Thread by @ASlavitt

COVID Update April 28: Today I had a crash course in what we can learn from the HIV crisis, what’s going on in Indian Country, employer based coverage & what’s next out of Congess.

Will start now & finish after @ChrisCuomo at 9:30 E on @cnn. 1/

QUIZ:

In Shenzhen China the median time to recovery from symptom onset was 1, 2, 3, or 4 weeks?

Who is the better De governor in combatting Coronavirus— Santis or Wine?

2/

Started the day with calls from a few sports leagues whi want to know what to do. Then Indian Country. Then the Hill. Then with people who wrestled with HIV/AIDS like we are now.

I’ll give it to you as it came to me. But by the end I need to find some deep connection points. 3/

Cause we’re all about finding the deep connection points. (I’m with the slippers.) 4/

Football is going to have Fall camp come hell or high water. They believe every player has been socially distancing. Hmmm.

I think not all their offensive linemen are in perfect health. 5/

The NBA is more circumspect. They have had family losses. They know how bad this can be. They have smart people. 6/

My advice:
1- As you do, youth sports does. Include them & set the right example because they don’t have the training facilities, etc & many live with sick family members
2- Test your fans before yourself
3- Help is honor who we’ve lost 7/

Pine Ridge reservation has somewhere between 25,000 & 35,000 people over 100x100 miles in South Dakota. It’s home to the Ogala Sioux.

Life expectancy is 48 for men. 50 for women. 8/

With the COVID crisis, a state of emergency was declared. But to get money they need to match it with money they don’t have.

They did get clean water from the government which they were all too grateful for. 9/

There is one hospital run by the Indian Health Service. They have 6 ventilators. Their COVID-19 Council estimates that absent a vaccine, they will have over 2000 hospitalizations.

Otherwise people will need to be airlifted to a hospital 100 miles away. 10/

They reminded me that what is coming to America— hunger, unemployment, poverty, despair— is their way of life. 80% unemployment, 98% below the poverty line, $4000 annual income. 11/

Health status on Pine Ridge is also not good
-4x the level of diabetic amputation
-4x the teen suicide rate
-5x infant mortality rate

Alcoholism, meth, opioids. Despair, hopelessness, but a sad resolve. Anyone I know who has been to PR leaves sad, angry & confused. 12/

As Iron Eye Slaw reminded me, they have experience with plagues. And so after the first positive COVID-19 test in late March what did they do?

Kicked the person (a visitor) out & set up check points. They don’t believe SD Govenor Noem will protect them. (Few in SD do). 13/

They’ve gotten no test kits even though they have asked for them. As far as they know, they haven’t seen more cases. If they do, it could happen fast.

As for food, their reserve supply are 400 Buffalo. 14/

They know that large death tolls would go unnoticed & I responded to.

So they go without deliveries or commerce or leafing the reservation. Once cases come, they expect nothing by way of help. So they hunker down. 15/

6 weeks into COVID-19 and we hunger for answers. We know little about who gets it, the symptoms, how the disease progresses, what happens from the virus— and how it works.

So I called a friend who was an intern at SF General in when the first AIDS patients started dying. 17/

I was most struck by one thing he said about the AIDS crisis & what they were seeing.

“We knew within a short time what this was. Like within a year or 2.”

We’ve been at this for weeks. 18/

The symptoms were mysterious
-PSP (a form of pneumonia)
-kaposi’s sarcoma
-wasting away

As it seems with COVID-19, the virus wasn’t the cause of death. The immune system was just destroyed.

In the case of COVID-19, the immune system can be over-stimulated.19/

I’m sure people can give a much better scientific description. I was interested in what we thought we knew & how it turned out. 20/

There were similarities & differences. The population was much narrower— gay men were stigmatized as were IV drug users.

Rarely seen infections & cancers were seen as “the gay plague.” 21/

Then the President wouldn’t utter the words HIV or AIDS for 5 whole years. 7 years before he gave a major speech.

The political reaction today is different. It is happening to “us” but this spreads more widely & slowness & denial played a different kind of role. 22/

The death rate from AIDS was 98% before treatments were available.

We don’t know the death rate from COVID-19, but it may be 1%. 23/

AZT has massive side effects. It took 8 years for there to be an anti-viral that worked. Zidovudine.

But the dosages were too high. The virus mutated. This was the early 90s. After enough experimentation the cocktail was formulated.

Almost 40 yrs later, there is no vaccine.24/

But today is different. In 6 weeks the virus was sequenced & a human trial underway. 10 years of work. Vaccine trials are underway as well.

Science has advanced. We won’t wait that long. But 18 mos to 2 years is really not much time for a thing like this. 25/

Tomorrow morning is silly early for @CNN at 6:15 MN time so I may go to bed.

I think I need to pull this tweet together with a few thoughts starting with the people— all of whom— make me smarter about things I normally don’t see. 26/

I don’t know if people like to be called out by name but at least let me thanks @JJCordovaK. 27/

I will tell you that since this pandemic I’ve tried to open my eyes to people & things I don’t spend enough time seeing. The people we ignore. 28/

I think of people we abandoned so long ago, free people who are now shut away. Hundreds of thousands of us dying & no one really caring to mention it.

Plagues we’ve passed & plagues we’ve ignored. 29/

One thing @ChaseIronEyes said to me about the present moment, pleading: “We are willing to sacrifice our elders for our stock market.”

These times of stress we decide what we value. 30/

But we also agreed something beautiful happens out of jarring moments discovery, out of slowing things down, even out of shame. Out of appreciating the smaller things.

Maybe we wake up a little. Speaking of which I got to do that soon.... /end

And of course..

3 weeks.
And wine.