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COVID-19 campus testing available as UNM gears up for outbreaks By Lissa Knudsen @lissaknudsen
As student newspapers across the nation push back on administrators and media accounts that are framing party-going students as largely responsible for university COVID-19 clusters and outbreaks, the University of New Mexico’s Student Health and Counseling (SHAC) is busy gearing up its diagnostic testing capacity. UNM opened up a mobile testing site at the University’s C Lot — located at the corner of Las Lomas Road and Redondo Drive — early last week. With the prospect of imminent outbreaks and clusters like those seen at universities across the country, UNM is putting plans in place to stem a potential tide of cases that could arise from continuing in-person classes. According to UNM’s Bring Back the Pack: Targeted Testing website, “Individuals selected for testing will be identified in large part through the daily symptom screening or from self-reporting or through the Interventional Rapid Response Task Force (IRRTF) process.” An email sent on behalf of Provost James Holloway to all main and branch faculty also advised faculty to have symptomatic students contact SHAC and self-report using the “selfreport system.”
On Aug. 23, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released new testing guidelines that state that if someone does not have COVID-19 symptoms — even if they have been recently exposed — they don’t need to be tested. The New York Times recently reported that “experts questioned the revision, pointing to the importance of identifying infections in the brief window immediately before the onset of symptoms, when many individuals are thought to be most contagious.” According to Dr. James Wilterding,
the co-executive director of SHAC, UNM will test asymptomatic students who have recently been exposed despite the revised CDC guidelines. “We are going to try to identify in a rational way (who to test) while also preserving the testing capacity in the state,” Wilterding said in a phone interview with the Daily Lobo. Wilterding explained that New Mexico is unique in that the state is able to work with TriCore Reference Laboratories in order to more quickly process testing. TriCore is a local lab
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Liam DeBonis / Daily Lobo / @LiamDebonis
Patients are separated into two groups: those who are symptomatic, and those who are asymptomatic but have been exposed to the virus.
Medical examiner says no CTE in Flowers autopsy By Hevyn Heckes @H_Squared90 Editor’s note: This article contains discussion of suicide. If you’re feeling suicidal, you are not alone. Please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or UNM’s Student Health and Counseling at 505-277-3136. On Aug. 25, famed attorney Ben Crump announced a wrongful death lawsuit regarding the November 2019 death of former University of New Mexico football player Nahje Flowers. The suit alleges that Flowers suffered from untreated and/or undiagnosed chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) — a neurological disorder common in athletes who participate in contact sports such as boxing or football — due to repeated head trauma during the course of play in his capacity as a defensive lineman for the Lobos. The legal case against the NCAA — one of three defendants named in the lawsuit — may crumble before it even begins. The Daily Lobo obtained the medical examiner’s report from Flowers’ autopsy upon request from the UNM Health Sciences Center’s media relations office. According to the re-
port, the autopsy was conducted by Dr. Lauren E. Dvorscak, a licensed medical investigator and assistant professor of pathology at UNM. Dvorscak’s report stated she didn’t find sufficient evidence of CTE upon microscopically examining recoverable parts of Flowers’ brain. In civil cases — including wrongful death suits — the discovery phase is conducted after the complaint is filed. Thus, the plaintiffs’ counsel may not have had access to Flowers’ autopsy report while drafting or prior to filing the complaint. Their entire case against the NCAA, according to the complaint, rests on the possibility that undiagnosed CTE caused Flowers’ depression and the ensuing suicidal episode that led to his death. It wasn’t immediately clear wheth-
er Flowers’ injuries from his cause of death could potentially have obscured some evidence of CTE in his brain. Dvorscak did not respond to a request for comment as of the publication of this article. According to the Mayo Clinic, CTE cannot be diagnosed while the patient is still alive except in rare cases. It can only be diagnosed after an autopsy on a decedent who had a history of repeated head trauma. The complaint’s arguments against former football head coach Bob Davie allege that he was at least willfully ignorant of Flowers’ depressive behaviors and may have directly contributed to Flowers’ depressed mental state by repeated verbal and emotion-
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Sharon Chischilly/ Daily Lobo / @ Schischillyy
Nahje Flowers (right) and his teammates celebrate a win for the Lobos against the Aggies on Sept. 21, 2019.
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As mass eviction prospect looms, Albuquerque protest calls for rent, mortgage cancellation By William Bowen @BowenWrites
DOWNTOWN — As the coronavirus pandemic continues to rage across the nation, the United States is staring down the barrel of another crisis: a wave of evictions and foreclosures. Almost half of New Mexicans have experienced a loss of employment income since the pandemic began, according to Census Bureau data, and a recent estimate suggested that up to 42% of New Mexican renters are at risk of eviction. In response, the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) and the La Riva/Freeman 2020 presidential campaign organized a protest calling for the cancellation of rent and mortgages on Saturday, Aug. 29 in downtown Albuquerque. “The protest was strong,” said Karina Rodgers, an organizer for the PSL and a protest attendee. “We had about 50 community members show up and participate.” Rodgers said many attendees made “frustrated and impassioned” speeches about struggling to pay rent because of the pandemic and that the protest drew support from people driving by in their cars. “Almost every other car was honking in support,” Rodgers said. “People were raising their fists in solidarity as they drove by.” The federal protections provided by the CARES Act were set to expire on Aug. 31 but were extended through the end of the year. The eviction and foreclosure protections, however, only apply to renters living in homes with some form of federally backed mortgages. New Mexico’s stay on evictions is still in place, but landlords can still file for eviction. This means that evictions can still be approved, but the action will not be taken until the New Mexico Supreme Court rescinds the stay. Renters cannot be physically removed from their homes while the eviction stay is in place, but many are missing rent payments that may be difficult to pay back. “There may be a stop on evictions right now,” said Bex Hampton, another organizer for the PSL and a University of New Mexico alumni. “(But) people are still going deeper and deeper into debt, more and more people are losing their jobs and unemployment has recently been cut. There needs to be more done, locally and nationally.”
Studies show that there are serious health outcomes connected to the stress caused by eviction threats and proceedings. If a large number of New Mexicans are evicted, the state will face a second public health crisis beyond the pandemic. “The effects of eviction are just so wide-ranging,” said Serge Martinez, a professor at the UNM School of Law with a background representing tenants and tenant associations. “It’s traumatic to be evicted. Local social supports (are) severed. The effect is one that ripples out and has longterm effects.” These extend beyond stress and negative health outcomes. Eviction harms tenants’ credit scores, which can make finding a new home difficult. In some cases, being evicted can mean a person becomes unhoused. “It’s hard to find decent (housing) if you have an eviction,” said Hampton, who has worked in public housing. “Just one eviction can keep someone in a cycle of homelessness.” The effects of an eviction wave would be likely to hit hardest in groups who are still recovering from the 2008 economic recession. That crisis — now over a decade removed from its devastating peak — is still being felt, particularly in marginalized groups. Once again, these groups are disproportionately at risk to lose their housing in the midst of a pandemic that has disproportionately affected them already. “The communities that have rebounded the least (from 2008) have been communities of color,” Martinez said. “The foreclosure crisis hit Black homeowners disproportionately, so now more of those folks are renters than would be otherwise. It just builds.” The Great Recession of 2008 led to around 10 million foreclosures. For comparison, if policymakers sit on their collective hands, the coronavirus recession could unhouse twice as many renters, according to research from the international nonprofit Aspen Institute. “We see the government bailing out Wall Street, bailing out the banks and bailing out (large) companies,” Hampton said. “But they leave working class people and even people who own small businesses who are unable to pay rent out to dry.” As various safeguarding measures fall away, the nation pushes closer to crisis. “The dam is not just breaking,” Martinez said. “We are actively
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