Friday, March 13, 2020
Editor's note: Seven Days is profiling some of the people defending Vermonters from COVID-19.
Should you become infected with COVID-19, there’s a decent chance you might end up in the care of Dr. Erin Kurek and her colleagues at the University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington. Kurek, 42, has been a hospitalist there for eight years and was an attending hospitalist in Salt Lake City for three years before that.
If you’re unfamiliar with what a hospitalist does, that could be because it’s a relatively new term, coined about 25 years ago. Hospitalists are licensed internal medicine physicians who treat patients in a hospital rather than at outside offices or clinics.
“You can almost think of it as your primary care doctor, in the hospital,” Kurek explained.
Kurek’s floor at the hospital takes admissions from the emergency room and primary care doctors, as well as patients transferred from other hospitals who need a higher level of care. So far, the medical center has identified one positive case of COVID-19, more commonly known as the coronavirus. Kurek hasn’t treated that patient, though a colleague in her group has.
“Our group is working hard to disperse the work while keeping one person in charge of COVID rule-outs,” she said.
Numerous patients have come through exhibiting those worrisome, flu-like symptoms — dry cough, fever, shortness of breath.
Tags: Dr. Erin Kurek , coronavirus , COVID-19 , University of Vermont Medical Center , Vermont's Defensive Line , Web Only , Image
"In this moment of crisis, more and more people understand that we need fundamental changes to our economy, we need fundamental changes to our heath care system," he told reporters at Hotel Vermont, where he has delivered remarks every day since Wednesday.
On Thursday, Sanders compared the pandemic to a world war and called for proportional emergency response. Friday's comments signaled that the Democratic presidential candidate sees coronavirus as a chance to broaden the appeal of "Medicare for All" and other proposals that his opponents for months have cast as too radical.
"If this isn't a red flag for the current dysfunctional and wasteful health care system, frankly, I don't know what is," Sanders said.
Tags: Senator , BernieBeat , Bernie Sanders , coronavirus , president , primary , Democratic , election , Web Only , Image
Thursday, March 12, 2020
The trains will instead be parked just to the south in the Vermont Rail System rail yard, the Vermont Transportation Agency announced Thursday afternoon.
That's good news to critics who said trains should not be allowed to spew noise and fumes overnight in a heavily visited section of Burlington's redeveloped, recreational waterfront. The area between Maple and College streets had been under consideration.
"My faith in humanity has been restored," said Melinda Moulton, CEO of Main Street Landing, who lobbied for restoring passenger rail service to Burlington but wants the trains to park in the rail yard.
The train service is expected to begin in 2021 with Amtrak’s Ethan Allen Express, which currently runs from New York City to Rutland via Albany, N.Y. Amtrak will extend its run to Burlington after track improvements are completed and the train will arrive at Union Station, which has been redeveloped by Main Street Landing.
“This decision represents substantial assessment and collaboration by VTrans, the City of Burlington, and Vermont Rail System, as well as serious consideration of public response,” state Transportation Secretary Joe Flynn said in a press release.
Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger praised the resolution.
It's a "great outcome for Burlington that achieves all the goals the City has had throughout this process,” Weinberger said in a press release. “Thanks to close collaboration between the City, the Vermont Agency of Transportation, and Vermont Rail Systems, we are restoring passenger rail service to downtown Burlington for the first time in decades, while also protecting the vibrancy of our waterfront, improving the Bike Path, and minimizing impacts on Burlington residents and businesses."
The plan will not impact existing rail yard operations, according to the press release, and the new overnight parking location means that a second track between Maple and College streets will not be needed.
A second track could have allowed fuel tanker cars as well as passenger trains to block the central waterfront, critics had worried.
"All the years that we've all worked to create this beautiful place for people was not the place to be storing and servicing trains,'' Moulton said.
Tags: Amtrak , Burlington , Union Station , Main Street Landing , Melinda Moulton , Vermont Rail System , Web Only , Image
"If there ever was a time in the modern history of our country when we are all in this together, this is that moment," Sanders told reporters at Hotel Vermont in Burlington. "Now is the time to come together with love and compassion for all, including the most vulnerable people in our society who will face this pandemic from a health perspective or face it from an economic perspective."
Sanders and former vice president Joe Biden both heavily criticized President Donald Trump's handling of the epidemic following his prime time address Wednesday night in which he announced a ban on travelers from Europe. Each spoke as lawmakers on Capitol Hill scrambled to put together a broad aid package and canceled a scheduled U.S. Senate recess.
Tags: Senator , BernieBeat , Bernie Sanders , coronavirus , Web Only , Image
Wednesday, March 11, 2020
The findings are contained in a 63-page report submitted to lawmakers Wednesday by a commission created in 2017 to study law enforcement interactions with people in mental health crisis.
Members of the Vermont Mental Health Crisis Response Commission were split in their assessment of how officers handled the hours-long standoff with the 76-year-old Grenon in his Burlington apartment. But the report vividly recounts the months of communication breakdowns and inadequate health care that precipitated Grenon's fatal encounter with police.
"If there's one thing that's clear to me from this, it's that his death was preventable," said commission chair Wilda White, former executive director of Vermont Psychiatric Survivors. "This was so preventable."
Tags: Phil Grenon , Ralph Grenon , Howard Center , Burlington Police Department , Wilda White , Vermont Mental Health Crisis Response Commission , police shooting , mental health , Web Only , Image
Tuesday, March 10, 2020
The Attorney General's Office filed suit against the face-search company on Tuesday, alleging its practice of scooping up billions of online images to build a facial recognition app violates Vermont's consumer protection statute.
The civil suit is also the first legal test of a provision in the state's data broker law, which was the only one of its kind when passed in 2018.
Tags: Clearview AI , data broker law , Vermont , lawsuit , T.J. Donovan , Web Only , Image
Sunday, March 8, 2020
The first person in Vermont to be diagnosed with the coronavirus known as COVID-19 is an adult Bennington County resident who was listed in stable condition in Southwestern Vermont Medical Center.
The person arrived at the hospital's emergency department on Thursday with fever, a cough and a high temperature. The patient was immediately placed in a negative-pressure isolation room and was tested for the virus, the hospital said in a statement Sunday afternoon.
The patient was not believed to have traveled abroad to one of the countries with serious outbreaks of the virus, Vermont Health Commissioner Mark Levine said during a press conference Sunday. That raises the possibility the person was infected from contact with someone in the community.
Levine stressed that it is too soon to know how the person became infected, and state health officials were working hard to trace the person’s contacts and contain the spread of the disease.
Tags: COVID-19 , coronavirus , Gov. Phil Scott , Mark Levine , Southwest Vermont Medical Center , Web Only , Image
Saturday, March 7, 2020
A test of a Vermont resident returned a presumptive positive result. Officials were awaiting confirmation by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the department said in a press release.
Gov. Phil Scott will hold a press conference at the Vermont Department of Public Safety headquarters in Waterbury on Sunday morning to provide updates on the case and the state's response efforts.
Tags: COVID-19 , coronavirus , Mark Levine , Web Only , Image
Thursday, March 5, 2020
The wrongful death suit alleges she succumbed to a heart infection that went untreated during several days that she was held by police and in prison, despite her repeated pleas for medical help.
Linsenmeir, or "Maddie" to those who read the stories penned by her sister, Kate O'Neill, was a Burlington, Vt., native who had long suffered from opioid-use disorder. She was arrested on a probation violation warrant in Springfield, Mass., on September 29, 2018. During her booking interview, she repeatedly said she was sick and requested medical care.
"I have a really, really bad chest, like I don't know what happened to it. It feels like it's caving in," she said, as recorded on police surveillance video. "I can't breathe."
Tags: Madelyn Linsenmeir , Springfield , Hooked , opioids , Web Only , Image
Wednesday, March 4, 2020
After losing by only 74 votes Tuesday, South Burlington City Council candidate Matt Cota has successfully sought a recount in his race against incumbent Meaghan Emery.
She won with 3,940 votes compared to 3,866 for Cota, which equates to 50.47 percent of the total vote to Cota's 49.52 percent. That outcome easily meets the statutory requirement that allows for a recount when the margin of victory is less than five percent.
Cota said he requested the recount Wednesday morning not only because the results were so close, but also because the city was swamped with a much higher turnout than normal on Town Meeting Day. The city ran out of ballots and had to make copies, which meant officials had to hand count a portion of them.
"Given these sort of odd circumstances where we ran out of ballots, this will ensure that we have a final tally that reflects every vote," Cota said. He added: "I would fully expect that anyone in my position, including my opponent, would do the same thing."
Tags: South Burlington , Town Meeting Day , recount , Meaghan Emery , Matt Cota , city council , election , Web Only , Image