Illinois Public Media News

As the coronavirus has continued to spread, so too have scam artists looking to profit off the pandemic. We’ll talk about bogus miracle cures, con artists promoting fake government relief, and store owners charging $80 for toilet paper. 

For most of us, living through a pandemic is new and frightening, but there can be a certain comfort in learning that people have been through this sort of thing before. Off and on through much of the last millennium, Europeans faced down the Black Death, and documented it in stories.

As planting season approaches, farmers who rely on foreign guest workers are in a bind. Some are turning to their newly unemployed neighbors in small towns for help in the fields.

Today on The 21st, farmers are looking to unemployed Americans to fill positions usually taken by migrant workers, the literature of pandemics past, and scam artists looking to profit off COVID-19.

Schools in Illinois are closed through the end of the current school year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and students may be missing out on more than just face-to-face time with teachers. They also might be missing an important link in their access to health care: school nurses. Without daily access to students, school nurses like Marlow fear that warning signs of illness or abuse may go unnoticed.