The coronavirus is ravaging the city’s public workforce, killing more than 100 civil servants — many who did not have the luxury of working from home.
Those toiling at the MTA have suffered the greatest toll, with 50 dead from COVID-19 including supervisors, bus drivers, train conductors and cleaners.
As for the Department of Education where we were given the luxury of working home too late:
The virus has struck down dozens of teachers, paraprofessionals and other school workers.
While the Department of Education continues to refuse to release a count of dead or infected employees, the teachers’ union says more than 40 members have perished. At least one principal, Dez-Ann Romain, and one assistant principal, Omara Flores, have died.
“I am imploring the mayor to make this information public immediately,” said City Councilman Mark Treyger, education committee chairman. Treyger has requested a bill to require the DOE to report its COVID-19 cases.
Mayor de Blasio has failed to track illnesses and hidden the DOE data to avoid responsibility for delaying the closure of city schools, Treyger said. “His policies helped advance widespread community transmission.”
Sharon Nearby, 52, a 6th-grade English teacher at IS 24 in Staten Island, died April 4 after a week in Staten Island University Hospital, spending her last days on a ventilator. Her husband and twin 14-year-old daughters could not be at her side.
Nearby spent most of her 30-year DOE career at the South Shore school, where she held high expectations for students, her husband Jeff said. “She was very loved. She was consistent and honest. And she made classes as fun as she could.”
Jeff Nearby believes Sharon contracted the virus on March 12 or 13, when teachers citywide conducted parent conferences remotely amid the outbreak. But teachers came in and worked together in the rooms making the calls. Sharon later learned a teacher in her room had tested positive.
Now to the police:
New York’s Finest have lost 19 members, the latest Detective Jack V. Polimeni, a 23-year NYPD veteran assigned to the warrant squad. He was the third officer to die. The NYPD also lost 16 civilian employees. That includes five school safety agents, said Gregory Floyd, president of the Teamsters Local 237, their union.
Floyd faulted de Blasio for his late decision to close schools, and keeping them open for staff training and for kids to pick up supplies through March 19.
“We’re not going to blame him for people getting sick, but we’re going to blame him for his response,” Floyd said.
Floyd's response is about as lame as UFT President Mulgrew's. The UFT boss was threatening lawsuits amidst the pandemic instead of telling members to stay out of unsafe buildings. Even supposedly militant TWU Local 100 President Tony Utano hasn't threatened to pull his members out of the dangerous subways.
Where are the strong unions we need?
The mostly non-union workers nationwide have been more militant with wildcat strikes unless I am missing something and the high absentee rates among some government agencies reflect more than just people who are really sick. There might be some actions that are occurring that we don't know about as they are being done behind the scenes.
For those who want to see the tragic numbers by agency, the Post has listed them and we copied them below. Our condolences go out to all of the families behind these numbers. Each number represents actual human beings.
- MTA: 50
- DOE: 40-plus teachers, 1 principal, 1 assistant principal
- NYPD: 19 including three officers, five school safety agents
- Corrections: 10
- Human Resources Administration: 5
- Health & Hospitals: 4
- Administration for Children’s Services: 4
- Parks: 3
- FDNY: 3
- Sanitation: 1
- Transportation: 1
- Administrative Services: 1
- Buildings: 1
- NYCHA: No response
38 comments:
The unions are silent now, because they were silent then. Complicity has its rewards and will have its costs. Contrary to what Cuomo says, June isn’t that long away.
Complicity has its rewards and its costs. The bill has arrived and it's time to pay up. The question is at what cost?
The cost is our lives.
The politicians realize now that they have committed one of the biggest blunders in history by shutting down economy over this virus. They acted because the original models were projecting up to 2 million deaths. The original models are seriously flawed. At this point we have had 22 thousand deaths which represent 0.00017% of the population of the US. Total confirmed cases represent 0.17% of the population. To crash the economy into a recession and possibly into a depression is pure insanity. And the snowflakes who are petrified would be wise to understand statistical probabilities. Everything you do in life contains risk and if you want to live completely safe and you can crawl up in a fetal position and stay home for the rest of your life.
@3:46
Wow, hospitals nationwide are full and there is no PPE for medical workers. The virus has only hit a small part of the population so far hence the shutdown.
You are saying it was a mistake to close er' down? Sure-
I love the snowflake comment, so cute.LOL
The 3:46am time stamp has me guessing you were up late in Moscow. доброе утро
3:46, That’s what governments want - all of us in fetal positions, completely reliant on handouts. All our civil liberties could be greatly curtailed. When violence starts they’ll take away our guns.I bought my first gun after Sandy and after watching someone nearly killed waiting online for gas. What would happen if there was no more food - real or purposely designed? All of us could become monitored continuously. We all are to an extent - a la 9/11. Learn the dark web and read whats happening in China, Russia, Iran, Yemen, Syria. Americans have no clue what those regimes are doing to their own people and to us. Bozo Trump thinks we’re at war with a virus. We’re at war with every autocratic nation and a faction inside this country that’s using him. China is selling its clamp down tech to all autocratic nations. Under Trump it may feel like we are quickly becoming one. We are and we aren’t. It’s ramping up. I loathe Trump but this virus was manufactured to cripple him and ensure he isn’t reelected. They want Biden as president. I can’t vote for either of them. Another form of control. Voting for one or the other isn’t a choice. Both lead to eventual collapse. If we say fuck this and go back to work, they’ll clamp down harder. If we stay home they’ll institute their plan A to ‘keep us safe and controlled’. It’s over,
9:02, There is a 7 hour time difference between NY and Moscow. 3:46 here is 10:46 am in Moscow. So maybe he was a Russian however listen to the right wing and you will hear that view that we are going to lose our civil liberties over this.
I am waiting for an 'expert' who claims we can start only start opening our economy again when we can contact trace/quarantine those who have the virus to make sure they don't spread it...when between 25% and 50% of all carriers/spreaders have absolutely no symptoms and don't know they have the disease so how on earth could they be identified and their actions and contacts be traced.
In other words, 'red herring' can be called on the 'expert'. That is just somebody who does not want to reopen the economy any time soon.
Ditto 'red herring' call on the faux notion of opening the economy only issuing carrying cards for those have the antibodies (First, you simultaneously test 330M Americans.....).
We have already lost many of our civil liberties. The Patriot Act is still in effect. We are monitored. Cameras everywhere watching from your phone and TV, on streets and at work, texts and conversations, IP addresses, etc. Anyone can be arrested and held indefinitely, without being charged. Throw in torture for good measure. Upon leaving office Eisenhower warned of the increasingly clandestine industrial/military faction hidden inside out country.
‘Eisenhower warned, "[while] we recognize the imperative need for this development...We must not fail to comprehend its grave implications we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence…The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." Eisenhower cautioned that the federal government’s collaboration with an alliance of military and industrial leaders, though necessary, was vulnerable to abuse of power. Ike then counseled American citizens to be vigilant in monitoring the military-industrial complex.’
It's called prospect theory. In general people are disproportionately averse to risk that is in fact quite small. FWIW it makes for a great Unit in a non-Regents class.
On the other hand 3:46 may be right that people misunderstand statistics but people also misunderstand exponential growth, which we teach in Algebra I.
Being afraid of one's own shadow and devil-may-care attitudes are extremes that are manifestations of both misunderstandings and serve no one well.
TJL,
Deep and thoughtful response. You "get" it.
3:46 and 9:58, please consider a more reputable news source. You might look for a source some are calling "fake news" like ABC, NBC, CBS.
Cuomo presser today at 2pm to announce reopening.
TJL
Don't know about a 'devil may care' attitude but I have seen folks suggest that we can reopen various portions of the economy here and there in the US shortly.
On the other hand there are those who insist we must have a universally administered vaccine and/or antibody test before opening up any parts of the US economy.
(Some of our decisions were based on the wildly inflated and certainly grim US projections that had up to 2,000,000 deaths predicted ...now that the projections seem to point at 60,000 there is no doubt those decisions can be revisited/modified and in some cases reversed here and there.)
Dont make poor people rich by making rich people poor
What?
Thanks 12:02 but please reconsider calling network news reputable. They are indeed Fake News. They are infected with Trump Derangement Syndrome and engage in constant fear-mongering.
12:11, yes I agree in principle that the government must loosen its restrictions ASAP. However that won't mean the "economy is open" as the latest Smithfield closure has shown. Playing too fast and loose can get enough people sick that the supply chain will perhaps be even more disrupted. The 2M prediction was indeed absurd as people would have (and did before the government acted) modified their own behavior. On the other hand the lower estimates depend on people continuing to limit their interactions. The models are only as good as the assumptions baked into them.
We all could argue either way. The one thing relevant to us is Cuomo and reopening school. I agree the economy has to be restarted. I don't agree that this is connected to school. School is closed every July and August and everyone still works.
So when cuomo announces at 2pm today that we are going back, what are we going to do?
If small businesses open then Andy is going to open schools because - who will watch the kids? Nothing about safety or teachers' health concerns
Our safety doesn't mean shit. When they sent us into the schools in mid March, the UFT, DOE, the mayor and governor proved they think we are expendable.
Schools are one of few places where you can't socially distance. Transportation is another. What can we do have 5 students per classroom. It's just not possible in a school of 3,000 kids in a building meant only for 1,500 kids. Also, kids don't know how to socially distance. They are all over each other and share germs at the water fountain.
1:03
Most will go back to work...if that is the case
I agree with 3:46, this is an over reaction to an original projection that was grim. The pain that is being created by this lunacy of near complete economic shut down far outweighs the actual damage caused by the virus. We still have salaries, but for MILLIONS they are experiencing personal economic distress. And this leads to all sorts of unintended consequences, additional pain for millions. I would agree with this extreme response if the death rate was 98%, but new studies from Germany now accurately put it at 0.37%
99.63 RECOVERY RATE.
And to the numbskull above who says all the nations hospitals are full,grow a brain, you are wrong.
If we didnt lock down, many more would be infected and dead. Now we are all going back to work???
Ben Chapman
Figure includes 48 school-level employees and two central office employees.
· 4m
Just in: after weeks of pressure @NYCSchools reveals that 50 school staffers have died from coronavirus
A teacher in my building died from the virus. (MOTT HALL SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY) Did she contact it during the 3 days that I too was in the building? Who knows. I do know that the DOE will never, ever, come up with a decent excuse for keeping the schools open. The lawsuits will be massive once this is all done.
Awful news: 50 Department of Education employees have died from the coronavirus -- including 21 teachers.
There will be nothing coming out of this. We will go back to work and all will be forgotten, the abuse will continue.
Nobody does to you what you don't allow.
The UFT needs to be held accountable too for not telling us it was unsafe in schools, do not go in.
They wont be held accountable. how would they be? Your suggestion is that when they open schools, we dont go at all?
Damn right UFTers don't go in if it is not deemed safe by people independent from the DOE
What independent agency can determine and put in writing that EACH school is safe?
Public Employees Safety and Health or the UFT's own health people. The UFT came into my school to complain about construction work that was causing hazardous conditions.
Carranza said that the danger of going into school buildings during that week were the same as anywhere else, so he does acknowledge that it was dangerous.
Find it in credible the liberal media gets it all wrong. Trump has lowest jobs report and economy is booming, then literally. economy shut down, highest unemployment, seems curious how that happens.
1. russia- wrong
2. impeachment-wrong
3. Kavanuagh-wrong
4.Virus -wrong
The WHO leader is in the pocket of the chinese, look it up, he covered up outbreaks in ethiopia. China owns ethiopia giving 2 billion a year. He is in cahoots with china, gave misinformation of the virus. Which is why Fauci looked like an idiot in January when he said this would not be a big deal and should not spread.
Cuomo and Gavin Newsom have been praising trump and they cant stand him. BLAME CHINA, THEY ARE TRYING TO TAKE US DOWN!
Chinese conspiracy theories? We have it all here on this thread.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-05-29/ethiopia-already-is-the-china-of-africa
https://www.cnn.com/style/article/addis-ababa-china-construction-style/index.html
If you actually research and dig deep you would actually see the connection. US pays 400 million a year to the WHO. The US should get someone we can trust not someone who will lie and help china cover up.
@10:54
TThe facts regarding Taiwan’s email to alert WHO to possible danger of COVID-19
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In response to WHO’s denial that Taiwan ever alerted it to the possibility of human-to-human transmission of COVID-19, the Central Epidemic Command Center makes the following statement today, April 11:
The Taiwan Centers for Disease Control (Taiwan CDC) learned from online sources that there had been at least seven cases of atypical pneumonia in Wuhan, China. In China, the term “atypical pneumonia” is commonly used to refer to SARS, a disease transmitted between humans caused by coronavirus.
Owing to its experience with the SARS epidemic in 2003, Taiwan vigilantly kept track of information about the new outbreak. On December 31, 2019, Taiwan sent an email to the International Health Regulations (IHR) focal point under the World Health Organization (WHO), informing WHO of its understanding of the disease and also requesting further information from WHO. Given the lack of clarity at the time, as well as the many rumors that were circulating, Taiwan’s aim was to ensure that all relevant parties remained alert, especially since the outbreak occurred just before the Lunar New Year holiday, which typically sees tremendous amounts of travel. To be prudent, in the email we took pains to refer to atypical pneumonia, and specifically noted that patients had been isolated for treatment. Public health professionals could discern from this wording that there was a real possibility of human-to-human transmission of the disease. However, because at the time there were as yet no cases of the disease in Taiwan, we could not state directly and conclusively that there had been human-to-human transmission.
The Taiwan CDC also contacted the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention in a bid to obtain more information. However, in response to our inquiries, the WHO IHR focal point only responded with a short message stating that Taiwan’s information had been forwarded to expert colleagues; China provided only a press release.
Even though Taiwan strongly suspected that human-to-human transmission of the disease was already occurring at the time, we were unable to gain confirmation through existing channels. Therefore, on the day the aforementioned email was sent to WHO, the Taiwan government activated enhanced border control and quarantine measures based on the assumption that human-to-human transmission was in fact occurring. These measures included screening passengers on flights from Wuhan prior to disembarkation.
In mid-January, the Taiwan CDC dispatched experts to Wuhan to gain a better understanding of the epidemic, the control measures taken there, and patients’ exposure history. Based on preliminary research, Taiwan determined that this form of pneumonia could indeed spread via human-to-human transmission.aiwan Releases December Email To WHO Showing Unheeded Warning About Coronavirus
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