U.S. Nurses' Heroic Defence of Health and Safety Amidst Pandemic and Neo-Liberal Wrecking
Nurses outside the White House honour health care workers who have died
from COVID-19 and demand proper protective equipment to do their jobs,
April 21, 2020.
In the midst of the pandemic, the lives of U.S.
health care workers and the public are being put at unnecessary risk by
government inaction and conflicts between the state and federal
governments. As the experience of health care workers in Canada has
shown, it is the workers themselves who are defending health and safety
standards against governments and employers that have other agendas,
especially in the U.S. system that is largely organized to create
profit for private interests. From February to the present, National
Nurses United and state nursing associations have regularly issued
press releases and organized public protests to continue to push
nurses' demands.
 A February 28
National Nurses United press release regarding a patient with COVID-19
treated at the UC Davis Medical Center in California, is indicative of
the attitude nurses across the U.S. are facing. The National Nurses
United pointed out that the case "highlights the vulnerability of the
nation's hospitals to this virus and the insufficiency of current
Centers for Disease Control guidelines.
"The single COVID-19 patient admitted to the
facility on February 19 has now led to the self-quarantine at home of
at least 36 RNs and 88 other health care workers.
"These 124 nurses and health care workers, who are
needed now more than ever, have instead been sidelined. Lack of
preparedness will create an unsustainable national health care staffing
crisis.
"Nurses view the handling of this COVID-19 case as
a system failure and not a success. National Nurses United RNs are
speaking out because they are dedicated to protecting the health and
safety of their patients, health care workers, and the public.
"Nurses employed by the University of California
medical centres had met with UC officials four times and written
repeatedly, starting from January 28, to notify them about the urgency
to prepare for coronavirus, make information requests, and offer to
work with them. On February 18, UC nurses wrote to Janet Napolitano,
the UC system president, to demand increased protection for nurses and
patients against the coronavirus. UC Davis nurses on February 11, eight
days before this patient was admitted, approached hospital management
and asked them to institute infection control plans that already
existed and had been in place during the 2014 ebola outbreak, but the
hospital did not."
Protest outside hospital in Antioch, California, March 24, 2020.
National Nurses United estimates more than 150 actions have
taken place across the U.S. since the shelter-in-place orders were
issued in different states.
"We know that we can be successful in getting all
our hospitals prepared to control the spread of this virus," said
Bonnie Castillo, RN, executive director of National Nurses United. "We
are committed to working with hospitals and state and federal agencies
to be ready. But nurses and health care workers need optimal staffing,
equipment, and supplies to do so. This is not the time for hospital
chains to cut corners or prioritize their profits. This is the time to
go the extra mile and make sure health care workers, patients, and the
public are protected at the highest standards."
 The following
month, in a March 10 press release, the National Nurses United stated,
"Registered nurses are outraged to learn that the Centers for Disease
Control (CDC) on [March 10] further weakened its guidance on measures
to contain COVID-19. These changes include, among other things, rolling
back personal protective equipment (PPE) standards from N-95
respirators to allow simple surgical masks; not requiring suspected or
confirmed COVID-19 patients to be placed in negative pressure isolation
rooms at all times; and weakening protections for health care workers
collecting diagnostic respiratory specimens. These are moves that
National Nurses United nurses say will gravely endanger nurses, health
care workers, patients, and our communities."
From March to the present, nurses have been
holding rallies at shift changes to back their demands, as well as
actions to defend nurses suspended for refusing to work without being
provided the necessary PPE to do their work safely.
Clashes Between State and Federal Authorities
over Equipment
As in Canada, working people are confronted with
an economy that is not organized on a self-reliant basis to meet
people's needs, in this case to provide the necessary PPE, ventilators
and other equipment needed for health care workers and COVID-19
patients. In the U.S. the situation is exacerbated by infighting
between federal and state authorities over medical equipment.
The New York Times on April 6
reported that "In Massachusetts, state leaders said they had confirmed
a vast order of personal protective equipment for their health workers;
then the Trump administration took control of the shipments.
"In Kentucky, the head of a hospital system told
members of Congress that his broker had pulled out of an agreement to
deliver four shipments of desperately needed medical gear after the
supplies were commandeered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency
(FEMA).
"Governor Jared Polis of Colorado thought his
state had secured 500 ventilators before they were 'swept up by FEMA.'
"For weeks, the Trump administration pushed states
to procure their own ventilators and protective gear, like masks,
gloves and face shields. But a new effort by the administration to
create a hybrid system of distribution -- divided between the federal
government, local officials and private health care companies -- has
led to new confusion, bordering on disarray, and charges of
confiscation."
Neo-Liberal Wrecking of U.S. Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC) is a federal agency under the Department of Health and
Human Services. From the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, many
questions have been raised about the CDC and the lack of timely action
and leadership on its part to combat the pandemic.
One initial problem was the CDC's failure to
provide reliable COVID-19 tests in January, after the U.S. decided to
establish its own test, rather than following the test established by
the World Health Organization. The Washington Post
reported on April 18, "The failure by the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention to quickly produce a test kit for detecting the novel
coronavirus was triggered by a glaring scientific breakdown at the
CDC's central laboratory complex in Atlanta, according to scientists
with knowledge of the matter and a determination by federal regulators.
"The CDC facilities that assembled the kits
violated sound manufacturing practices, resulting in contamination of
one of the three test components used in the highly sensitive detection
process, the scientists said.
"The cross contamination most likely occurred
because chemical mixtures were assembled into the kits within a lab
space that was also handling synthetic coronavirus material. The
scientists also said the proximity deviated from accepted procedures
and jeopardized testing for the virus.
"The Washington Post
separately confirmed that Food and Drug Administration officials
concluded that the CDC violated its own laboratory standards in making
the kits. The substandard practices exposed the kits to contamination.
"The troubled segment of the test was not critical
to detecting the novel coronavirus, experts said. But after the
difficulty emerged, CDC officials took more than a month to remove the
unnecessary step from the kits, exacerbating nationwide delays in
testing, according to an examination of federal documents and
interviews with more than 30 present and former federal scientists and
others familiar with the events."
A New York Times' report from
April 18 notes, "Testing is still rationed in some states and uneven in
others, and it can take days before doctors and patients receive
results. Many infectious disease and public health experts say testing
is nowhere near widespread enough to reopen the country or return to
some semblance of normal."
The situation begs the question as to why the CDC
was unable to adhere to basic procedures to avoid contamination of its
test kits.
In 2017, as part of a federal hiring freeze, 700
positions were left vacant at the CDC, which "officials and researchers
say affects programs supporting local and state public health emergency
readiness, infectious disease control and chronic disease prevention,"
the Washington Post reported at the time. Even
then, "At the National Institutes of Health, staff say clinical work,
patient care and recruitment are suffering," the Post
reported.
More cuts to the CDC have followed in subsequent
years, such as an 80 per cent cutback to CDC efforts to contribute to
global efforts to fight infectious disease epidemics, such as Ebola.
The situation indicates that the COVID-19 crisis
in the U.S. is a direct result of neo-liberal cuts to the very
institution meant to prevent mass disease outbreaks, such that the CDC
cannot even maintain basic laboratory standards nor play its role to
provide national safety guidelines that properly protect health care
workers.
This article was published in
Volume 50 Number 14 - April 25, 2020
Article Link:
U.S. Nurses' Heroic Defence of Health and Safety Amidst Pandemic and Neo-Liberal Wrecking
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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