Consider This from NPR - Fauci's New Vaccine Hopes For 2021; A Pandemic Election

Episode Date: June 3, 2020

Eight states and the District of Columbia went to the polls Tuesday. More mail-in ballots and fewer in-person polling places caused long delays in some places, highlighting the challenges for the November elections. KUT's Ashley Lopez reports, since naturalization ceremonies have been halted due to the pandemic, thousands who were due to become U.S. citizens over the last few weeks are now in limbo. Public health workers are encountering resistance, online harassment and even violent threats as they conduct contact tracing and other containment strategies in their local communities. NPR's Will Stone has more. Plus, a visit to the Six Feet Away Museum in Jacksonville, Florida, and an update on a coronavirus vaccine. Find and support your local public radio station Sign up for 'The New Normal' newsletter.This episode was recorded and published as part of this podcast's former 'Coronavirus Daily' format.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography. Kauffman.org Scientists could know whether they have a vaccine ready for use in less than six months. We're talking November or December, Dr. Anthony Fauci said this week. Which means that by that time,

we hopefully would have close to 100 million doses. And by the beginning of 2021, we hope to have a couple of hundred million doses. But even 200 million doses would leave millions of Americans without one. Plus, it's not yet clear how many people would agree to get a vaccine, how many doses a single person would need for immunity, or how long that immunity would last. I'm concerned a little bit more about with the durability of response.

Fauci said we do develop protection from less harmful coronaviruses, like some that cause the common cold. But. The durability of protection is only measured, you know, in a year or less. There's never a guarantee, ever, that you're going to get an effective vaccine. Coming up, one thing you can't do over Zoom is become a naturalized citizen. What that means for people hoping to vote this year. This is Coronavirus Daily from NPR. I'm Kelly McEvers. It, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the Wise app today or visit wise.com.

T's and C's apply. Okay, so about voting. This week, we got a small taste of how the November elections might go. And it's going to be complicated. We really are in uncharted territory for voting in America. Marcia Johnson Blanco is with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which provides legal tools to expand voting. Eight states and the District of Columbia had primary elections on Tuesday,

in the middle of a pandemic and a national protest movement. All of those places had mail-in ballot options, which is one reason in-person turnout was down in a lot of places. But Johnson Blanco said voters in some places didn't receive ballots on time. Some polling places were understaffed. And then, of course, recently we've seen the impact in the last several days of the curfew. In D.C., for instance, voting was one of the reasons you could be out in the streets after curfew at 7 p.m. But some voters waited five hours to vote, keeping those polling places open until after midnight. That's partly because the city cut polling places from 144 precincts to 20, thinking more voters would just stay home and vote by mail.

Of course, we know what the president thinks about that. We don't want them to do mail-in ballots because it's going to lead to total election fraud. So we don't want them to do mail-in ballots. But there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud of any kind anywhere in this country, despite what a lot of Republicans have said for years. The biggest challenge I have right now is making the concept of absentee ballot less toxic for Republicans. In Kentucky, the Republican secretary of state, Michael Adams, wants to send every voter a postcard telling them how to apply for a ballot

online so they can vote by mail in the primary later this month. And I've gotten, I've gotten my head taken off for that. Thing is, his current job, Kentucky Secretary of State, is an elected position. Michael Adams had to run for office. In the race for secretary of state, Michael Adams will require a photo ID to vote. And he did so on a platform of fighting voter fraud. The clear choice, Michael Adams for secretary of state. He'll make it easy to vote, hard to cheat. It's a sensitive issue and that's partly on me because I talked about it in my campaign. It's my job now to calm people's fears.

As for November, more states have loosened the rules for voting by mail, but not all. In some, you still need to supply a valid reason for requesting a mail-in ballot. It's not clear yet if concern about the virus will be a valid excuse everywhere to vote by mail. 2020 was on track for a huge turnout of new voters. But since the virus, the number of new people registering to vote has been lagging behind 2016 levels. One group of people who can't register to vote yet are thousands of immigrants waiting to become U.S. citizens. That's because since the pandemic hit, naturalization ceremonies have been on hold and officials have yet to come up with a way to do them remotely. Ashley Lopez of member station KUT in Austin reports. Elisabeth Hernandez moved to the U.S.

from Mexico almost 30 years ago, and she says that in that time, she never really thought much about becoming a citizen, until this year. She says, I want to vote for a president who will improve the country. She did all the paperwork and was set to have her naturalization ceremony on March 15th. But then the coronavirus happened and the ceremony was canceled. Hernandez says, it made me sad. She says she was emotional because she was so close to having her ceremony and now she doesn't know if that will happen anytime soon.

Diego Níguez-López with the National Partnership for New Americans says U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS, happen anytime soon. Diego Iniguez-Lopez with the National Partnership for New Americans says U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS, should hold virtual oath ceremonies. It's not unprecedented and it is an option. USCIS officials said in a statement that there are requirements mandated by Congress that make it, quote, logistically difficult for USCIS to administer naturalization oaths virtually or telephonically. Iniguez-Lopez says an estimated 860,000 immigrants were said to be naturalized this year alone. And now that's in jeopardy.

And these represent rising numbers of new American voters that have the power to sway the outcome of the upcoming presidential elections, midterm elections, and governorships and state legislature. And that's partly because immigrants make up a big chunk of the eligible voting population. Mark Hugo-Lopez with the Pew Research Center says one out of every 10 eligible voters in the U.S. will be a naturalized citizen in 2020. And among key demographic like Asians and Latinos, those voters are more likely to turn out. Most people who make the decision to become a citizen are oftentimes also somewhat more engaged than others in terms of wanting to get involved. And an important step actually happens in those

naturalization ceremonies. Dr. Annie Johnson-Benefield is with the League of Women Voters in Houston. One of the main things she does with the league is register voters at those oath ceremonies. It makes you very proud to be an American. And Benefield says she's able to register about 90 percent of the people in those ceremonies that day, which is unlike any other voter registration event. And Benefield says there were supposed to be 16 ceremonies in the Houston area this year. And the year's not over, so we have no idea how they're going to start structuring and scheduling them for the rest of the year. Benefield says she hopes government officials come up with a plan soon that allows immigrants to safely become citizens.

And she says she hopes they also figure out a way to make sure groups like hers can register them to vote this year. Ashley Lopez of Member Station KUT. In eastern Washington state, near the Canadian border, Lori Jones has been running a small public health department for 17 years. The kind of place you go to for a septic permit or a copy of your birth certificate. You know, we kind of sit here under the radar. But not anymore. Now, Lori Jones, like a lot of public health workers, is the public face of a massive contact tracing effort. She calls people who have tested positive for the virus or who may have had contact with someone who tested

positive and encourages them to stay home, maybe get tested themselves. For the first time, people are hearing terms like contact tracing, case investigation. Not everyone is responding well. Those frighten them for some reason. And that's not just in a rural county in Washington state. Reporter Will Stone picks up the story from there. Jones tries to break it down. She tells them it's a lot like what she does when someone gets salmonella. But she says it's been hard to get that message out on how contact tracing actually works,

especially in a place like Okanagan County, which is remote and sparsely populated. A lot of people rely on social media for their information and misinformation. This became all too clear for Jones last month. One local household was supposed to be isolating because a family member had tested positive. Jones had called them up to remind them everyone had to stay home. But someone in the community took that message very differently, that Jones was tracking all their movements. Then the accusations started flying that we were spying, that we had put them under house arrest. And what began as a small town spat became a widely shared

Facebook post, warning that people were being watched. Next came the online threats. Calling me out by name, threatening to reveal my address, and even a call to arms. That kind of scared me. The police told Jones to be careful. She bought security cameras for her home. When the neighbor's dog would bark, I would jump up at night. So I had a few real sleepless nights. Now she and her staff look over their shoulder when they head home at night. The coronavirus pandemic has made public health officials like Jones more visible than ever. And now we feel like targets. In Washington state, health officials have been trying to correct misinformation on social media, like the rumor that quarantine means being locked up somewhere.

In the next county over, Mark Straub is on the public health board. He says he's also getting lots of questions about the government's role in a pandemic. And some are reasonable, like concerns about medical privacy. We have to be sensitive to that. And so it's important that people understand that this is not going to be forced upon them, that these are voluntary measures. The fears and sometimes the backlash is happening around the country. In Ohio, there have been angry gatherings outside the home of the state health director. And in Colorado, anger over a stay-at-home order even forced one local health department

to close up some buildings and ramp up security. We've had protests in our offices and threats of a shooting civil war, even a couple of personal threats. That's Dr. John Douglas, who runs the Tri-County Health Department. We're desperately trying to scale up contact tracing, but we're having to divert funding to our security guards. Dr. Marcus Plescia is the chief medical officer for the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. He's been watching distrust of public health grow, and he's worried. Some of these decisions are not popular. Some of them are decisions that the public health officials would perhaps rather not make, but they're trying to do the right thing. They're

trying to keep people safe. But he says for public health strategies like contact tracing to actually work, they need their community's trust. Now more than ever. Reporter Will Stone in Seattle. When the pandemic hit and museums and galleries closed, art curator Shawana Brooks and her husband, artist Roosevelt Watson III, had an idea while they were cleaning out their home studio in Jacksonville, Florida.

We were looking at all the work and, you know, we don't have any more room to put it up on the walls. There was a couple of pieces that were already outside. So they put up a sign in their yard. The Six Feet Away Museum. A lot of the art is about race and justice. And neighbors responded. The community loved it. And that was

the one kicker that we wanted because a lot of the urban community don't feel welcome in museums. This was all before George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis by police. After that happened, neighbors had a place to meet up and process everything that's going on out loud. You could see people, their mentality and how they needed to connect around this art and how they also needed to talk. Shawana Brooks and Roosevelt Watson III talked to our colleagues at NPR's Morning Edition. Additional reporting for this episode came from NPR's Miles Parks and Pam Fessler. For more on the coronavirus, you can stay up to date with all the news on your local public radio station. I'm Kelly McEvers. We will be back with more tomorrow. It feels like nothing in the news these days makes any sense.

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