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MASKED HEROES
The debate over whether to wear a mask or not continues.
- Deborah Birx, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator, warned at a press briefing Thursday against being lulled into a false complacency when wearing a mask.
- “The most important thing is the social distancing and washing your hands,” she said. “We don’t want people to get an artificial sense of protection because they’re behind a mask.”
- Vice President Mike Pence, however, mentioned guidance on the issue would be coming from the Centers for Disease Control in the next few days.
The CDC currently does not recommend that healthy people wear face masks for protection.
Doctors and public health experts are calling for more widespread use. Legislators — like the mayors of Los Angeles and New York City — are also urging their constituents to wear face coverings in public.
There are dozens of stories of women making masks for themselves, their communities and area hospitals.
“A huge spectrum of women from all walks of life have come together to do this," Brooke Burch, a seamstress from Minnesota, told KTTC, a local NBC affiliate.
“It’s very exciting because it kind of reminds me of women way back in World War I and World War II, when the soldiers needed socks and washcloths and they just started knitting and sending these things out,” June Cauldwell, of Maine, told her local CBS affiliate.
📣 Are you sewing facemasks for health workers? Show us yours by sharing photos with #19thsewingstories.
— Andrea Valdez
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 Karen Kinsell, the lone doctor in a rural Georgia county
For 15 years, Karen Kinsell has been the only doctor in southwest Georgia’s Clay County, home to nearly 3,000 residents and one of the state’s poorest and sickest areas. Even before coronavirus began ravaging the country, many living here were already struggling with multiple pre-existing illnesses.
Kinsell had her own brush with the virus, thinking she might have been ill before testing negative last month. Still, she said she had symptoms consistent with COVID-19 and suspects she may have contracted the illness.
Errin Haines, The 19th’s editor at large, spoke to Dr. Kinsell this week about the challenges she faces as the pandemic threatens rural communities like hers. Our edited interview is below.
The 19th: Dr. Kinsell, what is the health care situation where you are?
Dr. Karen Kinsell: Clay County is a very small, rural county. It’s 20 miles to the next doctor in Georgia, about 15 to the next in Alabama.
There are a few really small hospitals in Georgia, about 20 miles away, and there’s another medium-sized one in Alabama, about 25 miles away.
If someone was actually ill enough to be hospitalized with coronavirus, they would be transferred to one of the larger hospitals. Albany is the closest large hospital in Georgia — about 50 miles away — but Albany is just completely overloaded and is transporting patients out. I think Albany has one of the highest per-capita case rates in the world. Dothan, Alabama — about 40 miles away — has another slightly larger hospital. It does not have that many cases yet and so I think EMS would tend to take folks in that direction.
What were things like in Clay County before coronavirus?
We’re very poor. [The poverty rate is around 30 percent. About 60 percent of African Americans are under the poverty level.]
We’re very sickly. Diabetes certainly is extremely common, hypertension, heart disease, some cancers. Asthma, because we’re so rural; the pollen here is just outrageous! In poor areas, people smoke more. Many people who have been disabled either never left or have moved here because it’s relatively cheap to live here — we’re right on a big lake — to try to enjoy the hunting and fishing.
So you take all of those factors and add coronavirus. How concerned were you about the spread over the past few weeks, thinking about the population you serve?
First it was in Atlanta, and we’d be watching the numbers every day like, “Oh, it’s no big deal.”
The day the first two cases were announced in Albany, I was in a meeting when it popped up in everybody’s phone. People just looked at each other like, “Oh, shit! This is coming.”
We’re officially counting five cases at this point. I know other people have been tested since then. We have all these other people who are not being tested. So, yeah, it’s here. The county to the south of us has 32 in a population of 10,000, so that’s about half of Albany’s rate, which is off the charts.
The day they announced the first case in the adjoining county happened to be the day after I got home from working urgent care on the other side of the state. In urgent care, we were doing social distancing, we were using hand sanitizer, but no masks because we thought there weren’t any cases. The next week, I started getting sick and actually we had just gotten test kits. I tested myself; I was negative. And then the weekend before last, I spiked a fever again.
We’d already decided we were going to stay home. I felt better pretty quickly, so I don’t know if that was it or not. The good thing about being a primary care doctor is you get exposed to so many things that your immunity goes up, so you shed things pretty quickly.
So how have you been performing your duties as a doctor?
When [The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] announced they were loosening the regulations on tele-health, we got very interested in that. Partly because several of the staff are high risk, and some of the others refused to be around people, even with a mask. We’ve been tele-only since [March 23].
To do it from home, you’re relying on the patient having a device [that transmits video]. And the reality is more than half of my patients do not have a functioning video capacity or know how to use it or have a signal or any of the above. We’re now on our third platform. We looked at another one yesterday.
But we’re doing all these visits. We kept our regular schedule. The normal health issues go on. You still have diabetes, you still have bladder infections, you still have COPD. We’re trying to keep our regular patients in rotation as well as fielding [additional COVID-19] calls.
When people see [the tele-health] model in wide use, everyone’s going to keep doing it. For some situations, tele-health makes a lot of sense. For others it doesn’t, because you can’t examine people, you can’t check their sugar, their labs. It has a personal aspect that you can’t replicate on the phone. The screen doesn’t add much to the visit at all.
How many calls a day would you say you’re getting related to COVID-19?
It really started last Thursday in terms of people getting symptoms. Only one or two of these have actually been tested, either because they didn't spike a fever at the right time or they didn’t want to fool with it. I try to kind of keep in touch with [the people calling about coronavirus], so they know somebody is caring about them. They have questions every day. This is new to everybody and the advice keeps changing every day.
What are you most worried about for your neighbors as this situation continues?
The financial fallout. That some people are going to die. And most likely, they’re going to be older people who are sickly anyway. It certainly is causing a lot of fear.
Read more: When the coronavirus comes to rural Georgia (The New Yorker, March 12)
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DOCKED PAY
Female doctors are paid 12 percent less than male doctors, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Women nurses are also paid 8 percent less than their male counterparts.
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 What we're reading
Millions of dads are stuck at home — which could be a game changer for working moms. “Millions of dads have suddenly been forced to stay home with their kids. This historic moment could forever shift dynamics in both firms and families, leading to greater gender equality down the road.” (CNN Business, April 3)
Trump’s Virus Defense Is Often an Attack, and the Target Is Often a Woman. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. General Motors CEO Mary Barra. PBS NewHour correspondent Yamiche Alcindor. The list goes on. (The New York Times, March 30)
U.S. appeals court allows Texas abortion curbs amid pandemic. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals put on a hold on a federal judge’s ruling that stopped Texas from banning abortions during the coronavirus pandemic. (Reuters, March 31)
Lorena Borjas, a transgender Latina activist who fought for immigrants and sex workers, has died of Covid-19. Borjas, who died Monday from coronavirus-related complications, spent much of her life helping transgender immigrant women, from founding a nonprofit to opening her home to people in need. (The New York Times, April 1)
As a Mom Working In a Prison, I Worry About Bringing Coronavirus Home. “It’s impossible to practice ‘social distancing’ when you work in a prison.” (The Marshall Project, April 1)
‘It’s Just So Devastating’: For Crestfallen Gymnasts, an Olympic Dream Deferred. “The rescheduling of the Olympics has hit female gymnasts particularly hard, considering that their window for Olympic success is so tiny.” (The New York Times, April 1)
🎧 Listen: For Immigrant Communities, Coronavirus Is A Different Kind Of Threat. Latino USA examines some of the particular challenges low-wage immigrant communities face during this time, like working in “essential” jobs and attaining health care. (Latino USA)
📺 Watch: These four women live in different continents, are different ages and have different jobs. But they have one thing in common: coronavirus. (NBC News)
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