Concerns are rising about the impact of coronavirus on elections, but New York can eliminate one source of contagion to reduce the risk:
BAN TOUCHSCREEN VOTING MACHINES IN NEW YORK A8597 (Paulin)/ S6733 (Myrie)
Sign the Common Cause New York petition to oppose the Certification of the Broken ExpressVote XL Voting System!
https://citizensvotingny.org/take-action
NYTimes: Coronavirus and 2020 Elections: What Happens to Voting in an Outbreak "Edmund Michalowski, the deputy clerk for elections in Cook County, Ill.,..added that officials have also been looking at effective disinfectants to wipe down touch screens between each vote.”
Touchscreens: The Mosquito of the Digital Age "The widespread and rapidly growing automation and digitization of our world has led to the installation of billions of touchscreens, both in our personal possession and in public use, such as at hospitals, airports, schools, restaurants, public transit, banks and government offices."
Germs at the Airport "According to our research, the average self check-in screen contained 253,857 CFU – over 13 times more than the average CFU of an airport water fountain button. One check-in screen recorded over 1 million CFU. In comparison, an average of only 172 CFU are found on toilet seats."
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/09/us/virus-election-voting.html
Coronavirus and 2020 Elections: What Happens to Voting in an Outbreak
Washington State, a center of the virus outbreak, holds its primary on Tuesday. Officials — and the presidential candidates — know there could be much bigger challenges to come.
By Kirk Johnson and Campbell Robertson
March 9, 2020
SEATTLE — Elections are complicated events, involving massive amounts of paperwork, thorny issues of law and a widely scattered cast of poll workers and ballot counters. In Washington State, which is holding its 2020 primary on Tuesday, there is another matter that officials are having to consider this year.
“How long does coronavirus last in saliva that is on an envelope?” asked Kim Wyman, the secretary of state in Washington, the state hardest hit by the virus so far.
Washington votes by mail, which eliminates most concerns about viral transmission, but also creates some. “We’re telling all of the people who handle incoming ballots to use gloves,” Ms. Wyman said. “We’ve also had a recommendation from National Guard: ‘Folks, you might consider masks.’”
Voters have been advised to use a wet sponge or cloth to seal envelopes rather than licking them. But many were probably mailed in before it was clear how big a virus risk there was in the state.
The leading Democratic presidential candidates, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senator Bernie Sanders, both addressed questions on Sunday about how the virus might affect their travel and campaigning. Public health officials have said adults over 60 are most at risk and should avoid crowds. Mr. Biden is 77, Mr. Sanders is 78 and President Trump is 73.
Mr. Biden’s campaign, in a statement, criticized Mr. Trump for contradicting public health guidance and said the Biden campaign would “lead by example in following expert advice and complying with reasonable risk mitigations.”
Mr. Sanders, asked by the CNN host Jake Tapper whether he, Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden should all limit their travel and avoid crowds, replied: “In the best of all possible worlds, maybe. But right now, we’re running as hard as we can.”
Washington’s voting challenges would pale in comparison with those facing the nation if the virus continues to spread, and particularly if it is still a public health risk in November.
A presidential election unfolds over months in crowded campaign rallies and nominating conventions, and culminates in November when more than 130 million voters and nearly a million poll workers come together in firehouses and gymnasiums, swiping fingers on touch screens or opening up those aforementioned licked envelopes. The effects of a socially transmitted respiratory virus, if it were to spread unabated through campaign season, would be almost endless.
Just how big a public health emergency the virus will become remains unknown. But the virus is already affecting the primaries in complications for voters overseas, canceled party fund-raisers and polling places that opened late on Super Tuesday because worried poll workers failed to show up. And if the outbreak continues to grow and intensify, or if, like the 1918 influenza, the contagion abates and then comes roaring back in the fall, it may soon be too late to do anything about it before the presidential election.
In-person voting could present numerous ways for the virus to spread, experts say.Credit...Lucy Nicholson/Reuters
“The problem is, we don’t have a plan for what happens if a part of the country faces a disruption on a presidential Election Day,” said Rick Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine’s law school. He said Congress should right now be considering federal legislation that would address potential voting trouble. “What if one part of the country is affected, if it’s California or Florida?” he said. “The closer we get to the election, the harder it’s going to be to come up with rules that look fair.”
This was indeed a factor in the 1918 election, which was not a presidential year but was plagued by issues nationwide involving quarantines and emergency measures. Al Smith, running as a Democrat for governor of New York, accused local Republican officials of calling last-minute bans on public gatherings to tamp down his support, rather than to prevent the spread of flu, according to a 2010 study of that election year. The outcome of a local judicial race in Idaho was eventually overturned in part because special arrangements were made to allow a small group of people under quarantine to vote.
Unusual arrangements were in place in the Israeli elections last Monday, with special plastic-tented polling stations set up for voters in quarantine. Lines there were reported to be long, and officials initially balked at counting the ballots cast there. But even short of exceptional measures like these, officials are already having to consider a long list of potential problems.
“What happens if all your poll workers get sick?” asked Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap of Maine, raising a possibility that could worsen an already serious shortage of willing poll workers, who tend to be older people and thus much more vulnerable to the disease. “If this thing continues to spread and grow, then you have to figure out how to compensate for that.”
Edmund Michalowski, the deputy clerk for elections in Cook County, Ill., which includes Chicago, said his office was meeting with a local judge to seek an order that would expand the office’s ability to take certain measures that usually require piecemeal judicial approval — like extending voting hours, reassigning early polling locations, changing voting days — in the event of “extraordinary circumstances.” He also added that officials have also been looking at effective disinfectants to wipe down touch screens between each vote.
For now, much is still in the discussion stage. Even as other major gatherings have been canceled or put on hold, Democrats on the campaign trail have kept speaking to big crowds — at a rally on Monday for Mr. Sanders, Representative Ilhan Omar asked people in the crowd to hold hands — and even the famously germ-averse Mr. Trump has brushed off concerns about his own big rallies, calling them “very safe.”
The Republican and Democratic national committees have begun talking of alternate plans for the conventions this summer, when, depending on what is happening with the outbreak, it might not be a great idea for 50,000 people from around the country to crowd into a big room. But officials stress that there have been no major changes yet to the original plans.
“Every convention necessitates developing a number of contingency plans to provide for a variety of scenarios,” Joe Solmonese, the chief executive of the Democratic National Convention Committee, said in a statement. “We will continue to monitor this developing situation closely and follow the guidance of the C.D.C. and state and local health officials.”
In a briefing with reporters on Monday, Max Everett, the vice president of the Republican National Convention Committee, said organizers were “constantly looking at all sorts of different things we’ve got to look at, to make sure we have all our contingencies planned for well ahead of time.”
Major changes to the conventions could be a headache for both parties — for the Republicans, given Mr. Trump’s fondness for pageantry, and particularly for the Democrats, given the prospect that their party may need some unifying after a divisive primary.
Some infectious disease experts insisted that the most drastic scenarios were unlikely, and that canceling a convention would be a serious overreaction.
“I would recommend people travel, go ahead and go and have this thing,” said Dr. Herbert L. DuPont, the director of the Center for Infectious Diseases at the University of Texas School of Public Health, who believes a panicked response could be more disruptive than the virus itself.
Such anxiety, he added resignedly, has already “produced distrust of our government — and it’s going to affect, big time, this election.”
That is precisely what troubles those who watch election security closely. The coronavirus does not need to be severely damaging for the deep concerns about it to present risks that could be exploited by outside actors.
“The individual decision to go vote is much more vulnerable than the ballot itself,” said Yonatan Striem-Amit, a founder of Cybereason, a cybersecurity technology company. Presidential elections can hinge on small changes in turnout in certain areas, and turnout at that level could be easily manipulated in anxious times by someone running a misinformation campaign. A rumor spreading on social media about a local outbreak on Election Day, even if quickly proven to be false, could be enough to swing a precinct.
“As an attacker, all you really have to do is target voters in a small, geographically concentrated area, and try to convince them it’s not worth it to get out of the house and vote,” Mr. Striem-Amit said.
There is evidence that this may already be happening. Mr. Michalowski said the Cook County Clerk’s office had recently reminded people that mail-in ballots were available for early voters. Immediately, he said, there came “a swarm of Facebook posts saying, ‘Don’t ask for a mail-in ballot, because it is only going to come in a foreign language.’” That just was not true, he said.
The concern about politically motivated misinformation campaigns underscores a larger point: For all the potential effects of the coronavirus on the mechanics of the voting process, it can also affect the outcome of the vote itself. That could happen in Tuesday’s Washington primary.
The polls show a dead heat in the state’s Democratic presidential contest, but neither Mr. Biden nor Mr. Sanders has scheduled any appearances in Washington in the days before the election. Neither candidate directly addressed on Sunday the question of travel to Washington.
State Democrats had expected presidential candidates to attend the party’s annual Warren G. Magnuson Awards dinner this past Saturday. But the dinner, which had been billed as “the single biggest event in Washington State Democratic Party history,” was postponed because of the health fears.
And the virus and the response to it could affect individual voters’ choices.
Lisa Cominetti, 55, a business analyst for the University of Washington continuing college program, sees the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus as another reason behind her commitment to elect a Democrat in the fall. “That person in office is not qualified to be in office,’’ she said.
John Anderson, 72, a retired engineer, said Mr. Trump’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak had reinforced his decision to support him. “It seemed like he was right away reacting to the need, and getting experts together,” Mr. Anderson said. “The Democrats seemed like they were all over the map, fighting each other and just taking shots at Trump, instead of trying to be supportive.”
Kirk Johnson reported from Seattle and Campbell Robertson from Pittsburgh. Thomas Kaplan contributed reporting from Jackson, Miss., and Lisa Lerer from Ann Arbor, Mich.
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https://www.emist.com/infection-prevention-touchscreens-are-contaminated/
Touchscreens: The Mosquito of the Digital Age
By Thomas Rolfe, Michael Nitti
Abstract The widespread and rapidly growing automation and digitization of our world has led to the installation of billions of touchscreens, both in our personal possession and in public use, such as at hospitals, airports, schools, restaurants, public transit, banks and government offices.
Warm touchscreens contacted by many people, or by individuals who themselves are in contact with potentially infected surfaces, are ideal hosts and transmitters of infectious disease. The touchscreen could be considered the mosquito of the digital age. In addition to being vectors of infectious disease, these tools are expensive devices and vulnerable to damage from cleaning protocols, vandalism and impact.………………………………………………………………………………….
https://www.insurancequotes.com/health/germs-at-the-airport
Germs at the Airport
Your bags are packed, travel insurance is purchased, and there’s plenty of time before your flight to make it through the dreaded security line during the peak holiday season. Vacation mode is finally on, and your worries are at ease – but should they be?
Although 2017 was historically the safest year for commercial air travel, travel dangers aren’t always as large as the planes we fly in. With the number of travelers increasing every year for the past nine years, it’s easy to see the increased foot traffic through airports. What we can’t see are the risks that come with the travelers – the germs brought in by passengers and left waiting for their source of transportation: you.
Over this busy holiday season, we conducted 18 tests across six surfaces from three major U.S. airports and airline flights. We sent our swabs to the lab and found the average number of viable bacteria and fungal cells per square inch, or colony-forming units (CFU), to see how clean traveling really is. Keep reading to see which surfaces were the dirtiest and what germs you may have met along the way.
Check Out the Germs at Check In
The Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta has been the busiest airport in the world since 1998, with the latest data reporting over 104 million passengers passing through in 2016. With mass amounts of traffic, self check-in kiosks are the quick stop for many flyers. The kiosks may offer more convenience, but at what cost? According to our research, the average self check-in screen contained 253,857 CFU – over 13 times more than the average CFU of an airport water fountain button. One check-in screen recorded over 1 million CFU. In comparison, an average of only 172 CFU are found on toilet seats.
Kitchen sinks and armrests on airline gate benches were far from similar, except when it came to average CFU levels. Despite the kitchen being the most contaminated place in homes and housing more bacteria than a toilet seat, armrests were even dirtier. Food remnants and dirty dishes left an average of 21,000 CFU in kitchen sinks – 630 CFU less than airline gate bench armrests.
Flying the Sickly Skies
Airports see a lot more traffic than airplanes; therefore, it makes sense the average CFU found in planes is a lot less. However, they’re still pretty high compared to most common household surfaces. Lavatory flush buttons were the dirtiest, with an average of 95,145 CFU, while a kitchen countertop had an average 361 CFU. It’s often thought airplanes are cleaned between each flight, but the FAA actually doesn’t regulate or inspect aircraft cleaning. Each airline can decide how often and how well an airplane is cleaned, so if the turnaround time between flights is low, the plane may not be cleaned at all. Even when a plane is cleaned, general cleaners are used rather than stronger disinfectants, leaving dangerous germs right in your lap.
No Need to Go Beyond the Surface
Germs and bacteria have a bad reputation – after all, they’re the ones that make us sick, right? Not all germs and bacteria are harmful to humans, however. In fact, some bacteria are needed for our bodies to work properly, and not having enough is what can make us sick. These disease-fighting bacteria are usually gram-positive rods – helpful, probiotic bacteria. Don’t let your guard down fully, though – they can also be pathogenic. They were most likely to be found on airport water fountain buttons, making up 59 percent of CFU.
Gram-positive cocci are from the same family of bacteria with a different cell shape but are far more dangerous. Many infections can stem from these bacteria, including pneumonia, skin, ear, and sinus infections, food poisoning, meningitis, bacteremia, and toxic shock syndrome. Gram-positive cocci were found on all surfaces tested in the airport and on the plane – the greatest percentages found on lavatory flush buttons (82 percent) and tray tables (65 percent).
One-third of the bacteria found on tray tables were bacillus – bacteria that cause food to spoil and some diseases in humans. While there is a chance these bacteria can cause anthrax and be involved in various infections, some strains aide in digestion.
A bench armrest at an airport gate was the only place with a large collection of yeast – these fungi made up 40 percent of the CFU tested there
Luckily, yeast is a common fungus found on human skin and areas prone to moisture and are typically harmless. An accumulation of yeast can lead to infections but are unlikely to develop just leaning on an armrest.
The last germ we screened for was also the most dangerous. Gram-negative rods cause infections that are most common in health care settings – pneumonia, bloodstream infections, wound or surgical site infections, and meningitis. On top of causing serious infections, these bacteria are resistant to multiple drugs and can even resist newer ones. Seat belt buckles were where they were most commonly found, making up 46 percent of total CFU. Armrests on airline gate benches were also popular homes to these pesky germs – 40 percent of the bacteria tested were found to be gram-negative rods.
On the Road or in the Air
Germs are everywhere and unavoidable, but certain surfaces are clearly riskier than others. Self check-in kiosks had the largest collection of bacteria most likely to make you sick. Opting for the faster route may be logical if you’re short on time or just hate waiting in lines, but be cautious of the risk. Carry sanitizer with you when traveling, or one of the millions of germs you come in contact with may have you exchanging vacation days for sick days.
Staying protected when traveling is important – whether it’s risks like weather, accidents, or sickness, travel insurance can help make sure your vacation doesn’t become a financial loss. But with all the germs traveling with you, health insurance may be just as important. At insuranceQuotes you can easily shop the widest network of carriers and agents in the industry so you can find the best policy for you. Visit us online today.
Methodology
We conducted 18 gram and stain culture swab tests across six surfaces. Each surface was swabbed three times at three major U.S. airports or on different major airline U.S. flights. Colony-forming units per square inch were averaged for each surface type. Individual surfaces were chosen based on perceived traffic and accessibility.
It is possible that with a larger sample size of surfaces, we could have gained more insight into CFU levels. No statistical testing was performed, so the claims listed above are based on means alone. As such, this content is exploratory.
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