Hospital employees
talk working conditions,
government leadership
On Wednesday afternoon, for-
mer second lady Jill Biden held a
virtual roundtable in recognition
of National Nurses Day. Michigan
Attorney General Dana Nessel
and nurses from health systems
in Detroit and Ann Arbor spoke at
the meeting.
Nessel began the conversation
by highlighting the work her office
is doing to ensure nurses and their
families have all the protections
they need. She mentioned price
gouging as a major issue, specifi-
cally on goods households need to
prevent the spread of COVID-19,
such as disinfectant supplies.
“We are seeing worse inci-
dences of price gouging than we
have ever seen in the history of
our state, and it is not an exaggera-
tion,” Nessel said. “Typically we
get about 80 price gouging com-
plaints a year. In the last month we
have gotten over 4,000.”
The Michigan Department of
Attorney General is also working
to combat COVID-19 scams and
enforce Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s
executive orders, Nessel said. She
explained that the office is work-
ing on issues she never imagined,
such as ensuring proper steriliza-
tion techniques for personal pro-
tective equipment.
“The first time I ever ran for
office at all was in 2018, so I don’t
have a great frame of reference in
terms of how things are supposed
to work during a time of national
emergency, but this can’t be the
right way for our nation to oper-
ate during a crisis of this nature,”
Nessel said. “We have to do better
than this.”
Biden shifted the conversation
by declaring her appreciation and
gratitude toward nurses and her
rationale for hosting the discus-
sion.
“Michigan was my very last
travel day and since then, like so
many Americans, I have been at
home,” Biden said. “We’ve had to
figure out how to run a presiden-
tial campaign when you can’t fly
or have a bus tour or even visit
peoples’ homes … as I thought
about who I wanted to hear from
and who I wanted to meet with, I
thought of the people who aren’t
home right now.”
Michigan Medicine nurse Katie
Oppenheim, chair of the Universi-
ty of Michigan Professional Nurse
Council, described the discrepan-
cy between nurses’ current public
image and what nurses are actu-
ally going through.
“When people think about
terms about how they describe
nurses, people say we’re ‘strong,’
we’re ‘smart,’ we use evidence-
based practice or skill,” Oppen-
heim said. “But right now I see
immense moral distress among
our workforce.”
Oppenheim
emphasized
she
has never seen anything like the
COVID-19 pandemic before.
“I have been a nurse for 42
years and worked in Cambodia
in a refugee camp and I’ve trav-
eled the world in a lot of different
capacities,” Oppenheim said. “It is
extremely challenging for people
to get through these times, pay the
right attention to the patients and
take care of themselves because of
that moral distress. It is something
I never thought I would see out-
side of working in a refugee camp.”
Tennessee registered medical
assistant
Gwendolyn
Johnson-
Smith acknowledged that despite
the greater resources and com-
pensation of nurses in the United
States compared to third-world
countries, leadership could have
done better to support the crisis.
“We are looking for a stable
hand in leadership that will push
international laws that people can
listen to,” Johnson-Smith said.
“We want someone that can make
America an example for the rest of
the world … third-world countries
should be able to look at America
and know that our leaders mean
business.”
Biden responded to Johnson-
Smith’s calls for leadership by
iterating
what
her
husband’s
administration is planning to
implement if elected in November.
“One of the things he has already
said is he would have an office of
2
Thursday, May 7, 2020
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
NEWS
Jill Biden hosts
Nurses Day event
Videoconferencing
security and privacy is
questioned
During the final minutes of the
last online lecture for Public Health
318: Food Literacy for All, the call was
hijacked with hate images and racial
slurs against African Americans for
roughly a minute before the instructor
ended the call.
Summer news editor Kristina
Zheng
talked
to
students
and
instructors of the course to hear their
reaction to what the FBI has titled
“Zoom-bombings” in which hackers
infiltrate calls.
Public Health student Madison
Fishler logged onto Zoom on
Tuesday evening for her final class
in Public Health 318: Food Literacy
for All. As the class was wrapping
up, the call was hijacked with hate
images and racial slurs against
African Americans for about a
minute before the instructors ended
the call, Fishler explained.
“I was taken aback,” Fishler
said. “I’m Caucasian, but I was still
very hurt and impacted by this.
It was very weird to me. I kind of
felt disgusted, kind of sick to my
stomach that this was happening.”
Since schools across the country
have transitioned to online learning,
the
videoconferencing
platform
Zoom has become a popular tool
for students sheltered at home.
However, while more and more
students log onto Zoom, concerns
with its security and privacy have
only increased.
The FBI issued a warning
on March 30 regarding “Zoom-
bombings,” an interruption in which
intruders disrupt video calls with
threatening language and offensive
images. According to the warning,
the FBI has received reports of
Zoom-bombings nationwide.
Fishler felt the security breach
was unexpected, given how recent
these
Zoom-bombing
incidents
have
occured.
She
said
the
security breach also made her feel
uncomfortable with using platforms
like Zoom.
“It made me feel like my privacy
was intruded,” Fishler said. “I would
like to see the school using better
platforms, but also who would
have known? This Zoom-bombing
has only been happening since this
COVID situation.”
Cindy Leung, Public Health
assistant professor, and Lilly Fink
Shapiro, University of Michigan
Sustainable Food System Initiative
program
manager,
are
both
leaders
of
the
course.
Leung
and Fink Shapiro said the class
was designed as an academic-
community partnership, in which
guest speakers in a variety of sectors
engage with students about the
crises and opportunities in today’s
food system. They said a unique
feature of the course is the ability
of community members from Ann
Arbor, Detroit and areas across the
state to join and engage with the
class.
Hijacked Zoom call
class raises concern
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