Dallas facility to house immigrant teenagers
Nurses often fight conspiracy theories along with the virus
DALLAS — The U.S. government plans to house up to 3,000 immigrant teenagers at a convention center in downtown Dallas as it struggles to find space for a surge of migrant children at the border who have strained the immigration system just two months into the Biden administration.
American authorities encountered people crossing the border without legal status more than 100,000 times in February — a level higher than all but four months of Donald Trump’s presidency. The spike in traffic poses a challenge to President Joe Biden at a fraught moment with Congress, about to take up immigration legislation.
The Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center will be used for up to 90 days beginning as early as this week, according to a memo obtained by The Associated
Press sent Monday to members of the Dallas City Council. Federal agencies will use the facility to house boys ages 15 to 17, according to the memo.
The Health and Human Services Department is rushing to open facilities across the country to house immigrant children who are otherwise being held by the Border Patrol, which is supposed to detain children for no more than three days. The Border Patrol is holding children longer because there is next to no space in the HHS system.
A tent facility operated by the Border Patrol in Donna, 500 miles south of Dallas, is holding more than 1,000 children and teenagers, some as young as 4.
Lawyers who inspect immigrant detention facilities under a court settlement say they interviewed children who reported being held in packed conditions in the tent, with some sleeping on the floor and others not able to shower for five days.
Los Angeles emergency room nurse Sandra Younan spent the last year juggling long hours as she watched many patients struggle with the coronavirus and some die.
Then there were the patients who claimed the virus was fake or coughed in her face, ignoring mask rules. One man stormed out of the hospital after a positive COVID-19 test, refusing to believe it was accurate.
“You have patients that are literally dying, and then you have patients that are denying the disease,” she said. “You try to educate and you try to educate, but then you just hit a wall.”
Bogus claims about the virus, masks and vaccines have exploded since COVID19 was declared a pandemic a year ago. Journalists, public health officials and tech companies have tried to push back against the falsehoods, but much of the job of correcting misinformation has fallen to the world’s front-line medical workers.
In Germany, a video clip showing a nurse using an empty syringe while practicing vaccinations traveled widely online as purported evidence that COVID-19 is fake. Doctors in Afghanistan reported patients telling them COVID-19 was created by the U.S. and China to reduce the world population.
In Bolivia, medical workers had to care for five people who ingested a toxic bleaching agent falsely touted as a COVID-19 cure.
Younan, 27, says her friends used to describe her as the “chillest person ever,” but now she deals with crushing anxiety.
“My life is being a nurse, so I don’t care if you’re really sick, you throw up on me, whatever,” Younan said. “But when you know what you’re doing is wrong, and I’m asking you repeatedly to please wear your mask to protect me, and you’re still not doing it, it’s like you have no regard for anybody but yourself. And that’s why this virus is spreading. It just makes you lose hope.”
Emily Scott, 36, who is
based at a Seattle hospital, has worked around the world on medical missions and helped care for the first U.S. COVID-19 patient last year. She was selected because of her experience working in Sierra Leone during the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak.
While many Americans were terrified of Ebola — a disease that isn’t nearly as contagious as the coronavirus and poses little threat in the U.S. — they aren’t nearly afraid enough of COVID-19, she said.
Scott blames a few factors: Ebola’s frightening symptoms, racism against Africans and the politicization of COVID-19 by American elected officials.
“I felt so much safer in Sierra Leone during Ebola
than I did at the beginning of this outbreak in the U.S.,” Scott said, because of how many people failed to heed social distancing and mask directives. “Things that are facts, and science, have become politicized.”
ER nurse L’Erin Ogle has heard a litany of false claims about the virus while working at a hospital in the suburbs of Kansas City, Missouri. They include: The virus isn’t any worse than the flu. It’s caused by 5G wireless towers. Masks won’t help and may hurt. Or, the most painful to her: The virus isn’t real, and doctors and nurses are engaged in a vast global conspiracy to hide the truth.
“It just feels so defeating, and it makes you question: Why am I doing this?” said
Ogle, 40.
Nurses are often the health care providers with the most patient contact, and patients frequently view nurses as more approachable, according to professor Maria Brann, an expert on health communication at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. That means nurses are more likely to encounter patients spreading misinformation, which gives them a special opportunity to intervene.
“Nurses have always been patient advocates, but this pandemic has thrown so much more at them,” Brann said. “It can definitely take a toll. This isn’t necessarily what they signed up for.”
In some cases, it’s nurses and other health care workers spreading misinformation. And many nurses say they encounter falsehoods about the coronavirus vaccine in their own families.
For Brenda Olmos, 31, a nurse practitioner in Austin, Texas, who focuses on a geriatric and Hispanic patient population, it was a no-brainer to get the vaccine. But first she had to debate her parents, who had heard unsubstantiated claims that the shot would cause infertility and Bell’s palsy on Spanish-language TV shows.
Olmos eventually convinced her parents to get the vaccine, too, but she worries about vaccine hesitancy in her community.
When she recently encountered an elderly patient with cancerous tumors, Olmos knew the growths had taken years to develop. But the man’s adult children who had recently gotten him the vaccine insisted that the two were connected.
“To them, it just seemed too coincidental,” Olmos said. “I just wanted them to not have that guilt.”
Olmos said the real problem with misinformation is not just bad actors spreading lies — it’s people believing false claims because they aren’t as comfortable navigating often complex medical findings.
“Low health literacy is the real pandemic,” she said. “As health care providers, we have a duty to serve the information in a way that’s palatable, and that’s easy to understand, so that people don’t consume misinformation because they can’t digest the real data.”
Dear Readers: Every year during this time I step away from my column to work on other creative projects. I hope you enjoy these “Best Of ” Q&A from 10 years ago. Today’s topic is: “Homeworking.”
I’ll be back with fresh Q&A next week.
Dear Amy: My wife wants to change careers and open a bakery. I know she will be successful, because she is successful in everything she has ever done. My issue is that she expects me to work there as well.
She told me I could “clean pans, bus tables and take out the trash.”
Amy, I have a homebased business and vowed years ago that I would never again work in restaurants unless (my) financial need dictated it.
I cannot see myself taking out the trash or washing pans just because my wife wants to be a fulltime baker. The only time I even hinted at the fact that I didn’t want to work there, she called me lazy and unsupportive. (I typically work about 15 or 20 hours a week.)
How can I tell her that I don’t want to be involved in the day-to-day operation of her new business, and at the same time convey that I support her fully?
— Hurtin’ Husband
Dear Hurtin’: While getting relatives to work in the family business is a time-tested recipe for success, compelling a spouse to take out your business’ trash is a lessthan-savory ingredient in a marriage.
Would you accuse your wife of being lazy or unsupportive if she didn’t want to sweep your office floor or tote your mass mailing to the post office for you?
I suggest you tell your wife that while you won’t be working at her business, you’d be happy to help her strategize and develop a business plan that doesn’t involve you being her (trash) bag man.
However, seeing as how you keep a less than parttime work schedule — you absolutely must pick up any slack — and trash — at home.
Dear Amy: My husband desperately wants to be a famous published author.
I edited his book numerous times before it got “published” online, and now he is writing stories on the web that he hopes to compile into a novel.
He expects me to edit all of these stories.
Being his editor before was awful. Although he fixed what I suggested and I helped him make the writing tighter, he didn’t learn from it, and the same mistakes occurred over and over again.
I pulled back from editing because of my demanding full-time job.
I am still expected to read everything he writes, and I struggle.
First, I am confronted by all those mistakes. Second, I am confronted by his needy questions: “Did you like this?” “Did you like that?” “What did you think about that event?”
He has participated in writing groups but left them. He took a writing class, but he had conflicts with the instructor — an award-winning author.
He yearns for my approval. He craves my adoring accolades. And he is driving me nuts.
— Exhausted Wife
Dear Exhausted: Some spouses can write and edit together, but for many couples who are not Virginia and Leonard Woolf, these two roles don’t always mix well.
Family members often do not make good first readers.
It is important for spouses to know that their partners are on their side. But it is also important for your husband to realize that demanding your praise makes you hostile toward his projects.
You can say, “I am your biggest fan. But I don’t love every single thing you write. I can’t edit you because it leads to conflict. Also, I just don’t want to.”
Your husband should hire an editor/assistant to help him. Ideally, paying someone would compel him to take edits and suggestions.
Unfortunately, he wants to cut corners without improving his work; he also wants the fame along with the accolades from you.
In short, he sounds like every needy, unpublished and eager writer I know.
Your adoring accolades will mean nothing if you are not also honest. Without honesty, the empty praise will bring on more insecurity. If he can’t handle your honesty, you should decline these bids for praise.