Here are 3 other reasons not to wear them

by Elisabeth Buchwald

Most people don’t use face masks correctly, a Johns Hopkins public health expert told MarketWatch

Though health officials have warned Americans to prepare for the spread of the novel coronavirus in the U.S., people shouldn’t wear face masks to prevent the spread of the infectious illness, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. surgeon general.

But that’s not the only reason Americans may want to think twice about using masks, one expert told MarketWatch.

Most people don’t know how to use face masks correctly, and a rush to buy masks could prevent the people who need them most — health care providers — from getting them, said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a scholar at the Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

In fact the U.S. surgeon general recently urged the public to “STOP BUYING MASKS!” “They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!,” wrote Surgeon General Jerome Adams on Twitter US:TWTR

The CDC said last month it doesn’t recommend people use face masks, making the announcement on the same day that first case of person-to-person transmission of coronavirus was reported in the U.S. The CDC recommendation on masks stands, a spokesman told MarketWatch Wednesday, even with the first reported case of a COVID-19 infection in an individual in California who had not been to China or been exposed to a person diagnosed with the virus.

“The virus is not spreading in the general community,” Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the Center for the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said in a Jan. 30 briefing. “We don’t routinely recommend the use of face masks by the public to prevent respiratory illness. And we certainly are not recommending that at this time for this new virus.”

HHS Secretary Alex Azar said Tuesday, “Our advice remains as it has been that the average American does not need a N95 mask. These are really more for health care providers.”

N95 masks are tighter-fitting than surgical masks and protect against small particles and large droplets, according to the CDC. Azar said that there are only 30 million N95 masks in the national stockpile, adding that there are “as many as 300 million masks needed in the U.S. for health care workers.”

There were 86 cases of COVID-19 and two reported deaths in the U.S., as of Monday.

Americans don’t seem to be heeding health officials’ advice: Walgreens US:WBA and Duane Reade pharmacies have seen increased demand for face masks and hand sanitizer across the country, said Alexandra Brown, a spokeswoman for Walgreens, which owns both chains. “We continually and closely monitor these types of situations to ensure that we have sufficient supply of those products,” she said.

Several sites have sold out of face masks entirely.

Target’s US:TGT brand of face masks, priced at $5.99 for a 10-pack, were out of stock on its site as of Thursday. A Target spokeswoman declined to comment on when the face masks would be back in stock.

There were still some face masks available on Amazon US:AMZN last Thursday, though many were quickly becoming out of stock. A pack of 20 3M US:MMM face masks was available for $129 on Thursday morning, but by midday it had sold out. In April last year the same pack of masks cost $9.99, according to camelcamelcamel.com, a site that tracks historic prices of goods sold on Amazon.

Amazon and 3M did not respond to requests for comment on when customers could expect to purchase masks that are currently out of stock.

To protect against a mask shortage, Home Depot US:HD US:HD US:HD US:HD US:HD has “limited purchase quantity to 10 [masks] per person to best serve as many customers as possible,” said Margaret Smith, a Home Depot spokeswoman. “Our merchandising and supply chain teams are working hard to replenish these items as quickly as possible.”

CVS US:CVS has also seen a surge in sales of face masks. The demand “may cause shortages at some store locations and we’ll re-supply those stores as quickly as possible,” Stephanie Cunha, a CVS spokeswoman, said last month.

Adalja applauded the CDC’s recommendation on face masks. “Even during H1N1 [flu epidemic], there was no recommendation to wear face masks,” he said. They “end up creating a false sense of security and most people don’t wear them appropriately,” he said.

People who are not in the medical field who wear the masks often come in contact with germs when they lift the mask up to eat or slip their fingers under the mask to blow their nose, he said.

Panic-driven demand for face masks, Adalja said, is particularly worrisome because it could have “a negative supply shock” effect on hospital personnel who need these masks more than the general public.

Like the surgeon general, Adalja said, “the best ways [for the general public] to protect themselves are the basic hygienic measures.” That includes washing your hands regularly and covering sneezes and coughs. But if you are “sick and need to go out you should wear a mask.”

Instead of wearing face masks, the general public should “be vigilant to the symptoms and signs of this novel coronavirus, that is, a fever and cough, and if you have those symptoms, please call your health-care provider,” Messonnier said last month.

“We want our actions to be evidence-based and appropriate to the current circumstance,” she said, which she said did not justify the use of face masks for people who have not been directly exposed to the virus.

The CDC has said it expects to see more coronavirus cases in the U.S. “It’s not so much a question of if … but rather more a question of exactly when this will happen and how many people in this country will have severe illness, Messonnier said on Feb. 25.

There are still many unknowns about how this strain of coronavirus, 2019-nCoV, spreads, but when person-to-person spread has occurred in the past, “it is thought to have happened via respiratory droplets produced when an infected person coughs or sneezes, similar to how influenza and other respiratory pathogens spread,” the CDC said on its website.

Like the CDC, the World Health Organization advises people to wear a mask only if they are displaying symptoms of coronavirus or “taking care of a person with suspected 2019-nCoV infection.”

In a separate update last month, the WHO gave instructions for how to appropriately wear and dispose of face masks. WHO also noted, “However, the use of a mask alone is insufficient to provide the adequate level of protection and other equally relevant measures should be adopted.”

WHO advises people who wish to wear a mask to place the mask “carefully to cover mouth and nose and tie securely to minimise any gaps between the face and the mask,” avoid touching the mask while you’re wearing it, and dispose of masks as soon as they become damp or humid. When removing the face mask, WHO recommends that people “do not touch the front but remove the lace from behind.”

Worldwide, 89,197 people have been infected with COVID-19, and at least 3,048 have died as of Monday.

Reported by Market Watch. (This story was originally published on Jan. 30 and has been updated).

Father Cardenal defied the Roman Catholic Church in the 1980s by serving as a minister in the revolutionary government of Nicaragua

by Elias E. López

The Rev. Ernesto Cardenal, one of Latin America’s most admired poets and priests, who defied the Roman Catholic Church in the 1980s by serving in the revolutionary Sandinista government of Nicaragua, died on Sunday in Managua, Nicaragua. He was 95.

His personal assistant, Luz Marina Acosta, confirmed his death to The Associated Press.

Born to a wealthy Nicaraguan family, Father Cardenal became a prominent intellectual voice of the Nicaraguan revolution and an ardent proponent of liberation theology, a Christian movement rooted in Marxist principles and committed to social justice and uplifting the poor. He was appointed Nicaragua’s first minister of culture after the Sandinistas overthrew the dictator Gen. Anastasio Somoza Debayle in 1979.

As the Vatican’s opposition to liberation theology intensified in the 1980s under Pope John Paul II, Father Cardenal became a focal point. Before a scheduled visit to Nicaragua in 1983, the pope publicly demanded that Father Cardenal and four other priests who had actively supported the revolution resign their government positions. The Sandinista government refused the demand to replace them, but said its invitation to the pope still stood.

After months of public arguing, the pope accepted the invitation and landed in Managua, Nicaragua’s capital. As he walked along a receiving line on the tarmac shaking hands, the pope seemed taken aback to see Father Cardenal among the dignitaries.

While other priests were in clerical garb, Father Cardenal had shown up wearing a collarless white shirt, slacks and his signature black beret over his thick white hair. When he knelt to kiss the pope’s ring, the pope withheld his hand and wagged his finger at him as he spoke to him, apparently sternly. According to a Vatican official, the pope told Father Cardenal, “You must straighten out your position with the church,” The Associated Press reported.

Videotape of the scolding, though not audible, was broadcast around the world.

“Christ led me to Marx,” Father Cardenal said in an interview in 1984. “I don’t think the pope understands Marxism. For me, the four gospels are all equally communist. I’m a Marxist who believes in God, follows Christ, and is a revolutionary for the sake of his kingdom.”

His priestly authority was revoked by Nicaragua’s bishops that same year. (Three other priests were also disciplined.) Father Cardenal’s suspension was lifted in February 2019, when Pope Francis granted him absolution from “all canonical censorships,” the Vatican News reported.

Father Cardenal began writing poetry as a young man, tracing the tormented history of Nicaragua and Latin America as epics in blank verse.

Much of his poetry, though, was intimate: love poems that recalled the longings of his youth, finely wrought images of city lights at dusk or his famous “Prayer for Marilyn Monroe,” in which he describes how Monroe was found on her deathbed in 1962, “like someone wounded by gangsters/stretching out his hand to a disconnected telephone.”

Fascinated by evolution and its lessons for politics, Father Cardenal began to incorporate science into his poetry in the 1980s. He developed the theme until the end of his life, marveling at the origins of the universe and the mysteries of DNA — sources of awe that in his vision brought people closer to God.

“In this monumental vision, everything merges and condenses,” the Nicaraguan writer Sergio Ramírez wrote in the introduction to Father Cardenal’s anthology “Ninety at Ninety,” which was published in Spanish in 2014. “Not only do the poet’s intimate personal experience and the scientific exploration of the heavens enter into the mystical, so do the memories of his own past.”

The most recent complete collection of Father Cardenal’s poetry published in English was “Pluriverse: New and Selected Poems,” (2009, edited and translated in part by Jonathan Cohen).

Closing the volume was the poem “Stardust,” Father Cardenal’s meditation on death. It concludes:

And the galaxy was taking the shape of a flower

the way it looks now on a starry night.

Our flesh and our bones come from other stars

and perhaps even from other galaxies,

we are universal,

and after death we will help to form other stars

Editors’ Picks and other galaxies.

We come from the stars, and to them we shall return.

Father Cardenal reading from his book of poems in 1980. Credit…Lachmann/Ullstein Bild, via Getty Images

Ernesto Cardenal Martínez was born on Jan. 20, 1925, to an upper-class family in Granada, a city on Lake Nicaragua. He studied literature in Managua and at Columbia University in New York City, where he read Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson and Ezra Pound.

He returned to Nicaragua in the 1950s, but after a failed coup against the Somoza family, he fled and joined the Trappist monastery Gethsemani, in Kentucky, where he befriended the American monk and writer Thomas Merton. He was ordained a priest after his subsequent return to Nicaragua.

Father Cardenal was an early supporter of the Sandinista National Liberation Front, which was founded in the early 1960s, named after Augusto César Sandino, the revolutionary who had led a guerrilla campaign against the American occupation of Nicaragua in the 1920s and ’30s and was assassinated in 1934.

Father Cardenal furthered the cause after settling on an island in the Solentiname archipelago, in vast Lake Nicaragua near the southern border, in the 1960s. He built a chapel, founded an artists colony, and taught literature and painting to local residents.

His poetry began to gain recognition. He became known for what he called his “Epigrams” — lyrical bursts about love and longing mixed with political and social commentary against the Somoza regime. In one, he wrote:

I’ve handed out clandestine pamphlets,

yelling: VIVA LA LIBERTAD! In the middle of the street

defying armed guards.

I participated in the April rebellion:

but I grow pale when I pass by your house

and one look from you makes me tremble.

His sermons, too, were political, full of denunciations of the Somoza regime. Some of his young parishioners became “guerrilleros,” and the island became a central military training ground for the Sandinista movement. After the Sandinistas came to power in 1979, after a bloody period of rioting, guerrilla resistance and a mass kidnapping operation in the capital, Father Cardenal was named minister of culture by the junta leader, Daniel Ortega.

As a government minister, Father Cardenal sought what he called the “democratization of culture.” He created poetry workshops around the country, tapping into Nicaragua’s rich poetic tradition, embodied in part by Ruben Dario, who spearheaded a Latin American modernist literary movement in the late 19th century.

But Father Cardenal’s critics said the ministry was imposing ideological uniformity by pressuring new writers to produce propaganda, particularly during the Sandinistas’ long guerrilla war against an American-backed counterrevolutionary force, known as the contras.

No immediate family members survive. His brother, the Rev. Fernando Cardenal, died in 2016.

Father Cardenal remained culture minister until 1987, when the ministry was dissolved and merged with another government agency. In the 1990s he distanced himself from the Sandinista government and in recent years criticized what he called the increasingly authoritarian style of Mr. Ortega, who became president in 2007. For Father Cardenal, the Sandinista revolution had failed.

But he remained committed to his Marxist ideals.

“I am a revolutionary,” Father Cardenal said in an interview with The New York Times published in January 2015. “Revolutionary means that I want to change the world.”

He added: “The Bible is full of revolutions. The prophets are people with a message of revolution. Jesus of Nazareth takes the revolutionary message of the prophets. And we also will continue trying to change the world and make revolution. Those revolutions failed, but others will come.”

Reported by The New York Times.

(Elisabeth Malkin contributed reporting).

Nonpartisan report finds hiring, partnership deals behind schedule

by Mark Hedin

Ethnic Media Services

In a Feb. 12 Capitol Hill hearing that stretched more than three hours, Census Bureau Director Steven Dillingham updated the 2020 effort and fielded questions from the House of Representatives’ Oversight and Reform Committee.

His long-scheduled appearance coincided with the nonpartisan Government Accounting Office releasing its latest report on census preparations and what needed action according to its recommendations previously agreed upon by the Census Bureau. Overall, it said, deemed Census Bureau readiness for 2020 operations is “mixed.”

Since 2017, the GAO has deemed the census a “high-risk” operation.

Topping the concerns at the hearing was the finding that the Census Bureau is behind on its hiring goals. About a half-million people will be needed to help get a full count, and for each position, Dillingham said, he would like to have six applicants. But 202 of the bureau’s 248 regional offices are still understaffed, with the first of five mailings targeting 95% of U.S. households due to be sent out in less than a month.

Dillingham said he believes concerns about the rate of hiring are premature. He expects to be fully staffed by April when the people knocking on doors to get questionnaire responses from households that haven’t responded either online or by telephone will be needed.

Citing the low unemployment rate as a challenge, he promised, “We will continue to recruit all through the census.” Besides, he said, “20 million college students are out there with student loans and needing money.”

Also of concern to committee members was the report’s description of the Census Bureau falling behind on forming partnerships with the community organizations, businesses and nonprofits that will be crucial in educating the public and maximizing survey response rates, particularly among hard-to-count populations.

Fraud and cybersecurity form the other key concern in the GAO report.

California Rep. Katie Porter entered into the hearing record a fund-raising mailing from the Republican National Committee that gives every appearance of being the census questionnaire.

Porter said the RNC sent a similar mailing in 2010, that led to legislation outlawing such misrepresentations.

Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney, of New York, called the RNC mailing “outrageous” and vowed to revisit that legislation and add enforcement mechanisms to it.

“Clearly, people are violating that,” Maloney said, looking at the mailing both Porter and California Rep. Jimmy Gomez had brought to the hearing. “The census is one of the sacred things in our Constitution.”

The adequacy of the Census Bureau’s preparations for prioritizing online responses also came up. Echoing his reassurances about the pace of hiring, Dillingham said that other targets the Census Bureau hasn’t met had been set higher than he expected would be necessary.

Although the Census Bureau decided on Feb. 7 to change the computer system it will use for online responses, Dillingham said it’s being set up to accommodate up to 600,000 users at once. But realistically, said his deputy, Al Fontenot, traffic at any one time is likely to be perhaps only a third of that.

Many committee members worried that their constituents lack adequate access to computers to ensure they’ll be counted. Dillingham and Fontenot described various plans, such as working with community libraries, but Michigan Rep. Brenda Lawrence pointed out that some libraries in her district have limited hours.

Missouri Rep. Lacy Clay noted historic census undercounts of African Americans — 718,000 people in 2010, he said — and noted the Census Bureau itself estimates that 60% plan to wait until someone visits their home before they’ll respond to the census.

Clay asked what outreach the bureau is planning, and specifically if it includes weekly newspapers and radio. Fontenot said a black advertising agency has partnered with the census’ primary advertising firm, Young & Rubicam, to help in communication efforts.

Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib complained about the reversal of the Census Bureau’s decision after 2010 to add “Middle Eastern/North African” as an option for the final question on the census questionnaire, about ethnicity. If, instead, people of that ethnicity have to identify themselves as white, she said, it will affect health research, language assistance, civil rights, minority businesses’ ability to get loans and more.

Writing in an identity, “doesn’t have the same impact and you know that. You’re making us invisible. You’re erasing us,” Tlaib said.

California Rep. Harley Rouda, whose Orange County district includes “Little Saigon,” home to the country’s largest Vietnamese population, including many refugees, asked how the census will enumerate those with limited or no English language skills.

Besides the census questionnaire being printed in English and Spanish, online forms are in 12 languages and, Fontenot said, materials including instructional videos total almost 60. But, he said, the primary way the census plans to meet people’s language challenges is by hiring partnership specialists with language fluency.

“We do count on our partners for language assistance,” Dillingham said.

New Mexico Rep. Deb Haaland shared an estimate that for every 1% of New Mexico’s population not counted in the census, the state loses $600 million of federal funding per decade. That’s money badly needed for “schools, health care programs, roads, so many other services,” particularly for Hispanic, Native and other communities of people of color, she said.

Unemployment is relatively high among the Spanish- and Navajo-speaking people Haaland represents, yet job applicants from her district have waited weeks to hear back from the census, she said.

“I know what it means for people to open the door and see someone who looks like them,” she said.

Dillingham said the bureau has boosted pay rates in response to unemployment and cost-of-living considerations in different communities. Fontenot cited the approval just last week of a $2 million budget for local advertising in “low-count areas.”

“If there’s more recruitment needed, we will make those efforts,” Dillingham said.