Measles is continuing to spread through unvaccinated communities, confirming experts' fears

Measles has no direct cure and
can spread easily.
(Photo by Kristine Wook, Unsplash)

The number of confirmed measles cases in the United States so far this year has reached 712, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The resurgence of the virus is cause for concern as “it is preventable … and has been considered eliminated from the U.S. since 2000,” according to Devi Shastri in an article for the Associated Press.

Measles is a viral infection that has no direct treatment. The illness can be indicated by a fever, runny nose, cough, watery eyes and a rash.

While Texas has the majority of cases at 505, there have been reports of measles in 25 states, according to the CDC.

“The multi-state outbreak confirms health experts’ fears that the virus will take hold in other U.S. communities with low vaccination rates and that the spread could stretch on for a year,” wrote Shastri.

According to Shastri's report, cases spread easily in communities with low vaccination rates and that the best way to avoid measles is to get vaccinated.

Even though the disease doesn’t have a direct cure, the article explains that most children do recover. However, “infection can lead to dangerous complications such as pneumonia, blindness, brain swelling and death.”

So far, three people have died from measles this year, according to the CDC.

Office of Rural Health releases strategic plan to help address health disparities between urban and rural areas

The CDC will will release an updated method for
urban-rural classification in 2024. (Adobe Stock photo)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention "unveiled its Rural Public Health Strategic Plan, which outlines the priorities, objectives and outcomes the agency hopes to see over the next five years as it collaborates with stakeholders on how to improve the health of rural residents," reports Liz Carey of The Daily Yonder. This plan is the overarching guide for CDC and its Office of Rural Health to use as it works to address health disparities between urban and rural areas.

The plan has four primary focuses: "Engaging with community health partners, strengthening rural public health infrastructure, advancing rural public health science, and improving rural public health preparedness and response," Carey explains. "The plan isn’t regionally or state-specific, but it is a step toward an action plan."

To help all stakeholders develop strategies within the four focus points, "the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the CDC, will release an updated method for urban-rural classification, before the end of the year," Carey reports. "That will make researching rural health issues easier, Katy Backes Kozhimannil, the co-director of the University of Minnesota Rural Health Research Center told Carey. One of the issues facing researchers is determining the rurality of subjects."

Dr. Diane Hall, the director of the CDC’s Office of Rural Health, told Carey, "We really wanted the strategic plan to actually be strategic, but also be actionable. But more than that, we wanted it to be relevant to the lives of people that live in rural communities.”

CDC wants to research avian bird flu on dairy farms, but many state officials and farmers don't want their help

Dairy farmers want to avoid being labeled an 'avian flu
hotspot.' (Adobe Stock photo)

Dairy farmers don't want Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researchers on their farms even if they're tracking down avian flu. While the dairy industry's opposition to CDC intervention makes it harder for investigators to understand how long and far H5N1 has traveled within dairy herds and work to contain it, farmers and some agriculture officials are claiming federal government overreach, report Meredith Lee Hill, David Lim and Marcia Brown of Politico.

Texas is one state where CDC investigators have not been invited to research because its health department can't find any farms to host them. Politico reports, "The resistance of dairy farmers is emblematic of the trust gap between key agriculture players in red and blue states and federal health officials — one that public health experts fear could hamper the nation's ability to head off the virus' threat to humans."

When the federal government suggested deploying research teams onto dairy farms, state agricultural leaders deflected the need for in-person CDC visits. Hill, Lim and Brown explain, "Democratic, as well as Republican, state officials shared those reservations, including that state and local health officials should continue to lead the response on the ground. Some have also pressed for the Department of Agriculture and its animal health experts to have more say in the process."

Dairies don't want CDC researchers poking around because they don't want to be "identified as a virus hotspot," and they don't want their workers, who are often undocumented, to be scrutinized. Politico reports, "Given that reality, state agriculture officials have specifically pushed for any interviews with farmworkers to be voluntary and conducted off the farms at a different site."

While the CDC is working to find a middle ground where it can work directly with dairy farmers, some states are working on their own measurement tools. Politico reports: "Idaho is one of several states working on a shortened version of the CDC's lengthy questionnaire, with the goal of developing a uniform survey that can be administered nationally, said the state's epidemiologist, Dr. Christine Hahn."

For 7 deadly years, feds flubbed fentanyl fight, Post reports, naming DEA, DHS, HHS, CDC, White House drug office

Photos of fentanyl victims in the lobby of DEA headquarters (Photo by Salwan Georges, The Washington Post)

"During the past seven years, as soaring quantities of fentanyl flooded into the United States, strategic blunders and cascading mistakes by successive U.S. administrations allowed the most lethal drug crisis in American history to become significantly worse," The Washington Post reports in a long story that begins a massive package on the problem.

"Presidents from both parties failed to take effective action in the face of one of the most urgent threats to the nation’s security, one that claims more lives each year than car accidents, suicides or gun violence," Nick Miroff, Scott Higham, Steven Rich, Salwan Georges and Erin Patrick O'Connor write. "Fentanyl is now the leading cause of death for Americans ages 18 to 49, according to a Post analysis."

Fentanyl and other synthetic opioids are primarily the responsibility of the Drug Enforcement Administration, which "stumbled through a series of missteps as it confronted the biggest challenge in its 50-year history," the Post reports. "The agency was slow to respond as Mexican cartels supplanted Chinese producers, creating a massive illicit pharmaceutical industry that is now producing more fentanyl than ever. . . . The DEA said it is now taking direct aim at the Mexican cartels and the fentanyl epidemic" but "acknowledged that the government remained too focused on heroin at the onset of the crisis."

Other agencies also fell short. The Department of Homeland Security "failed to ramp up scanning and inspection technology at official crossings, instead channeling $11 billion toward the construction of a border wall that does little to stop fentanyl traffickers," the Post reports. "The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, the executive branch office headed by the 'drug czar' and tasked with coordinating the government’s response, spent years fending off elimination and struggled to create an effective strategy to combat the scourge. The office lost its seat in the White House Cabinet and remains sidelined." David King, who runs a federal drug task force in San Diego, told the Post, “Law enforcement did the best it could. We can only do so much. But in Washington, they have been very slow to respond to this and now we are at the confluence of paralysis.”

Another bureaucratic failure: While "Narcotics agents say street-level demand for fentanyl is rising fast because so many new users are getting hooked," the Department of Health and Human Services "has not tracked the rise of fentanyl and does not know how many Americans are using it," the Post reports. That could stem from the fact that fentanyl is being added to other drugs, and is now involved in most overdoses. HHH's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention "is unable to track overdose deaths in real-time," the Post notes. "Its published data is one year behind. . . . There is one federal system that collects both fatal and nonfatal overdose data in real-time in several regions of the country. But the system, called ODMAP, is kept from public view. A database launched by the drug czar’s office last week maps some nonfatal overdoses, which can highlight regions where deaths are likely to follow. Without comprehensive data, the federal government is driving blind." John Walters, drug czar for presidents of both parties, told the Post, “This is like tracking the epidemic by visiting cemeteries.”

The Post also has a story on why fentanyl is so deadly and a collection of earlier stories on the opioid epidemic. It promises five more stories, including how "a DEA agent tracked the source of fentanyl in Mormon country" and "Inside the daunting hunt for the ingredients of fentanyl and meth."

Colorado man tests positive for avian influenza, but CDC says the virus is still a low threat to humans

"Bird flu ranks as a low threat to public health, said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, after a Colorado correctional inmate tested positive for avian influenza after culling an infected flock. It was the first U.S. case and the second worldwide of human infection by the H5N1 viruses now circulating among birds globally," Chuck Abbott reports for the Food & Energy Reporting Network.

But, the agency says humans are still at very little risk of contracting the virus, and that the case is the only one they've seen after tracking the health of more than 2,500 people who had been exposed to infected birds. The patient, who is younger than 40, is tired but mostly asymptomatic, and repeated flu tests have come back negative, Abbott reports. The Colorado Department of Public Health theorized that, because the man was in close contact with infected birds, the virus may have been present in his nose without truly infecting him.

The only other recent bird flu case happened in England in December, and officials say the patient had "very close, regular contact with a large number of infected birds, which they kept in and around their home over a prolonged period of time," reported the BBC. Here's the CDC's guidance on how to minimize the risk of contracting avian influenza.

More than 36 million domestic birds, mostly chicken and poultry, have died from the bird flu or from cullings of infected flocks over the past three months. The Agriculture Department transferred $263 million to the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service last week, in addition to $130 million in mid-March. "APHIS works with state and local officials to identify outbreaks and carry out response plans that include quarantines, cullings of birds, disposing of dead birds, and sanitizing infected premises," Abbott reports.

Rural seniors least likely to be vaccinated against Covid-19

Respondents polled between January and March 2022; fully vaccinated individuals are those who got either a single Johnson & Johnson shot or the two-shot sequence from Moderna or Pfizer. (Covid States Project chart)

Full vaccination against Covid-19 with a booster shot is one of the surest ways to protect oneself against severe outcomes from the coronavirus, especially among senior citizens, who tend to be more vulnerable to infection. Seniors who are totally unvaccinated and unboosted are disproportionately likely to be less-educated, lower-income, rural, and Republican. So says a new report by the Covid States Project, a consortium of Northeastern University, Harvard University and its medical school, Rutgers University and Northwestern University. 

Asked why they were unvaccinated, seniors mainly cited worries about side effects and a lack of trust in the process by which the vaccines were developed, researchers found. Many who had been vaccinated but who had not yet gotten a booster indicated they were open to it, but either did not feel it was urgent or cited obstacles such as transportation that kept them from doing so.

The Covid States Project looked into the question of seniors' coronavirus vaccination rates because they say the data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is "significantly flawed" because it relies on poor record-keeping. Read more here.

Pandemic roundup: Shots could have prevented 234K Covid-19 deaths; decade of public preschool gains erased

Here's a roundup of recent news stories about the pandemic and vaccination efforts:

Before the Omicron surge began in December 2021, about one-third of Americans had been infected with the coronavirus at least once. By the time the Omicron surge had died down, that number had almost doubled, with 58% of Americans in a randomized sample showing antibodies indicating a prior infection, according to a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study. Among children ages 11 and under, 75% had infection-related antibodies, up from 44% before the surge. Read more here.

The deaths of about 234,000 American adults since June 2021 could have been prevented by timely vaccination against the coronavirus, according to a new CDC study. Nearly 1 million Americans have died from Covid-19. Read more here.

The pandemic erased a decade of gains in enrollment and state funding of public preschools, according to an annual review from Rutgers University's National Institute for Early Education Research. However, the report found that federal relief money filled the hole left by states' spending cuts during the 2020-2021 school year. Read more here.

For the past two years, Covid-19 has been the leading cause of death for American law enforcement officers. One police sergeant tells a reporter what it was like to spend 49 days in the hospital with Covid-19 and why he didn't get vaccinated. Read more here.

Some pain patients and doctors worry the CDC's revised opioid-prescription guidelines won't help patients enough

Opioid prescriptions have fallen more than 40 percent over the past decade in response to the opioid overdose and addiction crisis. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has played a role in that by encouraging doctors to prescribe fewer painkillers, but that has made it more difficult for patients with chronic pain to get the medication they need. The CDC has drafted a new version, on which the public-comment period just ended, "but some worry it doesn't protect patients enough," Will Stone reports for NPR.

New CDC guidelines in 2016 encouraged doctors to be wary of opioid addiction and advised them to start at a low dose and avoid prescribing high doses. Amanda Votta, a Rhode Island graduate student who has rheumatoid arthritis, told Stone that it became much harder for her to get any kind of opioid prescription at all, and that she was often in great pain.

"There's broad agreement now that the 2016 guidelines were misapplied to pain patients like Votta," Stone reports. Dr. Roger Chou, who helped write the 2016 guidelines, told Stone the guidelines were only meant to guide doctors, not stop them from prescribing appropriate medication to patients with chronic pain. But many states used the guidelines as the basis for new laws, some of which limited doctors' ability to prescribe opioids, Stone reports.

The CDC's new prescribing guidelines show promise, some experts say. "The top-line recommendations no longer include specifics about the dose or duration a patient shouldn't exceed when taking opioids. The draft also warns up front that the guidelines should not be used as inflexible standards of care," Stone reports. But the lack of specific guidance could make some doctors uncomfortable and cause them to stop prescribing opioids at all, another expert said.

Studies illustrate the effectiveness of mask-wearing in slowing the pandemic, especially in rural counties

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention graphic; click the image to enlarge it.

A pair of studies illustrates the effectiveness of mask-wearing in slowing the spread of the coronavirus.

The first, released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, showed real-world evidence that masks work, and that what kind of mask you wear matters.

"In addition to being up to date with recommended Covid-19 vaccinations, consistently wearing a comfortable, well-fitting face mask or respirator in indoor public settings protects against acquisition of [Covid-19] infection; a respirator offers the most protection," says the early release report.

The study assessed face-mask or respirator use among 652 people who tested positive for the virus and 1,176 who tested negative from Feb. 18 to Dec. 1, 2021 and self-reported being in indoor public settings during the two weeks preceding their test, with no known contact with any confirmed or suspected Covid-19 infection. The samples were randomly selected residents of California.

A second study showed that rural counties with mask mandates saw fewer coronavirus cases than rural counties without such mandates in late 2020. "The study from researchers in Kansas and Missouri and published in the Journal of Osteopathic Medicine looked at Covid-19 cases across 38 rural counties in Missouri, Iowa, Tennessee and Florida, half of which implemented mask mandates. It found in the month after counties enacted mask requirements, cases were 16.9 percent lower than in counties without mandates," Jessica Piper reports for Bangor Daily News.

Pandemic roundup: Interactive database lets you track local cases; dark days ahead for nurses and hospitals

Here's a roundup of recent news stories about the pandemic and vaccination efforts:

The pandemic highlights rural health-care disparities, writes the editorial board of The Daily Tar Heel, the student newspaper for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Read more here.

The New York Times has a new interactive database that allows you to track coronavirus cases in any state, county or metro area. Check it out here.

A recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study found that all vaccinated participants with severe Covid-19 had at least one other risk factor, including age, poor immune system, heart disease, and more. Read more here.

Hospitals and nursing homes are so short-staffed that some are asking infected nurses to come in to work. Some facilities are also asking nurses to use vacation and sick days to stay home if they test positive for coronavirus. That could put some infected nurses in an impossible position: risk financial ruin if they don't have enough paid time off, or go to work sick and endanger patients and coworkers. Experts warn that darker days are ahead for hospitals.

NBC News has a new interactive map tracking hospital stress. Check it out here.

Pandemic roundup: Indoor masking advised in most counties; debates on school masking stir confusion, anger

Levels of coronavirus transmission by county from July 26-31, 2021. NPR map based on CDC data. Click the image to enlarge it or here for the interactive version.

Here's a roundup of recent news about the pandemic and immunization efforts:

The number of welfare recipients increased in most states during the pandemic, but declined in 10 of the 13 states that refused to drop rules requiring residents to work or look for a job to qualify for assistance. The decline is likely because it was more difficult to meet such requirements amid widespread shutdowns. Read more here.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is advising vaccinated people to wear a mask indoors in counties with substantial coronavirus spread. See whether it's recommended for your county (above). Read more here.

State-level CDC data show that breakthrough cases among the vaccinated are relatively rare, and that the vast majority of Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths are unvaccinated people. Read more here.

According to an internal CDC document, the Delta variant is more likely to infect vaccinated people, and may cause more severe illness, than other coronavirus variants. It's also as contagious as the chicken pox, and more contagious than the viruses that cause MERS, SARS, Ebola, the common cold, the seasonal flu and smallpox. Read more here.

The hype—and controversy—surrounding messenger RNA vaccines is distracting people from discussing other ways to end the pandemic, including more traditionally formulated coronavirus vaccines such as the Novavax. scientist Hilda Bastian writes for The Atlantic. Read more here.

As the new school year looms, debates over mask mandates stir anger and confusion. Read more here.

Covid-19 outbreaks are on the rise in nursing homes. Read more here.

Vaccination rates are surging in areas where the Delta variant is running rampant. Read more here.

Walmart and other major employers are strengthening masking and vaccination requirements and/or incentives for employees. Read more here.

Another coronavirus variant is spreading in Florida. Read more here.

Pandemic roundup: Federal program gets vaccines to more rural residents; Facebook adds fact-checks to vax posts

Here's a roundup of recent news stories about the pandemic and vaccination efforts.

Coronavirus cases are surging in 21 states as health officials warn against reopening too quickly. Read more here.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reduced its social-distancing recommendation for children in schools from six feet to three feet. Read more here.

Facebook is adding informational labels to posts about coronavirus vaccines as it expands its efforts to counteract pandemic misinformation. The platform is also adding a tool to give users information on where and when they can get vaccinated. Read more here.

The two-shot AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine reduced symptomatic disease by 79 percent, according to the drug maker's study. That will help the vaccine be authorized in the U.S. Read more here.

Experts warn: even those who have already been vaccinated must observe social-distancing measures and other precautions to help stamp out the spread of the virus. Read more here.

Vaccine eligibility in the U.S. is a confusing mish-mash of state rules. Read more here. 

Commentary: Primary-care physicians should be at the heart of rural vaccination. Read more here.

A federal program gets vaccines to qualified facilities, rural residents, and migrant workers. Read more here.

Rural Wisconsin residents now have more options for getting vaccinated since the state has expanded a federal pharmacy program. Read more here.

Fact-checker: Trump attacks opponents, spreads falsehoods in CPAC speech

Former President Trump attacked opponents and spread well-refuted falsehoods in his Sunday afternoon speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, his first major address since leaving office, according to fact-checkers.

"Trump's unrepentant repetition of his election fraud claims was noteworthy in light of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, which Trump didn't mention," William Cummings reports for USA Today. "And his old attacks on wind energy added overblown claims that it was responsible for Texas' recent outages."

On Sunday, Trump blamed the recent power outages in Texas on iced-over wind turbines. "Traditional sources of energy such as natural gas, coal and nuclear energy systems, were responsible for nearly twice as many outages in Texas as frozen wind turbines and solar panels, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which operates the state’s power grid," Cummings reports. "ERCOT reported that of the 45,000 total megawatts of power that were offline statewide during the winter storm, about 30,000 consisted of thermal sources — gas, coal and nuclear plants – and 16,000 came from renewable sources. Wind only supplies about a quarter of the electricity in Texas."

Trump also "doubled down" on claims that the election was fraudulent, Cummings reports. "Had we had a fair election, the results would have been much different," Trump said. However, Cummings reports, "All 50 states certified the election results, and both state and federal judges (including Trump appointees) rejected scores of court challenges from the Trump campaign. Though isolated cases of fraud and irregularities were uncovered (as they are in every election) none came anywhere near the widespread level that would have been required to alter the result." Cummings also reports that many of the legal challenges mounted against the election results were dismissed based on their merits, meaning they didn't present enough evidence of fraud.

Trump claimed that Democrats used the pandemic as an excuse to illegally change election rules without the approval of their state legislatures. But the rule changes enacted were not illegal, Cummings notes. "Many states, including some controlled by Republicans, expanded mail-in voting in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Those changes were sparked by the very real concerns about the threat posed by the virus, which has killed more than 500,000 Americans," Cummings reports. "The U.S. Constitution leaves the manner of how elections are conducted to state legislatures. While in most cases the changes to mail-in voting were not directly approved by state legislatures, those legislatures had empowered their respective secretaries of state to make such emergency changes through legislation they approved."

The former president criticized the nation's top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, saying he's changed his advice on masking now that President Biden is in office. "First Fauci said you don’t need masks, no masks, no good. Then all of a sudden, now he wants double masks," Trump said. But that's misleading or exaggerated, Linda Qiu reports for The New York Times. Though initial government guidance on mask-wearing was "muddled," health agencies urged the practice long before Biden took office. In March 2020, Fauci said he wasn't against the general public wearing masks, but said he worried health-care workers would face a shortage if everyone wore them. By April, both Fauci and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began urging the general public to wear cloth masks, Qiu reports.

Trump made several false claims about undocumented immigration and refugees. He said his administration brought illegal border crossings to historic lows, but that's false, Qiu reports (and quotes the numbers to prove it). Trump also claimed that Biden "has effectively ordered a shutdown of ICE, halting virtually all deportations. Everyone, murderers, everybody." Though the Biden administration ordered a 100-day pause on deportations, it didn't apply to "murderers" and everybody. "In a memo in February, Immigration and Customs Enforcement said it would 'focus the agency’s civil immigration enforcement and removal resources on threats to national security, border security and public safety.' That would include anyone convicted of an aggravated felony, such as murder," Qiu reports. "Moreover, deporting immigrants is not the agency’s sole function. As ICE has scaled back removal operations, it has continued to conduct investigations into other illegal activity." Trump also said "nobody knows anything about" refugees" and that the U.S. doesn't have criminal records or health records about them. That's false, Qiu reports, since mandatory background checks for refugees take one or two years to complete.

The trade war was also in the cross-hairs, as Trump said his tariffs took "billions and billions of dollars from China." But tariffs are paid for by American consumers, not China, Qiu reports. Additionally, Trump said the U.S. used to have a $504 billion trade deficit with China. But that was "a reference to the trade deficit in goods — which does not include services and is not a 'loss' — with China, which grew to $538 billion under his watch," Qiu reports.

The Times debunked several other claims Trump made during the speech about election security, the U.S. economy, and the number of jobs the Keystone XL Pipeline would provide.

Wednesday webinar to discuss CDC public-health worker training program that can help rural health departments

The Rural Health Information Hub will host a free webinar at 1 p.m. ET Wednesday, Dec. 2, to discuss the Public Health Associates Program and how it can benefit rural health departments. 

The PHAP is a two-year, paid training program through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in which public-health workers gain real-world experience working at public-health agencies and nongovernmental organizations around the country. 

Rural health departments may benefit from becoming a PHAP host site, especially since it's often difficult to find qualified health-care workers. The webinar will discuss PHAP's mission, goals and more. Interested organizations can apply to become a PHAP host site from Dec. 15 to Feb. 16.

Click here for more information about the webinar or to register.

GAO says Education Department and CDC gave conflicting, incomplete guidance to local school officials on reopenings

"President Donald Trump and U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos talked out of both sides of their mouths on school reopening, a new government watchdog report finds," Evie Blad of Education Week writes about a report by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

"On the one hand, DeVos stressed that plans on how to reopen school buildings during the covid-19 pandemic were 'state and local decisions.' On the other hand, Trump and DeVos suggested schools' federal funding may be at risk if they don't allow students to return for in-person learning," Blad reports.

The GAO also concluded that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has provided unclear and sometimes contradictory guidance about how schools should minimize the spread of the virus. The report also criticized the Department of Education for leaving out details about wearing masks and social distancing when it summarized the CDC’s guidelines on its website, Blad reports.

"The report's findings echo concerns school administrators have voiced for months as they struggle to interpret layers of local, state, and federal directives amid changing information about the virus and how it spreads. Their push for clearer federal instructions started as early as March, when governors around the country ordered mass closures of their buildings to stop the spread of the virus," Blad reports. "And some complained that the Trump administration's push for schools to open in-person added political fuel to an already raging fire."

A paper in progress by two political scientists suggests that community support for President Trump had a significant influence on many school districts' decisions to resume in-person classes.

Quick hits: Report slams FEMA for failing to help repeatedly flooded homes; abandoned gas wells left to leak methane

Here's a roundup of stories with rural resonance; if you do or see similar work that should be shared on The Rural Blog, email us at heather.chapman@uky.edu.

A top official at the Department of Health and Human Services has taken a leave of absence after posting a Facebook rant promoting conspiracy theories about the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the pandemic. Read more here.

The pandemic has more people thinking about diseases that spread from animals to humans. Here's an overview of major outbreaks caused by such diseases over the past 200 years. Read more here.

The Department of Homeland Security's inspector general slammed the Federal Emergency Management Agency for failing to help tens of thousands of people whose homes have repeatedly flooded. Read more here.

Gas companies are abandoning wells, leaving them to leak methane indefinitely. Read more here.

West Virginia environmental regulators are proposing fine reductions for water pollution violations for a coal company owned by the state's billionaire governor Jim Justice. Read more here.

President Trump announced $13 billion in new pandemic aid to farmers at a rally in Wisconsin. Read more here.

Coronavirus data returns to CDC site, for a limited time, after outcry; HHS system will have more data, but . . .

"On the eve of a new coronavirus reporting system this week, data disappeared from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website as hospitals began filing information to a private contractor or their states instead," Lena Sun and Amy Goldstein report for The Washington Post. "A day later, an outcry — including from other federal health officials — prompted the Trump administration to reinstate that dashboard and another daily CDC report on the pandemic."

The announcement appears to be a win for public transparency, "but with any policy regarding an American hospital, the fine print is essential: The CDC site will only provide the data on availability of hospital beds and intensive care units up to July 14," Matt Stieb reports for New York magazine's Intelligencer. "Moving forward, the American public will have to access coronavirus hospitalization data from private sources."

The administration insists the move is about efficiency, and that the data will remain available to the public. Instead of reporting data to the CDC and the Department for Health and Human Services, hospitals will share information only with HHS through a portal created and maintained by a private contractor. The contractor, TeleTracking Technologies, was awarded a $10 million no-bid contract in April, Jon Allsop reports for Columbia Journalism Review.

For some, the change could have merit. For example, they say the CDC system "was built for tracking hospital-acquired pneumonias and urinary-tract infections, and it wasn’t perfect for keeping up with coronavirus data," Nicholas Florko and Eric Boodman report for Stat. "The HHS system, however, was built specifically to track the covid-19 pandemic and it will compile far more data than just what’s currently being produced by hospitals. Plus, hospitals were already reporting similar data through the TeleTracking system. The federal government has been using those reports to determine each state’s allocation of Gilead’s covid-19 drug, remdesivir."

Many have concerns about the switch, though. "Hospitals are being asked to learn a new data system as they’re struggling to keep up with a raging pandemic," Florko and Boodman report. "Streams of data that the CDC was making available to researchers and the public have suddenly been cut off, exacerbating fears that the Trump administration is trying to stomp out any evidence that the pandemic is worse than ever."

However, the move is consistent "with the administration’s habit of paying private contractors to do research or execute tasks that taxpayers are already paying for: A report from ProPublica published on Wednesday details how federal and state governments paid McKinsey over $100 million this year for pandemic advice, while the White House cast aside the recommendations of its own public-health experts," Stieb reports for the Intelligencer.

Emails from meatpackers show how quickly rural public-health agencies were overwhelmed by covid-19

Thousands of emails and other documents obtained by ProPublica show how patchwork regulations and underfunded public-health agencies in rural areas often left local and state governments unequipped to handle covid-19 outbreaks at meatpacking plants.

"The candid, often emotional messages provide a real-time reckoning of how the companies responsible for a critical part of the food supply chain were hazardously unprepared and how a system that relied on tiny local public health agencies was quickly overwhelmed by the consequences," Michael Grabell, Claire Perlman and Bernice Yeung report for ProPublica. "The coronavirus response was complicated by a lack of clarity over which agency had the authority to order meatpacking plants to make changes or shut down. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention could only offer guidance. The U.S. Department of Agriculture dealt with animals and food. The Labor Department had few rules that applied to a virus. And the power of local and state health officials varied from state to state."

Plans created by meatpackers and government officials to deal with infectious diseases mostly focused on animals instead of the workers, most of whom are immigrants, refugees and African Americans. "The failure to have a coordinated plan for workers left small, often rural communities vulnerable. More than 24,000 coronavirus cases have been tied to meatpacking plants," ProPublica reports. "Though many haven’t suffered severe symptoms, at least 87 workers have died. More than 25 of the dead worked for Tyson," one of the nation's largest poultry processors. 

Tyson formed a coronavirus task force in January to assess the risk to its plants, but emails and other records show that social distancing protocols to protect workers weren't implemented until after outbreaks began occurring, and that Tyson and other companies seemingly spent more energy in the early weeks urging state and local officials to allow them to keep their plants open. A little less than half of Tyson's major plants have reported outbreaks, and many have been forced to close temporarily, ProPublica reports.

However, Tyson may have attempted to delay notifying some public health officials about outbreaks. After the county health department began seeing a spike in positive cases at the Wilkesboro, N.C. plant, Tyson hired a private company to take over testing, then turned over very few results until threatened with legal action, ProPublica reports.

Probe reveals more coronavirus outbreaks in meat plants than previously thought, offers database and seeks tips

Coronavirus outbreaks among meatpacking workers are far more extensive than previously thought, and it could get worse, according to an investigation by USA Today and the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting. See the database for updated information. The reporters seek tips from meatpacking workers, saying "Visit our page on how to contact us securely."

"More than 150 of America’s largest meat processing plants operate in counties where the rate of coronavirus infection is already among the nation’s highest, based on the media outlets' analysis of slaughterhouse locations and county-level covid-19 infection rates," Kyle Bagenstose, Sky Chadde and Matt Wynn report. "These facilities represent more than 1 in 3 of the nation’s biggest beef, pork and poultry processing plants. Rates of infection around these plants are higher than those of 75 percent of other U.S. counties, the analysis found."

There aren't any shortages yet, because the nation still has plenty of meat in storage, but meatpackers are operating at 60 percent of capacity, the reporters found. Shortages could come if workers continue to sicken and plants continue to close, they write, "but experts say there's little risk of a dwindling protein supply because, given the choice between worker safety and keeping meat on grocery shelves, the nation’s slaughterhouses will choose to produce food."

The meatpacking plant outbreaks shed an uncomfortable light on working conditions that can encourage the spread of infectious diseases, especially among undocumented immigrant workers who are loathe to report safety violations for fear of losing their jobs, Bagenstose, Chadde and Wynn report: "The meatpacking industry already has been notorious for poor working conditions even before the coronavirus pandemic. Meat and poultry employees have among the highest illness rates of all manufacturing employees and are less likely to report injuries and illness than any other type of worker, federal watchdog reports have found. And the plants have been called out numerous times for refusing to let their employees use the bathroom, even to wash their hands – one of the biggest ways to reduce the spread of the coronavirus."

Lax state and federal oversight hasn't helped. "Amplifying the danger is that, in many places, meat processing companies are largely on their own to ensure an outbreak doesn’t spread across their factory floors," the reporters write. "Factory workers, unions, and even managers say the federal government – including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration – has done little more than issue non-enforceable guidance. On its website, for example, the CDC has released safety guidelines for critical workers and businesses, which primarily promote common-sense measures of sanitization and personal distancing. State health departments have also taken a backseat role in all but a few places."