just a few of the things trump does not notice
Unemployment claims climbed by 1.5 million last week, despite jobs gains in May
The numbers suggest that some Americans are still being pushed out of work nearly three months into the pandemic.
Workers filed another 1.5 million claims for jobless benefits last week, the Labor Department reported, suggesting that some Americans are still being pushed out of work nearly three months into the pandemic.
Additionally, nearly 706,000 people applied for benefits under the new temporary Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program created for people who are ineligible for traditional unemployment benefits. With those workers added, the number of new claims filed last week could be higher than 2.5 million, despite every state loosening stay-at-home orders and allowing businesses to reopen in recent weeks.
The numbers suggest that some Americans are still being pushed out of work nearly three months into the pandemic.
www.politico.com
It's people, People, People as lines stretch across america
DENVER — Standing in line used to be an American pastime, whether it was lining up for Broadway shows, camping outside movie theaters before a Star Wars premiere or shivering outside big-box stores to be the first inside on Black Friday.
The coronavirus has changed all that. Now, millions of people across the country are risking their health to wait in tense, sometimes desperate, new lines for basic needs as the economic toll of the virus grips the country.
In cars and on foot, they are snapping on masks and waiting for hours to stock up on groceries, file for unemployment assistance, cast their ballots and pick up boxes of donated food. The lines stretch around blocks and clog two-lane highways.
In western Pennsylvania, cars
stacked up for miles on Monday as hundreds of people waited to collect a week’s worth of groceries from the Pittsburgh Community Food Bank.
Outside Miami, some of the 16 million Americans who have lost their jobs over the past few weeks
snaked around a library on Tuesday, waiting to pick up a paper application for unemployment benefits.
And in Milwaukee, Catherine Graham, who has a bad heart and asthma, slapped on a homemade face mask and left her apartment on Tuesday for the first time since early March to spend two hours waiting in line to vote at one of the five polling locations in the city that remained open for the Wisconsin primary election.
“It was people, people, people,” Ms. Graham, 78, said. “I was afraid.”
One resident of Ms. Graham’s senior-apartment complex has already died of the coronavirus, and Ms. Graham said she nearly turned back when she saw the line. But, determined to vote, she perched on her walker as the line inched ahead and prayed with her *******, asking God to keep them safe. Every day since, she has been scrutinizing her ******* pressure, oxygen levels and other vital signs on a home machine.
The scenes are especially jarring at a moment when freeways are empty and city centers are deserted, and public-health experts are urging people to slow the transmission of the coronavirus by avoiding each other.
“It’s worrisome,” said Carl Bergstrom, a biologist at the University of Washington who studies pandemics. “It’s setting up unnecessary opportunities for transmission.”
Even as supermarkets line up shoppers outside and put stickers six feet apart on their floors marking where customers should wait to check out, some scientists and policy experts warn that businesses and government agencies are still not doing enough to keep people apart in public, or to prevent them from having to line up altogether.
Jeremy Konyndyk, a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development, was aghast when he saw travelers crammed into
chaotic immigration and customs lines last month to get back into the United States after President Trump announced new travel restrictions. Those images showed the danger of lines — how jamming hundreds of people together in confined spaces could undo weeks of careful social distancing, he said.
“It’s a nightmare,” he said. “What was intended as a measure to prevent the spread of the virus instead became a huge super-spreading opportunity.”
In Milwaukee, Jennifer Taff, 38, said Tuesday’s election had been needlessly ****** to go ahead during a pandemic.
As she stood in line for two and a half hours, masked up and holding a cardboard sign saying, “This is Ridiculous,” Ms. Taff said she worried that the older people beside her were risking their health to vote.
“This lovely woman coughing behind me should have been home in bed, being taken care of,” Ms. Taff said. “It’s totally playing politics with our lives.”
In normal times, the unwritten rules of standing in line are clear, said David Gibson, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame who has studied line behavior: Don’t cut. Don’t stand creepily close. Keep it moving.
But Mr. Gibson said little about lines is clear anymore. Is six feet of distance really enough to avoid infection? What is the best way to face? Should lines be first-come-first-serve, or should older, more vulnerable people be allowed to skip ahead — which is now the policy at some grocery stores?
“It’s not Lord of the Flies yet,” Mr. Gibson said. “We haven’t dispensed with etiquette and rules and procedures.”
But some lines ripple with anxiety,
as people rise at dawn and make a calculated gamble about setting their health against fulfilling some need sharpened by the disruptions and anxiety of the pandemic.
Lines for groceries, food aid and unemployment assistance stretch for blocks as the coronavirus crisis forces Americans into quarantine queues.
www.nytimes.com
The current hunger crisis in the US, in photos
Food banks across the country have seen a staggering uptick in need since the onset of the pandemic.
www.vox.com
Hungry Americans are waiting in miles-long lines as food banks struggle to keep up with demand. Here's a look at how rising unemployment and dwindling volunteer pools are impacting US food pantries.
More than 16.8 million Americans have filed for unemployment in the past three weeks, bringing national unemployment rates up to 13 percent.
www.businessinsider.com
These US counties are at risk of exceeding their hospital capacity during COVID-19 surge
Map showing US counties where COVID-19 patient demand is predicted to exceed supply (in red) between April 2 and May 13 under various levels of social distancing and hospital preparations. The map on the left models a scenario in which there is no social distancing and a "low" hospital surge response; the map on the right models a scenario in which contact between people is reduced by 40% (through social distancing) and there is a "high" hospital surge response.
(Image: © Columbia University)
A new study identifies which U.S. counties are at highest risk of exceeding their hospital capacity during the next six weeks of the COVID-19 outbreak. Many of those counties are in the Northeast and the South.
The authors' projections are available to
view in the form of an interactive map.
The study, from researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, highlights just how important it will be to continue
social distancing and hospital preparations in the coming weeks, which could save hundreds of thousands of lives, the authors said.
The authors' projections are available to view in the form of an interactive map.
www.livescience.com
A 'huge wave of evictions' is possible in January
Eviction Moratorium Delays Crisis Until January, When Tenants Will Owe Back Rent
The nationwide eviction moratorium announced Tuesday by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will provide immediate and welcome relief through the end of the year for certain renters, but housing rights advocates say the move is woefully inadequate because it fails to provide any payment assistance to renters.
Tenants will still owe back rent plus interest and fees once the moratorium ends in January.
The HHS/CDC eviction moratorium goes further than the moratorium in the CARES Act passed in March, which only applied to renters using federal housing assistance programs or whose landlord had a federally backed mortgage. The move by the Trump administration follows weeks where anti-eviction activists
shut down eviction courts in New Orleans, as well
actions in 15 cities protesting the failure of Congress to provide rent relief. It also comes following a week of criticism after a Department of Housing and Urban Development official
deceived New York public housing residents into appearing in a Trump campaign video without their consent.
The news is a welcome respite for the
30 to 40 million people estimated to be on the brink of eviction. As Deborah Thrope, deputy director of the National Housing Law Project, pointed out, “Housing access is critical to stem the effects of the coronavirus.” But the moratorium merely
delays the evictions crisis, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, a nonprofit that advocates for affordable housing. Diane Yentel, the president and CEO of the coalition, said in a
statement that, “while an eviction moratorium is an essential step, it is a half-measure that extends a financial cliff for renters to fall off of when the moratorium expires and back rent is owed,” and called for at least $100 billion in emergency rental relief to properly address the crisis
This new eviction moratorium is in effect from September 4 through December 31, 2020, and is expected to face
legal challenges by landlords. It applies to all 50 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories, with the exception of
American Samoa, which is excluded for now as it has reported no cases of COVID-19.
In order to qualify, renters must meet five requirements. First, they must expect to face homelessness, or expect to move into “
close quarters” with others if they are evicted. Second, they must be unable to pay their rent either due to a loss of income or major medical expenses. Third, they must make partial rent payments each month “as close to the full payment as the individual’s circumstances may permit.” Fourth, they must have “used best efforts” to find government assistance for rent. Finally, they must either have received a stimulus check, not filed a tax return in 2019 or make less than $99,000 (or less than $198,000 if filing a joint tax return).
If a renter meets all of these criteria, they must sign a
written declaration to their landlord, under penalty of perjury, stating they meet the requirements. Needing to supply this written declaration directly to their landlord may prove difficult to renters whose only access to a computer or internet is through a smartphone — which is about
one in five U.S. residents. Those without easy access to a printer (especially with the closure of libraries due to the pandemic) may also have difficulty getting the required documentation to their landlord. “Any time you impose even minimal documentation requirements to qualify for a protection like this, it raises an impediment for people to comply,” said Eric Dunn, director of litigation at the National Housing Law Project. The documentation requirement may also create opportunities for landlords to say what tenants submit isn’t sufficient. The public interest group MassAccess, a project of Suffolk Law’s Legal Innovation and Technology Lab, has created an
online tool to determine eligibility and auto populate the declaration.
The measure offers temporary relief, but renters need immediate cash assistance to stave off an eviction crisis in 2021.
truthout.org
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