This week on the show and on revealnews.org, we’re digging into the shifting CDC guidelines on personal protective equipment for front-line workers in the health care industry. 

Back in January and February, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that health care providers evaluating or treating COVID-19 be equipped with N95 respirators. In mid-March, however, with the U.S. confronting the likelihood of a significant shortfall in respirators and other supplies, the agency downgraded that guidance. The new recommendations cleared the way for hospitals to dispatch workers to care for COVID-19 patients wearing only surgical masks for all but the highest-risk procedures.

Since its onslaught on the U.S. began, COVID-19 has shaken the medical industry. According to CDC data, more than 31,000 health care workers across the country have had confirmed cases of the disease and more than 100 have died. That’s not the case in places such as Hong Kong, where, according to the World Health Organization, only one health care worker had gotten sick as of late April. 

Reveal reporters Elizabeth Shogren and Jennifer Gollan talked to doctors, nurses, union officials, public health experts and others about what led up to the CDC’s shift and what hospitals are seeing as a result.

For more on what they found, check out this week’s episode. 
 

Investigating Amazon 

As we exposed last fall, Amazon warehouse workers face working conditions that can lead to workers being maimed, unable to do the job and then, ultimately, becoming unemployed. 

Now, there’s a scandal brewing at Amazon over the way the company has treated its warehouse workers during the pandemic. 

First, the company fired Christian Smalls, a warehouse worker who led a walkout over working conditions at the Staten Island, New York, warehouse, demanding that the company sanitize the warehouse and be more transparent about cases of COVID-19 among workers. 

Then, Amazon general counsel David Zapolsky wanted to make Smalls, who is black, the face of its anti-union campaign, calling him “not smart, or articulate,” according to leaked notes from a meeting among top company leaders that VICE News obtained.

That didn’t sit well with a group of the company’s white-collar workers, according to leaked internal chats and emails viewed by Recode. “Amazon corporate employees are angry and disgusted over how their company is handling escalating labor disputes at its warehouses,” Recode found. 

But in mid-April, Amazon fired two tech workers who had been outspoken critics of how the company has treated warehouse workers and its climate policies and another leader of warehouse protests in Minnesota. 

Finally, earlier this month, Amazon Vice President Tim Bray announced his resignation in protest, saying he was dismayed that employees who spoke up faced retaliation. In a blog post on his website, he said: “It’s evidence of a vein of toxicity running through the company culture. I choose neither to serve nor drink that poison.”

It’s a story we’re going to continue following. In the meantime, here’s a guide if you aren’t familiar with our Amazon reporting (which last week was honored as a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize!):

• Listen to an updated Reveal episode that brings in new coronavirus reporting with our original story. 

• Read our long-form story on the web. 

• Watch these two videos from PBS NewsHour. 

• See what injury rates are like at the warehouse that handles your packages.

What we’re reading

Early precautions draw a life-and-death divide between Flushing and Corona
Really fantastic reporting and use of data to dig into why Corona and Flushing – two neighborhoods in Queens, New York – have had such disparate COVID-19 cases and deaths.  – Sumi Aggarwal, director of collaborations

White people are demanding their lives back In states where black people are losing theirs

Edwin Rios and Reveal alum Sinduja Rangarajan lay out the racial disparities in states that are reopening. "Of the 15 states with the widest disparities between the Black share of the population and the Black share of COVID deaths,” they report, "nine have reopened or are reopening soon.” – Matt Thompson, editor in chief 
 

The performance of a lockdown 

When Christine Baranski, Jon Batiste, Yo-Yo Ma and scores of other current and former Juilliard School artists come together to evoke life under quarantine, the result is breathtaking. If you have 10 minutes, check out “Bolero Juilliard.” Read more about its creation from the Daily Beast. And if this touches you, listen all the way to the end of our most recent episode for a resonant performance.

Fact-based journalism is worth fighting for.