STATE EMPLOYEES WANT HAZARD PAY
[RALEIGH] The State Employees Association of North Carolina wants Gov. Roy Cooper and the legislature to grant hazard pay to all state workers at prisons and other state facilities "in essential jobs where social distancing is impossible or impractical.” In an April 4th letter, SEANC Director Ardis Watkins requested that state employees get time-and-a-half as long as the state emergency lasts. No response from either from the governor or legislative leaders at press time.
ISOLATED ELDERLY CITIZENS AT GREATER RISK DURING CRISIS
[GREENSBORO] Elderly citizens who live by themselves and are self -dependent for food and medicine are at greater risk during the COVID-19 crisis, because thy can ill-afford to run out of their essentials, health officials ay. In addition, even without the crisis, many seniors have to deal with loneliness and depression. Some seniors, fearful of contracting the deadly virus, have cut back on in-home care services to minimize coming in contact with the outside world. Many elder services across the state have established routine calling to their clients to make sure they’re alright, and get a read on their needs.
NORTH CAROLINA TO HIT 500,000 JOBLESS CLAIMS
[RALEIGH] 21,000 out-of-work North Carolinians have filed for jobless benefits every day in the three weeks since a state of emergency was declared because of the COVID-19 crisis, published reports say. The state has approved approximately $30 million in unemployment benefits, and federal government benefits are expected to assist as well. Congress approved benefits of $600 per week for up to four months. Per state benefits, 110,000 have been proved thus far.
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BLACKS INCREASING CASES
OF COVID-19 ACROSS N.C.
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
In Louisiana Monday, Gov. John Bell Edwards had stark news for his state - over 70% of it’s confirmed 15,000 COVID-19 cases were African-Americans.
“Slightly more than 70 percent of all deaths in Louisiana (from the virus) are of African Americans, who make up about 32 percent of the overall population of our state,” he said Monday. “This is a big disparity, and we want to find out what that is attributable to … and what we can do to slow that trend down.”
In Chicago, more than half of those who’ve contracted coronavirus, and over 70% of those who have died, are African-American.
As of Monday, April 6th, North Carolina officially had approximately 3,000 cases of novel coronavirus (COVID-19), in over 90 of 100 counties, with approximately 40 deaths (unofficial numbers from late reporting county health departments had the numbers higher).
Of that number, over 690, or 37 percent, were black. An estimated 22% (7) of blacks known to have been infected with COVID-19, had died.
African-Americans make up an estimated 21% of North Carolina’s population. Mecklenburg, Wake and Durham counties - counties with high black populations - also have the most coronavirus cases across the state.
With published reports projecting that North Carolina could have as many as 750,000 people infected by the end of May if current social distancing policies are not maintained (Gov. Cooper’s “stay at home” restrictions are scheduled to end on April 29th), the number of blacks who could catch the virus if the percentages held at where they are now would be 277,000 African-American cases, and 165,000 dead.
As shocking as those numbers are, they are even more eyeopening in other, larger states.
As of Friday, April 3rd, while African-Americans make up just 15% of Michigan’s population, they are 35% of the state’s COVID-19 known cases. In Illinois - blacks are 16% of the state’s population, but 36% of the coronavirus cases.
And in neighboring South Carolina, African-Americans tally in at 28% of the population, but 36% of those infected with COVID-19.
Even without COVID-19, the death rate for African-Americans “…is generally higher than whites for heart diseases, stroke, cancer, asthma, influenza and pneumonia, diabetes, HIV/AIDS, and homicide,” states the 2017 U.S. Health and Human Services report, based on 2015 findings.
But now with the novel coronavirus added to the list, spreading at a frightening rate (North Carolina is doubling it’s overall cases in days now instead of weeks) the impact on the black community here in the Tar Heel state, and across the nation, is expected to be devastating.
Indeed, because several chronic diseases like diabetes are so prevalent in the African-American community, many black medical professionals are bracing themselves for the worst, and warning the community to pay serious heed to the social distancing directives issued by Gov. Cooper weeks ago.
North Carolina is fortunate. It is one of the few states breaking down it’s daily cases by race, thus making it easier to track the virus. Neither the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention, or the World’s Health Organization do as of press time.
In a March 27th letter to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar from Sen/ Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) and Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, requested that his agency start keeping track of COVID-19 in communities of color, and publish the results .
“Without demographic data on the race and ethnicity of patients being tested, the rate of positive test results, and outcomes for those with COVID-19, it will be impossible for practitioners and policy makers to address disparities in health outcomes and inequities in access to testing and treatment as they emerge,” Warren and Pressley wrote. “This lack of information will exacerbate existing health disparities and result in the loss of lives in vulnerable communities. It will also hamper the efforts of public health officials to track and contain the novel coronavirus in the areas that are at the highest risk of continued spread.”
Until a vaccine is developed, can the African-American community here and elsewhere, survive as the coronavirus spreads.
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TRUMP, GOP ARE AFRAID
OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
As it stands now, come November 3rd, if a North Carolina voter chooses to mail-in their ballot, they may do so, or go to their local voting precinct to cast their ballot.
But because of the spread of the novel coronavirus, and concerns about state-mandated social distancing restrictions remaining in force through then, there are many Democrats nationally who would prefer to see the presidential and local elections be conducted by mail.
“Vote by mail is so important to ... our democracy so that people have access to voting and not be deterred, especially at this time, by the admonition to stay home," Pelosi told reporters last week. She wants to put the proposal in the next $1 trillion COVID-19 response legislation that Congress will take up.
In the U.S Senate, Sen. Amy Klobucher (D-MN) is sponsoring a bill designed to accomplish the same thing.
Several states, including Hawaii, Alaska and Wyoming, already ditched their in-person primaries in lieu of mail-in ballots for different dates. Advocates say with questions looming over the November general, now is the time to establish a national mail-in policy.
But prominent Republican leaders, including no less than President Trump, counter that making voting easier and more efficient is not good for the country, because it’s primarily bad for the GOP.
'They had things – levels of voting that if you ever agreed to it you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again,' Trump said earlier this week of the Democratic proposal.
Another major Republican leader, Speaker of the Georgia House David Ralston, is also not pleased with mail-in plans for balloting. The state is mailing each registered voter a form so that they can get an absentee ballot in the mail for the May 19 primary.
Ralston, like the president, believes mail-in ballots open up possibilities of fraud. But then he added, “The president said it best ― this will be extremely devastating to Republicans and conservatives in Georgia.”
Every registered voter is going to get one of these. Now I ask you ... what was turnout in the primary back in 2018 or 2016. Was it 100%? No. No. It’s way, way, way lower. This will certainly drive up turnout.”
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