COVID Heroes: Feeding Workers, Putting Restaurants Back to Work

We’re six months into this miserable disease and there’s little to feel good about. Yet stories emerge of truly heroic people who are manning soup kitchens, putting in 14-hour days in healthcare facilities and fueling supply chains to help save lives. Now independent groups have come together as “Frontline Foods”. An estimated 1,000 volunteers have delivered more than 541,000 meals.

“It’s been an incredible experience,” said Alexis Perlmutter, one of the Frontline Foods volunteers leading Chicago’s efforts. “This would not be possible without an army of volunteers that is rolling up their sleeves to solve problems together.”

Frontline Foods works with World Central Kitchen, a global nonprofit, delivering fresh meals to essential workers

Bringing meals to hospitals in a safe and organized fashion can be extremely difficult, said Nate Mook, the chief executive of World Central Kitchen. But World Central Kitchen has the expertise to help. Having served communities ravaged by disasters like hurricanes and earthquakes, it has stepped in to coordinate these separate fundraising initiatives.

• World Central Kitchen has served more than a million meals in more than 95 cities across the country.
• It has also been working in seven cities in Spain, which had one of the world’s highest coronavirus mortality rates.
• In one week, the Chicago’s Frontline Foods teamed up with 10 restaurants and delivered more than 1,000 meals to six hospitals.
• In New York, World Central Kitchen set up a distribution site at Hudson Yards to serve the staff at the makeshift hospital in the Jacob K. Javits Center. The organization is also planning to bring daily meals to roughly 30,000 professionals working in the city’s public hospitals and health clinics, with support from Michael R. Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York.
• In Washington DC, World Central Kitchen staffers cooked 8,000 meals/day for homeless people, older residents and essential workers, including firefighters and police officers.

World Central Kitchen: Helping restaurants whose businesses have slowed or closed

We all have our favorite neighborhood bars and restaurants, many of them now shuttered. Those lucky enough to have outdoor seating have reopened, but we know they’re limping along. We wonder how long they can hang on, what our neighborhoods will look like when this is all over. Happily, World Central Kitchen is extending a hand.

World Central Kitchen is providing administrative and financial backing to Frontline Foods and other grassroots groups, like Off Their Plate, which has operations from Boston to Seattle. “We’re good at moving quickly,” said Tim Kilcoyne, the director of chef operations at World Central Kitchen. Yet given how widespread the current health crisis is, he said, “the only way we would be able to help as many people as possible is with partners.”

Other collaborations are underway in Oakland

• World Central Kitchen has delivered thousands of meals from dozens of local restaurants to medics at drive-through testing sites, homeless residents in transitional housing, seniors and at-risk youth.
• Kingston 11, a Jamaican restaurant that has been contributing to those relief efforts, has hired back more than half of its back-of-house staff, said Sam Chapple-Sokol, who works for World Central Kitchen in Oakland. “They’re open three days a week right now, because of the limited demand and the limited ability,” he said.
• World Central Kitchen has also been creating opportunities for food delivery workers. It has connected with Uber Eats and other delivery companies to bring meals from local restaurants to front-line workers and others in need in Los Angeles, Newark and New York, as well as Washington and Oakland.

If someone is hungry, you start cooking

The motivation behind the organization’s work comes from the can-do attitude of its founder, the celebrity chef and activist José Andrés, said Mr. Chapple-Sokol. “If somebody is hungry,” he said, “you just get in the kitchen and start cooking.”

COVID has created an urgency on many levels, including creating a Living Trust

As the COVID crisis drags on, more clients are scheduling appointments to create or update their Living Trusts. Our Trust package includes a Pour Over Will, and for those families with children under 18, it means that they can name a Guardianrather than having the court appoint one for you. Creating a Trust helps provide some peace of mind during these uncertain times. Best of all, we guide you through it and we prepare the legal documents.

Our Trust package includes a Will, Power of Attorney, an Advance Healthcare Directive and Incapacity Planning. At California Document Preparers, for most of our services, we charge one flat fee. We’re helpful, compassionate and affordable.

We service the entire East Bay and North Bay areas

Berkeley, El Cerrito, Richmond, Pinole, Alameda, San Leandro, Castro Valley Newark, San Lorenzo, Concord, Alamo, Danville, Lafayette, Orinda, Moraga, Pleasant Hill, Martinez, Pittsburg, Antioch, Brentwood, Oakley, Discovery Bay, Pleasanton, San Ramon, Livermore, Tracy and Fremont. Our clients also live in the Napa Valley, Benicia, Vallejo, Martinez, Fairfield.

COVID, Ventilators and Your Healthcare Directive

In April, 91-year old Minna Buck revised her Advance Healthcare Directive. She doesn’t want to be intubated if she becomes infected with COVID. Ms. Buck has done her research and knows she doesn’t want any part of intubation. She knows that even if she survived, the recovery would leave her weak and disoriented, a burden on others, with a negligible quality of life.

No Intubation for Ms. Buck

Buck is clearly in the high-risk group. “No intubation,” she wrote in large letters on the form, making sure to include the date and her initials. “I don’t want to put everybody through the anguish,” said Buck.

Ventilators represent a loss of personal control

For older adults contemplating what might happen to them during this pandemic, ventilators represent a terrifying lack of personal control. Ventilators pump oxygen into a patient’s body while he or she lies in bed, typically sedated, with a breathing tube snaked down the windpipe. This can be the greatest fear: helplessly being hooked to a machine with the end of life looming. Yet for others, there is the hope that the machine might pull them back from the brink, giving them another shot at life.

Who will care for these patients? Where?

“It’s a very long, uphill battle to recovery,” and many older patients may never regain full functioning, said Dr. Negin Hajizadeh, an associate professor of critical care medicine at the School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell on New York’s Long Island. “Who’s going to take care of these patients after a prolonged ventilator course ― and where?”

Quality of life issues motivated one single woman to change her healthcare directive

In St. Paul, Minnesota, Joyce Edwards is 61, unmarried and lives alone. In late April, Edwards revised her Advance Healthcare Directive to specify that “for COVID-19, I do not want to be placed on a ventilator. I have to think about what the quality of my life is going to be. Could I live independently and take care of myself — the things I value the most? There’s no spouse or adult children to take care of me. Who would step into the breach and look after me while I’m in recovery?”

End of life care discussions: Think about what’s important to you

COVID has created some immediacy around end of life decision-making. Experts advise older adults to discuss what’s most important to them–independence, time with family, mobility, living as long as possible. Think about what represents a good quality of life—this will provide context for the ventilator decision. For Minna Buck, quality of life and independence outweighed living as along as possible. At 91, she has lived a long, full life.

During this health crisis, many are feeling an urgency to create a Living Trust 

As the COVID crisis drags on, more clients are scheduling appointments to create or update their Living Trusts. Our Trust package includes a Pour Over Will, and for those families with children under 18, it means that they can name a Guardian. Creating a Trust helps provide some peace of mind during these uncertain times. Best of all, we guide you through it and we prepare the legal documents.

Our Trust package includes a Will, Power of Attorney, an Advance Healthcare Directive and Incapacity Planning. At California Document Preparers, for most of our services, we charge one flat fee. We’re helpful, compassionate and affordable.

Schedule an appointment today

Our offices are open and we’ve instituted stringent sanitation procedures. We can also provide our services virtually via Zoom or phone. Schedule an appointment today at one of our three Bay Area officesin Dublin, Walnut Creek or Oakland. Please wear your mask and stay safe.

We service the entire East Bay and North Bay areas

Berkeley, El Cerrito, Richmond, Pinole, Alameda, San Leandro, Castro Valley Newark, San Lorenzo, Concord, Alamo, Danville, Lafayette, Orinda, Moraga, Pleasant Hill, Martinez, Pittsburg, Antioch, Brentwood, Oakley, Discovery Bay, Pleasanton, San Ramon, Livermore, Tracy and Fremont. Our clients also live in the Napa Valley, Benicia, Vallejo, Martinez, Fairfield.

As Pandemic Evolves, New Symptoms Emerge

Does anyone else wake up in the morning, take a few deep breaths and cough to test for COVID? We’re now learning that fever, cough and shortness of breath are not the only warning signs of a coronavirus infection.

As doctors and virologists learn more this insidious disease, they’re also discovering new symptoms that can accompany the more obvious respiratory problems. These new symptoms reinforce what experts around the world are telling us: The coronavirus is still in charge, capable of causing a sustained and often prolonged attack. Even more frightening for those in a high-risk demographic, are the long-term effects of the virus. People who get the disease do not develop an immunity. COVID breaks down our immune systems, and we can catch it again. The virus can leave its patients weak and disoriented.

In the early days of the pandemic, the focus was on treating those who were the sickest

But we’ve become more knowledgeable. “It takes a while for the full range of symptoms to be known when you’re dealing with a new virus,” explains Lisa Winston, M.D., an epidemiologist and professor of clinical medicine at UCSF.

COVID patients are exhibiting a broader range of symptoms

• Some patients are reporting red or purple lesions on hands and feet.
• Doctors are treating people with diarrhea and loss of appetite, sense of taste and smell.
• Dermatologist Esther Freeman, M.D., has identified red- and purple-colored toes that swell, burn and itch. This unusual symptom has been dubbed “COVID toes.”
• Rashes similar to those from hives and chicken pox have also been reported on some coronavirus patients.
• According to the Journal of American Neurology, confusion, delirium, and other neurological symptoms have also been observed in those with COVID.
• There are early reports suggesting that COVID may raise the risk of abnormal blood clotting. Clots reaching the lungs, heart or brain can cause more serious complications, including pulmonary embolism, heart attack or stroke. If the virus enters cells in the heart, it also can cause a heart infection known as myocarditis. This infection may cause chest pain, abnormal heart rhythms and heart failure.
• Happy hypoxia. This is a dangerous condition where patients have dangerously low levels of oxygen in their blood, which could cause reduced consciousness. Patients with this condition have been unusually alert and comfortable—completely unaware that they’re manifesting a serious condition.

Response to COVID will be influenced by the strength of our own immune systems

Once COVID reaches the lungs and the bloodstream, it travels around pretty freely. More research will determine how it interacts with cells. Symptoms may be caused by inflammation that results from the body’s immune response to infection—and will vary widely depending on the strength of the individual immune system. While fewer people are dying from COVID, more people are becoming infected. We can minimize the risk by social distancing and wearing masks.

During this health crisis, many are feeling an urgency to create a Living Trust

We are scheduling appointments with clients to create or update the Trusts they created 15-20 years ago—there may be new grandchildren, property and/or investments. Think of those things that would change the inheritance for your beneficiaries.

Our Trust package includes a Will, Power of Attorney, an Advance Healthcare Directive and Incapacity Planning. We guide you through the process and prepare the legal documents. At California Document Preparers, for most of our services, we charge one flat fee.

Schedule a secure office visit or work virtually via Zoom

Our offices are open and we’ve instituted stringent sanitation procedures. We can also provide our services virtually using Zoom or phones. Schedule an appointment today at one of our three Bay Area offices in Dublin, Walnut Creek or Oakland. We’re helpful, compassionate and affordable. COVID is going to be with us for a while, so wear a mask and stay safe!

We service the entire East Bay and North Bay areas

Berkeley, El Cerrito, Richmond, Pinole, Alameda, San Leandro, Castro Valley Newark, San Lorenzo, Concord, Alamo, Danville, Lafayette, Orinda, Moraga, Pleasant Hill, Martinez, Pittsburg, Antioch, Brentwood, Oakley, Discovery Bay, Pleasanton, San Ramon, Livermore, Tracy and Fremont. Our clients also live in the Napa Valley, Benicia, Vallejo, Martinez, Fairfield.

This story is based on an article from the AARP, Unusual Symptoms of COVID-19 You Need to Know About, by Rachel Nania

Probate: A Tragic Consequence of the Pandemic

COVID is proving to be a very cunning adversary. Experts continue to learn about and respect COVID’s nuances because it’s still the one in control. While the disease is most dangerous for the elderly and those with preexisting conditions, it transcends demographics. It’s affecting those who are healthy, athletic, young and strong.

Probate has emerged as an unfortunate consequence of COVID

Tragically, thousands of people, including our health care workers, are dying from this disease every single day. Many never created a Will or Living Trust. Their families, still reeling from the shock of a tragic death, are now having to deal with Probate. They’re tackling the challenges of administering an estate during a pandemic when everything is infinitely more difficult.

California Document Preparers guides our clients through the entire Probate process

While Probate can seem overwhelming, it is actually a very methodical process. Best of all, we guide you through the entire process, and we prepare the legal documents.

As part of Probate, the Court appoints a personal representative, or Administrator, to settle the estate, so we work directly with that Administrator throughout the Probate process. The administrator is responsible for:

• Collecting all of the decedent’s property
• Paying all of the estate’s debts, claims and taxes
• Collecting all rights to income, dividends, etc.
• Settling all disputes
• Distributing or transferring the remaining property to the heirs

Access to the decedent’s accounts to determine the financial landscape 

The Administrator may meet with the financial advisor, insurance agent, accountant, etc. to acquire estate information. Gaining access to all of the decedent’s records–bank statements, savings accounts and income tax returns–will help determine the financial landscape. The Administrator is in charge of valuing and and selling assets, as necessary, to settle the estate’s debts or expenses.

During Probate, the deceased’s estate becomes a separate tax entity, so the Administrator must obtain a federal identification number and open a bank account in the name of the estate, from which to pay creditors. It is also necessary to file the estate’s tax return and a final individual tax return.

Distribution of remaining assets

Once all taxes and debts have been satisfied, the Court will then distribute any remaining assets according to state law. In California, the first priority is given to the deceased’s spouse, followed by the deceased’s children.

Working with California Document Preparers

The safety and wellbeing of our own team and our clients are important to us. For many of our clients, we are working completely virtually using ZOOM and phones. We’ve instituted stringent sanitation procedures in our offices, so our clients can feel comfortable about meeting with us. Everyone is wearing masks and gloves; hand sanitizers are distributed throughout the space. We limit the number of people in the office so that we can maintain proper social distancing.

For most of our services, we charge one flat fee. We’re helpful, compassionate and affordable. Schedule an appointment today at one of our three Bay Area offices in Dublin, Walnut Creek or Oakland.

We service the entire East Bay and North Bay areas

Berkeley, El Cerrito, Richmond, Pinole, Alameda, San Leandro, Castro Valley Newark, San Lorenzo, Concord, Alamo, Danville, Lafayette, Orinda, Moraga, Pleasant Hill, Martinez, Pittsburg, Antioch, Brentwood, Oakley, Discovery Bay, Pleasanton, San Ramon, Livermore, Tracy and Fremont. Our clients also live in the Napa Valley, Benicia, Vallejo, Martinez, Fairfield.

COVID-19: Is There Some Good to Come Out of This?

We’ve lived through some tough times. Many of us remember the way the Vietnam War, and Watergate tore our country apart. The 2008 recession eliminated many small businesses, and it took a few years for the rest of us to get back on our feet and begin to prosper. And now we find ourselves completely kneecapped by COVID-19. Within just weeks, our lives have radically changed, and we face another long month of sheltering in place. But we find ourselves asking if there is some good to come out of this.

A global phenomenon, we have no idea when this will end

COVID-19 is a virus, and scientists tell us that it’s mutating, which will make it more difficult to develop a treatment or vaccine. Yet we’re tired of being cooped up. We want haircuts and spa days. We’re annoyed that we have to cancel our vacation plans. How selfish we are. The burden of this will fall disproportionately and tragically on the old, the weak and the poor in ways that are too awful to contemplate.

But take heart; some good things may come from this pandemic

1. Innovation: That fundamentally American ethic

Business owners who want to remain successful have had to be nimble. I know one small business owner who closed one office, furloughed part of his team and began offering his services virtually. All within one week. He is now planning to expand what is now his new, leaner business model.

2. There can be no doubt that we are part of a global community

Oblivious to borders, there’s no passport control for this guy. The only way of stopping the virus’ spread would be to shut borders completely. No coming in or going out. Cooperation among nations is essential to combating the epidemic. Sharing knowledge and tools is critical because this airborne disease roams the globe.

3. Getting to know your family and your neighborhood

As we’re all locked up in our local quarantines, we might get better acquainted with our neighbors and our families. We might be more present to the people around us, the people we love. Families with extra time together may go back to enjoying just being together, doing simple things—card games and board games, playing catch, cooking, going for walks or bike rides.

4. It may make future epidemics less likely

If we’re smart, we can take the lessons from this pandemic and learn from them. Public health needs to become a specialty, and our public officials need to be paying attention to the first signs of trouble and begin preparing. We lost precious time and we’re paying the price in lost lives and a plummeting economy. Much has been learned about the containment and mitigation of infectious disease. Vaccines against future viral challenges are likely to be developed faster as a result.

5. The miracles of modern medicine have let us down

No popping a pill for this one. There is no cure. This is going to be harder than what we’re used to, and it’s going to be around for a while. COVID promises to change the way we travel, work and recreate. Recognizing our own vulnerability might slap us around and make us humbler.

6. Our environment may benefit

• India’s 1.3 billion people have created one the world’s worst smog problems. The Himalayan mountain range is now isvisible from a distance for the first time in years. People now can see the stars. All of this proves that better air quality can be achieved.
• China’s emissions have been reduced by 25%; coal use cut by 40% and good air quality days are up by 11%.
• Without traffic and air travel, greenhouse gas emissions have fallen dramatically. Pollution in New York has reduced by nearly 50% because of measures to contain the virus.

A global pandemic claiming people’s lives shouldn’t be seen as a way of bringing about environmental and social change, but we may be able to take some of these bitter lessons and apply them to other parts of our lives. At the very least, we can hope that our government officials are learning that we need our allies, our global relationships. We are, indeed, in this together.

During this health crisis, many are feeling an urgency to create a Living Trust 

Our Trust package includes a Will, Power of Attorney, an Advance Healthcare Directive and Incapacity Planning. We guide you through the process and prepare the legal documents. At California Document Preparers, we charge one flat fee for most of our services. We’re helpful, compassionate and affordable. Schedule an appointment today at one of our three Bay Area offices in Dublin, Walnut Creek or Oakland.

Note that our offices are open and we’ve instituted stringent sanitation procedures. We can also provide our services virtually.

We service the entire East Bay and North Bay areas

Berkeley, El Cerrito, Richmond, Pinole, Alameda, San Leandro, Castro Valley Newark, San Lorenzo, Concord, Alamo, Danville, Lafayette, Orinda, Moraga, Pleasant Hill, Martinez, Pittsburg, Antioch, Brentwood, Oakley, Discovery Bay, Pleasanton, San Ramon, Livermore, Tracy, Hayward and Fremont. Our clients also live in the Napa Valley, Benicia, Vallejo, Martinez, Fairfield.