| THE BIG STORY
RIP to a supermom Sundee Rutter, 42, died in a Washington state hospital on March 16. She had tested positive for the coronavirus a week earlier; her six children said their last goodbyes to her from outside her hospital room, via walkie talkie.
“I told her I love her ... she shouldn’t worry about the kids,” Elijah Ross-Rutter, her fourth-oldest child, told BuzzFeed News. She was recovering from breast cancer when the coronavirus struck.
She’d raised her six children, aged 13-24, as a single mother since their father died in 2012. Since her death people have raised more than $275,000 to support her children. “It kind of goes to show how big of an impact my mom had on our community, her son Elijah said. “She was a supermom, you know?”
BuzzFeed News is telling the stories of the people who are losing their lives to the coronavirus. If you know someone who has died of COVID-19, and would like to share their story, email us here Courtesy Elijah Ross-Rutter STAYING ON TOP OF THIS Privacy in a pandemic
In countries like South Korea and Singapore that have managed to respond effectively to the coronavirus outbreak so far, one key weapon has been the ability to “test and trace” — to not just have widespread testing available for everyone, but to follow a positive test by making sure everyone who has had contact with that person, and potentially been infected, knows to self-isolate.
That has pretty serious privacy implications — as do the many other forms of surveillance, tracking and government control that once seemed outlandish but are now on the table as methods of containing the outbreak in the United States. And privacy advocates who have devoted their careers to keeping the government in check are grappling with how to respond.
“Is the coronavirus the kind of emergency that requires setting aside otherwise sacrosanct commitments to privacy and civil liberties” Rosie Gray asks? “Or like the 9/11 attacks before it, does it mark a moment in which panicked Americans will accept new erosions on their freedoms, only to regret it when the immediate danger recedes?”
Zak Tebbal for BuzzFeed News TELL YOUR STORY
BuzzFeed News reporters are talking to people across the country and around the world about how the coronavirus outbreak is affecting them, and we’re always happy to hear from people with stories to share. Are you a trans or nonbinary person? Pier Dominguez wants to hear about your experience. Have you or someone you know been stuck abroad because of the travel shutdowns? Get in touch with Scaachi Koul. Are you dealing with FOMO, or the lack of it? Michael Blackmon wants to know about it.
And if you or anyone you know is going through something you think the media should be covering, you can always contact us through our tip line — it’s where so many of our best stories come from. You can email [email protected] or check out our tips page for all the ways you can contact us anonymously.
SNAPSHOTS Federal judges have struck down temporary bans on abortion in Texas and Ohio. The states had categorized abortion as a non-essential medical service to be shut down during the coronavirus emergency, but judges disagreed.
FBI agents arrested a man in New York after he allegedly told them he had COVID-19 and coughed at them. The agents were confronting him about claims of stockpiling and price gouging on vital medical supplies when the incident happened.
Farm workers in Florida are a pillar of the American food production system. But their living and working conditions are a “ticking time bomb” during the coronavirus pandemic.
New Jersey has charged a number of people with breaking the state’s lockdown order to only leave your house for essential reasons. Among the alleged rule-breaking: someone who had a house party and posted the videos on YouTube, people who held weddings during the lockdown, and a woman who went out to throw a molotov cocktail at her boyfriend’s house.
Brent Stirton / Getty Images AROUND THE WORLD India’s sudden national lockdown, affecting more than 1.3 billion people, has been chaotic and at times violent, and especially so for the country’s poorest and most vulnerable. Many migrant workers have been left with no choice but to walk home to their villages, often hundreds of miles away; others are being crammed into buses that risk spreading the virus.
Mexico’s president was filmed shaking the hand of a 92-year old woman on Sunday — itself an eyebrow raiser during pandemic times. But the identity of the woman is even more eyebrow-raising: she is the mother of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the country’s most infamous drug lord, who is currently serving a life sentence in a US prison. “She’s a 92-year old woman,” President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said yesterday. “She deserves all my respect, regardless of who her son is.”
But when it comes to eyebrow-raising behaviour from a national leader, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko basically just pulled a “hold my beer” on López Obrador. He told the country that he believes it will not be affected by the coronavirus, and listed the things he believes will keep his people safe from the outbreak, which include tractors, vodka, and saunas.
GOT ANY WEED?
We asked readers how their weed supply is holding up during the lockdown
And readers responded, hundreds of them. Scaachi Koul put together the best of them, and has a picture of a nation holed up at home but maintaining its steady supply of joints, edibles and more, thanks to a weed delivery ecosystem that is both resilient, and classed as an essential service in many of the states where it’s legal.
“Coloradans are stockpiling cannabis and guns like crazy,” one (legal) seller in Colorado said. “Some people even think they’ll never see legal weed again, that if we eventually shut down, that it’ll be the end of all of this...They’re panic shopping, just like with everything else.”
LOCKDOWN, WITH KIDS
There are fundamentally two different types of working from home
People doing it without kids may have no idea how different this whole experience has been for those doing it with kids. But Anne Helen Petersen spoke to five working parents about how they’ve managed to build their new lives to incorporate home offices *and* home classrooms, and everything else that goes on when you’re locked down with little ones.
One representative sample from the diary of a working parent: “10 a.m.: We get up early, watch some Sesame Street, and then I work with clients for as long as Elmo and coloring books will hold....”
I hope Elmo holds for as long as possible today,
Tom P.S. If you like this newsletter, help keep our reporting free for all. Support BuzzFeed News by becoming a member here. (Monthly memberships are available worldwide). 📝 This letter was edited and brought to you by Tom Gara and BuzzFeed News. You can always reach us here.
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