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The post Arizona’s ‘downwinders,’ exposed to Cold War nuclear testing, fight for compensation appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>The federal government enacted a compensation program for “downwinders,” those who lived near the Nevada Test Site and suffered cancers linked to radiation from the nuclear blasts. However, unlike residents in other parts of Arizona, Nevada and Utah, the residents of Kingman and lower Mohave County have never been compensated by the federal government.
Lower Mohave County residents don’t know why the federal government left them out of the 1990 Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, known as RECA. Neither do lawmakers who’ve fought for years to broaden the program. With RECA scheduled to end in 2022, they say, it’s urgent to include residents like Stephens and her neighbors and relatives.
“We want to make sure that all of the families impacted are appropriately recognized and compensated,” said Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Ariz., who along with Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., introduced legislation this year that would expand RECA to include all of Mohave County, as well as Clark County, Nevada, most of which was also left out of the compensation program.
“They suffered so that we could advance American defense systems at the time that we were testing nuclear missiles, and now we owe it to them to do our part to make sure that they are recognized, acknowledged and compensated,” Stanton said.
Stephens spent more than a decade as the president of the Mohave County Downwinders, sending letters to legislators and collecting personal stories. She hopes she and other downwinders can see those changes in their lifetimes.
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“We fought so long for so many years,” she said. “I want it resolved.”
The dangers and fallout of atomic testing were unknown to the public when testing began at the Nevada Test Site, now known as the Nevada National Security Site. One hundred of the nuclear tests at the site from 1951 to 1962 were above ground.
Stephens said getting a glimpse of the flashes or enormous mushroom clouds was a form of entertainment. Detonation times and dates were advertised in newspapers. Children were given short recesses on testing days to stand in the schoolyard and to watch the explosions turn the sky orange. In Las Vegas, only 65 miles from the testing site, businesses billed the tests as tourist attractions to view from hotel windows.
Stephens recalls that as a teenager in 1953, she, her father, her uncle and her brother rode on horseback into the Aquarius Mountains to get a better view of one of the nuclear explosions. As they watched the plume shoot into the sky, they could feel the wind blow the smoke and dust toward them. They hurried to get off the mountain, trying to escape the fallout. But by the time they returned home, their clothes were coated with oily pink stains, Stephens said.
“So about everyone up there got cancer,” she said. Her father died of colon and kidney cancer. Her brother, who is still alive, was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Colon cancer, which Stephens is also diagnosed with, is covered under RECA.
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]]>The post Arizona’s ‘God, guns and Trump’ country is starting to doubt appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>In this dry stretch of northwestern Arizona, Trump campaign signs dot the desert landscape, and Trump flags fly from the backs of dusty pickup trucks.
Last fall, an event called “Trumpstock” outside the town of Kingman featured a Trump impersonator, a pro-Trump rapper and a menu of “M.A.G.A. Subs.” Last month, thousands of people blasted classic rock and circled Lake Havasu in a Trump-themed boat parade.
“This whole area is based around people who have the same thing in common,” said Alan Morris, a 36-year-old who participated in the parade. “God, guns and Trump.”
Yet now, as the nation confronts the coronavirus pandemic, an economic recession and mass protests against police brutality and racism, some voters in the longtime Republican stronghold of Mohave County have begun to have second thoughts about the president.
“He’s an embarrassment,” said Ron Kennedy, 72. “And I voted for him.”
A veteran of the Air Force, Kennedy said he had grown wary of the president’s blunt style over the last few years. But the turning point for him came this month when protesters outside the White House were pushed back by authorities so Trump could walk to St. John’s Episcopal Church to be photographed by news crews.
“It turned me off,” Kennedy said. “Breaking up a peaceful protest just for a photo op.”
Recent polls show Trump now trails presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden in the presidential race — a reversal driven in part by the erosion of his once-commanding lead among white voters in battleground states such as Arizona.
To try to shore up support, Trump has visited the state three times in the last five months, including last week for an appearance at a Phoenix megachurch.
In Mohave County, a vast expanse of desert where 90% of the 212,000 residents are white and 73% of the vote went for Trump in 2016, there is still deep support for the president.
But he is facing new challenges here, such as assuaging concerns that he and the federal government have mishandled the coronavirus. The U.S. death toll of more than 127,000 is the highest in the world.
Four years ago, 57-year-old Keith Eaton viewed Trump as a refreshing change — an outsider who didn’t speak like a politician and appeared to act based on his gut.
“I just wanted to see what would happen,” said Eaton, who told himself: “At the very least it’s gonna be a circus we can watch.”
But Trump’s novelty has worn off, he said.
“The lack of leadership with this whole COVID thing, the lack of respect for the professionals that do this stuff … the last four months have turned me way, way more against him,” said Eaton, a firefighter. “There’s no way I would vote for him at this point. And a lot of guys I know feel the same.”
Eaton still expects Trump to win Mohave County, though by less of a margin than he did four years ago.
Sam Scarmardo, head of the Mohave County GOP, at his gun store in Lake Havasu City, Ariz.
(Kate Lithicum / Los Angeles Times)
Sam Scarmardo, head of the Mohave County GOP, said that if people have been changing their minds on Trump it’s only because of “the left-wingers who are doing everything they can to destroy him and bring the country to its knees.”
“A lot of people think coronavirus was blown out of proportion to damage Trump,” he said.
Scarmardo said voters in Mohave County have a Wild West mind-set and are naturally drawn to Trump’s defense of gun rights, his disdain for government regulation and his vow to stop unauthorized immigration from the Mexican border, which lies 150 miles to the south.
In an interview in the back room of his Lake Havasu City gun store, where his four rescue dogs circled underfoot, he ticked off what he sees as Trump’s accomplishments: the rollback of Obama-era clean-energy rules, the movement of the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, new policies that make it harder for migrants to seek asylum in the United States.
“He’s gotten more done than the last 20 presidents,” said Scarmardo.
His shop, Sam’s Shooter’s Emporium, features a life-size cardboard cutout of the president by the front door and a bulletin board that looks like Trump’s Twitter feed come to life. One poster questions the legitimacy of President Obama’s birth certificate; another compares the hijab worn by U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar to a diaper.
In the bathroom are copies of former First Lady Michelle Obama’s autobiography — whose pages are used as toilet paper.
Such unapologetic displays of the kind of bigoted and divisive views embraced by Trump have never been a problem here, said Scarmardo.
“We don’t get much argument,” he said.
And yet, a few weeks ago, a surprising thing happened down the street from the gun store. A couple dozen people gathered for a Black Lives Matter protest.
More protests were held in Kingman, about 60 miles away.
At each event, participants were outnumbered by counter-protesters, some of whom were armed with rifles.
Government officials who monitored the event said they were less afraid of looting than of the protesters getting shot.
The demonstrations ended peacefully — and even sparked new kinds of soul-searching.
Retired police officer Jeff Page, 57, said the protests made him question whether racial bias had ever played a role in his own policing.
He concluded that it hadn’t.
“I did 28 years in law enforcement in Idaho, and I can tell you that there’s not one person that I ever worked with who wanted to go out and find somebody to kill or beat up,” he said on a recent afternoon at No Name Bar, a saloon in Lave Havasu City where he, his wife and some friends had gathered for beers.
“It’s been very painful,” Page said of the recent protests.
“It’s been horrible,” agreed his wife, Victoria.
He plans to vote again for Trump in 2020, but he said that his daughter, who voted for Trump four years ago, is undecided. She works for the local school district and is repelled by the president’s immigration policies that make life harder for Latino students and their families.
They have had conversations as a family about the topic, with Jeff arguing that illegal immigration is a law-and-order issue. But those talks don’t typically end well.
So the family came up with a solution, said Victoria: “We just don’t talk politics.”
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]]>The post Arizona’s COVID-19 spread is ‘alarming’ and action is needed, experts warn appeared first on Virus Reports.
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Known Arizona deaths from COVID-19 cracked 1,000 for the first time on June 5, less than three months after the state announced the first known death.
Arizona Republic
PHOENIX – Experts around the country and in Arizona are raising alarms about the state’s COVID-19 situation because cases and hospitalizations have increased for the past two weeks.
The increase in cases can’t solely be attributed to increased testing in Arizona, experts say.
Instead, it looks like the state is trending upward in a way that is concerning and could need another stay-at-home order to curb the spread.
“I would go so far as to say alarming,” said Dr. William Hanage, an epidemiology professor at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “The only sort of crumb of comfort that I can find is that I think, in general, it’s sort of easier to social distance in Arizona than it is in some places.”
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If trajectory continues, state ‘may need to gear up for increasing action’
Arizona’s largest hospital system warned over the past week that its intensive care units are filling up, ventilator use was on the rise and capacity was reached for extracorporeal membrane oxygenation treatment.
“We have seen a steady climb of COVID-19 cases in Arizona over the last two weeks,” Banner Health tweeted Monday. “This trend is concerning to us, and also correlates with a rise in cases that we are seeing in our hospital ICUs.”
The state health director sent a letter June 6 to hospitals urging them to “fully activate” their emergency plans.
But Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and Dr. Cara Christ, the director of the Arizona Department of Health Services, said last week that the rise in cases was expected as Arizona started reopening.
Ducey’s office has repeatedly pointed to an increase in testing as the cause of case numbers increasing.
Jessica Rigler, the state health department’s assistant director, said the department is trying to spread the message that people can take precautions such as wearing a mask in public and staying home while sick.
“We don’t want people to be in crisis mode, thinking that everything is all bad in Arizona with the cases,” Rigler said. “We are certainly monitoring what’s going on and trying to ensure that people understand where we are with COVID-19 in our communities.”
Dr. Kacey Ernst, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Arizona, said all signs seem to point to increasing transmission of the disease. Increased testing could explain increased cases, but not increased hospitalizations, she said. Arizona does appear to be increasing more than other states, she said.
The situation is “very concerning,” she said.
“If we continue on this trajectory and it is not just due to one or two localized outbreaks, then we may need to gear up for increasing action,” Ernst said in an email. “The director of ADHS has declared all hospitals should activate their emergency plans. That should tell us all something.”
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Ducey spokesman Patrick Ptak said the governor’s office is working with public health officials and community leaders to provide more guidance on reopening, “ensuring businesses return smarter and work to mitigate the spread.”
Ptak said in an email that the increase in cases was anticipated, and the state is working on ways to increase hospital capacity. The old St. Luke’s hospital is “ready for activation” though not yet needed, he said.
Ptak also pointed to increased testing as a reason cases are increasing, saying testing has doubled since the stay at home order ended May 15.
What national experts see
Across the country, health experts have taken notice of Arizona’s trajectory.
“There are 3 state warnings worth issuing today for COVID,” Andy Slavitt, a former administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under President Barack Obama, tweeted Tuesday. “Not panic, but time to consider actions.”
Arizona was on the list, along with Arkansas and Utah.
Youyang Gu, a data scientist who created covid19-projections.com, posted a map of how states’ cases are changing, considering both population and the rate of increase, he wrote on Twitter.
In that map, Arizona appears bright red, earning the worst score for COVID-19 case changes. Positive scores on the map mean cases are decreasing. States that had early outbreaks, including New York and Michigan, now have positive scores on the map.
Arizona scored -100, the lowest in the country.
Other models projecting the spread of COVID-19 have adjusted their estimates upward for Arizona.
A model from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington showed in mid-May that Arizona would reach about 2,900 deaths from the disease by August 4. It now predicts more than 4,400 by that date.
During New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s COVID-19 briefing June 8, he said Arizona and a few other states offered a “cautionary tale.”
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With an increase like Arizona is seeing, the state needs to be thinking about how to slow the disease down, Hanage said. Reopening does the opposite, because transmission occurs when people come into contact with others, he said.
If states wait too long to act, they’re “sitting on a kind of powder keg of transmission chains,” Hanage said.
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What are numbers showing?
Most indicators in Arizona show an increase in the disease’s spread that goes beyond just increased testing, experts say. For example, since the day after the stay-at-home order expired May 16 to Tuesday, cases increased by 108% while testing increased by 100%.
Last week, several days saw more than 1,000 newly reported cases. Prior to the past week’s dramatic case increases, new cases reported daily have typically been in the several hundreds.
Hospitalizations have steadily risen. Statewide hospitalizations as of Sunday were at 1,266 inpatients in Arizona with suspected and confirmed COVID-19, which was the second highest number, behind Friday, since the state began reporting the data on April 9. The past eight days have seen inpatient hospitalizations statewide for suspected and confirmed COVID-19 eclipse 1,000.
The percentage of positive tests per week increased from 5% a month ago to 6% three weeks ago to 9% two weeks ago, and 12% last week.
With increasing testing, the percent of positive tests out of all tests would ideally decrease, Hanage said.
Who is being tested, particularly if there are efforts to test those in congregate settings such as nursing homes, can affect this percentage, Hanage said.
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Statewide, Arizona didn’t see a decrease in COVID-19 at any point, said Dr. Joe Gerald, an associate professor at UA’s Mel & Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health. Some places did begin to plateau or level off, he said. But since social distancing restrictions were lifted in early- to mid-May, the disease has taken off, he said.
“When you put these pieces together, they’re really worrisome signs that the outbreak has really gained speed and momentum again,” Gerald said. “And if we don’t do something to turn it around fairly quickly, we could be in real trouble come early July.”
Gerald said it looks like, if trends continue, hospital capacity could reach its limit by early July, which could mean trouble for providing high-quality care to people who need it.
What could stop the trend?
It’s clear now to experts that the state is in a concerning position. But acting immediately to take measures to curb the spread won’t have an immediate effect on case increases because people are already infected and spreading it to their close contacts, they said.
Hanage said if he were advising the governor, he would say the least that can be done is to halt reopening and see if the increase continues.
“Even if you were to be able to take pretty effective measures now, you’d still be having a month or so of difficulty with cases at at least this level, if not somewhat more,” Hanage said.
Still, experts say the state needs to act quickly to get the situation under control.
The public needs to continue following public health recommendations, such as physically distancing, wearing masks and washing hands, Ernst, of the University of Arizona, said. It’s also important for state leaders to follow these guidelines, she said.
Ducey, for instance, has not worn a mask in public and has been pictured at meetings indoors with groups of unmasked people.
“There needs to be a cultural shift,” Ernst said. “So many people still aren’t wearing masks. But people see leaders not taking these precautions and they hear the state is open and they let their guard down. Psychologically, it is hard to keep it going, but it is critical. This will get closer to home to people as more get sick.”
Gerald said it’s hard to see how the state could avoid another shutdown at the rate cases and hospitalizations are increasing right now.
Will Humble, the executive director of the Arizona Public Health Association, detailed in a blog post several steps the state should take now to stem cases. Those include a focusing on testing and infection control in nursing homes, enhancing contact tracing, allowing cities to put their own mitigation strategies in place and requiring people to wear cloth masks in public.
Those steps could make it so the state doesn’t have to institute another stay at home order, Humble said.
“If we don’t do anything, we’re just going to drive off a cliff,” Humble said.
Contributing: Stephanie Innes and Alison Steinbach, Arizona Republic
Follow reporter Rachel Leingang on Twitter.
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