What about the caregivers and medical staff rights, voting rights instead of roadblocks and lawsuits, or protection for whistle blowers exposing war crimes? Did service workers and warehouse workers stay on the job to feed America at their own risk and without a constitutional right to work in a safe environment?
Workers’ rights
Darkest part of the pandemic’ is approaching, says public health expert
As the coronavirus surges across much of the United States, infection rates are particularly high in some less-populated Western and Midwestern states, including Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota. Amna Nawaz talks to Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota about the crisis -- and how to address it.
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Michael Osterholm:
What we're running out of are people who have expertise in intensive care medicine, doctors, nurses, the support teams.
And when you don’t have that kind of expertise at hand, even though you may have a bed, you’re not getting the care that may necessarily save your life. And so expect to see not only severe illnesses increasing, and the number of people in ICUs, but expect to see the deaths increase
And I think that, based on the number of experiences that I have personally been involved with where young adults take home the virus to mom and dad, grandpa and grandma, uncle Bill and aunt Jane for some kind of celebration, only to have them become infected and be dead three weeks later, we don't want that to happen at the holidays.
LATEST PUBLIC HEALTH EXAMPLES
- Caregivers
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Bridget Brennan:
I'm an emergency physician, as well as a chief medical officer.
I'm hoping people will come around to believe that this is real, because it certainly is. I have got staff working just endlessly trying to take care of patients. And when we hear people not taking this seriously, it's a little disheartening.
We don't see the numbers slowing down, at least not yet. I'm hoping it will start to taper off here. My concern is going forward into respiratory season, flu, colds, RSV. It is that time of year. And when we combine it with something like this, it makes me a little nervous about going through the next three or four months.
- Medical staff
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Renae Welhouse:
I'm a nurse practitioner here at Sanford Health in Bismarck, North Dakota.
When we have a patient on the COVID unit, we require isolation. And they're isolated from their family at their greatest time of need. That becomes very difficult. And, as health care providers, we provide and try to bridge that communication and try to bridge and provide that emotional support, not only for our patients, but also for the patients' family members, because they aren't able to come and sit at the side of the bed and hold their hand.
Living rights
Coronavirus: Did workers die to keep food on America's tables?
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Voting rights
The clogged polling locations reflect an underlying pattern: the number of places to vote has shrunk statewide, with little recourse.
- Georgia Public Broadcasting/ProPublica found that the average wait time after 7 p.m. across Georgia was 51 minutes in polling places that were 90% or more nonwhite, but only 6 minutes in polling places that were 90% white.
- High-profile recruitment drive targeting young people to help out
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Neighbor rights
Social distancing requirements mean many communities across the United States have fewer shelter beds.
COVID-19 worsens US homeless crisis
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Public rights
Impunity for War Criminals, War on Whistleblowers
Crimes and other serious human rights abuses perpetrated by American and coalition troops, private contractors, and Iraqi government and paramilitary forces.
Officials who planned or executed the illegal war, nor any of the field commanders or even rank-and-file troops connected with any of the crimes revealed in the logs, were ever seriously punished.
The whistleblowers, on the other hand, suffered tremendously for exposing the truth. Both Manning and Assange were charged under the 1917 Espionage Act.
- Early in the year, U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning leaked the "Collateral Murder" video, which shows U.S. Apache attack helicopter crews laughing and joking while massacring a group of Iraqi civilians, including journalists, and shooting children.
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- WikiLeaks published the Afghan War Logs, which contained over 75,000 classified Army reports detailing war crimes committed by coalition forces in Afghanistan.