queens, New York, around a black box of his cremated remains. A rendering of the Virgin of Guadalupe, patroness of Mexico and the Americas, watched over his ashes on a table beside flowers and prayer candles.

The Rev. Fabian Arias, a Catholic priest from Buenos Aires, Argentina, is the pastor of Iglesia de Sion, a congregation with a mission relationship alongside Saint Peter’s Church in Manhattan, and has performed funeral services 14 times in the last two months. Saturday’s service for López was the first he’s been able to perform in a private residence.

“Ninety-nine percent of funeral homes are not receiving people for religious ceremonies; they say ‘no,’” said Arias “They will take your body and provide cremation.”

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National parks visitors should plan for ‘new normal’

BRYCE CANYON NATIONAL PARK, Utah — After closing amid the coronavirus pandemic, the National Park Service is testing public access at several parks across the nation, including two in Utah, with limited offerings and services. Visitor centers and campgrounds remain largely shuttered at Bryce Canyon and Capitol Reef, but visitors are welcome at some of the sites.

“I felt like they did it right here because if they opened all the services, I think it would have been too much. Too many people would hit it,” Donna Sullivan, of Sedona, Arizona, told The Salt Lake Tribune Wednesday at Bryce Canyon.

Sullivan was on a day visit to hike the park’s Rim Trail and Bryce Amphitheater, two of the few hiking destinations currently open at Bryce. She found plenty of room to social distance, but Bryce will likely see larger crowds as word gets out that the park is open and will not collect entry fees.

Visitors should steel themselves for a “new normal” that will not likely square with their last trip, said Acting Park Service Director David Vela.

“You may have facilities that aren’t going to be available, but the (park’s) footprint will be. So it will be a different visitor experience, and it will be a different normal that we’re going to need to own and, frankly, mitigate,” Vela said Friday. “This gets to the value and importance of making sure that visitors know what to expect when they get to the park, making sure that visitors go to the park’s website (and) social media … as to what is accessible, how to plan your trip, and, most importantly, what are the expectations when you get there.”

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NY’s Cuomo criticized over highest nursing home death toll

NEW YORK — New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has won bipartisan praise for rallying supplies for his ravaged hospitals and helping slow the coronavirus, is coming under increasing criticism for not bringing that same level of commitment to a problem that has so far stymied him: nursing homes.

In part-lecture, part-cheerleading briefings that have made him a Democratic counter to President Donald Trump, Cuomo has often seemed dismissive and resigned to defeat when asked about his state leading the nation in nursing home deaths.

“We’ve tried everything to keep it out of a nursing home, but it’s virtually impossible,” Cuomo told reporters. “Now is not the best time to put your mother in a nursing home. That is a fact.”

Residents’ relatives, health care watchdogs and lawmakers from both parties cite problems with testing and transparency that have prevented officials — and the public — from grasping the full scale of the catastrophe.

And they are second-guessing a state directive that requires nursing homes take on new patients infected with COVID-19 — an order they say accelerated outbreaks in facilities that are prime breeding grounds for infectious diseases.

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Rangers, IRS volunteers lead in returns of federal workers

WASHINGTON — Returning Internal Revenue Service workers in Kansas City are being directed to a room well-stocked with face masks, while some other IRS offices were still telling staffers to buy or make their own as the Trump administration starts rolling out a location-based plan for returning more of the some 2 million federal workers to job sites.

The administration says the broad discretion in its coronavirus guidelines will allow agency heads to get federal workers back first in areas where rates of cases are lower and where protective measures and health care are robust. Officials for unions representing the federal government’s civilian workforce are expressing cautious approval at some of the spot-by-spot plans being drawn up, but they still fear workers will be ordered back and risk infection as President Donald Trump tries to push the U.S. economy back up on its feet.

So far, it’s only a partial return bringing back comparatively few of the federal employees sent home for safety amid the outbreak. But with the U.S. still among the hardest hit in an outbreak that has killed 275,000 people around the world, some federal workers fear they’ll be political pawns.

“Trump just wants to bring people back, because he wants to reset the economy. The one workforce he has control over is the federal workforce,” said Nicole Cantello, a staffer in the Environmental Protection Agency’s Chicago region, and a local president of the American Federation of Government Employees, a union representing federal workers.

Guidelines late last month from the White House Office of Management and Budget and the federal Office of Personnel Management call for phased returns based partly on local conditions, such as whether there have been 14 straight days of declining cases of coronavirus and flu. But the federal guidelines largely shy away from mandates, such as any directives to make protective gear available to all federal workers.

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