I'm proud to work at @propublica every day but the journalism we've published this past week is truly exceptional. If you'll indulge me for this 🧵...
1. Last year, Congress quietly passed a bill allowing thousands of Liberian immigrants to apply for green cards. But the Trump administration hardly made it easy, and now the application window is closing. by @DLindpropublica.org/article/a-once…
5. Another exceptional #longreads by @lizziepresser For years, JaMarcus Crews tried to get a new kidney, but corporate healthcare stood in the way.
He needed dialysis to stay alive. He couldn’t miss a session, not even during a pandemic. features.propublica.org/covid-dialysis…
9. This story on broken promises in Hawaii by our Local Reporting Network partner Rob Perez @StarAdvertiser and @agnel88_philip: The Government Promised to Return Ancestral Hawaiian Land, Then Never Finished the Job propublica.org/article/the-go…
10. AND we have been updating our midnight regulation tracker as the Trump administration winds down. Essential watchdogging. projects.propublica.org/trump-midnight…
Do you like what we do and want to be informed when we publish big stories? It's easy! Sign up for our Big Story newsletter: propublica.org/newsletters/th…
Lastly, investigative reporting takes time and money. It doesn't pay for itself. If you like what we do, consider a year-end donation. We'll put it to good use. donate.propublica.org/give/203438/#!… 🙏
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After living through and reporting on COVID-19’s siege of New York and New Jersey, I held out hope that other regions of the country wouldn’t have to face the same horrors. But what's going on now in Houston looks disturbingly similar. Some observations 👇 1/
Houston (and Texas in general) didn’t really experience much COVID-19 in the spring. Hospitals delayed elective surgeries but the patients didn’t come. (graphic via @Covid19Tracking)
But now, by a variety of metrics, the Houston region is in trouble, as @mike_hixenbaugh and I have outlined in several stories in the past two weeks. Our latest, on the city’s overwhelmed hospitals: propublica.org/article/all-th… 3/
I’m so happy, I could scream!! 😱 😱 Our Local Reporting Network partner, @adndotcom, won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for our collaboration on Lawless, an examination of sexual violence in Alaska and why the problem isn’t getting better. 1/x
Since statehood, Alaska has robbed Native villages of the most basic of human rights: access to first responders. Our work with @adndotcom laid bare this failing, two-tiered criminal justice system. 3/x
It's Sunday morning so now's as good a time as any for some COVID math. Follow along. 1/x
NYC has 8.4 million people (source: census.gov/quickfacts/new…). If 21% have had COVID (as the governor said this week), that's 1.76 million people. 2/x
As of yesterday:
Confirmed deaths:10,961 (0.6%, or six-tenths of one percent of the 1.76 million people)
Probable deaths:5,309 (0.3%)
Source: www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid…
3/x
Wanted to address a question I've heard repeatedly today after writing why I'm taking #COVID19 so seriously: Why should we be reacting this way to #COVID19 when H1N1 (swine flu) triggered far less panic in 2019? 1/x
This has become a trope for @realDonaldTrump, a dangerous one--and it's responsible for resistance today to the important public health messages needed to #FlattenTheCurve. 2/x
First, an acknowledgement: H1N1 was labeled a pandemic by WHO (cdc.gov/h1n1flu/who/) and it sickened between 14 million and 34 million people, per CDC estimates. cdc.gov/H1N1flu/estima… BUT... and there are huge caveats 3/x
Lots of questions this morning about mortality from #covid19. For my money, best place to look is China where we have a large denominator. This @JAMA_current summary tells us a lot. ja.ma/2U49cFK 1/x
Let's start with spectrum of disease. Looking at 44,415 cases, here's the breakdown:
Mild: 81% (36 160 cases)
Severe: 14% (6168 cases)
Critical: 5% (2087 cases)
How about mortality? In China, the mortality rate in the first 44,672 cases was 2.3% (1023). But that is not distributed evenly at all. The rate is 14.8% in patients aged ≥80 years (208 of 1408) and 8.0% in patients aged 70-79 years (312 of 3918). 3/x