Pickup truck delivers bodies to Philly medical examiner | Morning Newsletter
Plus, Pa. dairy farmers are dumping milk.
The Morning Newsletter
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On the same day that protesters gathered in Harrisburg, Gov. Tom Wolf extended the very stay-at-home order they were protesting, and vetoed a bill that would have allowed more businesses to reopen, citing health concerns. And in Philly, pictures show what looks like a delivery of human remains being transferred to the city’s medical examiner in the back of a pickup truck, as hospitals continue to battle unprecedented challenges because of the coronavirus.
— Josh Rosenblat (@joshrosenblat, morningnewsletter@inquirer.com)
A Ford pickup truck pulled up to the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office on Sunday with five or six bagged bodies stacked in its cargo bed. After speaking to a medical examiner’s employee, the driver appeared to climb into the bed, walk on the bodies, and drag them out by their feet and onto gurneys, according to my colleague who was on the scene taking photographs.
The Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed that a transfer of human remains arrived in “an unapproved manner” but, the office did not confirm which hospital the bodies arrived from. Scrawled, though, in black marker on two of the white body bags were the words “Albert Einstein Medical” and “Einstein Med Center.”
The office did not know if any of the people in the truck were killed by COVID-19.
On a recent morning, a dairy farmer pumped more than 800 gallons of perfectly good milk into a manure spreader because the farm’s milk buyer directed that the load be dumped. The buyer’s biggest commercial customers were restaurants, schools, and coffee shops that stopped buying milk because of the coronavirus lockdown, leaving the processor with more milk than it could sell.
But just 75 miles away, retail customers in Philadelphia were clamoring for more milk than many grocery stores had in stock. The supply chain has been broken, and massive demand has turned supermarket shopping and deliveries into massive headaches.
The people who clean hospitals are doing their part to try to stop the spread of the coronavirus as they prep each room for the next scared patient. They wear the same protective gear as nurses: an N95 mask, eye goggles, a blue gown, two pairs of gloves, two spray cleaners, washcloths, linens, toilet paper, tissues, microfiber mops, and wipes.
When a patient leaves a room — whether they’ve died, been discharged, or transferred — hospital cleaners wait an hour and then start cleaning. They take bagged trash, doubled in plastic, to a biohazard dirty utility room, then they spray, scrub, wipe, and mop every surface and change the linens.
What you need to know today
Gov. Wolf extended Pennsylvania’s stay-at-home order to May 8 and vetoed the bill that would have allowed more businesses to reopen because of public health objections. Even though the stay-at-home order has been extended, Pennsylvania has issued just a handful of citations for violations while New Jersey has charged more than 1,700.
People who don’t have symptoms are the ones who are largely spreading the coronavirus. That makes reopening the economy harder.
A new report shows that more than eight in 10 restaurant employees have been laid off or furloughed since the beginning of March in Pennsylvania.
Hundreds turned out for an anti-shutdown rally yesterday in Harrisburg. Here’s a video of what it looked and sounded like.
Data show that the vast majority of workers in Pennsylvania who are deemed essential earn low and working-class wages.
Patients with heart attacks and strokes may be staying away from hospitals, doctors say.
Through your eyes | #OurPhilly
A beautiful silhouette. Thanks for sharing, @mikelaytonphoto!
Tag your Instagram posts or tweets with #OurPhilly and we’ll pick our favorite each day to feature in this newsletter and give you a shout out!
That’s interesting
🏭💨If you’re smelling rotten eggs in Philly, don’t blame your neighbor’s cooking. Blame the defunct Philadelphia refinery.
🏈The Eagles’ biggest need in the upcoming NFL draft is at wide receiver, and this class might be historically good. But because this year’s draft process has been conducted under coronavirus lockdowns, lesser-known draft prospects have been using home videos to get NFL teams’ attention.
🍷Here’s how to place a booze order for curbside pickup at a Pennsylvania liquor store. You can also get your alcohol in other ways.
💼Does your boss have to tell if you there’s a positive coronavirus case in your workplace? Essential workers especially are wondering.
]🗳️Depending on where you live, it could be hard to vote during the coronavirus.
📉With tourist visits and conventions no longer coming to Philly, at least four major hotel projects are facing more than $280 million in construction debt, according to my colleague’s reporting.
Opinions
“I was getting so frustrated by people telling me what they were going to do, and how long it would take and why it wouldn’t work. I was just like, ‘OK, let me check my office and see what I have in the way of supplies. Let me see what my friends have in the way of supplies.’ And was like, ‘We are going to do this while they figure it out. Because I can’t sit around and wait.” — surgeon Ala Stanford in a column written by Jenice Armstrong about Stanford’s swift response to the coronavirus crisis, giving on-the-spot nasal swab tests and setting up testing at a North Philly church.
Coronavirus shutdowns might be shortsighted, write Antony Davies, an associate economics professor at Duquesne University, and James R. Harrigan, managing director of the Center for the Philosophy of Freedom at the University of Arizona.
The racial disparities of the coronavirus pandemic are another example of the need for reparations, write William A. Darity Jr., a public policy, African and American studies, and economics professor at Duke University, and A. Kirsten Mullen, a folklorist, museum consultant, and lecturer who focuses on race, art, history, and politics.
What we’re reading
The team that normally works on Philadelphia’s major events like the Broad Street Run is now tasked with setting up quarantine and isolation space in the city, KYW reports.
If you’re worried you might face foreclosure because of the coronavirus pandemic, there’s a free housing assistance hotline that could help, WHYY reports.
Carson Wentz is 6-foot-5. Would it matter if he was one inch taller? The Ringer explored why “tall” quarterbacks haven’t been able to succeed in the NFL.
Your Daily Dose of | Buttons
The Pennsylvania Button Society has been holding it together for 73 years despite recent setbacks (including the alleged theft of as much as $13,000 in club funds by one of its longtime members). The group is made up of people who notice every single button, not just the ones that find their ways into junk drawers or fall off clothes.