Director of Oregon VA "morale building exercise" flashmob ignored COVID-19 recommendations

How serious is the VA taking this pandemic that anyone thought this would "build morale" instead of spreading death?

Roseburg VA director leads coronavirus dance party without social distancing, face masks

KGW8 News
The Oregonian/OregonLive
Author: Ted Sickinger
April 25, 2020

Just a week ago, the Roseburg VA confirmed four members of its medical center staff and one patient had tested positive for COVID-19.

ROSEBURG, Oregon — An internal video obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive shows the director of the U.S. Department of Veterans Administration Medical Center in Roseburg holding a flash mob dance party in hospital offices with at least 16 staff, none of them consistently wearing protective equipment or maintaining social distance.

The event appears to be a morale building exercise and was posted Friday on the hospital’s internal intranet, one of the regular updates that Director Keith M. Allen has been posting on COVID-19 and other topics. The updates are viewable by all 1,000 employees in the Roseburg VA district, which covers four southern Oregon counties and a slice of Northern California.

The district serves some 56,000 veterans, many of them elderly and with preexisting conditions. Just a week ago, a Roseburg VA administrator confirmed that four members of the medical center’s staff – including a nurse who ended up on a ventilator in a Portland hospital -- and one patient had tested positive for COVID-19.
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