{"id":3269,"date":"2020-11-18T14:16:02","date_gmt":"2020-11-18T19:16:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/?p=3269"},"modified":"2020-12-08T12:20:02","modified_gmt":"2020-12-08T17:20:02","slug":"health-experts-say-new-york-isnt-ready-for-second-wave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/2020\/11\/health-experts-say-new-york-isnt-ready-for-second-wave\/","title":{"rendered":"Health Experts Say New York Isn\u2019t Ready For Second Wave"},"content":{"rendered":"

Panelists at this year\u2019s Student Empowerment Conference expressed pessimism about New York\u2019s ability to handle another rise in coronavirus cases.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Dr. Jason Matuszak, president of the New York State Academy of Family Physicians, told moderator Nadine Pratt that one takeaway from the pandemic so far is that \u201cwe learned how inadequate an employer-provided healthcare system really is for the average person in New York State,\u201d he said,\u00a0 \u201cOne disruption to that system and the whole thing comes crashing down.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

A majority of young people <\/span>favor<\/span><\/a> a single-payer healthcare system that guarantees coverage to all Americans, and support has gone up significantly among other age groups since 2019.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As part of a daylong event sponsored by the New York Public Interest Research Group, Mutuszak spoke alongside Manhattan Assemblymember Richard Gottfried and treasurer on the board of directors of the New York State Nurses Association, Nancy Hagans. The other panels of the day focused on student activism and recent elections.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a healthcare system that doesn\u2019t treat people of limited means very well. Those problems have been there before the virus, the virus just made it much worse,\u201d said Gottfried.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As data became clearer over the summer, studies showed class and racial <\/span>disparities<\/span><\/a> in care. \u201cLow income and people of color had insufficient healthcare resources before the pandemic, so they were doubly hit when the pandemic arrived,\u201d Hagans said. She added that hospitals in Manhattan had budgets to <\/span>charter jets<\/span><\/a> and bring in PPE while hospitals in low income or minority communities couldn\u2019t afford that luxury.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

College students<\/span><\/a> took to the streets in the spring and summer in waves of <\/span>protests<\/span><\/a> sparked by police killings to also demand justice for racial disparities in coronavirus care.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

With <\/span>reports<\/span><\/a> of effective vaccines coming soon, Dr. Matuszak said that if New York plans to <\/span>mandate vaccines<\/span><\/a>, the state would need to ensure equitable vaccination for people of all incomes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe vaccine shouldn\u2019t be a business, it should be considered a right for all Americans,\u201d Hagans said. \u201cIf we leave it up to the pharmaceutical industry, we don\u2019t get care to underserved communities.\u201d She added that vaccine distribution shouldn\u2019t mirror the early disparities in coronavirus testing where Americans with <\/span>more money<\/span><\/a> had access to testing while low income communities severely lacked testing resources.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As for the<\/span> rising<\/span><\/a> cases in New York, Hagans said nurses are not ready. \u201cWe still don\u2019t have PPE, and we\u2019re still understaffed. We are still being told we can only use one N95 mask per day, if we have another wave, the nurse-patient ratios would be devastating,\u201d explaining that nurses are supposed to be assigned to two patients at most. During the height of the pandemic in New York in the spring, nurses were assigned up to eight patients at once. Hagans said that nurses are still being assigned to up to four patients at once.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know that we\u2019re much better than March or April, there is going to be a lot of death associated with this recent rise despite all of the advancements that we believe we\u2019ve made,\u201d Jason said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Health experts on a recent NYPIRG panel predict that New York is not ready for another rise in coronavirus cases. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":3270,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[324],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-student-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3269"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3293,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3269\/revisions\/3293"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}