According to the current shelter in place order we are to leave our homes solely for the purposes of providing or receiving essential services. While we all still need to feed ourselves, trips to the grocery store are not what they once were before the inception of the coronavirus. With this in mind, we hope that the following advice collected from the County of Sonoma and local grocers may be of help to facilitate your safe food shopping while helping to decrease the spread of COVID-19.
Limit or avoid all trips to the grocery store
Staying home means staying safe and keeping other people safe: plan ahead by making a detailed list of your food needs. Go to the store only when absolutely necessary. This can be a good time to shop for your pantry and freezer. Try to buy enough food to last for two weeks.
But, you think, what good are grocery lists when many items on your list may be sold out? All the more reason to plan for alternative choices. You can even Google ingredients to see what the world’s collection of recipes can do for the foods you may already have on hand. (Remember to check dates on food items you may have at home. This is not a good time to risk food borne illnesses.)
If you would like to avoid the grocery store all together, several grocery chains — including Safeway and Raley’s — offer no-contact pickup and delivery. Simply order online and pickup your order at a specified parking location in the store’s lot, or have your groceries delivered to your own doorstep. Instacart is another option for home grocery delivery. Because these services are likely to be in high demand right now, make sure to stay on top of your food supply so that you can order a week before you run out.
Wash your hands, wear a mask and don’t touch your face
Experts also advise shoppers to wash their hands before they shop and immediately after. Soap, water and thorough washing is the gold standard for fighting off viruses. And don’t touch your face (wearing a mask or face covering will help prevent you from doing so).
Most stores provide wipes for cart handles and freezer doors — but it’s also a good idea to bring your own.
Don’t bring the family
During a shelter in place order, any trip outside the home can seem like a potential excursion. But while a family trip to the store may sound appealing, it is not a good idea during the coronavirus pandemic.
Write a shopping list together and then send only one person from each household to the store — this reduces the amount of people in the store, making it easier to maintain social distancing, thus decreasing the risk of getting and spreading the virus.
Go when it is less crowded
As more people are unable to work or are working from home, the natural rhythm of grocery stores has shifted. Still, by and large, there are generally less people early in the morning and later at night. If you arrive at a store which is packed with people, come back at another time. A Google search of a particular store can give you an indication of the current foot traffic in a pop-up box.
Several local grocery stores have implemented seniors-only hours: this is a time for older adults and people with underlying medical conditions to shop away from crowds during the coronavirus pandemic.
You may also consider shopping in a small market close to home to reduce the number of people you’re around.
Keep the distance
Local grocers are finding a need to constantly remind people to pay attention to the 6-foot distancing marks. Let’s help them help us. This includes keeping your distance from grocery store workers.
Grocery clerks, while they go about performing an essential service for us, are particularly exposed during the coronavirus pandemic. Try not to crowd the store personnel when asking about the availability of your favorite ice cream.
Get in and get out
Again, plan your shopping trip in advance. Have a list on hand and keep yourself and grocery workers safe by getting your goods quickly. This is not a time to be browsing the store while googling Ina Garten recipes. The people in the line that wraps around the building will appreciate your quick and efficient shopping efforts.
Treat fresh produce like dog poop
Grab that beautiful kohlrabi using a produce bag as a glove, the same way dog walkers pick up their dogs’ waste. Then turn the bag inside out to contain it. Watch this video from Oliver’s for a demo. And don’t touch items you are not purchasing or contemplate purchasing. If you must knock on that melon, put a bag over your fist. Then knock gently.
Wipe down your debit, credit or membership card
Wipe cards down before and after presenting them to the cashier. When possible, pay with your phone so there’s no exchange with the cashier.
Reusable bags are a new no-no
To fight cross-contamination, stores are not accepting your reusable bags for packing groceries. Those bags that you’ve finally remembered to start bringing, they have to stay home for now.
Consider disinfecting food packaging and washing fresh produce
When you return home, take off your shoes, hang up your coat and wash your hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds.
Currently there is no evidence to support transmission of COVID-19 associated with food, according to the CDC. It may, however, be possible for a person to contract COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or eyes. Unpack your groceries at the door and keep those grocery bags outside to use for garbage or put straight in the recycling. Then use sanitizing wipes or a bleach solution to clean food packaging, or dispose of packaging when possible.
Remember to wash your hands again for 20 seconds after you’ve unpacked your groceries and sanitized packaging.
As always, you should handle and prepare food safely. The FDA recommends following the usual best practices for handling food, such as cooking foods to their proper temperature and washing produce thoroughly.
Really clean up
Once you’re done unpacking your groceries, keep your shoes and outerwear by the door, wipe off surfaces and, if you’re really concerned about getting sick, it might be worth throwing your clothes in the wash and taking a shower.
Thank your grocery workers with your actions
They’re here for us in our time of need. Being cooperative and kind and giving them their 6 to 10 feet of space is a great way to thank them.
Be gentle on yourself
For doing this tiring work of staying safe and keeping other people safe, reward yourself with a binge watch, hot tea or a video chat. Forgive yourself if you haven’t used the lockdown as the chance to take up knitting, study physics or launch your career as a stay-at-home filmmaker. Being vigilant about safety is hard work.
The whole world thanks every one of you for your efforts.
Finding a secure place to live has not been easy for Nez Marquez, 23, who has experienced homelessness for the past five years. Born in Mexico and raised in New York, he left home at 18 because his family did not accept his gender identity and sexual orientation, he said.
Marquez is staying at Sylvia’s Place, an emergency shelter for LGBTQ young adults on the bottom floor of a Manhattan church. He said shelters that specifically cater to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people are safer for him because he has been subjected to homophobic attacks at general-population shelters. But now, in addition to anti-gay violence and the inherent dangers of life on the streets, Marquez has another fear: the coronavirus and its ripple effects.
Nez Marquez, 23, is staying at Sylvia’s Place, an emergency shelter in New York City for LGBTQ teens and young adults.Courtesy of Nez Marquez
“I’ve been worried about not having housing,” Marquez said in an interview. “If where I’m staying shuts down, I’ll be out of options.”
Not only does he worry about being “forced to live in a homophobic environment,” but he also has a congenital lung issue, putting him at higher risk for adverse outcomes if he were to get COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus.
LGBTQ youth and young adults, like Marquez, make up a disproportionate number of homeless young people, and this vulnerable demographic is facing unique hardships amid the global health crisis. With countrywide shutdowns of schools and youth programs, diminished office hours at LGBTQ community centers and, for many of them, unsupportive family members, these young Americans and the organizations that serve them are forced to find new ways to get and provide support.
Increase in needs, decrease in services
LGBTQ adults make up an estimated 4.5 percent of the U.S. population, but recent studies have found that 20 percent to 45 percent of homeless youth identify as LGBTQ, and among young adults ages 18 to 25, LGBTQ people have a 2.2 times greater risk of homelessness than their non-LGBTQ peers, according to a new research brief by the Williams Institute at UCLA Law.
Many homeless LGBTQ young adults rely on the approximately 260 LGBTQ community centers across the U.S. for their vital needs and general well-being. During the pandemic, however, many of the centers are reducing their hours and services or closing their doors completely to protect staff and visitors.
“Our clients rely on nonprofits to provide health care, and a lot of those places have closed or shut down hours.”
KATE BARNHART, NEW ALTERNATIVES EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
New York City’s LGBT Community Center, at the center of the pandemic in the U.S., closed its Manhattan location and suspended its in-person operations indefinitely on March 13. It is providing some services remotely, such as individual counseling sessions, 12-step support groups and youth social programs. Similarly, the Los Angeles LGBT Center has canceled all nonessential meetings and limited its youth programs to lunch services and critical needs while keeping its housing center open.
Detroit’s Ruth Ellis Center, which includes drop-in services, a health clinic and an overnight shelter, has also reduced some of its services. Before the coronavirus crisis, the drop-in center offered hot meals and showers daily and professional skills training three days a week. Now, the center is open only to distribute groceries from its front doors on Mondays and Wednesdays from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Staff members are still doing videoconference appointments for behavioral health and primary care.
“The need for services is increasing, and the availability of services is decreasing,” said Kate Barnhart, executive director of New Alternatives, a New York City-based nonprofit for LGBTQ homeless youth.
Barnhart said the pandemic has further complicated her clients’ already inconsistent access to care, particularly when it comes to their health needs.
“Our clients rely on nonprofits to provide health care, and a lot of those places have closed or shut down hours,” she said, saying a client of hers recently ran out of psychiatric medication when all her go-to medical providers were closed because of the crisis.
Barnhart said a third of her clients are living with HIV, and she fears what will happen if they are unable to get their daily medication.
For LGBTQ youth and young adults who are able to find beds at one of the few overnight shelters across the country that cater to them, there is a different set of challenges and risks.
Brad Schlaikowsky, co-founder of Courage MKE, a Milwaukee organization that operates a group home for LGBTQ youth, said soap, hand sanitizer and other hygiene products — many of which are crucial to help prevent contraction of the coronavirus — have been hard to come by for people who are housing insecure. Due to the contagious nature of the virus, his organization is not accepting food and clothing donations.
“This is a huge expense on the budget, and it’s hitting everyone hard right now,” Schlaikowsky said. “The best way people can help any organization is through financial support.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that everyone physically distance themselves from others by about 6 feet to reduce the chance of contracting the virus. The CDC has issued interim guidelines for the country’s thousands of homeless shelters if someone does get sick, including confining symptomatic clients to individual rooms or moving them to alternative facilities if possible. However, at many shelters, the guidance is impractical.
“We don’t have a private room,” said Wendy Kaplan, director of Trinity Place Shelter, an LGBTQ youth shelter in New York City. “It’s unrealistic, out of touch and makes us feel like the government isn’t able or prepared to protect some of our most vulnerable members of society.”
‘Serious implications’ for mental health
In addition to the physical well-being of LGBTQ homeless youth and young adults, there are also concerns about the unique mental health challenges they may face.
The Trevor Project, a national nonprofit that focuses on LGBTQ youth in crisis, released a white paper Friday outlining the “serious implications” the COVID-19 crisis could have on the mental health of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer young people. The organization cited the physical distancing, economic strain and increased anxiety related to the pandemic as being among the most worrisome problems.
“For a lot of LGBTQ young people, the main sources of support that they get are at their schools, at clubs, at community centers, at physical spaces that they no longer have access to.”
AMIT PALEY, TREVOR PROJECT CEO
“LGBTQ young people … are already at risk of discrimination and isolation, which can impact their mental health,” Amit Paley, the organization’s CEO, said Tuesday in an interview with MSNBC. “For a lot of LGBTQ young people, the main sources of support that they get are at their schools, at clubs, at community centers, at physical spaces that they no longer have access to. … Not being able to connect with some of those really important, positive influences in your life can be extremely challenging for LGBTQ youth right now.”
Paley said the Trevor Project, which operates a 24/7 crisis hotline, has had a steep increase in the number of LGBTQ youth who have been reaching out.
“We saw nearly twice the level of young people reaching out, and we know that this pandemic is having an impact, that young people are not sure where they can turn to for support,” he said.
‘It’s most important they know they’re not alone’
Local and national organizations that serve LGBTQ homeless youth are working to acclimate to the new normal, developing innovative pathways to accommodate the changing and expanding needs of this vulnerable population.
Lilianna Angel Reyes, director of the Ruth Ellis Center’s drop-in service, said staff members at the Detroit facility “aren’t waiting for people to create a solution.”
“They’re creating them, and we’re helping [our clients] be the healthiest they can,” she said.
With schools closed, staff members at the center’s group home, Ruth’s House, have developed an educational curriculum for their residents, who are ages 12 to 17. And at the drop-in center, which typically caters to teens and young adults ages 13 to 30, staffers have turned the large open space into a makeshift classroom for their group home residents.
Reyes said the Ruth Ellis Center is a safe space that “can be built anywhere” — including online, where the center has ramped up its presence. Staffers are now offering some services through digital video platforms, like its tobacco cessation program for transgender women, and clients can connect with staffers on social media, including Facebook Messenger and Snapchat.
Reyes said that overcoming obstacles and a lack of resources “isn’t new” for the youth and young adults whom the Ruth Ellis Center serves and that this may ultimately help them get through the pandemic and its ripple effects.
“Most of our youth have had long histories of trauma, and they’re extremely resilient,” she said.
Trinity Place Shelter, which caters to LGBTQ New Yorkers ages 18 to 24, is typically open only in the evening and overnight, but during the pandemic, it is operating 24 hours a day. The extended hours give the center’s 10 residents a place to socially distance, three meals a day and somewhere to wash their hands.
“The less time they’re on the subway and out interacting with the public, the safer they are,” the Rev. Heidi Neumark, the shelter’s executive director, said in an interview.
Neumark, who is a pastor at Trinity Lutheran Church, which houses Trinity Place Shelter, said that now it is “particularly important that we offer a lot of extra reassurance.”
“Most of the young people are here because they have been rejected by their families and do not have the support system and comfort that some people can count on,” she said.
While Milwaukee schools and most of the city’s youth programs are closed, Courage MKE has tripled the number of onsite staff members working at its group home, Courage House, the only LGBTQ youth shelter in Wisconsin. The increase is intended to help ensure that the organization’s clients get the extra support they need during the pandemic while also keeping burnout low and morale high among the staff.
“We’re 24/7 for the next 30 days, and it’s not always sunshine and daisies, so we want to protect them, too,” Schlaikowsky said of his staff.
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Schlaikowsky said Courage MKE’s staffers are also trying to keep a brave face on for the youth and young adults they serve.
“If we show fear, it will rub off on the kids and make their anxiety even higher,” he said.
In addition to getting help, Courage MKE’s clients are helping others by preparing sandwiches for people in the community in need of food. Schlaikowsky said that making 300 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches has been an effective distraction for the organization’s clients and that feeding others has been an affecting way to thank the broader community for all the support it has given the nonprofit since it launched in 2015.
In his interview on MSNBC, Paley of the Trevor Project spoke directly to LGBTQ young people, telling them they “are deserving of love and respect” and are not alone. He also stressed that “social distancing is not the same as social isolation.”
“There are places you can reach out to for support,” he said. “There are always organizations like the Trevor Project that are here 24/7.”
The Trevor Project provides multiple round-the-clock services for LGBTQ youth in need, including TrevorSpace, a social networking site specifically for LGBTQ youth, and a network of trained crisis service counselors who can be reached through TrevorChat, TrevorText and TrevorLifeline (1-866-488-7386).
In its new report, the Trevor Project also encourages LGBTQ young people who are in distress because of the negative social impacts of physical distancing to participate in shared activities online, like gaming, watch parties and physical activity classes.
As for Nez Marquez, he has been staying indoors most of the day at his shelter, which is offering extended hours. He said that while his circumstances were not ideal before the coronavirus emerged, he longs to return to his pre-pandemic life.
“I was applying for housing, I was applying for jobs and had interviews, and I can’t do that anymore,” Marquez said. “I just can’t wait for this to be over and I can go back to my life to do what I need to do.”
Forty-one years ago yesterday, on April 2, 1974, out lesbian Kathy Kozachenko made history as the first openly gay person elected to political office in the US.
Then a 21-year-old University of Michigan student, she was part of the now-defunct left-wing Human Rights Party, which consisted mostly of college students and recent graduates.
“This is the first time in the history of the U.S. that someone has run openly as a gay person and been elected to public office,” Kathy Kozachenko said during her 1974 victory speech, which was unearthed by Bloomberg.
“Gay liberation was not a major issue in the campaign — both candidates in this ward said they supported gay rights, but 10 years ago, or even three years ago, lesbianism would have meant automatic defeat.
“This year we talked about rent control. We talked about the city’s budget. We talked about police priorities, and we had a record of action to run on.
“Many people’s attitudes about gayness are still far from healthy, but my campaign forced some people at least to re-examine their prejudices and stereotypes.”
Kozachenko’s political career was short-lived – after two years on the city council, she decided not to run for a second term.
“As hard as we tried to make our organization representative of and inclusive of individuals beyond students — to be a voice for working people, people that were on welfare but trying to move beyond welfare, people of color — we weren’t really able to go beyond being a student organization,” she said of the Human Rights Party.
“So the viability of the organization as a vehicle for change, I could see that it wasn’t going to be long term, and I wanted to see where else I could be effective.”
But she was the first of many openly gay public officials in the US.
Since equal marriage was legalised in 2015, a “rainbow wave” of LGBT+ lawmakers were elected.
Today, 855 out LGBT+ political leaders sit in elected office, according to the Victory Institute.
“We need you to run for office and be the next historic first,” she said.
“We’ve seen that we cannot be complacent, that we need even more LGBTQ candidates to run. LGBTQ candidates from all walks of life, with diverse backgrounds, with diverse perspectives.
“We need more LGBTQ candidates of color, more trans candidates, more womxn candidates, more LGBTQ immigrant candidates, more intersex candidates, more LGBTQ candidates with bold ideas who will keep pushing our movement forward.”
Kathy Kozachenko said that she is “so proud” of all the activists who came after her.
“The people that pushed and pushed and pushed for gay marriage, the transgender people that have pushed for their rights and for understanding of who they are.
“I think none of this would have happened without the energy and activism of many, many people not giving up, and I’m very grateful for that, and I’m grateful for the chance that I was able to play a small part in this.”
An estimated 75 percent of Americans are now living under stay-at-home orders because of the coronavirus, which may be one big reason why we’re typing the following phrases into Google as fast as our malnourished fingers will allow it: “Is it safe to order food delivery?” And: “Is it safe to eat takeout during covid?” And countless variations of each.
People clearly want answers. Let’s get you some before you’re forced to binge-watch “Schitt’s Creek” with a cold can of baked beans.
Naturally, these queries can be answered from any number of perspectives: Are food delivery and takeout safe for the person ordering them? For the crews preparing the food? For the delivery drivers? None are easy to answer definitively, but there are ways customers and companies can reduce the risks.
– Are food delivery and takeout safe for the person ordering?
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been consistent on its messaging from the start of the outbreak: There’s no evidence that the coronavirus can be transmitted through food. It is “generally thought to be spread from person-to-person through respiratory droplets” from coughing or sneezing, the CDC notes. Our foodstuffs may be safe, but what about the packaging? The public has been especially concerned about disease transmission via inanimate objects since the New England Journal of Medicine published a study in mid-March that said the coronavirus was detectable on cardboard, plastics and other materials for many hours, and even days, after it was applied to the surfaces.
Within days of the study, medical professionals were suggesting we take extra, extra precautions to protect us from potentially harmful packages and containers we bring into the house. But recently in a Washington Post op-ed, Joseph G. Allen, an assistant professor of exposure and assessment science at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, provided some much-needed perspective:
“In the epidemiological world, we have a helpful way to think about it: the “Sufficient-Component Cause model.” Think of this model as pieces of a pie. For disease to happen, all of the pieces of the pie have to be there: sick driver, sneezing/coughing, viral particles transferred to the package, a very short time lapse before delivery, you touching the exact same spot on the package as the sneeze, you then touching your face or mouth before hand-washing.”
In terms of takeaway, you can replace “driver” with “person packing your meal.” Either way, when you bring outside meals into the house, you should remove the food from the bags/packaging/containers and put it on clean dishware (and use your own utensils). If you want, you can use gloves to open the packaging/containers. When finished, you should throw away the materials or thoroughly clean and recycle them. You should immediately wash your hands for 20 seconds with soap and hot water before eating. (If you don’t have soap and hot water available, a hand sanitizer with at least 60 percent alcohol will suffice.) You should also clean and disinfect all surfaces where the packaging materials were placed. And don’t touch your face at any point.
In the months since the coronavirus outbreak began, more science has emerged on how it spreads. One study has suggested that the “digestive system other than the respiratory system may serve as an alternative route of infection,” which means that, theoretically, the virus could be transmitted via people who haven’t adequately washed their hands after using the bathroom.
“We can reasonably surmise that some transmissible virus happens from a stool, but we have no evidence to suggest that it is a major route of transmission,” says William Hanage, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “My judgment would be that the role of this in transmission is dwarfed by the contribution that is made by people who don’t even realize they are infected yet.”
“People should just wash their hands regularly and, in particular, when they’re preparing food,” Hanage adds.
What can you do to protect yourself from this potential route of transmission? Experts say the best way is to patronize only those restaurants/takeaways that you know and trust. But you can also track down city and county health inspection reports. They’re widely available online, whether in Los Angeles, New York, Washington or other jurisdictions. But be cognizant that reports may be old and outdated or may feature violations that have already been remedied by restaurant operators.
Recently, a story out of Skagit County, Wash., raised fears that the coronavirus may be transmitted through the air without an infected person coughing or sneezing. To date, however, the World Health Organization is sticking to its warning that the coronavirus is primarily transmitted via droplets from coughing and sneezing, largely downplaying the transmission through smaller air droplets, though not without considerable pushback from the public health community.
Restaurants and delivery services alike are keeping these concerns in mind. Delivery companies such as DoorDash, Postmates and Uber Eats offer “contactless” options in which a driver will drop off your order on the porch or some other designated area. Similarly, some restaurants and coffee shops allow customers to pick up their orders from a counter, thereby avoiding contact with an employee (though maybe not with fellow customers).
Whether or not you select the contactless option for takeaway, it’s paramount to keep at least six feet away from both employees and other customers to prevent the spread of the virus. It may be easier to maintain this distance during nonpeak hours, when there are fewer customers in the restaurant or takeaway area.
“You are already doing your bit by getting food from takeout” and delivery, says Hanage, the associate professor of epidemiology. “If you take those additional steps, then you’re doing more. You’re reducing the risks yet more.”
– Are food delivery and takeout safe for the crews preparing and packaging orders?
This is an almost impossible question to answer. Every restaurant is different: Some need only a few employees to operate now, while some still have a full crew. Some have tight kitchens; some have spacious ones. Some employees can walk to work, and some have to take public transportation, which exposes them to more people who may be carrying the virus. The best thing to do is to talk to the managers of your favorite restaurants and ask how they keep their employees safe. But do so politely, with real empathy. The pressures placed on restaurateurs right now may already be too much to bear.
As the National Restaurant Association points out, the industry already “follows strict local public health guidelines. To meet these guidelines, restaurants have safety protocols and best practices in place.” On top of municipal health codes, many chefs and restaurant owners have doubled their efforts to maintain healthy workplaces, requiring more frequent cleaning of work surfaces, changing out gloves repeatedly and other new protocols.
Last month, President Donald Trump signed the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, which provides paid sick leave for employees who are quarantined or are experiencing coronavirus symptoms and seeking a medical diagnosis. The act also covers employees who are taking care of someone under quarantine or a child out of school or day care because of the outbreak. Companies with more than 500 employees are exempt, presumably because 89 percent of workers at larger business have access to some kind of sick leave.
The new law should help keep restaurant employees – who historically work while ill because they have no paid sick leave – at home when they are not feeling well. Perhaps this is so obvious that it doesn’t bear repeating, but customers should not visit restaurants for takeout if they’re not feeling well, either. The coronavirus is not a one-way pandemic.
Despite all of the precautions and new measures, however, countless restaurants have still opted to close down entirely, because they couldn’t make enough money to keep the business afloat or because remaining open would put their employees (and their families) at risk. Or both. Some employers just didn’t think the risk was worth the return.
– Is food delivery safe for drivers?
The Families First Coronavirus Response Act covers gig workers such as food delivery drivers, who are not considered employees of their particular companies. As The Post’s Heather Long reported, gig workers will get these sick leave benefits “in the form of a tax credit.”
But major delivery companies, such as DoorDash and Uber Eats, have also created assistance programs that will cover up to two weeks of sick leave for qualified workers who have been diagnosed with the coronavirus, placed in quarantine or asked to self-isolate. A DoorDash representative said the company’s program would continue regardless of the federal tax credit. Some companies, such as DoorDash and Uber Eats, are also providing drivers with disinfectants, gloves, wipes and/or hand sanitizers, though some Dashers (as the drivers are called for DoorDash) have complained about the company’s shipping fees.
Customers who order delivery meals should request the contactless option. It’s good for both customer and driver. The latter encounters dozens of people a day, and every door bell they ring could bring them face to face with an infected customer. But if you insist on meeting with the driver, wash your hands thoroughly first with soap and hot water for 20 seconds. Wear a mask, if you have one.
Put the driver at ease, and let them know you want to protect their health, too. And don’t forget to tip well.
Two days ago, an emergency-room doctor called Frank Gabrin died in his husband’s arms due to complications from coronavirus – just a week after showing symptoms.
Gabrin, 60, who worked at hospitals in New Jersey and New York, had been on the frontlines for two weeks as the number of COVID-19 cases rapidly increased.
According to Gabrin’s husband, Arnold Vargas, shortages of personal protective equipment had meant he was forced to reuse face masks and hospital gowns between treating patients.
“He was a person who just wanted to help people,” Vargas told Chris Cuomo, who also tested positive for COVID-19 this week, during an emotional interview on CNN’s ‘Cuomo Prime Time’.
Gabrin died suddenly on Tuesday after waking up with chest pains and unable to breathe.
“He had a lot of coughing and two days ago he was very sick,” Vargas said through tears.
On Tuesday, Gabrin woke up saying, “Baby, I can’t breathe,” Vargas said.
He had first shown symptoms about a week previously, but had not been tested for the virus.
Dr. Frank Gabrin had been treating coronavirus patients on the front lines. He died in his husband’s arms just days after showing symptoms.
The global death toll from the crisis currently stands at more than 50,000 people, with Spain accounting for a fifth of those who have died from the disease.
Lyons said: “He didn’t expect this to happen as it was coming up. He really didn’t. He was working hard, we were talking every day.
“I was saying, ‘How is it going?’ He said, ‘It’s busy, but it’s manageable.’
“And it went from manageable to unmanageable overnight. I think that’s what happened, and even then he looked for ways to make it work, even when he knew [his immune system] was compromised.”
A two-time cancer survivor, Vargas said his husband told him: “I can handle this. I survived cancer and this is just the coronavirus.”
After holding his husband while he died, Vargas is now showing symptoms of coronavirus himself.
“It’s a big thing we’re asking [health care workers] to face,” Lyons said.
“It’s like asking soldiers to go to the front line and giving them nothing to do their job.”
Multiple people who had been at the party later posted on social media confirming that they, or someone they knew who had also attended, had been diagnosed.
Over the weekend, a second person has died after contracting the virus at the festival.
Ron Rich, 65, who lived in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, was a musician and formerly a high school band director.
He was also a prominent figure in the local LGBT+ community, volunteering for Outshine Film Festival, Lambda Legal and the National LGBTQ Task Force.
The National LGBTQ Task Force wrote on Facebook on Tuesday, March 31, that it was “mourning the passing of a loyal volunteer, Ron Rich, who succumbed to COVID-19 over the weekend”.
It continued: “Ron was a familiar face to the guests who attended the Task Force Gala, Winter Party Festival and our Fort Lauderdale house parties over the past five years as his big smile and warmth had him mostly serving on our hospitality team… He will be missed.
“We extend our condolences to his family and friends.”
His friends took to social media to express their grief after his death.
Onre Soto wrote: “I’m heartbroken by the news I got last night… My best friend Ron Rich passing Saturday night.
He was truly honest [and] sincere… We [are] all grieving for his family. I will miss you forever, until we meet again.”
Another friend, Theo Vernon, wrote: “I am devastated this morning. My good friend Ron Rich has passed away due to the COVID-19 virus.
“I student taught at Grissom under him and worked with him my first year teaching at Grissom high school in 1985. He was an amazing mentor, musician and we became great friends.”
Israel Carreras passed away last week after attend the Winter Party.
Israel Carreras, 40, who had no prior health conditions, was the first person to pass away after contracting coronavirus at the Winter Party.
Carreras’ partner, Franco Conquista, told WSVN: “He started to feel sick after the event. We went together.
“I went to his place, taking care of him for two days, and I also had it. He couldn’t breathe, so he wanted to go to the hospital, and then, he was at the hospital for four or five days.
“Then, they put him to sleep because he was really agitated, and then, he never woke up again.”
Conquista added that he was currently at home in isolation, grieving his partner, and called for others to stay at home.
He said: “This poor boy was only 40 years old. It can kill anybody, so just stay home and think of other people.”
Amid the coronavirus crisis, state health officials responsible for gathering data on COVID-19 are declining to collect and report whether or not patients identify as LGBTQ — a practice that angers LGBTQ advocates who say those answers could yield important information to combat the disease.
The lack of data, advocates say, will essentially blind the public to the coronavirus’ impact on LGBTQ people — a population that may be particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 — as the epidemic continues to rise and health officials warn the death toll in the United States will hit its peak in the coming weeks.
An estimated 100,000 to 240,000 Americans may die as a result of the coronavirus epidemic, U.S. government health advisers said this week.
The deputy director of the National LGBT Cancer Network, who goes by the name Scout and has a Ph.D. in sociomedical sciences from Columbia University, said the lack of data on the coronavirus’ impact on LGBTQ people reflects the absence of LGBTQ data collection in medical surveys writ large.
“The common phenomenon of not collecting LGBTQ health surveillance data hurts us in so many ways. Now it will hurt us by masking the impact of COVID-19 on our communities,” Scout said. “Considering an estimated 3.3 million of us use tobacco products, and therefore have a higher risk of negative outcomes if we get coronavirus, not collecting LGBTQ+ status in health surveillance data is horrible. We will mourn our losses but never be able to measure them.”
The Blade reached out to several states where the confirmed cases of coronavirus infection are at their highest and as of this week surpassed 5,000 cases, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention. Additionally, the Blade sought LGBTQ demographic information on the COVID-19 impact from jurisdictions local to the D.C. region and states that have had greater incident rates of COVID-19 cases.
The only jurisdiction to report having collected data on whether COVID-19 patients identify as LGBTQ was D.C,, where the department of health affirmed Tuesday to the Blade that process was underway.
“DC Health is collecting information about LGBTQ+ status of coronavirus patients,” said Alison Reeves, a D.C. Department of Health spokesperson. “However, that data is incomplete and will not be made public at this time.”
Harper Jean Tobin, director of policy for the National Center for Transgender Equality, said any reporting on COVID-19’s impact on LGBTQ people would likely be an undercount “due to the fast spread of the virus and the extraordinary shortcomings in the United States’ response to the pandemic.”
“Unfortunately, many of our pre-existing public health surveillance systems did not yet incorporate basic demographic data about LGBTQ people, and many health care institutions haven’t yet implemented this data collection in their patient record systems either,” Tobin said. “That’s inexcusable, but it’s also not likely we’ll be able to correct those deficiencies in the middle of a fast-moving global pandemic.”
Jurisdictions other than D.C. either didn’t respond to the Blade’s request to comment, or affirmed they didn’t collect data on whether coronavirus patients identify as LGBTQ.
In Michigan, where Detroit has become a new epicenter for the coronavirus epidemic, a spokesperson for the state department of health confirmed LGBTQ status of patients isn’t asked by health officials.
“That’s not something captured in the Michigan Disease Surveillance System where cases are reported, so we wouldn’t be able to determine that information,” said Lynn Sutfin, a spokesperson for Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.
The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services didn’t respond to a follow-up email inquiry on why LGBTQ status isn’t collected in the state medical data system.
In New York, a spokesperson said the NY Department of Health is “not tracking COVID-19 cases by sexuality,” then when asked why that was the case referred the Blade to recent remarks from Gov. Andrew Cuomo on COVID-19.
“This virus does not discriminate,” Cuomo said. “It doesn’t discriminate by age. It doesn’t discriminate by party. It affects all Americans, and what you’re seeing in New York is going to spread across this country.”
Privacy issues around asking COVID-19 patients whether they identify as LGBTQ were cited by one state contacted by the Blade about LGBTQ demographics on the epidemic.
In Washington State — where the coronavirus spread early on the during the epidemic, but has since stabilized compared to other states — the state department of health affirmed it doesn’t collect data on whether coronavirus patients identify as LGBTQ.
Danielle Koenig, a Washington State Department of Health spokesperson, said, “We don’t have sexual orientation information on patients.” When asked why that was the case, Koenig replied, “We don’t publish more specific demographic data to protect patient privacy.”
Tobin sought to assuage concerns about privacy issues on collecting LGBTQ information in health surveys by saying state officials could keep it confidential and that information could be used to augment health care.
“Providers and our leaders need to make sure that everyone who needs help is getting it, and discrimination won’t be tolerated,” Tobin said. “Though it may take much longer than it should, we need to ensure going forward that LGBTQ-inclusive demographic data is included in all our health surveillance and electronic health record systems, that this information is voluntary and confidential, and that it’s used to improve access and quality of care.”
The departments of health for New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia didn’t respond to the Blade’s request to comment, and the California Department of Health referred the Blade to a page on its website showing the information state officials record for COVID-19. (It doesn’t include whether patients identify as LGBTQ.)
Emphasizing changing forms to include LGBTQ questions amid a pandemic may not be realistic, Tobin cited several examples for why they would have been useful, including finding out whether LGBTQ people have particular health vulnerabilities and the right way to tailor public health messages.
“The health care system runs on data,” Tobin said. “Collecting information in patient records helps promote honest communication between patients and staff to make sure their health needs and concerns are addressed. It helps us determine whether certain populations are seeking or receiving specific services at different rates, or having different outcomes.”
The lack of data collection on whether coronavirus patients identify as LGBTQ appears to be the result of a general practice as well as the official CDC form specific for COVID-19 data collection, which doesn’t include questions seeking to identify whether a patient is LGBTQ.
The CDC form seeks to obtain information on patients who tested positive for COVID-19 based on age, sex and ethnicity, but no where does it ask their sexual orientation.
For the query on sex, the form allows states to record the patient’s answer as “male,” “female,” “none,” or “other.” Although those options provide some flexibility to patients who are non-binary, it doesn’t explicitly seek to ascertain whether a COVID-19 patient is transgender.
The Centers for Disease Control didn’t respond to multiple requests from the Blade on whether it has information on COVID-19’s impact on LGBTQ people, nor why its data collection survey doesn’t ask patients if they identify as LGBTQ.
Tobin said she’s optimistic about seeing more LGBTQ demographic data in health surveys in the future, but recognized the current reality.
“For now, we know that the virus doesn’t care about gender, but that having physical vulnerabilities, a high-risk job, no paid leave, smoking, lacking safe housing, or living in an institutional setting (such as a shelter, jail, or nursing home) all put you at greater risk,” Tobin said. “Trans people, on average, are more likely to experience each one of these risk factors.”
States and the CDC aren’t collecting data on whether COVID-19 patients identify as LGBTQ despite a recent joint letter declaring LGBTQ people would be vulnerable to the epidemic.
More than 150 advocates warned LGBTQ people would be disproportionately affected by the coronavirus because they smoke and suffer from cancer at higher rates; have high reported rates of discrimination in the health care system; and are disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS.
(However, Dr. Susan Henn, chief medical officer for the D.C.-based Whitman-Walker Health, has told the Blade for people with well-managed HIV, the increased risk would only be “very slight.”)
The letter takes note ensuring “surveillance efforts capture sexual orientation and gender identity as part of routine demographics” would be a crucial goal to achieve in serving LGBTQ people during the COVID-19 epidemic.
Dr. Scott Nass, president of GLMA: Health Professionals Advancing LGBTQ Equality and a Palm Springs, Calif.-based family physician, said LGBTQ advocates will continue to beat the drum for LGBTQ inclusion in health surveys despite states declining to do that during the coronavirus crisis.
“GLMA has long advocated for data collection inclusive of sexual orientation and gender identity as central to ensuring the health and well-being of LGBTQ people,” Nass said. “Given the potential risk factors for LGBTQ individuals, inclusive data collection at federal and state levels may reveal important and life-saving data about the coronavirus and LGBTQ people and that’s exactly why GLMA, the National LGBTQ Cancer Network and more than 150 organizations called for data inclusion in our open letter on COVID-19 and LGBTQ communities.”
The Department of Health & Human Services added a question on sexual orientation to the National Health Interview Survey, the principal source of information on the health of the U.S. population. Although the administration was sluggish to add questions on transgender status, the Obama administration eventually allowed states to ask both sexual orientation and gender identity questions on the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, or BRFSS, if they so choose.
Scout said allowing states to include the LGBTQ questions on health surveys “has actually proven unexpectedly strong as political winds shifted” and now around 35 states made the inquiry on BRFSS, but “that’s still not full U.S. data.”
“Collecting SOGI data on electronic health records is rare as hens teeth,” Scout said. “This leaves us with all of our health issues masked for anything that is reliant on real time or end stage disease reporting (save HIV which has a separate system). Thus, in a time like today, we will only be able to measure which LGBTQ people had COVID years after the fact through self-report of people who have survived and happen to live in a state that collects SOGI on their BRFSS, and then only if BRFSS coordinators decide to add a COVID question.”
The number of anti-LGBTQ hate groups soared 43 percent last year, rising from 49 groups in 2018 to 70 in 2019, according to a recent report from the Southern Poverty Law Center.
“Groups that vilify the LGBTQ community, in fact, represented the fastest-growing sector among hate groups in 2019,” the report states. The SPLC found the surge in anti-LGBTQ groups occurred amid an overall decrease in hate groups last year, which dropped to 940 from an all-time high of 1,020 in 2018.
The report said the surge was “possibly fueled by continued anti-LGBTQ sentiment and policy emanating from government officials,” largely attributing it to the Trump administration.
“Anti-LGBTQ groups have become intertwined with the Trump administration, and — after years of civil rights progress and growing acceptance among the broader American public — anti-LGBTQ sentiment within the Republican Party is rising,” the report states. “Though Trump promised during his campaign to be a ‘real friend’ to the LGBTQ community, he has fully embraced anti-LGBTQ hate groups and their agenda of dismantling federal protections and resources for LGBTQ people.”
Then Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump holds a rainbow flag given to him by a supporter during a campaign rally at the University of Northern Colorado on Oct. 30, 2016 in Greeley, Colo.Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images file
In a statement sent to NBC News, White House spokesman Judd Deere called SPLC a “far-left smear organization” and said its “comments are disgusting.” He also pointed to the president’s track record on LGBTQ issues, saying Trump has “fought for inclusion and repeatedly condemned hate and violence.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center defines a hate group as “an organization that — based on its official statements or principles, the statements of its leaders, or its activities — has beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.”
Most of the growth in new anti-LGBTQ hate groups, SPLC’s report found, comes from grassroots churches.
One example is the expansion in the network of churches run by Steven Anderson. Anderson runs Faithful World Baptist Church, in Tempe, Arizona, which has been listed as a hate group by the SPLC for some time. The church, according to its website, believes “homosexuality is a sin and an abomination which God punishes with the death penalty.”
Faithful World Baptist Church did not respond to NBC News’ request for comment.
Many of the 70 “anti-LGBTQ hate groups” in SPLC’s report are well established.
President Donald Trump shakes hands with Family Research Council president Tony Perkins at the 2017 Value Voters Summit on Oct. 13, 2017 in Washington.Evan Vucci / AP file
One of the best known is the Family Research Council, which was founded in 1983 and hosts the annual Value Voters Summit for conservative politicians and thousands of participants each year. At last year’s summit, President Donald Trump repeated his opposition to the Equality Act, a bill passed by the House that would extend federal nondiscrimination protections to LGBTQ people.
Lecia Brooks, an SPLC spokesperson, told NBC News that the council’s long-time president, Tony Perkins, has been granted “unfettered access” to the Trump administration. Notably, Perkins was appointed to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
Following Perkins’ appointment to the independent, bipartisan commission, the national LGBTQ advocacy group GLAAD compiled a list of more than 30 examples of Perkins’ and FRC’s opposition to the rights of LGBTQ people in the U.S. and abroad. Among those examples are a comparison of same-sex marriage to a marriage between “a man and his horse”; calling the “It Gets Better” project, an initiative designed to help LGBTQ young people cope with bullying and marginalization, “disgusting” and a “concerted effort” to recruit kids into the gay “lifestyle”; and claiming that the “blood” of “young Marines” would be on the hands of lawmakers who voted to repeal the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.
The Family Research Council did not respond to a request for comment.
Another “anti-LGBTQ hate group” named in the report is the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal group with attorneys across the country and a long track record of litigating against LGBTQ rights.
In a lawsuit that made national headlines last year, ADF represented Jack Phillips, a Christian baker who refused to make a cake for a gay wedding, in a narrow victory at the Supreme Court. ADF is also involved in another Supreme Court case dealing with LGBTQ workers rights, representing a Detroit funeral home that fired an employee after she informed the home that she was undergoing a gender transition. Among its non-Supreme Court cases, ADF is currently representing three athletes in a suit against the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference, which adopted a policy allowing transgender girls to compete in interscholastic sports with cisgender high school girls.
Jeremy Tedesco, ADF’s senior counsel and vice president of U.S. advocacy, slammed the Southern Poverty Law Center and the timing of its new report, which was released March 18.
“It is appalling that the Southern Poverty Law Center would choose this time of national emergency to launch their divisive and false ‘hate report,’” Tedesco told NBC News. “We call on SPLC to retract the report, stop sowing division and join the rest of America against our common foe: COVID-19.”
Brooks dismissed criticisms of SPLC releasing its annual report during the coronavirus pandemic.
“Fighting hate is something we have to keep at the forefront of our minds,” she said. “They don’t take a break, and we don’t take a break either.”
Westboro Baptist Church, known for its public protests that consistently feature signs with homophobic messages like “God Hates Fags,” also appears on the SPLC’s list. In 2019, the grouppicketed Morehouse College and Spelman College after the two historically black, single-sex institutions changed their admissions policy to include transgender students.
Jonathan Phelps, a spokesperson for the church, told NBC News that the SPLC is “not being honest” in their characterization of the Westboro Baptist Church as a hate group.
“We don’t discriminate. Whatever your favorite sin is, if you ask us about it we are going to articulate in the plainest language possible what the Lord Jesus Christ has said about it,” he said. Regarding homosexuality, “it is an abomination,” Phelps added.
Brooks said SPLC stands by its “hate group” designations and dismissed criticisms that the organization disproportionately focuses on religious groups.
“We are not against Christian groups,” Brooks said. “For us, it’s more about the way they go out of their way to demonize LGBTQ folks.”
Brooks also lamented the lack of public pushback against many of these groups.
“Sadly, there is not enough public outcry against anti-LGBTQ groups because we have just let it go saying, ‘That’s just their religion,’” she said.
History of ‘anti-LGBTQ hate’
The SPLC has been tracking the number of hate groups in the United States since 1990, but the anti-LGBTQ movement emerged decades before.
“Along the same lines that you see today, they put forward stereotypes and vilify, especially gay men, as predators and predators of children, and use that to justify the tactics of taking rights way from LGBTQ people,” Fetner explained.
Fetner cited as an early example the activism of Anita Bryant in Florida. The singer-turned-anti-gay-activist was behind the “Save Our Children” campaign, which in 1977 helped overturn a newly passed local ordinance in Miami-Dade County that prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment, housing and public services.
“It caught on with socially conservative evangelical communities, and sort of blossomed and became the lead issue of the Religious Right,” Fetner said.
The late 1970s also saw the emergence of Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, a political action group that wielded significant influence in the Republican Party. Fetner said Falwell realized early on that raising issues of sexuality was both “titillating and scandalous” enough to prompt followers to make sizable donations to his organization.
“The Religious Right really inserted itself into the Republican Party in the ‘80s and ‘90s and has had an influence in American politics ever since,” she added. However, Fetner said the movement began to decline in the 1990s.
“Young evangelicals weren’t as interested in anti-gay activism as the older folks,” she said. At the same time, acceptance of homosexuality was on the rise in the U.S., across all segments of the population. “People were actually changing their minds.”
By the early 2000s, the U.S. reached a tipping point for acceptance of homosexuality, according to a Pew study, and by 2016, LGBTQ advocates had solidified many civil rights gains, such as the legalization of same-sex marriage.
Why are we seeing a surge?
So, what changed?
“Trump’s embrace of these groups, their leaders and their policy agenda fuels this growth,” Brooks said of the rise in “anti-LGBTQ hate groups.”
The report points to significant staffing and policy choices by the Trump administration that reflect the position of organizations on the SPLC’s growing anti-LGBTQ list.
Since taking office, the Trump administration has rolled back several protections for LGBTQ people through executive orders, includingnondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ workers employed by federal contractors.
“The administration has consistently claimed that laws and regulations that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex do not apply to LGBTQ people and has worked to install religious exemptions to civil rights laws,” the report states.
In addition, nearly one third of the administration’s judicial nominees boast anti-LGBTQ track records, according to a report by Lambda Legal.
“Religious conservatives have taken this as an opportunity to push back on any civil rights gains LGBTQ folks have made,” Brooks said. “They couch it in ‘religious freedom,’” she added.
“I think that anti-gay activism is swept up as part of this new social embrace of intolerance and right-wing attitudes of all kinds,” Fetner said.
“People are disgruntled, going online, getting misinformation and getting radicalized,” she added. “Some portion of these people are joining new organizations or new churches.”
Fetner sees the Trump administration is both the outcome of this broader phenomenon, and a catalyst for increased anti-LGBTQ activism.
“Trump’s win was a signal to these larger social forces that this is their moment,” she said.
What’s the impact?
Anti-LGBTQ groups have a significant impact on policy outcomes, social violence and the priorities of LGBTQ advocacy organizations, according to civil rights advocates and scholars.
“Extremist ideas long believed outside of the realm of legitimate politics are penetrating deeply into the mainstream, spawning public policies that target immigrants, LGBTQ people and Muslims,” the report states.
Shannon Minter, legal director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights, said this “pattern of escalating attacks has put the LGBT movement on the defensive” and caused advocacy groups to invest a “tremendous amount of resources to deal with these attacks.”
Fetner said most LGBTQ advocacy groups are funded at “a fraction of the Religious Right groups that were proposing these initiatives.” She said that means they’re “sucked into these battles where their very right to exist is on the table again,” and they’re “putting out fires that have been started by better resourced organizations.”
The SPLC report and LGBTQ advocates also connect the surge in “anti-LGBTQ hate groups” to violence against LGBTQ people.
The FBI’s most recent Hate Crime Statistics report, released in November, found nearly 20 percent of all reported hate crimes in 2018 were motivated by anti-LGBTQ bias. While reported anti-LGBTQ hate crimes grew from 2017 to 2018, the most growth was seen in reports of anti-trans violence, which increased 34 percent year-over-year.
“I don’t think the anti-LGBTQ movement will win, but the damage they can do along the way is substantial,” Fetner said. Despite this, she remains optimistic, saying, “The LGBTQ movement will carry on and will come out of it stronger.”
Idaho Governor Brad Little Monday evening signed into law two bills that place new restrictions on transgender individuals in the state. The first of the two bills the Republican governor signed targets a transgender person’s ability to request a birth certificate change.
Under the new law, transgender individuals will no longer be able to change their listed sex on their official birth certificates and the certificate can only be amended within a single year of its initial filing. After that year has expired, the only grounds on which the certificate could be changed would be “fraud, duress, or material mistake of fact.”
The second transgender-related bill Little signed Monday bans transgender woman and girls from participating in women’s sports sponsored by public schools, colleges and universities.
Very few people have the breadth and depth of experience with infectious disease — scientific, activist, and personal — as Gregg Gonsalves.
Gonsalves was a leading member of ACT UP, a militant activist group that played a vital role in waking the American public up to the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and ‘90s. An HIV-positive gay man, he spent the following decades doing research and activism surrounding AIDS and other infectious diseases. He has a PhD from Yale University in epidemiology, where he’s currently a professor studying microbial diseases, and received a MacArthur fellowship (more commonly known as a Genius Grant) in 2018.
So when we spoke on the phone this week and he sounded the alarm about the Trump administration’s push to relax coronavirus quarantine measures as soon as possible, I got a little panicked.
“The rest of the United States [will be like] New York two weeks from now,” he told me. “You can’t relax social distancing now without risking a conflagration.”
In his mind, Trump’s handling of the crisis feels like an eerie callback to the 1980s, when then-President Ronald Reagan chose to ignore early warnings about the threat from HIV/AIDS. About 450,000 Americans died of the disease between 1981 and 2000, a toll that Gonsalves believes can (at least in part) be blamed on Reagan’s “malign neglect” of the outbreak. For Gonsalves, the Trump response to coronavirus feels like the same thing all over again — just with the time frame sped way up.
We talked about his view of the science and policy surrounding coronavirus as well as the lessons the AIDS epidemic has for Americans today — not just when it comes to policy, but also what ordinary people can do to make things better despite being stuck at home.
A transcript of our conversation follows, edited for length and clarity.
Zack Beauchamp
What do you think happens in a world where certain parts of the country start ending restrictions on business activity?
Gregg Gonsalves
You don’t have to be an epidemiologist to figure that one out: viruses don’t respect state borders. If we’re going to sort of be able to contain this outbreak, it’s going to have to be a national commitment.
Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, and the governor of Mississippi have said they’re not willing to do these sorts of stay-at-home orders; I think the governor of Mississippi overruled local officials on this. We already have a patchwork of responses to the epidemic. New York City may be the epicenter of the epidemic right now, but there’s only a matter of time until it spreads to Miami and Tupelo and New Orleans — which [currently] has some of the largest increases in cases.
Everybody said we were in Italy two weeks ago. The rest of the United States is New York two weeks from now.
Unless we figure out how to sort of move toward what the New York Times called for the other day — a national lockdown of sorts — we’re just going to see cases increase and emergency rooms and ICUs across the country be filled to capacity. People no longer being in the hospital, but in morgues around the country — and people unable to bury their dead for risk of infection to themselves. It’s pretty clear what the choices are for us.
Zack Beauchamp
This isn’t controversial among epidemiologists, right? I want to be clear.
Gregg Gonsalves
No.
We’re operating off of public health history and what’s happened with other epidemics. We did this SARS, we did this with H1N1, we’ve done this with Ebola. It’s not different now except that this is a more widespread pandemic than we’ve seen before.
The models differ a little bit, but their implication is the same: Without extreme social distancing, we’re going to unleash the virus and potentially collapse our health systems. You can’t relax social distancing now without risking a conflagration.
Park Avenue in New York City, the epicenter of the coronavirus epidemic in the US, has been closed off to make it easier for pedestrians to maintain social distancing.
Zack Beauchamp
Is there a world in which the United States could adopt an approach more like what you see in South Korea — where you have much more widespread testing and you have contact tracing of people who are infected? Or are we past the point of no return on that kind of approach?
Gregg Gonsalves
Could’ve, should’ve, would’ve.
Three months ago, we could have used the WHO tests instead of developing a CDC test that was so defective that they had to start from scratch. If we were going to do scale-up of testing and contact tracing to contain the epidemic, it would have started happening in late December, early January. We’re now in a case where the virus is everywhere.
We do need to scale-up testing. We need to know how far and how deep this epidemic goes across the US, but we’re in the mitigation phase. There’s hundreds of thousands — if not millions — infected with the virus already. So we’re trying to sort of keep it from spreading further.
Testing is going to be an important part of that. Not just virus testing, but antibody testing to see who has been exposed and is no longer carrying the disease. Testing and contact tracing are going to be really important, but we’re at the end of March and we don’t have the testing capacity in the United States even to test everyone who comes into our hospitals to find out if they have Covid-19.
[The South Korea approach] is going to be our eventual way out. But we’re not there. We’re not even close.
Zack Beauchamp
You mentioned historical pandemics and epidemics earlier. I want to talk about the early HIV/AIDS outbreak, the most deadly recent outbreak in the US prior to Covid-19 — and a topic on which you’re a leading expert.
What lessons should we be taking from our own experience with a deadly epidemic in our country?
Gregg Gonsalves
We have two cases of sort of botched responses to epidemics out of neglect and incompetence.
In the 1980s, we had a president who ignored the AIDS epidemic for most of his presidency — didn’t mention AIDS until the seventh year of his two-year term. That malign neglect, which for President Reagan was probably based on homophobia and racism and fear of people who use drugs, is a very specific kind of malevolence and incompetence.
I don’t know how old you are, but I remember when the Legionnaires were in Philadelphia in that hotel [in 1976] and this new disease struck the hotel. The CDC was mobilized, there was a national mobilization over a few cases of a new unknown disease. A few years later, we had people screaming from the rooftops that [AIDS] is going to be a disaster — but nobody really was listening.
Zack Beauchamp
Does it feel like déjà vu when it comes to coronavirus — but sped up?
Gregg Gonsalves
The déjà vu is in a bumbling idiot of a president who is totally unprepared to do what’s necessary to deal with the health and wellbeing of the people he serves.
The mobilization outside of DC among ordinary people is completely different than what we saw in the early days of the [AIDS] epidemic. Just think of our heroic doctors and nurses in our hospitals, the academic community, the community of faith leaders. If we had this kind of mobilization back then, we would’ve been in much better shape, but we didn’t. We did among ourselves in the gay community, but we were a small group of people.
Today, it’s been a national mobilization — except at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Once again, we have a president who failed to take an epidemic seriously and ended up getting many of the people who he’s supposed to represent killed. “PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO HELP THEIR NEIGHBORS IN A WAY THAT WE DON’T THINK ABOUT VERY MUCH IN OUR DAILY LIVES”
Zack Beauchamp
I don’t know if this is even the right way to think about this. But is there any way, based on your experiences with ACT UP, to describe what coronavirus activism might look like?
Is it the social solidarity that you’re describing earlier, in terms of community mobilization, or is there some kind of more directly political way to put pressure on the White House or governors or other authorities to do more?
Gregg Gonsalves
Weeks ago, old ACT UP alums and younger AIDS activists were all over this. Our antennae go up when we see infectious diseases get ignored and I think we were all talking about this in December and January. There’s a Covid-19 activist group in New York City that’s doing everything from diagnostics to social media.
My friend Amy Kapczynski at Yale Law School and I, who both have AIDS activist backgrounds, have written for the Boston Review talking about the political challenges of this pandemic. A lot of old AIDS activists have been central to this and it’s no coincidence that Debbie Birx and Tony Fauci are two old AIDS hands as well.
I don’t know how old you are, but I remember when the Legionnaires were in Philadelphia in that hotel [in 1976] and this new disease struck the hotel. The CDC was mobilized, there was a national mobilization over a few cases of a new unknown disease. A few years later, we had people screaming from the rooftops that [AIDS] is going to be a disaster — but nobody really was listening.
Zack Beauchamp
Does it feel like déjà vu when it comes to coronavirus — but sped up?
Gregg Gonsalves
The déjà vu is in a bumbling idiot of a president who is totally unprepared to do what’s necessary to deal with the health and wellbeing of the people he serves.
The mobilization outside of DC among ordinary people is completely different than what we saw in the early days of the [AIDS] epidemic. Just think of our heroic doctors and nurses in our hospitals, the academic community, the community of faith leaders. If we had this kind of mobilization back then, we would’ve been in much better shape, but we didn’t. We did among ourselves in the gay community, but we were a small group of people.
Today, it’s been a national mobilization — except at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Once again, we have a president who failed to take an epidemic seriously and ended up getting many of the people who he’s supposed to represent killed. “PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO HELP THEIR NEIGHBORS IN A WAY THAT WE DON’T THINK ABOUT VERY MUCH IN OUR DAILY LIVES”
Zack Beauchamp
I don’t know if this is even the right way to think about this. But is there any way, based on your experiences with ACT UP, to describe what coronavirus activism might look like?
Is it the social solidarity that you’re describing earlier, in terms of community mobilization, or is there some kind of more directly political way to put pressure on the White House or governors or other authorities to do more?
Gregg Gonsalves
Weeks ago, old ACT UP alums and younger AIDS activists were all over this. Our antennae go up when we see infectious diseases get ignored and I think we were all talking about this in December and January. There’s a Covid-19 activist group in New York City that’s doing everything from diagnostics to social media.
My friend Amy Kapczynski at Yale Law School and I, who both have AIDS activist backgrounds, have written for the Boston Review talking about the political challenges of this pandemic. A lot of old AIDS activists have been central to this and it’s no coincidence that Debbie Birx and Tony Fauci are two old AIDS hands as well.
There’s been a very big mobilization around AIDS activists around the coronavirus epidemic, but the big challenge is that you can’t do what we used to do, which is to storm the NIH and seize control of the FDA — because you can’t leave your house.
Zack Beauchamp
That’s why I’m asking. A lot of people are sitting at home feeling impotent and scared; what would you tell them if somebody reading our interview thinks, “I would like to do something about this the way these AIDS activists are organizing”? What kinds of avenues for activism are there?
Gregg Gonsalves
Well first of all, they’re doing something really, really important right now. As I said, social distancing is an act of solidarity and generosity, it’s just tremendous. Think of the millions of people who are going out — maybe to go grocery shopping once a week.
The other thing is that we got to get more people to join the cause, and it means reaching young people who seem to feel a little bit immune to this. I was on the phone with a group of Harvard students earlier this week where they’re developing sort of a campaign called #WhyIStayHome. The idea is trying to reach out to people through social media; we have a lot more resources in terms of getting the word out about what needs to be done that is sort of proliferating across the country.
I just retweeted an editorial from a West Virginia newspaper, which was simply brilliant saying, “We need to take this seriously” — really challenging what’s coming out of the White House in Charleston, West Virginia. We’re able to amplify that, an editorial in which you would mostly consider a red state.
Lots of stuff is happening. I think organizers from the Women’s March — I was on a call with them yesterday — are trying to figure out ways to keep the pressure on Congress, on governors, and local officials. Remember that the president can make whatever pronouncements he wants on social distancing, but it’s going to be the governors and mayors who decide what happens.
So a lot of activism can happen very locally, where you may know your mayor. You may know the member of your city council. You may be able to get on the phone with them and make change: It doesn’t matter if you reach Mike Pence or Donald Trump, if you’re reaching the governor of Rhode Island or the mayor of Hartford and saying, as a citizen of your state, as a citizen of your city, I expect you to hold the line and keep us together by keeping us apart.
Zack Beauchamp
You’ve tweeted, on #WhyIStayAtHome, that you’re someone who has HIV yourself. What does it feel like to move around in the world under these circumstances, especially as someone who’s — I’ve seen your picture — doesn’t look like the kind of older person we associate with being especially threatened by the coronavirus.
Gregg Gonsalves
Well, one is I’m not immunocompromised. I’ve been on antiretroviral therapy since 1996. I’m more than about 15 years with a stable HIV infection.
Zack Beauchamp
That’s great, that’s just great.
Gregg Gonsalves
But there are other people who have HIV who may be more compromised than I am. As I said in that tweet, my mother is 86 years old and I have a sister-in-law who has cancer. I worry about them more than I worry about myself. I’m no spring chicken; I’m 57 years old, so my chances, in general, are higher than yours of developing symptomatic disease.
But moving around in the world, I feel less physical risk than I do the weight of the history of the AIDS epidemic. Another epidemic being mishandled; it’s PTSD of a certain sort where you’re like, we’re really doing this again? I shouldn’t go to Las Vegas because I’m pretty unlucky, and I think a lot of us are feeling that way.
We have resilience and an ability to respond and to organize and know what to do. But we also know what it’s like to watch your loved ones die, these waves of dying friends, over the course of a month and years.
I don’t know anybody personally who’s died of coronavirus yet. But I’m waiting for the shoe to drop and it’s terrifying. Is it going to be my partner? Is it going to be any of my close work colleagues? Going to be somebody in my family? And that feeling is very reminiscent of the days of the AIDS epidemic because you were going to funeral after funeral.
I know the hospital here [in New Haven] is close to capacity in terms of its ICU beds. New York hospitals are the same way. And so the chances that you’re going to be able to get access to care with each passing day is going to become more remote because there’s not going to be enough beds to put you in. I’m petrified that I’m going to get a call from somebody who says I have it or somebody saying, he has it or she has it and they’re in the ICU or something like that.
Zack Beauchamp
Advice is almost the wrong word here, but do you have any guidance for helping people think through these emotions, that kind of fear, given your experience with an epidemic where people you knew were getting infected and dying?
Gregg Gonsalves
A member of ACT UP, an art critic named Douglas Crimp, wrote a big essay called “Mourning and Militancy.” He talked about how, in ACT UP, we were all sort of militant: fighting, and so didn’t really want to talk about how we felt about what was going on. He said that it was important to acknowledge the anger and the grief and the sadness you’re feeling, while sort of maintaining an outward focus, a commitment to making things better. As Vito Russo, another member of ACT UP said, “We have to be alive when this is all over to make sure it never happens again.”
So I think the advice for people is to understand what’s going on emotionally for you, the grief you’re feeling, the sadness you’re feeling — even if it’s not for somebody who’s gotten sick and died, but for the sort of life that we once all had in January or February. That life is over for the foreseeable future.
And it’s hard to believe they we’re all going to be the same after these next few months. Take it in, understand it. I’m not a touchy-feely person, but I think it means talking to people you care about either face to face if you’re in the same house with them, or online or whatever.
But don’t stew in it; say “there’s something I can do.” I can protect my community by social distancing. Whatever skills I have, I can contribute — I can write for a newspaper or I have power as a citizen in my city or my state. I can influence my elected officials on the phone or by email or other means of communication. … Face your emotions and your grief and then make sure that we can get through this together, with the fewest deaths and the least damage.
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