GBO NEWS: CORONA SPECIAL ISSUE—COVID-19 Meets Ageism2020: Social Media Gaffes, Comedian Trevor Noah Blames Senior “Delinquents” for Spread; Nursing Home Infection Mismanagement; Payroll Tax Cut for Affluent, Not Workers; Major Aging Conferences Cancelled, Postponed; Webinar on Future of Pandemics & Aging.
GENERATIONS BEAT ONLINE NEWS
E-News of the Journalists Network on Generations – Our 27th Year.
March 12, 2020 — Volume 27, Number 3
EDITOR’S NOTE: GBONews, e-news of the Journalists Network on Generations (JNG), publishes alerts for journalists, producers and authors covering generational issues. Send your news of important stories or books (by you and others), fellowships, awards or pertinent kvetches to GBO News Editor Paul Kleyman. To subscribe to GBONews.org at no charge, simply sending a request to Paul with your name, address, phone number and editorial affiliation or note that you freelance. For each issue, you’ll receive the table of contents in an e-mail, so just click through to the full issue at www.gbonews.org. GBONews does not provide its list to other entities.
In This Issue: News That’s Over 60% Sanitized.
1. COVID-19 MEETS AGEISM-2020: “False Alarm” Claims: Don’t Worry, It’s Just Old People; Comedian Trevor Noah Blames Spread on Old “Delinquents”;
2. LONG-TERM MISMANAGEMENT: *** “New Guidelines as Virus Devastates Nursing Homes: No More Visitors,” New York Times; *** “Coronavirus Stresses Nursing Home Infection-Control Practices,” (61% Had Violations), Connecticut Health I-Team; *** “Nursing Homes Were Lax Even Before Virus,” Kaiser Health News; *** “Caronavirus Reveals Flaws in U.S,. Health System,” The Dose, The Commonwealth Fund.
3. SAVED BY THE PAYROLL TAX?: **** “Trump’s Payroll Tax Cut Would Hurt Social Security Without Helping Workers,” by Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times; *** “Far Better Ways Than Payroll Tax Cut to Contain Virus’s Economic Damage,” by Chye-Ching Huang, Center for Budget and Policy Priorities; & Other Expert Sources.
4.. CORONA AGE CONFERENCE DISTANCING: Aging in America Meeting Cancelled; Future of Pandemics & Age Webinar, March 27.
1. COVID-19 MEETS AGEISM-2020
“False Alarm” Claims: Don’t Worry, It’s Just Old People
Pandora’s pandemic box: Amid all to be reported that’s protective come the inevitable, unsanitized distortions, some merely ignorant, such as comedian Trevor Noah’s ridicule of “delinquent” seniors videoed by CNN partying and shaking hands, or more purposeful, especially President Donald Trump’s seemingly prudent proposal but damaging proposal to zero out the Social Security payroll tax as his prime economic stimulus in the wake of the viral crisis.
The media’s red-tufted images of the COVID-19 virus may look like a Whiffle Ball with measles, but there’s no joke when the World Health Organization (WHO) has to correct viral social media statements that the spreading germ is merely sounding a “false alarm, everybody, turns out the coronavirus only kills old people.” This actual tweet sneezed out on Feb. 26, by user @ahleuwu. In another example, @MarshyPony wrote, “The only fatalities to the Corona Virus (sic) so far were old people with weakened immune systems and or people with pre-existing lung conditions. . . .”
These and others were reported by Julia Mastroianni, of Canada’s National Post (March 3) in her story, “ ‘Real People Won’t Die’ : Rhetoric Around Who is at Risk of Coronavirus Infection Sparks Debate Over Ageism, Ableism.”
Mastroianni cites WHO’s recent Q&A about COVID-19, stressing that the agency wrote that older people with pre-existing medical conditions (such as high blood pressure, heart disease, or diabetes) “appear to develop serious illness more often than others.’ Some social media users, however, have taken this to mean that they don’t need to worry because it’s only these vulnerable populations who are at severe risk.”
Her story also quotes U.S.-based writer Laura Dorwart, who counter-tweeted that such messaging exposed how disabled people are “regularly and systemically devalued.” She explained that such errant reassurances are tantamount to saying, “Don’t worry, Real People won’t die, only Non-People like the old and disabled people.” She added, “The underlying assumption often is, ‘Well we can’t do anything about THEM anyway,’ as if there’s no point.”
Mastroianni also interviewed Liz Finnegan, a U.S.-based community manager, who has the autoimmune condition, lupus. She remarked on “people who say, ‘Yes there was a death, but that person was 50 and had an underlying condition.’ Yes, this is a fact, but it’s phrased in a way that is particularly devoid of compassion. It’s almost as if these losses are viewed as more acceptable.” Finnegan said she worries that if many believe the illness “is insignificant and of little risk to themselves, they’re less likely to take the appropriate measures to keep from spreading it.”
This story linked to the first large study analyzing the effect of other health conditions on COVID-19 cases and fatalities. Mastroianni noted an initial Chinese study of 1,590 patients across the country with the laboratory-confirmed disease. She said, “The study — posted on Feb. 27, to the site medRxiv, which posts research before it has been peer-reviewed — found that the 399 patients with at least one additional disease had a 79 per cent greater chance of dying, of requiring intensive care or a respirator, or of both. The additional diseases included hypertension, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.”
Anti-ageism advocate, Ashton Applewhite, blogged March 9, that a key reason, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), that older adults tend to be about twice as likely to “develop serious outcomes” from the COVID-19 respiratory infection as younger and healthier people, is that they’re more likely to have underlying conditions—such as heart disease, lung disease and diabetes.
Applewhite went on, “This doesn’t mean that turning 65 puts someone at higher risk. . . . Underlying health plays a much bigger role than age does. And while older people do have more health issues, plenty are in excellent health.”
Trevor Noah Blames Spread on Old “Delinquents”
Meanwhile, in a stunning example of -ism blindness, otherwise brilliant satirist Trevor Noah, concluded the lead story of his March 10 Daily Show on Comedy Central by chiding older adults as culprits in spreading the disease, while governments are “doing their best to contain the virus.”
The segment, titled, “Is This How We Die?” mostly promotes public health measures, such as handwashing and “social distancing,” which he jests could be useful in break ups—“Hey, baby, we need some space.” Noah smartly includes an NBC news clip on how many people, particularly gig-economy workers, like ride-share drivers, cannot afford to stay home without paid leave.
But then, at 5:40 minutes into the story, Noah goes to the gray side, something he does too frequently in targeting older people as the butt of jokes. In this case, the segment centers quite seriously on a CNN piece about older people ignoring the government’s urgings to avoid crowds. True, CNN’s narrator states “there are few signs that seniors are listening.” The story focuses on a group of affluent retirees at Orlando’s gated community, The Villages, as the play softball. The reporter mentions the seniors were only told to eliminate their post-game high-fives, which they don’t. And ruddy-face resident Rick Sanford, 72, ends the stiory declaring coronavirus warnings to be “bogus.”
Noah, then, generalizes, “It’s really funny how all of us are working to protect old people, who are most at risk. But then old people are just out there living their best life.” Curiously, neither CNN nor Noah question management responsibility at The Villages, for having, evidently, downplayed more than advice not to slap high-fives.
More curious, still, is why Noah and his production team so often tunnel their vision past their ageist misrepresentations of Americas elders—often in the image of cranky old white men—while also stridently featuring segments on other kinds of bias. Ironically, the May 10 program ended on an interview with the authors of a new young-adult book showing the history of racism in America. I have to wonder whether Noah would have blamed the old for spreading the virus had CNN focused on older Africans Americans or other ethnic elders?
2. LONG-TERM MISMANAGEMENT
*** “New Guidelines as Virus Devastates Nursing Homes: No More Visitors,” Jack Healy, Matt Richtel & Mike Baker, NYT (March 11): Where else might a social satirist probe the COVID-19 news for pointed satire? (Sorry, we’ve had to quarantine the biting satire.) How about this cue from the March 11 New York Timesarticle, Paragraph four states, “’The mortality rate is shocking,’ said Mark Parkinson, president of the American Health Care Association. He said the death rate might well exceed the 15 percent that had been reported in China for people aged 80 and older.” Not much for laughs, right?
However, as health reporters on the generations beat know, the blandly named AHCA is the trade group representing for-profit nursing home providers, two-thirds of all long-term care (LTC) facilities in the United States. One doesn’t have to Google far to find decades of reports on how the LTC industry has lobbied against key caregiving and safety measures as increased staffing levels, and has resisted better training, pay and working conditions for direct-care employees, those who spend most time with the patients.
The NYT story is about new recommendations from industry leaders to curtail all but the most essential facility visits. The piece article goes, “Dr. Kevin Kavanagh, an expert in infection control who has been critical of lax practices at nursing homes, lauded the new guidance that restricts social visits.”
*** “Coronavirus Stresses Nursing Home Infection-Control Practices,” by Cara Rosner and Susan Jaffe, Connecticut Health I-Team (March 12, 2020): Their In-depth Team reporting includes important nation, as well as the Connecticut State figures gathered by some of the top investigative health journalists in the field.
They report, “Nationally, 9,372 nursing homes, or 61%, were cited for one or more infection-control violations, according to a report by Kaiser Health News. Kaiser’s analysis found that violations since the beginning of 2017 were more common at homes with fewer nurses and aides than at facilities with higher staffing levels. Infection prevention violations included staff failing to wash their hands or change their gloves in between caring for residents, or properly cleaning equipment after each use, such as glucometers, which measure blood sugar levels.” The article adds, “Seniors have a high risk of contracting coronavirus, according to Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC. ‘Starting at age 60 there is an increasing risk of disease and the risk increases with age,’ she said.
*** “Coronavirus Stress Test: Many 5-Star Nursing Homes Have Infection-Control Lapses,” by Jordan Rau of Kaiser Health News (March 4)? (The San Francisco Chronicle ran this story with the sharper headline, “Nursing Homes Were Lax Even Before Virus.” Is there a pop-culture satirist on The Daily Show set who might want to skewer corporate executives hoping to look good in the nursing home neighborhood? I’ve seen Stephen Colbert’s producers pull up weeds ever deeper than these on many other issues and shake out the wry chuckles. Is there a nuance in the house?
*** “Caronavirus Reveals Flaws in U.S,. Health System,” published on The Dose, a Commonwealth Fund podcast by Shanoor Seervai with a full transcript (March 6, 2020): Seervai’s interview with the Fund’s President David Blumenthal, MD, and health care policy VP Sara Collins, PhD, is stunningly revealing about the fissures in U.S. health care –especially cracked more open by current policies — that threaten the nation. These are two of the most knowledgeable and respected health care policy research experts in the field, and their analyses suggests many questions reporters may raise nationally and locally about the spread of COVID-19.
Noting that older adults are at especially high risk of both contracting the virus and experience severe symptoms, Blumenthal explains, “We don’t have adequate primary care in the United States. We have a tremendous deficit compared to other advanced countries of frontline providers who can offer that initial contact with the health care system, where symptom identification can take place, and where screening could happen outside of the crowded and more dangerous setting of a hospital emergency room.”
3. SAVED BY THE PAYROLL TAX?
And then there’s President Orange, shown in recent days pressing the campaign flesh as heartily as ever, despite his possible exposure to the coronavirus, while he’s admonishing others to refrain. Was good old Rick at The Villages taking on the MAGA-tude from his leader? There’s no need of GBONews to try adding to all of documented evidence of this administration’s failures regarding detection and containment of COVID-19, but what about, say, the devastating economic impact? What about President Trump’s likely actual propose in proposing to eliminate the Social Security payroll tax? Sounds intuitive, right, a stimulus for the working stiff’s paycheck?
Reporters will find some excellent background and fodder for good questions in a range of sources that have criticized the wisdom of the zero payroll tax (it mostly benefits high earners), but also offer these three can offer significant solutions.
**** “Trump’s Payroll Tax Cut Would Hurt Social Security Without Helping Workers,” by Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times (March 10, 2020): The Pulitzer Prize-winning LAT economics columnist writes, “Here’s a bad idea, unearthed by President Trump from a decade ago: Cutting the payroll tax to goose the economy. A payroll tax cut was part of the arsenal used by President Obama to fight the Great Recession in 2011. It was a bad idea then, and a bad idea now.”
He continues, “Regardless of how it’s designed, a payroll tax cut would be poorly targeted, delivering the most help to households least in need. It would have only a diluted impact over time. And it would undermine Social Security, the program most dependent on the payroll tax Who would be helped by the payroll tax cut? More-affluent workers, that’s who. A 2% cut in the payroll tax would come to $2,754 for everyone earning [Social Security’s] taxable maximum of $137,700 or more. For a two-earner household at the maximum, the cut would come to an annual $5,508. A 2% cut would put only $500 in the pocket of a single parent earning $25,000 a year, former Obama economic advisor Jason Furman observed on Twitter. Hourly workers sent home without pay or laid off because of the economic slowdown would get nothing.”
Hiltzik adds, “What’s most unnerving about a payroll tax cut is its potential to undermine Social Security. . . . Using this income stream as a tool to pump stimulus into the economy threatens to erode Social Security’s position as a unique government program with its own revenue stream, a tax dedicated to its upkeep alone. Melding its own revenue with that of the federal government at large facilitates no one’s goals except those who want to see the edifice pulled down. That includes Trump, who has spoken openly about cutting “entitlements” such as Social Security and Medicare benefits.”
Furthermore, the NYT reported March 11 that congressional members of both parties have rejected eliminating the payroll tax, but may consider a partial reduction as part of a larger stimulus package.
One always quotable and very informed source is Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) co-founder and senior economist, Dean Baker. He blogged, “While the economy will need a boost to limit the extent of the downturn caused by the virus, cutting the Social Security tax is the wrong way to go.”
What’s more, says Baker, “Under the law, Social Security payments can only come from the program’s dedicated revenue stream, which is primarily the Social Security payroll tax. Under President Obama, a temporary Social Security tax cut was put in place in 2011. The lost revenue was replaced by general revenue, so the Trust Fund was not in any way diminished.”
Another critical source is Nancy J. Altman, president of the advocacy group, Social Security Words. Also a member of the bipartisan federal Social Security Advisory Board, Altman wrote, “Donald Trump is using the coronavirus crisis as an excuse to propose a reduction in payroll contributions. This is a Trojan Horse attack on our Social Security system, which will do nothing to meaningfully address the crisis at hand. Other proposals to stimulate the economy, such as restoring the Making Work Pay Tax Credit or expanding the existing Earned Income Tax Credit, are more targeted and provide more fiscal stimulus. They are fairer in their distribution and place no administrative burdens on employers.”
At the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, Chye-Ching Huang, Senior Director of Economic Policy, posted “Far Better Ways Than Payroll Tax Cut to Contain Virus’s Economic Damage” (March 10). She wrote that the “Trump Administration has suggested trying to shore up the economy through a payroll tax cut, but direct, immediate stimulus payments — like those made with bipartisan support when recession threatened in 2008 — would do far more to reduce immediate hardship and buttress an economy that faces serious risk. Such measures — along with strengthening Medicaid coverage, unemployment insurance, nutrition assistance, and paid sick leave — would deliver assistance quickly to people struggling to get by, who will spend virtually all of the additional resources they receive and thereby help keep consumer purchases from declining too sharply and sending the economy downhill.”
4.. CORONA AGE CONFERENCE DISTANCING
ASA Cancelation; Pandemics & Age Webinar
*** Aging in America Meeting Cancelled: GBONews received an email announcement from American Society on Aging Chair Karyne Jones, saying ASA has cancelled its 2020 Aging in America conference in Atlanta, previously schedule for March 24-27.
Jones wrote, “We understand our presenters, exhibitors, sponsors and collaborating organizations have been planning to present and engage with attendees since last June. The contributions of everyone who attends this multi-disciplinary annual event is what ignites enthusiasm for shared best practices, recent research results and shared new information. This conference is everyone’s annual collective experience. We are all disappointed! “ The 2021 Aging in America Conference will convene, hopefully, April 6-9 in San Diego.
Also postponed as part of Aging in America is the What’s Next Longevity Business Summit. Conference organizer, Mary Furlong, announced that it will be held in Berkeley, Calif., June 24-25, superseding the annual Silicon Valley Longevity Business Summit and Business Plan Competition. To preview the agenda and lineup of speakers, check out their website. This conference is usually media friendly. More will come on who to contact for a press badge.
*** Webinar: The Nexus Between Pandemics and Age-Related Diseases, March 27, 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM EDT: News Flash—All old people won’t die in the next two weeks – but the dangers will continue. This webinar will include leading national health care and medical research experts, Joan Mannick, MD (Co-founder and CMO of resTORbio), Nir Barzilai, MD (Albert Einstein College of Medicine), Lawrence Steinman, MD (Stanford, including former long-time Chair of Immunology) and Cynthia Stuen, PhD (Chair of the NGO Committee on Ageing/NY).
According to panel moderator Adriane Berg, Director of the Metabesity Initiative and Host of Generation Bold Radio, “For the longer term, we want to reduce health risks—whether from the flu, coronavirus, or other infections—to the elderly and to reduce the incidence of chronic diseases that can render patients more vulnerable to such infections.” She continues in the event announcement, “With the global outbreak of SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 on the rise, there is an intense current public interest in the vulnerability of the elderly and those with comorbidities to COVID-19.” Yup, there’s that other coronavirus spreading its news, SARS-CoV-2.
To view the presentation: log in with your computer at https://buff.ly/3cRC6Bj. 2. For audio only (no slides): dial +1 888 601-3595 or +1 304 362-9327. Please click “Register” above to RSVP.
The Journalists Network on Generations (JNG), founded in 1993, publishes Generations Beat Online News (GBONews.org). JNG provides information and networking opportunities for journalists covering generational issues, but not those representing services, products or lobbying agendas. Copyright 2020 JNG. For more information contact GBO Editor Paul Kleyman.
To subscribe of unsubscribe, or if you have technical problems receiving issues of GBO or if you’d like to be removed from the list, e-mail me at paul.kleyman@earthlink.net, or pfkleyman@gmail.com or phone me at 415-821-2801.