Call it the “New York City coronavirus.” In Alaska, COVID-19 didn’t originate in Seattle.
A report detailed in theNew York Timessays that 80 percent of the infections of COVID-19 in Alaska are from the strain of the virus that came through New York City.
It’s a different strain than the one that swept through Seattle. According to the report, no case of coronavirus in Alaska have been associated with the Washington state strain.
The coronavirus infection was so widespread in New York by early March, that the city was the primary source of new infections in many parts of the country. Thousands of travelers going to and from the city took the infections across the country before communities and states knew it was there and had started setting social distancing limits.
The findings are drawn from geneticists’ tracking signature mutations of the virus, travel histories of infected people, and models of the outbreak, the newspaper said.
States such as Arizona, Utah, and Idaho, also saw most of their cases come from New York City travelers. Idaho, Ohio, Iowa, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, and Massachusetts were similar to Alaska in having no cases that were part of the Seattle strain.
The damage has already been done. When Must Read Alaska reached John (his name is changed to protect him from government retaliation), he was on a conference call with his partners, trying to figure out how or when to reopen their signature Anchorage restaurant.
Or, more accurately, if they can reopen at all.
The new “Phase 2” regulations, announced by the Dunleavy Administration on Wednesday, were leaving restaurant owners scratching their heads and peering into their now-empty wallets.
The emergency regulations allow restaurants to open at 50 percent capacity, or no more than 50 customers, but the required distancing of tables at 10-feet distances puts a similar cap on the number of customers they can seat. The math isn’t working for a lot of restaurants and the net result is they can’t open — there would not be enough business to staff up the downtown Anchorage dining establishment. They can seat no more people than they could under the old restrictions, John said.
What’s more, the restaurant owner said, the loans from the federal government, known as Paycheck Protection Program loans, only apply to wages and rent. What he needs is to completely restock the pantry with fish, meats and vegetables, dairy and other fresh ingredients that make the restaurant an experience. This is not about throwing pizzas or flipping a previously frozen burger.
When he closed the restaurant under government orders over a month ago, everything had to be thrown away, frozen, or given away. Now, John wondered, who in the restaurant industry will have the money to get the engine of the restaurants going again?
Like other independent restauranteurs, John and his partners were in the middle of deciding if they can reopen in Phase II of the “open” economy in Alaska. Many others he knows won’t, he said. The regulations change too quickly, and the governor could reverse his policy and shut everything down at the drop of a hat. The ability to open at all is now in peril.
Another restaurant owner in Anchorage said she’s terrified of the state government pulling her liquors license if there’s any infraction, no matter how small, of the emergency regulations. She, too, won’t be opening during Phase II, because she’s watched as the state and municipality’s emergency orders changed — sometimes by the hour.
The South Anchorage restaurant owner doesn’t want to risk purchasing the groceries for her establishment, only to be shut down again by the government with just a few hours notice.
An Anchorage man who owns a bouncy-gym for children says his prospects are bleak. He doesn’t know if he’ll make it, and every loan and grant he has applied for has not come through.
In Skagway, a mechanic we’ll call Joe said 100 percent of his work for six months of the year is repairing tour buses. Not a single bus is running, and the town is a ghost town. He doesn’t know if he’ll make it.
Skagway’s Broadway Street has become a ghost town.
Even the Skagway grocery store and hardware store, both considered essential businesses under the shutdown, have lost enormous revenue because the population of Skagway is still under 1,000. It will not grow to three times its winter size this summer as the workforce moves in to manage and serve the million-plus tourists that were expected before the cruise industry collapsed.
Skagway is so empty, with the stores on Broadway still boarded up, you could run down the street naked unwitnessed by a single soul.
Whether the federal funding that is sitting in the Legislative Budget and Audit Committee that has been set aside for businesses will be enough is also in grave doubt. The committee chairman, Rep. Chris Tuck, says he wants the governor to adopt the Tuck plan for putting money out into communities. The committee has sat on the money for over two weeks.
By now, losses at the first restaurant are past $1 million, and the second restaurant is half that. There’s only $290 million in that state pot for business loans, and Tuck wants it all out the door as grants.
However the funds get out the door — by loans or by politically-charged grants — they won’t even begin to cover the losses in the restaurant sector, much less for mechanics, photo studios, bouncy gyms, and hair salons.
Restaurants have been closed for so long now, some of their staff have left the state, while others are actually getting by on unemployment benefits, with the federal $600 bonus having given a boost for some workers who won’t come in to work at at empty restaurant, only to make pocket change in tips. For some, it’s more expensive to drive to work than it is to stay at home and scrape by on unemployment benefits.
What has unfolded is a scenario where these restaurants cannot open because they cannot seat enough customers, and they’ve lost so much money that they can’t pay their past-due bills and buy the food they need. No supplier is going to extend them credit.
“All of us have to pay the vendors that we owed when we closed last month,” John said. “The product has to come out of our own wallets because government funding so far won’t pay for it and it’s the largest expense we have. This is hindering a lot of companies from being able to reopen, because the cost of restarting the car is more than we have in our pockets.”
GAMESMANSHIP? REP. CHRIS TUCK WANTS SPECIAL SESSION
Rep. Chris Tuck, Democrat chair of the Legislative Budget and Audit Committee, made a game-day decision on Wednesday and canceled the committee meeting he had scheduled several days prior — it was a meeting in which he was likely to be outvoted on getting federal funding out to Alaska municipalities and businesses.
He had already blocked progress on Friday on things like $290 million for small-business relief, and $586 million for support of local governments.
The response from Republican lawmakers was shock. The Alaska treasury has had the funds and the governor’s plan to get it out to where it belongs for more than two weeks. Businesses are starting to close permanently because the aid is too slow in coming.
Gov. Mike Dunleavy on Wednesday said the funds came to the state on April 20, and he had the plan to distribute them in front of the legislative committee on April 21.
But Tuck wanted a more detailed plan for the business and municipal spending. The Office of Management and Budget gave it to him the next day — April 22.
But last Friday when the committee met, it only acted on the funds that would go to state agencies. The grants and loans to businesses and municipalities are being held up by Tuck, who wants the entire Legislature to convene, possibly to try to politicize the funding. Tuck is demanding that the governor call a special session, although the Legislature is technically still in session until May 21 because it has not gaveled out “sine die.”
Fifteen days have passed since the committee has had the plan.
House Minority Leader Lance Pruitt said the committee’s continued delays on COVID-19 and CARES Act relief funding is unconscionable.
“The laundry list of Alaskan businesses shutting down is growing every day. Governor Dunleavy has laid out a plan to get money into Alaskans’ hands as expeditiously as possible. The Legislative Budget & Audit Committee only needs to approve this distribution to get money to Alaskans immediately.”
“Businesses are shutting down, Alaskans are struggling, we don’t have weeks to figure this out. The RPL process is the fastest way to get relief into the hands of Alaskans,” Pruitt said. “LB&A can accelerate this process; we join other Legislators in calling for swift action.”
The Legislature is currently under the 24-hour rule, allowing LB&A to meet at any time to approve the funding, he said.
“Personal agendas need to be set aside, Alaskans need to know they are the priority. No more delays; approve the money now,” Rep. Lance Pruitt
“We need this money in the hands of these entities now. We’re asking that the Legislature, the LB&A committee, move quickly on this,” Gov. Dunleavy said during a press availability on Wednesday.
Other Republicans observed that this is a “consequence moment.”
“The reason Tuck has control over the funds is because Republicans like Representatives Jennifer Johnston, Gary Knopp, Chuck Kopp, and Louise Stutes, made Tuck powerful. Power is a dangerous thing,” said a legislative aide on condition on anonymity. “Tuck now has the lives of all Alaskans in his hands.”
Tuck represents District 23, Anchorage. Connie Dougherty, a Republican, has filed to oppose him in November.
The entire world of news writers seems to think the Mat-Su School District Board has banned five famous books.
School board members have heard from as far away as New York City about the wrongheadedness of their actions. Of course, they only removed the books from the instructed curriculum, not the school libraries. News organizations as far away as London and as close as the Mat-Su have written about the vote taken on April 22 to exclude books from the high school English curriculum.
Tonight, the board will take up an agenda item placed by two school board members who didn’t favor the removal of the books. Board members Sarah Welton and Kelsey Trimmer want to take public testimony on the following books, and the reasons they are no longer part of taught material:
“Catch-22” – racial slurs, scenes of violence against women.
“The Invisible Man” – language, rape and incest.
“The Things They Carried” — profanity and sexual references.
“The Great Gatsby” — language and sexual references.
In accordance with Board policy and Administrative Regulation 6144, controversial issues may continue to be discussed and addressed in the classroom under certain conditions, says Board Chairman Tom Bergey.
“It is the Superintendent or designee (usually the school principal), who has “the authority to judge whether the [those] conditions are being met,” Bergey said.
The regulation provides the Superintendent or designee authority to approve books not listed on a recommended reading list. Board action on April 22 did not alter this authority, he said.
“The School Board did not ban the books, did not preclude their use by teachers, and did not remove the books from school libraries,” Bergey said.
One more case of COVID-19 coronavirus was diagnosed during the most recent 24-hour snapshot by the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services. The new case is in the Southeast Fairbanks Census Area — the Interior.
The total case count in Alaska is 372. Recovered cases in Alaska now total 284.
Some 23,655 swab tests have been conducted in Alaska, or about 364 tests a day since testing began on March 2. No new hospitalizations were reported; the total cumulative hospitalizations to 38. Currently 8 Alaskans are hospitalized with the illness.
One new death due to COVID-19 was reported, which is the first death since April 11. This brings the total to 10 Alaskans who have died from the coronavirus since it arrived in the state in early March.
Two months after his 91st birthday, Robert M. Burnett slipped away from life. He had been in failing health for the last few months, and yet his death was peaceful, overlooking beautiful Lake Chapala in Mexico.
Born in Baker, Oregon, Robert had lived in the town of Chapala, in the state of Jalisco, Mexico for more than 25 years, where he had been involved in many charitable works on behalf of public education and the arts. Although he had lived in Alaska for 15 years, he lived in Chapala longer than anywhere else as an adult.
Robert Burnett in Chile in the 1950s.
Robert graduated from Lincoln High School in Portland and Lewis and Clark College in Lake Oswego, got married, and had two daughters before heading to Chile for a life of adventure for a few years.
Upon his return, he was a journalist for most of his career, writing for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, and editing the Culver City Star News. He recalled standing on a jetty after the Great Alaska Earthquake waiting to record the tsunami that was expected to sweep the southern coast of California. Although many perished in Crescent City, California, the wave was barely registered in Los Angeles.
He went on to become the Associated Press Bureau chief in San Diego before he got the itch to go to Alaska.
Robert moved his family to Alaska in the fall of 1969, as he had headed north that summer to mine the Bering Sea for gold. When that venture failed spectacularly, he got a job with the State of Alaska as the public information officer for the Department of Fish and Game and lived in Juneau.
When Gov. Keith Miller ran for his re-election, Robert was his press secretary. Miller, the third governor of Alaska who had taken office when Gov. Walter Hickel was appointed Secretary of the Interior for President Richard Nixon, lost to Gov. Bill Egan, a populist Democrat, who had previously served as Alaska’s first governor.
Robert especially loved working alongside the well-loved filmmaker Amos Berg, and the two of them produced vast amounts of printed and filmed material for the Department of Fish and Game, under Commissioner Wally Noremberg.
Robert was also the editor of the Alaska Blue Book, an encyclopedic reference manual for Alaska officials in the 1970s. After leaving state service, he hand-trolled for salmon in Southeast Alaska, and was the administrator for the Kavilco, the Kasaan Village Corporation, before heading back to Oregon to care for his aging parents.
Robert already had his master’s degree in journalism from UCLA, and a master’s degree in Spanish, but later in life he earned a third master’s degree in archaeology. An archeological site in Oregon, known as the Burnett site, is named for him after he discovered it on his property on a bluff above the Willamette River in 1987. He worked for several years as an archeologist in Oregon.
He moved to Mexico in 1996 and never looked back. In those years, he developed a loving relationship with Carmen Magana, who became his life partner for a period that spanned 20 years. He returned to Alaska for the last time in 2014 and traveled the road system with his daughter, Suzanne Downing, the author of this obituary, assisting her as she campaigned for Gov. Sean Parnell’s reelection.
Robert Burnett and Suzanne Downing at the Alaska State Fair, August, 2014.
Robert was proud of his four children, Rebecca, Suzanne, Peter, and Joseph, who he raised with his first wife Marlys Burnett, formerly of Juneau. And he was also proud of Carmen’s children, Lucy, Mabel, and Siglinda, who he helped raise.
MAINSTREAM MEDIA GOES ALL IN FOR LIBERAL UNDERWRITING
When last year the Anchorage Daily News announced it had received a ProPublica grant to produce a series about the lack of law and order in village Alaska, some knowing observers nodded their heads and said, “They’re going for a Pulitzer.”
The project proposed had the distinct contours of what the Pulitzer committee members like to see: Social justice denied, dramatic and easy-to-tell plot line with gripping vignettes that illustrate a greater problem. A series. A cause to champion and a public policy needle to move.
It was not unlike the series that won the newspaper a Pulitzer just a few years earlier. “People in Peril” focused on rural alcoholism in Alaska villages, “the epidemic of despair that is robbing an entire generation of its birthright happens far from city lights,” the newspaper wrote at the time.
If only the booze was gone, rural Alaska would be a great place — that was the takeaway of the “People in Peril” series of 1988. The alcohol kept flowing and the drugs — meth and opioids — fuel family dysfunction and social destruction, as pointed out last year by independent writer/thinking/curmudgeon Craig Medred, an ADN alumnus who remarked on his old newsroom winding up the pitch for another Pulitzer project, this time with ProPublica financing:
“Now the ADN, in cooperation with ProPublica, is back with what it hopes will be another Pulitzer Prize-winning series redefining the problem. This time the newspaper has teamed up with Outside media to argue the problem is a lack of law enforcement to keep people from harming each other.
“The crisis of alcohol and despair has evolved into a crisis of crime,” Medred wrote of the moving target — what is it exactly that ails Rural Alaska: Drugs and alcohol, or crime unpunished?
A generation has passed since that “People in Peril” series. If anything, the problems seem to be worse.
But in 2019, the reporters and photographers followed the time-tested Pulitzer formula and pumped out another series, one that spoke to the rampant lawlessness, and a village public safety program run amuck with convicted criminals serving as village cops.
As predicted, this week it was announced that the newspaper had grasped the brass ring, winning the Public Service Pulitzer Gold Medal for the “Lawless series”, a year-long deep dive into what the newspaper calls the failures of the criminal justice system in rural Alaska. Rural Alaska is a place deeply committed to tribal sovereignty, but that’s a story for another day. It wasn’t the story the ADN set out to tell.
During the ADN’s project year, U.S. Attorney Bill Barr visited rural Alaska and listened to the travails of locals — mainly women — who are preyed on in villages, some of which are intergenerational rape camps.
In lightning speed, Barr released $10.5 million directly to tribes and tribal organizations to beef up the number of officers, to repair buildings, and buy equipment. No strings attached in the sense that there would be little, if any, accountability. More money followed in the way of grants.
It was parachute decision-making and it made for an effective part of the story — the newspaper followed Barr’s every move in Alaska. Barr declared public safety an emergency in Alaska. The newspaper can rightfully take some credit for getting the money to villages.
A year later, few if any village officers have been hired, and there is no accountability for the federal expenditure. It’s business as usual in villages.
“But what is certain is that the simple and dramatic story is easier to both write and digest than the complex and complicated story, much more likely to spark government action, and thus much more likely to win a prize,” Medred wrote in 2019 at the outset of the Lawless project.
It’s the third Pulitzer Prize for the Daily News in the newspaper’s history — all in the public service category. The gold medal for public service is among 15 Pulitzer Prize categoriesawarded for journalism this year. Without a doubt, this is a feather in the cap for the newspaper, which has seen better days. It’s like winning a Grammy or an Oscar. These are your peers telling you that you’ve done the best work in America during the past year.
Reporting for “Lawless” was led by undeniably talented Kyle Hopkins, and included contributions from many ADN staff members, all of whom get to own a Pulitzer medallion for touching any part of the series.
The project was funded by ProPublica, which calls itself an “independent nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism with moral force. We dig deep into important issues, shining a light on abuses of power and betrayals of public trust — and we stick with those issues as long as it takes to hold power to account.”
Indeed. In 2020, ProPublica is an anti-conservative news organization. It’s not just liberal or progressive, but is committed to leftist cause journalism, and has been funded by the most left-leaning foundations in America, such as the George Soros’ Open Society, The Sandler Foundation.
What ProPublica specializes in is “cause journalism” that it defines as “independent investigations.” A scan of the group’s chosen journalistic endeavors shows that it is the house organ for the Democratic Party, at best.
In May of 2015, a scan of the ProPublica top headlines show a smattering of stories about a variety of topics, some of them having to do with water distribution in the West. These were during the Obama years:
But by November, 2016, the stories strongly focused on criticism of the recently elected President Donald Trump:
“How Journalists Need to Begin Imagining the Unimaginable.”
“In An Ugly Election Result, Hate Surges Online.”
“Surprise: Trump’s Adviser on Wall Street Regulations is a Longtime Swamp-Dweller.”
From November, 2016 point on, ProPublica has focused its muscle on discrediting the president.
But with cash to award compliant newspapers, it expands its reach beyond its own website. And during the past decade, as newspapers have seen both circulation and revenues decline and their share of the news market continuing to fall, they have found takers.
Newspaper circulation in 2016, the year Trump was elected, dropped to levels not seen since World War II.
Revenues have plummeted for newspapers, even before the Wuhan coronavirus destroyed their advertisers. The newsroom layoffs picked up steam and there was no investment in projects like the ones that win Pulitzers. Now, it’s just about survival.
For newspapers to compete for the Pulitzer Prize in the future, readers can expect more alliances with foundations that have a cause to champion.
The original phrase on the Pulitzer Medallion of “disinterested,” meaning objective journalism that is not beholden to any entity, is merely a vestigial concept, as newspapers make these alliances that influence their coverage and cripple their independence. In the fraternity of journalism, financial friendships such as these create undeniable relationships of a common purpose.
The danger for any traditional newsroom today is that the business model that has supported their product is no longer viable. And yet, liberal foundation funding is a Siren’s call to their own hastened destruction.
We wonder, as surely you have, why the Legislature is sitting on its thumbs in getting out to cash-strapped cities and businesses and nonprofits the $1.25 billion in federal COVID-19 relief funding sent Alaska’s way.
Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s was ready with a plan for the dough within two days of its arrival in the state treasury, but the Legislature? Well, lawmakers do not seem in much of a hurry. The Legislative Budget and Audit Committee last week approved only $125 million for state programs, leaving cities, businesses and non-profits hanging.
Dunleavy wanted $586 million for communities; $290 million for small business loans; $50 million for nonprofits, $10 million for homeless interventions, and $337 million for public health-related COVID-19 costs. He wanted $29 million to go to public transit; $32 million for Anchorage and Fairbanks airports, and $100 million in fisheries aid.
Lawmakers approved only six of Dunleavy’s requests:
$45 million for K-12 public education;
$42 million for child nutrition programs;
$29 million for rural transportation, including $10 million the Alaska Marine Highway System;
$5 million for UA;
$3.6 million for law enforcement; and,
$442,000 for Alaska State Council on the Arts.
It is up to the Legislature – the same Legislature that refused early Permanent Fund dividends or a $1,000 state relief check to help struggling Alaskans – to make the needed appropriations. Beneath the surface there is a simmering feud over who should control the expenditures, Dunleavy or the Legislature.
Meanwhile, Rome burns. Businesses are shutting their doors. Cities are choking. Nonprofits are out of money. Oil field layoffs are accelerating and Alaska’s situation only is getting worse.
Alaska not only is not open for business, it is close to going out of business.
The Alaska Department of Health and Social Services on Tuesday announced one new case of COVID-19 in Alaska. The new case is in Anchorage.
The total case count in Alaska is 371. In Anchorage, a total of 190 cases have been diagnosed, less than half a percent of the Anchorage population, since the first Anchorage case on March 2.
Anchorage has averaged three cases per day since the outbreak first arrived in Alaska’s largest city.
Recovered cases in Alaska now total 277, which leaves 94 active cases, a drop of about 10 percent from Monday.
Some 22,723 tests have been conducted, or about 345 tests a day since testing began on March 2. One more hospitalization was reported, bringing the total cumulative hospitalizations to 38.
No new deaths due to COVID-19 were reported. The last death in Alaska attributed to COVID-19 was on April 11, and brought the total who died inside the state to 7, while two other Alaskans died while out of state.
Currently 12 Alaskans are hospitalized with the illness.
The death rate in Alaska from COVID-19 stands at 2.44 percent. As for hospitalizations, nearly 10 percent of those who have gotten the virus have had to be hospitalized at some point.
