Suffolk Closeup - Back To Work And Covid-19 Testing

“It is certainly true that we need to get back to work. It’s a shame that we don’t have the testing that would inform us how to get back to work the safest way possible,” said Dr. Paul A. Offit, co-inventor of the vaccine for rotavirus. Like COVID-19, rotavirus is highly contagious and can be fatal. It causes severe diarrhea. Until the vaccine arrived in the mid-2000’s, hundreds of thousands of children worldwide died from it each year. In developing countries, it still takes a toll.

Dr. Offit was on the Sunday TODAY show and host Willie Geist was questioning him about the specter of “packed New York parks” and shopping malls re-opening around the U.S. 

Dr. Offit of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia said that without widespread testing for COVID-19—to know who has it and who doesn’t—the nation is going to “learn the lesson the hard way.”

Test, trace and isolate

That—short of breakthroughs in a vaccine and treatment and only then, said Dr. Offit, will we be “truly safe to get back to pre-coronavirus lives”—is the smart way forward.

Consider the article in The Atlantic last week headlined: “What’s Behind South Korea’s COVID-19 Exceptionalism?” The sub-head: “Seven weeks ago, South Korea and the U.S. had the same number of virus deaths. Today, South Korea has fewer than 300, and the U.S. has more than 70,000.” It noted that “by the end of February, South Korea had the most COVID-19 patients of any country outside China. New confirmed cases were doubling every few days….More than a dozen countries imposed travel restrictions to protect their citizens from the Korean outbreak, including the U.S., which had, at the time, recorded an official COVID-19 death toll low enough to count on one hand. But just as South Korea appeared to be descending into catastrophe, the country stopped the virus in its tracks.”

The major cause of the spread in South Korea, said the article by Derek Thompson, was a religious event involving 1,000 “worshippers in a large windowless room.” The result was “a trail of pathogens that would lead to thousands of infections, triggering one of the largest coronavirus outbreaks in the world.”

South Korea learned the identity of those at event and embarked on testing. “Individuals with the most serious cases were sent to hospitals, while those with milder cases checked into isolation units….The government used a combination of interviews and cellphone surveillance to track down the recent contacts of new patients and ordered those contacts to self-isolate as well.”

“Within a month, the Korean outbreak was effectively contained. In the first two weeks of March, new daily cases fell from 800 to fewer than 100.” The day the article came out, “the nation of 51 million reported zero new domestic infections for the third straight day.”

Since The Atlantic piece, however, an infected person not wearing a mask went into several clubs in Seoul in one night and infected 40 club-goers. Seoul’s mayor immediately responded by ordering the closure of all clubs and bars in the city.

The call for testing, tracing an isolating has been sounded eloquently and forcefully by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo—and he has set into motion a massive program to do it.

“Testing, tracing and then isolating…that is going to be the key going forward,” said the governor at one of his daily briefings on the pandemic where the most hard-hit areas have been in New York City and Nassau and Suffolk Counties. 

“You test the person,” said Mr. Cuomo. “If the person winds up positive, you then trace that person’s contacts….This entire operation has never been done before. So it’s intimidating. You’ve never heard the words testing, tracing, isolate before. No one has….We want to operate on a tri-state basis….The virus doesn’t stop at jurisdictional boundaries. Well, I’m at the Town of Brookhaven. I stop here. No, the virus doesn’t say that. The virus just spreads….This is going to be a massive undertaking. Good news is that [former] Mayor Michael Bloomberg has volunteered to help us develop and implement the tracing program.”

There will be an “army of tracers”—thousands of tracers.

It’s not just South Korea that has successfully beaten back COVID-19 with the test, trace and isolate formula. Among other countries with similar programs has been Iceland. “With testing, Iceland claims major success against COVID-19” was the headline of a recent Associated Press account. 

The big problem for the U.S., as the recent lead front-page headline in The New York Times declared: “Testing Scarce As States Weigh Reopening.” Thus in so much of the U.S., as reopenings happen, areas are flying blind, leading to what Dr. Offit projects will be learning “the lesson the hard way.”

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books. 

Suffolk Closeup - Covid-19 A Turning Point For Humanity

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

Karl Grossman 

Voices from around the world—including that of a Suffolk County professor deeply involved in work at the United Nations—see the COVID-19 pandemic as a turning point.

Scott Carlin of Hampton Bays is a representative to the UN Economic and Social Council. He was a planner of a UN conference last year for nongovernmental organizations to discuss and find solutions to challenges including climate change and building sustainable communities. 

Dr. Carlin taught at Southampton College for a dozen years and then, when Long Island University closed its Southampton campus in 2005, moved to LIU Post to teach including courses on the environment and sustainability.

“COVID-19 creates a new context for speaking and acting with conscience,” he says. He speaks of how in this crisis “mutual aid initiatives will flourish as people create new pathways for sharing resources and inspiring others…. Selfless actions will shine.” 

Indeed, the heroes in health care, the doctors, nurses, aides and others treating the ill, police, EMTs, and other first-responders on the frontlines, and the many other heroes in this calamity—risking and many losing their own lives, are people involved in selfless actions.

Professor Carlin sees the pandemic and response to it as “one human family and one Earth community” having “seized this moment to dramatically expand” commitments to, among other goals, biodiversity, clean water, education, economic and ecological democracy…human rights, interdependence of all life, non-violence, public health—“or, more simply, a world committed to sharing, caring and solidarity.”  

Indian author Arundhati Roy is writing about the pandemic being a “portal”—a “gateway”—to a new world. “Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew,” says Ms. Roy. “This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.” 

She says: “We can choose,” she says, “to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our…dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through…ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.” 

We can hope somehow the pandemic might lead to a better world. More importantly, after all the deaths, the profound misery, we could and must work for a better world.

This pandemic has made clear the oneness of the peoples of the world. “Seen from space, the Earth has no borders. The spread of the coronavirus is showing us that what we share is much more powerful than what keeps us apart,” wrote former astronaut Scott Kelly in an op-ed piece in The New York Times. “All people are inescapably interconnected, and the more we can come together to solve our problems, the better off we will all be. One of the side effects of seeing Earth from the perspective of space is feeling more compassion for others.” 

“I’ve seen humans work together to prevail over some of the toughest challenges imaginable,” said Mr. Kelly, who spent a year on the International Space Station, “and I know we can prevail over this one if we all do our part and work together as a team. Oh, and wash your hands—often,” he concluded.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is appealing to warring parties on Earth to pull back from hostilities, put aside mistrust and animosity, silence the guns. “It is time,” says Mr. Guterres, “to put armed conflict on lockdown and focus together on the true fight of our lives.” 

“The virus drastically demonstrates both the mutual global dependencies and the irresponsibility of military conflict,” says Susanne Grabenhorst, leader of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. War has “massively weakened” health systems “and made millions of people particularly vulnerable to the current pandemic.” 

“There will be change,” says social critic, linguist, historian and MIT Professor emeritus Noam Chomsky. “The question is: what kind of change?” Dr. Chomsky was interviewed in a TV program produced by the Media Innovation Center where I teach, SUNY/College at Old Westbury. He is interviewed by Julie Goldsmith, a fine journalism student. The half-hour video can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lciwaaFQqCk&feature=youtu.be 

Dr. Chomsky asks whether the pandemic will provide an opening for “more repression?” In the program he alleges a drive afoot of figures “working to institute the kind of change they want.” They’re “carefully constructing” a push “headed by the White House encompassing the most reactionary states in the world”—among countries he singles out are Hungary, Italy and India—to use the pandemic to foster authoritarian rule. “Will there be counter-pressure?” he asks. People need to understand that it is not enough to just show up on Election Day, says Dr. Chomsky. They must be “all the time working, pressing, making changes—that’s the way things are done—and it has to be done on an international scale.”

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books. 

Suffolk Closeup - Covid-19 Took My Friend

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

“We are lying as low as possible. It’s all pretty frightening—I find myself acutely aware that every day may be the start of the last week or two of one’s life on Earth. Sobering and chilling,” my friend, Linda Pentz Gunter, emailed me.

That’s on everybody’s mind—death because of this plague.

And by now we all know of someone who has passed away as a result of COVID-19.

An old friend of mine who has died is Samuel Markowitz. 

Samuel MarkowitzSam had been a frontline reporter at Newsday, the competitor to my paper, the daily Long Island Press. He gave me, as an early reporter, wise counsel about being a journalist. Sam would move on to become the public relations person for the Suffolk County Republican Party—a right hand person to Edwin M. (Buzz) Schwenk, Suffolk GOP chairman from 1968 to 1977. He later would become head of PR for Arthur M. Cromarty, chief judge of Suffolk County.

Sam was a solid straight-shooter as a journalist and, likewise, as a PR person.

He lived in Patchogue with his wife, Loretta (who passed away in 2014) and their two children, Howard and Helene. My wife and I were friends socially with Sam and Loretta. 

Helene, now Mastromarino, Sam’s daughter, said her father had been at an assisted living facility in Nassau County where it was thought he had become “dehydrated.” He was having “trouble walking.” He was tested for COVID-19 and it was found to have struck him. Sam died at Mount Sinai South Nassau hospital. 

“It was horrible, horrible,” said Mrs. Mastromarino of her dad’s death. “No one should have to die like this.”

The burial was at Patchogue Hebrew Cemetery and limited to 10 people, all standing six-feet apart, wearing masks and plastic gloves, related Helene. Children sat back in the cars. 

“He was such a good man,” Helene said.

Sam was, indeed. 

Another person I knew—also through journalism—who tragically died in this pandemic was Joan Porco. Mrs. Porco had written the “Montauk Mooring” column in The East Hampton Press where this column also appears.

She and her husband, Edward Porco, lived in Montauk part-time and then full-time for 46 years before moving in 2013 to Peconic Landing, the retirement community in Greenport. Some eight people at Peconic Landing have died in recent weeks from the highly contagious COVID-19.

Joan, beyond being a columnist, had been a teacher, social worker, Gestalt psychotherapist, poet and author. I would see her yearly at Press holiday parties and we would chat—she was a fascinating, community-minded, brilliant person. 

Mrs. Porco was a lifelong political and civil rights activist. She published a volume of poetry titled “Gaudeamus’—Latin for “let us rejoice,” which was also the name she and Mr. Porco gave to their home in Montauk. She wrote a book on the history of Concerned Citizens of Montauk, Holding Back the Tide: The Thirty Five-Year Struggle to Save Montauk.

She and Mr. Porco were board members of Concerned Citizens of Montauk and he also had been its president and president, too, of the East Hampton Trails Preservations Society.

Mr. and Mrs. Porco died of COVID-19 within four days of each other, she at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital and he at Stony Brook Eastern Long Island Hospital.

“Covid-19 took my stepfather Tuesday evening, and my mother early this morning,” wrote Matthew Chachere on Facebook. “Each, sadly, alone and in isolation in hospital from us and each other.” I got to know Mr. Chachere, now an attorney, when he was deeply involved in the successful battle against the Shoreham nuclear power plant project. He was arrested for engaging in civil disobedience—going over the fence at the plant site with 571 others in symbolic protest which they defended in court as justified because of the threat Shoreham posed to people on Long Island.

“My mom got me involved in political activism at the ripe age of 7, handing out leaflets for a fair housing campaign,” Mr. Chachere continued. “She never stopped.” Neither has Mr. Chachere. Last year, the Asthma Free Housing Act which Matthew drafted as staff attorney at the Northern Manhattan Improvement Corporation went into effect in New York City. It requires landlords to remove hazards that can trigger asthma attacks including mold, rodents and roaches, and leaks and pathways for vermin infestation.

If only the virus that causes COVID-19 could be removed!!! Hopefully—so hopefully—there’ll be a vaccine and a treatment to do that. But, meanwhile, this deadly plague continues.

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books. 

Suffolk Closeup - Can Shuttered Foley Facility Help In Covid-19 Pandemic

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

The John J. Foley Skilled Nursing Facility in Yaphank—in the middle of Suffolk County—sits there “still empty” and, says Rob Colarco, presiding officer of the Suffolk County Legislature, should “in response to the coronavirus crisis” be put to use. 

The facility was closed and sold—in a controversial sale by Suffolk County—to Long Island Community Hospital in 2016 for $15 million.

Mr. Colarco noted that when the county built the facility in 1995 “each room had oxygen set up directly to go into the rooms.” Oxygen is critical for seriously ill COVID-19 patients. 

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for $50 million is constructing on an emergency basis a 1,000-bed “temporary” hospital, nearly all of it involving tents, on the campus of Stony Brook University in response to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in Suffolk.

The Foley facility constitutes “a permanent structure” available for long-term use, says Mr. Colarco of Patchogue. He said in an interview last week that it would not be a “turn-key” transition to get the Foley facility ready, but “the basic infrastructure” of the five-story facility has been “maintained. 

U.S. Representative Lee Zeldin of Shirley and Richard T. Margulis, president and CEO of Long Island Community Hospital are also urging the Foley facility’s use. 

Mr. Zeldin and Mr. Margulis are requesting New York State “consider utilizing the currently underutilized” facility “which could accommodate up to 500 beds, as a location to increase hospital bed capacity on Long Island,” according to a statement from the office of Mr. Zeldin, whose lst C.D. includes all of Brookhaven Town, the five East End towns and much of Smithtown.

Mr. Zeldin said in the statement: “One of the greatest challenges the continued outbreak of coronavirus poses is the strain it puts on our communities’ healthcare system and possible overwhelming of our local hospitals. We must utilize every resource available to expand our hospital bed capacity, and John J. Foley Skilled Nursing Home may be a critical untapped resource.”

Mr. Margulis said: “During this unprecedented critical time in healthcare and its impact on our community, we have explored every possible option for helping to expand bed capacity limitations. We would like to use our asset of the former John J. Foley Nursing Home to create additional hospital bed space to help care for patients….We need to join together and do whatever we can to fight this disease and support our community.”

Long Island Community Hospital, in East Patchogue, is the only hospital in Suffolk remaining independent, “unaffiliated” with a hospital network such as Stony Brook Medicine or Northwell Health. “It’s very hard for a small community hospital to stay unaffiliated,” said Mr. Colarco. 

The hospital (renamed in 2018 from Brookhaven Memorial Hospital) told the county before the sale that it planned to offer hemodialysis, drug rehabilitation and other services at the 181,749-square foot building. 

The Foley facility was originally the site of the Suffolk County Home and Infirmary and, before that, the Suffolk County Alms-House—a home for Suffolk poor which opened in 1870 and featured a 170-acre farm on which they grew food. The farm continues as the Suffolk County Farm and Education Center managed since 1974 by Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County.

In 1975, it looked like the Suffolk County Home and Infirmary would be shut down after the state Department of Health found violations in a building inspection, so the county Department of Health Services said it should be closed. But then Suffolk County Executive John V. N. Klein and the Suffolk Legislature joined to appropriate money for repairs. “Suffolk Home and Infirmary Is Saved,” was the The New York Times headline.

Then, two decades later, a new facility—named for ex-Legislator John J. Foley of Blue Point, long strongly committed to health care—was built for $42 million. But County Executives Steve Levy and his successor, Steve Bellone, thereafter pushed to sell it for financial reasons. 

Mr. Bellone said in 2013 that county taxpayers couldn’t afford the $1 million a month subsidy he said the Foley facility cost. There was intense opposition led by then Legislators Kate Browning of Shirley and John Kennedy of Nesconset, now county comptroller, and also a lawsuit. There was great concern for the very needy patients served by Foley. The sale first involved purchase by a Bronx-based nursing home operator for $36 million—later reduced to $20 million—but the operator withdrew the offer. So, the facility was closed and sold to what was then called Brookhaven Memorial Hospital. 

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books. 

Suffolk Closeup - "You Are Living A Moment In History"

SUFFOLK CLOSUEP

By Karl Grossman

Among the most moving words about the coronavirus outbreak were those of Governor Andrew Cuomo to National Guard troops involved in converting the Javits Center into a hospital for coronavirus patients.

“You are living a moment in history,” said Mr. Cuomo. “This is a moment that is going to change this nation. This is a moment that forges character, forges people, changes people—makes them stronger, makes them weaker. Ten years from now, you will be talking about today to your children, and your children and you will shed a tear because you will remember the lives lost…and you’ll remember how hard we worked and that we still lost loved ones.” But “you will also be proud. You’ll be proud of what you did. You’ll be proud that you showed up…When other people played it safe, you had the courage to show up and you had the courage and professionalism to make a difference and save lives.”

James Larocca, a former state commissioner of energy and commissioner of transportation and now a Sag Harbor Village trustee, penned an op-ed about Mr. Cuomo which ran in Newsday. “If extraordinary times require extraordinary measures, and they do, then this is the time for the Democratic Party to nominate Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo for president,” he wrote. 

Mr. Larocca said Mr. Cuomo is “the only elected official in the United States today who has fully demonstrated the leadership, toughness, management skill and humanity that meeting the coronavirus pandemic demands.” He said “if a nominee is not chosen on a first ballot at the convention,” it can “open up to other candidates.” 

Whether Mr. Cuomo might become the Democratic candidate for president because of his leadership in this crisis may or may not happen—he emphasized last week that “I am not running for president”—but certainly he has been catapulted into great political prominence.  

Among the many TV pieces involving the gigantic number of people homebound to prevent the spread of the virus was a report by David Pogue, technology and science reporter on CBS News Sunday Morning. “Welcome to lockdown!” he said into a camera he set up himself at his home. “How to live and work at home without losing your mind. First of all: curse the virus, but bless high-speed Internet! The Internet is our lifeline through this thing. It’s how we socialize, it’s our entertainment, it’s how business gets done. This is the Internet’s big moment.”

“It’s incredible what’s going on over video chat these days,” he continued. “Meetings, of course, but also exercise classes, concerts, church services, game nights, even weddings!”

“Life goes on; you just have to go at it a little differently,” Mr. Pogue concluded.

Quite differently.

A rub regarding computers and the Internet, is that not everyone has the hardware. This is explored in a piece in the current issue of Time magazine titled “The Online Learning Divide.” It focuses on online teaching caused by schools being closed, but it applies generally. It quotes a New York City English teacher saying: “I am concerned that, in 2020, all of our students don’t have access to technology or Internet at home.”

The Stone Creek Inn in East Quogue reached out to “all our Socially Distanced Friends” in an email saying: “Hello…We finally have a day to reflect on this whirlwind of a week. Like you, there were moments we all felt overwhelmed, emotional, anxious, exhausted.” The inn is limited to offering takeout meals, of course. It referenced a quote from former U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson. “Let us all remember that ‘The manner in which one endures what must be endured is more important than the thing that must be endured.’…Stay well!” 

For Suffolk, an issue has been raised about folks from New York City seeking refuge here. An article in the New York Post was headlined: “’We should blow up the bridges’—coronavirus leads to class warfare in Hamptons.” High up is a quote: “’There’s not a vegetable to be found in this town right now,’ says one resident of Springs, a working-class pocket of East Hampton. ‘It’s these elitist people who think they don’t have to follow the rules.’”

Phil Keith, a columnist colleague here, posted on Facebook: “Where’s our community spirit? I’ve seen so many posts and articles complaining about ‘city people’ coming out here and hogging our groceries and toilet paper. What—we only like their money in the summer? They have kids, and fears, and parents and grandparents just like the rest of us. Why not just extend an elbow and say, ‘Hey neighbor—how can I help?’ I’d like to think they’d do the same for us if, for example, a hurricane devastated the East End. C’mon, everyone, lend a hand—and a smile.”

In the obituaries are the names of more and more people—heading for 200 in Suffolk as of this writing—who have died in this terrible epidemic. All that can be done to reduce the death toll, here and everywhere, must be done.

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books.