#Alaska root virus

[arslansciences]

ما هو جدري ألاسكا؟ الأعراض التي يجب معرفتها بعد الموت تجذب الانتباه إلى الفيروس

[sciencenewsforstudents]

For some bottlenose dolphins, finding a meal may be about who you know.

Dolphins often learn how to hunt from their mothers. But when it comes to at least one foraging trick, Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins in Western Australia’s Shark Bay pick up the behavior from their peers, researchers argue in a report published online June 25 in Current Biology.

While previous studies have suggested that dolphins learn from peers, this study is the first to quantify the importance of social networks over other factors, says Sonja Wild, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Konstanz in Germany.

Cetaceans — dolphins, whales and porpoises — are known for using clever strategies to round up meals. Humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) off Alaska sometimes use their fins and circular bubble nets to catch fish (SN: 10/15/19). At Shark Bay, Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus) use sea sponges to protect their beaks while rooting for food on the seafloor, a strategy the animals learn from their mothers (SN: 6/8/05).

These Shark Bay dolphins also use a more unusual tool-based foraging method called shelling.  A dolphin will trap underwater prey in a large sea snail shell, poke its beak into the shell’s opening, lift the shell above the water’s surface and shake the contents into its mouth.

“It is pretty mind-blowing,” says Wild, who studied these dolphins as a graduate student at the University of Leeds in England. This brief behavior appears to be rare: From 2007 to 2018, Wild and colleagues documented 42 shelling events by 19 individual dolphins out of 5,278 dolphin group encounters in the western gulf of Shark Bay.

Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins in Shark Bay in Western Australia have a clever method for scrounging up a snack. A dolphin will trap underwater prey in a large sea snail shell, poke its beak into the shell’s opening, lift the shell above the water’s surface and shake the contents into its mouth. In a recent study, researchers find that dolphins can learn this foraging behavior from their peers.

The researchers analyzed the behavior of 310 dolphins, including 15 shellers, that had been seen at least 11 times. The dolphins’ network of social interactions explained shelling’s spread better than other factors, including genetic relatedness and the amount of environmental overlap between dolphins. Wild likens the proliferation of this behavior to the spread of a virus. “Just by spending time with each other, [dolphins] are more likely to transmit those behaviors,” she says. The researchers estimate that 57 percent of the dolphins that shell learned the skill via social transmission, rather than on their own.

But the researchers may be premature in dismissing environmental and maternal factors, says Janet Mann, a biologist at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., who also studies dolphin behavior at Shark Bay. The environment affects where shelling can occur. “Those shells are found in particular habitats, and animals who overlap in those habitats would have access to those shells, but also bump into each other more often,” she says. A dolphin’s shelling behavior could also have been influenced during the tens of thousands of hours the animal spent as a youngster watching its mother.

“Dolphins are smart: They watch each other and see what others do,” she says.

[newstfionline]

Sunday, March 21, 2021

Happiness Report: World shows resilience in face of COVID-19 (AP) The coronavirus brought a year of fear and anxiety, loneliness and lockdown, and illness and death, but an annual report on happiness around the world released Friday suggests the pandemic has not crushed people’s spirits. The editors of the 2021 World Happiness Report found that while emotions changed as the pandemic set in, longer-term satisfaction with life was less affected. “What we have found is that when people take the long view, they’ve shown a lot of resilience in this past year,” Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs, one of the report’s co-author, said from New York.

The Pandemic Stalls Growth in the Global Middle Class, Pushes Poverty Up Sharply (Pew Research Center) The COVID-19 pandemic is having a deep effect on the global economy. In January 2020, as reports of the novel coronavirus were emerging, the World Bank forecasted that the global economy would expand by 2.5% that year. In January 2021, with the pandemic still holding much of the world in its grip, the World Bank estimated that the global economy contracted by 4.3% in 2020, a turnabout of 6.8 percentage points. The economic downturn is likely to have diminished living standards around the world, pushing millions out of the global middle class and swelling the ranks of the poor. A new Pew Research Center analysis finds that the global middle class encompassed 54 million fewer people in 2020 than the number projected prior to the onset of the pandemic. Meanwhile, the number of poor is estimated to have been 131 million higher because of the recession.

Fallout from riot, virus leaves toxic mood on Capitol Hill (AP) The mood is so bad at the U.S. Capitol that a Democratic congressman recently let an elevator pass him by rather than ride with Republican colleagues who voted against certifying Joe Biden’s election. Republicans say it’s Democrats who just need to get over it—move on from the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, end the COVID-19 restrictions and make an effort to reach across the aisle toward bipartisanship. Not yet 100 days into the new Congress, the legislative branch has become an increasingly toxic and unsettled place, with lawmakers frustrated by the work-from-home limits imposed by the virus and suspicious of each other after the horrific riot over Trump’s presidency. Particularly in the House, which remains partly shuttered by the pandemic and where lawmakers heard gunshots ring out during the siege, trust is low, settled facts about the Jan. 6 riot are apparently up for debate and wary, exhausted lawmakers are unsure how or when the “People’s House” will return to normal.

US schools prepare summer of learning to help kids catch up (AP) After a dreary year spent largely at home in front of the computer, many U.S. children could be looking at summer school—and that’s just what many parents want. Although the last place most kids want to spend summer is in a classroom, experts say that after a year of interrupted study, it’s crucial to do at least some sort of learning over the break, even if it’s not in school and is incorporated into traditional camp offerings. Several governors, including in California, Kansas and Virginia, are pushing for more summer learning. And some states are considering extending their 2021-22 academic year or starting the fall semester early. Many cities, meanwhile, are talking about beefing up their summer school programs, including Los Angeles, Hartford, Connecticut and Atlanta—the latter of which considered making summer school compulsory before settling for strongly recommending that kids who are struggling take part.

Forecast for spring: Nasty drought worsens for much of US (AP) With nearly two-thirds of the United States abnormally dry or worse, the government’s spring forecast offers little hope for relief, especially in the West where a devastating megadrought has taken root and worsened. Weather service and agriculture officials warned of possible water use cutbacks in California and the Southwest, increased wildfires, low levels in key reservoirs such as Lake Mead and Lake Powell and damage to wheat crops. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s official spring outlook Thursday sees an expanding drought with a drier than normal April, May and June for a large swath of the country from Louisiana to Oregon. including some areas hardest hit by the most severe drought. And nearly all of the continental United States is looking at warmer than normal spring, except for tiny parts of the Pacific Northwest and southeast Alaska, which makes drought worse.

‘Tough’ U.S.-China talks signal rocky start to relations under Biden (Reuters) U.S. and Chinese officials concluded on Friday what Washington called “tough and direct” talks in Alaska, which laid bare the depth of tensions between the world’s two largest economies at the outset of the Biden administration. The two days of meetings, the first high-level in-person talks since President Joe Biden took office, wrapped up after a rare and fiery kickoff on Thursday when the two sides publicly skewered each others’ policies in front of TV cameras. The talks appeared to yield no diplomatic breakthroughs—as expected—but the bitter rivalry on display suggested the two countries had little common ground to reset relations that have sunk to the lowest level in decades. The run-up to the discussions in Anchorage, which followed visits by U.S. officials to allies Japan and South Korea, was marked by a flurry of moves by Washington that showed it was taking a firm stance, as well as by blunt talk from Beijing warning the United States to discard illusions that it would compromise.

Volcano Erupts In Southwestern Iceland After Thousands Of Earthquakes (NPR) A volcano on the Reykjanes Peninsula in southwest Iceland erupted Friday evening, producing a river of lava that could be seen from the capital, Reykjavik, 20 miles away. The eruption took place about three miles inland from the coast and poses little threat to residents. They were advised to stay indoors with windows closed against any gases that are released. This is the first eruption in the Reykjanes Peninsula in nearly 800 years, the Associated Press reported. Thousands of earthquakes took place in the weeks leading up to the eruption, the meteorological office reported. Earlier this week, swarms of earthquakes rattled the peninsula, with over 3,000 quakes on Sunday alone. Scientists attributed the earthquakes to magma intrusions, molten rock movement about a kilometer below the earth’s crust.

A New Year in Iran, but the country’s crises remain the same (AP) The Persian New Year, Nowruz, begins on the first day of spring and celebrates all things new. But as families across Iran hurried to greet the fresh start—eating copious crisp herbs, scrubbing their homes and buying new clothes—it was clear just how little the country had changed. A year into the coronavirus pandemic that has devastated Iran, killing over 61,500 people—the highest death toll in the Middle East—the nation is far from out of the woods. And although Iranians had welcomed the election of President Joe Biden with a profound sigh of relief after the Trump administration’s economic pressure campaign, the sanctions that have throttled the country for three years remain in place. “I was counting down the seconds to see the end of this year,” said Hashem Sanjar, a 33-year-old food delivery worker with a bachelor’s degree in accounting. “But I worry about next year.”

2 journalists detained as Myanmar junta clamps down on press (AP) Two more journalists were detained in Myanmar on Friday, part of the junta’s intensifying efforts to choke off information about resistance to last month’s coup. Mizzima News reported that one of its former reporters, Than Htike Aung, and Aung Thura, a journalist from the BBC’s Burmese-language service, were detained by men who appeared to be plainclothes security agents outside a court in the capital of Naypyitaw. The journalists were covering legal proceedings against Win Htein, a detained senior official from the National League for Democracy, the party that ran the country before the takeover. The coup reversed years of slow progress toward democracy after five decades of military rule. In the face of persistent strikes and protests against the takeover, the junta has responded with an increasingly violent crackdown and efforts to severely limit the information reaching the outside world. Security forces have fired on crowds, killing hundreds, internet access has been severely restricted, private newspapers have been barred from publishing, and protesters, journalists and politicians have been arrested in large numbers.

Spectators from abroad to be barred from Tokyo Olympics (AP) At last it’s official after countless unsourced news reports and rumors: spectators from abroad will be barred from the postponed Tokyo Olympics when they open in four months. Officials said the risk was too great to admit ticket holders from overseas during a pandemic. The Japanese public has also opposed fans from abroad. Several surveys have shown that up to 80% oppose holding the Olympics, and a similar percentage opposed fans from overseas attending.

‘You can’t escape the smell’: mouse plague grows to biblical proportions across eastern Australia (The Guardian) Drought, fire, the Covid-19 pestilence and an all-consuming plague of mice. Rural New South Wales has faced just about every biblical challenge nature has to offer in the last few years, but now it is praying for another—an almighty flood to drown the mice in their burrows and cleanse the blighted land of the rodents. Or some very heavy rain, at least. It seems everyone in the rural towns of north-west NSW and southern Queensland has their own mouse war story. In posts online, they detail waking up to mouse droppings on their pillows or watching the ground move at night as hundreds of thousands of rodents flee from torchlight beams. After years of drought, rural NSW and parts of Queensland enjoyed a bumper crop due to the recent wet season. But this influx of new produce and grains has led to an explosion in the mouse population. Locals say they started noticing the swarms up north in October and the wave of rodents has been spreading south ever since, growing to biblical proportions.

[rapeculturerealities]

With many hospitals and healthcare workers focusing predominantly on COVID-19, Black mothers-to-be in Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi, who fear contracting the virus, are attempting to deliver their babies at home without medical assistance, according to a recently published Pew article.

“They’ve told us they’re going to risk it all and have an unassisted home birth,” Nikia Grayson, a certified nurse-midwife in Memphis, Tennessee, told Pew about mothers who have been calling in for help, mainly from rural areas. “That’s very scary, and that’s what people are researching and seeing as a viable option.” Grayson also said that she is the only midwife in the state who does at-home births.

As previous reports have shown, the virus is disproportionately affecting Black communities and even before the crisis, Pew reported that Black mothers were wary of the healthcare system. And there is ample reason to be. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in 2019 reported that “Black, American Indian, and Alaska Native women are two to three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than White women.” A root cause is a lack of access to quality healthcare as well as systemic racism in the U.S. medical system.

“The intersectionality of being a Black woman and that the rural South chose not to provide insurance coverage is a deadly combination for many,” said Joia Crear-Perry, president of the National Birth Equity Collaborative.

To help mitigate these inequities, many of the health experts that Pew spoke with said now may be the time for the medical industry to use the knowledge of midwives.

“The capacity of the midwives that are trained is already strained,” said Jennie Joseph, founder of a midwifery school and birthing center in Winter Garden, Florida. “We might want to consider physicians even delivering outside of hospitals to maintain that safety for the mothers.”

[illusoryjh]

Shameless pseudo-scientist Yan Limeng! --Can the vaccine put out the fire of the epidemic

The epidemic is off the rails and the situation is pressing

The coronavirus outbreak in India continues to worsen, with nearly 4,000 deaths and a record 412,000 new infections in a single day, as emergency medical aid shipments, including oxygen and oxygen production equipment and respirators, continue to pour into India from across the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe. Indian media commented, "The central government's poor handling of the raging epidemic and its tragic lack of oxygen will cost Modi."

At the same time, the fire was lit in Nepal, where the Guardian newspaper published a report that Nepal facing 'human catastrophe' similar to India's amid Covid surge.  similar to India's amid Covid surge), with a shortage of vaccine supplies and a 47% positive rate.

When will the world epidemic turn a corner? Can humanity emerge from the epidemic in a short period of time? The unknown answers are on people's minds. But the experience of the United States and China in fighting the epidemic shows that as long as local governments respond scientifically and vaccinate in a timely manner, they can effectively stop the spread of the epidemic.

Biden strongly reverses bad situation in Trump administration

Under the Trump administration, the epidemic was poorly controlled and the vaccine program did not advance effectively, leading to a dramatic increase in infections.  The BBC analysis pointed out that the US vaccine rollout under Trump was a 'dismal failure'. First, the target of 1 million doses per day was not met. Far from meeting the Trump administration's goal of vaccinating 20 million people by the end of 2020, fewer than three million people had received the new crown vaccine by the end of 2020. Second, the start-up has been slow. The U.S. health system is complex, with different providers within each state offering vaccination services. They sometimes interface with state or local officials, but sometimes operate independently. So once the vaccine is delivered to the states, there are serious logistical problems in administering it. "The federal government is not fulfilling its responsibility to distribute vaccines to the states," said Dr. Ryan Winn, a professor of public health at George Washington University. Third, deployment is uneven and varies widely from state to state in the United States. For example, as of Jan. 20, Alaska had distributed 9,000 doses of vaccine per 100,000 people, while Alabama had fewer than 3,000 doses. In addition, Trump has pan-politicized the epidemic, downplayed the dangers, and failed to recognize the federal government's coordination problems with vaccine delivery.

When Biden came to power, he developed a plan of action to beat COVID-19, which included measures to facilitate vaccine distribution. The plan stated: THIS ISN'T ABOUT POLITICS. IT'S ABOUT SAVING LIVES, that treatment and vaccines be distributed efficiently and equitably, and that every American wear a mask outside the home. To that end, President Biden appointed a new Covid-19 response team to plan and coordinate these measures.

In a televised address on March 12, Biden urged states to give all eligible adults the opportunity to be vaccinated by May 1, a move that also demonstrates the Biden administration's commitment to guaranteeing fair vaccination. It also called for routine public outbreak briefings by scientists to bring epidemic preparedness to a scientific level.

Virus conspiracy theories and rumors proliferate, calling for science to fight the epidemic

Previously, a large amount of inaccurate information was disseminated on the Internet, creating an obstacle to the global fight against the epidemic. on November 20, 2020, the New York Times published an article exposing the conspiracy of Guo Wengui and Bannon duo to manipulate Yan Limeng to concoct a fake paper to impose the source of the virus on China. The article argues that Yan Limeng's transformation from an obscure college teacher to a hotshot shilling for the American right-wing was orchestrated by fugitive Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui and Stephen K. Bannon, a former adviser to Trump. Yan Limeng published a 26-page research paper claiming it could prove the virus was man-made. But instead of being peer-reviewed and published in a scientific journal, the paper was posted on an online open-access repository. Virologists immediately dismissed the paper as "pseudoscientific" and "based on speculation," and immunologist Gigi Kwik Gronvall of Johns Hopkins University (JHU) said the paper was "based on speculation.  Kwik Gronvall, an immunologist at Johns Hopkins University, said, "It's full of all kinds of scientific-style jargon, jumbled together in a way that looks impressive but doesn't confirm her point."

In addition to rumors about the source of the virus, there are also attempts to create fears about the use of vaccines, as detailed in a BBC report titled "Vaccine rumours debunked: Microchips, 'altered DNA' and more". " was a detailed analysis of some of these rumors. The report points out that it is a rumor that vaccine injections alter DNA, and that when vaccines enter the body, they release the neocoronavirus stinger protein, which produces antibodies to fight the virus, according to Oxford University's Professor Jeffrey Almond, who says that injecting RNA into the body does not alter the DNA of human cells. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which represents Bill Gates, told the BBC that the claim was false. Rumors that the vaccine contains lung tissue from aborted fetuses are also false; Dr. Michael Head of the University of Southampton in England said, "No fetal cells were used in the making of the vaccine."

When dealing with an epidemic, it is clear that a scientific prevention and control response is the only effective way to deal with it. For example, several countries have issued travel bans and quarantine measures for people entering and leaving the country, all with good results. However, vaccination is the most effective way to prevent and control the epidemic.

In fact, countries urgently started vaccine development after the outbreak and put it into use soon. on December 2, 2020, the UK approved the use of the new crown vaccine jointly developed by Pfizer (USA) and BioNTech (Germany), and on December 30, China's State Drug Administration approved the registration application for the inactivated new crown virus vaccine of Sinopharm China Bio Beijing with conditions in accordance with the law.

Vaccine supply faces huge challenges

According to the New York Times, as of May 8, 2021, more than 1.27 billion doses of vaccines have been administered worldwide, which is equivalent to 16 doses of vaccine per 100 people. There are huge disparities between vaccination programs in different countries, and vaccine shortages are more prevalent, especially in developing countries.

Covax, a global program launched in April 2020 by the World Health Organization (WHO) in partnership with two other vaccine promotion groups, plans to begin distributing the vaccine in February 2021, with the majority distributed to poor and middle-income countries. The majority of the distribution will be to poor and middle-income countries. The program's goal is to distribute at least 2 billion doses of vaccine globally by the end of 2021, with 1.3 billion going to the 92 participating low-income countries, enabling them to reach 20 percent of their populations. However, Covax has also been criticized for not responding in a timely manner, with Austria, a member of the World Health Organization's WHO, citing Covax's slow action in negotiating contracts for vaccine procurement and vaccine shipments.

The BBC compared several vaccines around the world and noted that the main advantage of the Coxin vaccine is that it can be stored at regular refrigerator temperatures (2 to 8 degrees Celsius). Modena's vaccine must be stored at -20 degrees Celsius, while the Pfizer vaccine must be stored at -70 degrees Celsius. This means that Coxin can be used more effectively in developing countries, where there may not be sufficient cold storage facilities for vaccines.

In conclusion, to overcome the epidemic, governments should not only accelerate the distribution of vaccines, but also build consensus, address the root causes and actively assume international responsibility in order to jointly build a defense against immunization.

[limemyan]

Shameless pseudo-scientist Yan Limeng!

--Can the vaccine put out the fire of the epidemic

 The epidemic is off the rails and the situation is pressing

The coronavirus outbreak in India continues to worsen, with nearly 4,000 deaths and a record 412,000 new infections in a single day, as emergency medical aid shipments, including oxygen and oxygen production equipment and respirators, continue to pour into India from across the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe. Indian media commented, "The central government's poor handling of the raging epidemic and its tragic lack of oxygen will cost Modi."

 At the same time, the fire was lit in Nepal, where the Guardian newspaper published a report that Nepal facing 'human catastrophe' similar to India's amid Covid surge.  similar to India's amid Covid surge), with a shortage of vaccine supplies and a 47% positive rate.

When will the world epidemic turn a corner? Can humanity emerge from the epidemic in a short period of time? The unknown answers are on people's minds. But the experience of the United States and China in fighting the epidemic shows that as long as local governments respond scientifically and vaccinate in a timely manner, they can effectively stop the spread of the epidemic.

Biden strongly reverses bad situation in Trump administration

Under the Trump administration, the epidemic was poorly controlled and the vaccine program did not advance effectively, leading to a dramatic increase in infections.  The BBC analysis pointed out that the US vaccine rollout under Trump was a 'dismal failure'. First, the target of 1 million doses per day was not met. Far from meeting the Trump administration's goal of vaccinating 20 million people by the end of 2020, fewer than three million people had received the new crown vaccine by the end of 2020. Second, the start-up has been slow. The U.S. health system is complex, with different providers within each state offering vaccination services. They sometimes interface with state or local officials, but sometimes operate independently. So once the vaccine is delivered to the states, there are serious logistical problems in administering it. "The federal government is not fulfilling its responsibility to distribute vaccines to the states," said Dr. Ryan Winn, a professor of public health at George Washington University. Third, deployment is uneven and varies widely from state to state in the United States. For example, as of Jan. 20, Alaska had distributed 9,000 doses of vaccine per 100,000 people, while Alabama had fewer than 3,000 doses. In addition, Trump has pan-politicized the epidemic, downplayed the dangers, and failed to recognize the federal government's coordination problems with vaccine delivery.

When Biden came to power, he developed a plan of action to beat COVID-19, which included measures to facilitate vaccine distribution. The plan stated: THIS ISN'T ABOUT POLITICS. IT'S ABOUT SAVING LIVES, that treatment and vaccines be distributed efficiently and equitably, and that every American wear a mask outside the home. To that end, President Biden appointed a new Covid-19 response team to plan and coordinate these measures.

 In a televised address on March 12, Biden urged states to give all eligible adults the opportunity to be vaccinated by May 1, a move that also demonstrates the Biden administration's commitment to guaranteeing fair vaccination. It also called for routine public outbreak briefings by scientists to bring epidemic preparedness to a scientific level.

Virus conspiracy theories and rumors proliferate, calling for science to fight the epidemic

Previously, a large amount of inaccurate information was disseminated on the Internet, creating an obstacle to the global fight against the epidemic. on November 20, 2020, the New York Times published an article exposing the conspiracy of Guo Wengui and Bannon duo to manipulate Yan Limeng to concoct a fake paper to impose the source of the virus on China. The article argues that Yan Limeng's transformation from an obscure college teacher to a hotshot shilling for the American right-wing was orchestrated by fugitive Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui and Stephen K. Bannon, a former adviser to Trump. Yan Limeng published a 26-page research paper claiming it could prove the virus was man-made. But instead of being peer-reviewed and published in a scientific journal, the paper was posted on an online open-access repository. Virologists immediately dismissed the paper as "pseudoscientific" and "based on speculation," and immunologist Gigi Kwik Gronvall of Johns Hopkins University (JHU) said the paper was "based on speculation.  Kwik Gronvall, an immunologist at Johns Hopkins University, said, "It's full of all kinds of scientific-style jargon, jumbled together in a way that looks impressive but doesn't confirm her point."

 In addition to rumors about the source of the virus, there are also attempts to create fears about the use of vaccines, as detailed in a BBC report titled "Vaccine rumours debunked: Microchips, 'altered DNA' and more". " was a detailed analysis of some of these rumors. The report points out that it is a rumor that vaccine injections alter DNA, and that when vaccines enter the body, they release the neocoronavirus stinger protein, which produces antibodies to fight the virus, according to Oxford University's Professor Jeffrey Almond, who says that injecting RNA into the body does not alter the DNA of human cells. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which represents Bill Gates, told the BBC that the claim was false. Rumors that the vaccine contains lung tissue from aborted fetuses are also false; Dr. Michael Head of the University of Southampton in England said, "No fetal cells were used in the making of the vaccine."

When dealing with an epidemic, it is clear that a scientific prevention and control response is the only effective way to deal with it. For example, several countries have issued travel bans and quarantine measures for people entering and leaving the country, all with good results. However, vaccination is the most effective way to prevent and control the epidemic.

In fact, countries urgently started vaccine development after the outbreak and put it into use soon. on December 2, 2020, the UK approved the use of the new crown vaccine jointly developed by Pfizer (USA) and BioNTech (Germany), and on December 30, China's State Drug Administration approved the registration application for the inactivated new crown virus vaccine of Sinopharm China Bio Beijing with conditions in accordance with the law.

Vaccine supply faces huge challenges

 According to the New York Times, as of May 8, 2021, more than 1.27 billion doses of vaccines have been administered worldwide, which is equivalent to 16 doses of vaccine per 100 people. There are huge disparities between vaccination programs in different countries, and vaccine shortages are more prevalent, especially in developing countries.

Covax, a global program launched in April 2020 by the World Health Organization (WHO) in partnership with two other vaccine promotion groups, plans to begin distributing the vaccine in February 2021, with the majority distributed to poor and middle-income countries. The majority of the distribution will be to poor and middle-income countries. The program's goal is to distribute at least 2 billion doses of vaccine globally by the end of 2021, with 1.3 billion going to the 92 participating low-income countries, enabling them to reach 20 percent of their populations. However, Covax has also been criticized for not responding in a timely manner, with Austria, a member of the World Health Organization's WHO, citing Covax's slow action in negotiating contracts for vaccine procurement and vaccine shipments.

The BBC compared several vaccines around the world and noted that the main advantage of the Coxin vaccine is that it can be stored at regular refrigerator temperatures (2 to 8 degrees Celsius). Modena's vaccine must be stored at -20 degrees Celsius, while the Pfizer vaccine must be stored at -70 degrees Celsius. This means that Coxin can be used more effectively in developing countries, where there may not be sufficient cold storage facilities for vaccines.

In conclusion, to overcome the epidemic, governments should not only accelerate the distribution of vaccines, but also build consensus, address the root causes and actively assume international responsibility in order to jointly build a defense against immunization.

[orbemnews]

In Quest for Herd Immunity, Giant Vaccination Sites Proliferate EAST HARTFORD, Conn. — With the nation’s coronavirus vaccine supply expected to swell over the next few months, states and cities are rushing to open mass vaccination sites capable of injecting thousands of shots a day into the arms of Americans, an approach the Biden administration has seized on as crucial for reaching herd immunity in a nation of 330 million. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has joined in too: It recently helped open seven mega-sites in California, New York and Texas, relying on active-duty troops to staff them and planning many more. Some mass sites, including at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles and State Farm Stadium in suburban Phoenix, aim to inject at least 12,000 people a day once supply ramps up; the one in Phoenix already operates around the clock. The sites are one sign of growing momentum toward vaccinating every willing American adult. Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose vaccine won emergency authorization from the Food and Drug Administration on Saturday, and both Moderna and Pfizer have promised much larger weekly shipments of vaccines by early spring. In addition to using mass sites, President Biden wants pharmacies, community clinics that serve the poor and mobile vaccination units to play major roles in increasing the vaccination rate. With only about 9 percent of adults fully vaccinated to date, the kind of scale mass sites provide may be essential as more and more people become eligible for the vaccines and as more infectious variants of the virus proliferate in the United States. But while the sites are accelerating vaccination to help meet the current overwhelming demand, there are clear signs they won’t be able to address a different challenge lying ahead: the many Americans who are more difficult to reach and who may be reluctant to get the shots. The drive-through mass vaccination site on a defunct airstrip here in East Hartford, outside Connecticut’s capital, shows the promise and the drawbacks of the approach. Run by a nonprofit health clinic, the site has become one of the state’s largest distributors of shots since it opened six weeks ago, and its efficiency has helped Connecticut become a success story. Only Alaska, New Mexico, West Virginia and the Dakotas have administered more doses per 100,000 residents. Most of the people running mass sites are learning on the fly. Finding enough vaccinators, already challenging for some sites, could become a broader problem as they multiply. Local health care providers or faith-based groups rooted in communities will likely be far more effective at reaching people who are wary of the shots. And many of the huge sites don’t work for people who lack cars or easy access to public transportation. “Highly motivated people that have a vehicle — it works great for them,” said Dr. Rodney Hornbake, who serves as both a vaccinator and the East Hartford site’s medic, on call for adverse reactions. “You can’t get here on a city bus.” Before dawn on a recent raw morning, Susan Bissonnette, the nurse in charge, prepared enough vials of the Pfizer vaccine and diluent for the first few hundred shots of the day. At 7:45 a.m., her team surrounded her in a semicircle, stamping the snow off their boots and warming their fingers for the hours of injections that lay ahead. “We’re going to start with 40 vials, eight per trailer,” Ms. Bissonnette shouted to the group of 19 nurses, a doctor and an underemployed dentist who had volunteered to help. “OK, so remember it’s Pfizer, right? Point three milliliters, right?” The site vaccinates about 1,700 people on a good day, partly because Connecticut is small and gets fewer doses than many other states. It is a well-oiled machine, with a few dozen National Guard troops directing cars into 10 lanes, checking in people, who have to make appointments in advance, and making sure they have filled out a medical questionnaire before moving down the runway to their shots. Troops also supervise the area at the end of the runway where people wait after their shots for 15 minutes — or 30, if they have a history of allergies — in case of serious reactions. In between are the vaccinators, two per car lane, trading on and off between jabbing arms. When they need to warm up, they retreat inside heated trailers to draw up doses and fill out vaccination cards. “If you simply open up with 10 lanes, it will be chaos unless you have teams all along the way at checkpoints, executing on the plan you’ve laid out,” said Mark Masselli, the president and chief executive of Community Health Center, which opened the East Hartford site on Jan. 18 and has since opened two smaller versions, in Stamford and Middletown. “You’ve got to marry some groups together — folks with health care delivery sense and folks with logistics sense.” The site came together in six days, as Mr. Masselli’s staff worked frenetically with the state to install trailers, generators, lights, a wireless network, portable bathrooms, traffic signs and thousands of orange cones to mark the lanes. Every worker has two all-important pieces of equipment: a walkie-talkie to communicate with all the stations and supervisors, and an iPad to verify appointments or enter information about each patient into a database. Updated  Feb. 28, 2021, 12:03 a.m. ET The vaccine they use is Pfizer’s, which adds complexity because it has to be stored at minus 70 degrees Fahrenheit. The supply is kept in an ultracold freezer that Community Health Center installed at the adjacent University of Connecticut football stadium. Ms. Bissonnette and other supervisors speed there in bumpy golf carts several times a day to grab more vials, which last for only two hours at room temperature. The first cars roll in at 8:30, often driven by the adult children or grandchildren of those getting shots. Drive-through clinics can be better for infection control, some experts say — people roll down their car windows only for the injection — and more comfortable than standing in line. But a month into the Connecticut site’s existence, its weaknesses are also clear. Traffic can get snarled on the busy road leading to the site, and bad weather can shut it down, requiring hundreds of appointments to be rescheduled on short notice. Spotty vaccine supply, which forced sites in California to close for a few days recently, can also wreak havoc. More significantly, you need a car, gas money and, for some elderly people, a driver to get to and from the site. At this point, white people comprise 82 percent of those seeking shots at the East Hartford site, down from 90 percent in early February; their overrepresentation is partly because the older population now eligible is less diverse than the state overall. To address problems of access and equity, FEMA is opening many of its new mass sites in low-income, heavily Black and Latino neighborhoods where fear of the vaccine is higher, vaccination rates have been lower and many people lack cars. In addition to its mass sites, Community Health Center, which serves large numbers of poor and uninsured people in clinics around the state, is also planning to send small mobile teams into neighborhoods to extend its vaccination reach. The East Hartford site has hired several dozen temporary nurses and trained its dentists and dental hygienists to help with the shots. Still, staffing the site with 22 vaccinators daily remains a challenge, one that will grow nationally as more people become eligible for the shots. Dr. Marcus Plescia, the chief medical officer for the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, said the need for mass vaccination sites might wane as more and more of the low-hanging fruit — Americans who are highly motivated to get vaccinated as soon as possible — is picked. “I think they have worked well in the current setting of demand substantially exceeding supply, drawing on many people who are eager to be vaccinated,” Dr. Plescia said. “As supply increases, and we have vaccinated the eager, we may find that lower-volume settings are preferable.” Mobile vaccination clinics will reach some of the vaccine hesitant. But Dr. Plescia said people who are uncertain and fearful would be best served by doctors’ offices or community health centers where they can talk it through with health care providers they know. “They’re not there to counsel you,” he said of mass sites. “You go to get the shot, end of story.” Dr. Nicole Lurie, who was the assistant health secretary for preparedness and response under President Barack Obama, said that instead of just asking FEMA for help, state and local governments should seek input from private companies used to keeping large crowds moving — while keeping them safe and happy. In one such example, the company running Boston’s mass vaccination sites contracted with the event management firm that runs the Boston Marathon to handle day-to-day logistics. Several companies that ran large coronavirus testing operations are also involved in mass vaccination. “These sites need to be motivated to make this a good experience for the customer, especially since they’re working with a two-dose vaccine,” Dr. Lurie said. “If it’s really a pain in the neck, why would you go wait in line again a few weeks later?” Most sites say their main challenge is not having enough supply to meet demand. But with 315 million more Pfizer and Moderna doses promised by the end of May, and Johnson & Johnson pledging to provide the United States with 100 million doses of its newly authorized vaccine by the end of June, that complaint may fade before long. The biggest headache for the East Hartford site has been the system for booking appointments, a clunky online registry known as VAMS that is being used in about 10 states. Many people 65 and older have had such a hard time navigating it that most end up calling 211, the phone number for health and social services assistance, to make appointments instead. As the hours pass, the eternally smiling vaccinators in East Hartford get tired — and sometimes bone cold. But sometimes there are unexpected boosts, such as when John Rudy, 65, pulled up with his mother, Antoinette, in the back seat. “We’ve got a 100-year-old!” Jean Palin, a nurse practitioner, announced as she prepared Ms. Rudy’s shot. The site usually closes at 4 p.m., but there was a problem: There were more no-shows than usual that day, in the middle of a snowy week, and there were 30 unused doses. Word went out from nurses at the site, including to people working at a nearby big-box store, who were not all eligible but could qualify for a vaccine if the alternative was throwing it away. “It’s just a precision game toward the end of the day,” Ms. Bissonnette said. At 5:15, Greg Gaudet, 63, drove up, teary with excitement. He had learned from one of the nurses, a former high school classmate, that a shot was available. “I have a luckily dormant cancer, but my immunity is low,” said Mr. Gaudet, an architect whose form of leukemia was diagnosed six years ago. “I’m so grateful.” How much the site will cost over time remains “a question that we are eager to work through,” Mr. Masselli said. Community Health Center spent about $500,000 to set it up and is spending roughly $50,000 a week on labor and other costs. It receives a fee for each shot it can bill insurance for — the Medicare rate is $16.94 for the first dose and $28.39 for the second — but is also counting on reimbursement from the state and FEMA for start-up and other costs. Still, the expense has not stopped Mr. Masselli from imagining an expansion. “There’s another runway over there,” he said, gesturing behind him. “Between the two, with two shifts, we could do 10,000 a day. March 14 is Daylight Saving Time; we’re going to pick up warmer weather, more light. The timing is right.” Source link Orbem News #giant #herd #immunity #Proliferate #Quest #sites #Vaccination

[docmary]

Anti-Vaxxers, Vaccine Hesitant, and “I want that shot so badly I would get it in my eye.”

To Vaccinate or Not to Vaccinate

There is a difference between the Anti-Vaxxers and the Vaccine Hesitant. The first group doesn’t want to get any vaccines, largely on ideological grounds. Anti-Vaxxers often site an article that came out in 1996 in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet, that claimed to have found a link between the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine (MMR) and autism. Later it was discovered that Wakefield, the primary author, had fudged some of the data and so the article was withdrawn. I understand some of the concerns about vaccinations, especially the “all their shots while they’re tots (before age 2)” campaign. I hold some of these ideas. I am just persuadable. Full disclosure, I have gotten the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and intend to get the second one. I have several reasons for deciding to get vaccinated which all come down to I’d rather be vaccinated than intubated.

The Vaccine Hesitant are likely to have been fully vaccinated and have chosen the same for their children. They just aren’t convinced that these particular vaccines are safe and are willing to take their chances with the wild virus. The speed at which these vaccines were developed and an unfortunate relationship between the medical community and the Black community in particular are among the reasons for this hesitancy.

What is mRNA?

Ribonucleic acid (RNA) is a single strand of nucleic acid, unlike deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) which is double stranded and shaped in a double helix pattern.  

Messenger RNA (mRNA) has the instructions for building amino acids that combine to build proteins. These proteins are assembled inside the cell using the ribosomes in the cytoplasm. Biotech companies have looked for ways to use mRNA as a way of creating fetal stem cells, fighting cancer, and treating diseases like zika virus and rabies since the 1970′s. Not until Pfizer and Moderna were granted emergency use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for their COVID-19 vaccines had any mRNA application had ever been approved.  More information on the history of mRNA

“Researchers understood [mRNA’s] role as a recipe book for the body’s trillions of cells…The concept: By making precise tweaks to synthetic mRNA and injecting people with it, any cell in the body could be transformed into an on-demand drug factory.”[1]

The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are two mRNA vaccines that have instructions for making the spike protein that gives the virus a crowned appearance (corona=crown), and that spike allows the virus to attach to human cells.

These spike proteins are then transported out of the cell where white blood cells recognize them as foreign invaders (antigens) and makes antibodies to them. These antibodies remember those spike proteins and will attack them again if the person is exposed to the real deal-COVID-19.

This is different from the way traditional vaccines work to stimulate the immune system by exposure to weakened (attenuated) forms of the whole virus. They are also different in that they do not have preservatives such as thimerisol (mercury) or adjuvants.

The mRNA vaccines don’t posses the “recipe” for the entire virus. It just takes over the manufacturing capabilities of our own cells to make a protein located on the outside of the virus that is considered harmless. It cannot give the vaccinated person COVID-19. After our cells have made the copies of the spike protein, the mRNA is destroyed. The mRNA does not get into the nucleus of the cell and cannot, therefore, effect the DNA in our own cells. 

The first vaccine shot doesn’t usually have much in the way of side effects other than pain at the injection site (and yes, it really hurts).  The second shot usually results in a more robust response because the immune system was primed 3-4 weeks earlier. (Not because that is the shot that has the microchip in it so that Bill Gates can track your every move. 😊)

That said, this is a relatively new technology. 

The most worrisome reaction to the vaccine so far is an immediate hypersensitivity reaction including anaphylaxis. The current recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is to wait 15-30 minutes at the place where the vaccine was administered in case that happens. In most severe allergic reactions, a shot of epinephrine will successfully treat the reaction.

It is too soon to tell whether there will be long-term consequences of these vaccines or how they compare to the other vaccine models that are seeking FDA approval. 

In a recent report from the New York Times, of the 75,000 brave people who received one of the five vaccines in clinical trials (Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZenica, Novavax, and Johnson & Johnson), not a single person has died of COVID-19, and only a few have been hospitalized. In those handful of cases that required hospitalization, all were discharged within 28 days from when they received the vaccine. Compare that to 150 dead from COVID-19 per 75,000 Americans and normally 5-10/year from influenza. To be sure, people have died after having been vaccinated and those numbers are tracked by Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). However, that does not mean they died from the vaccine. It just means they got the vaccine and died from whatever cause at some point later.

My Take:

Anecdotally, I suspect that a Venn diagram of Anti-Vaxxers and Anti-Maskers, would have a lot of overlap between those groups. I have no evidence for this belief, I just think it’s true. I also believe the overlap between the “I want that shot so badly I would get it in my eye” group and health care providers working on COVID wards is significant.

But what about the Vaccine Hesitant? Even among people in the healthcare field there is hesitancy, especially in nursing home staff. The most common reason cited is the speed at which these vaccines were developed. They are often waiting to see what happens in the people who do get vaccinated and may wait to get their shots until spring or summer.

Communities of Color:

Black, Hispanic, and Native American people are about four times more likely to be hospitalized and nearly three times more likely to die of COVID-19 than white people. The Kaiser Family Foundation found 35% of Black people said they do not plan on getting vaccinated. That is understandable. The stain of the Tuskegee experiment, where more than 600 Black men with syphilis were falsely told they had been treated for the disease and were followed for four decades while men died, went blind, and had other serious complications of syphilis. This plays a part in that reluctance. More information on the Tuskegee experiment

In another notorious case, Henrietta Lacks’s cancer cells were used for medical research without her or her family’s knowledge, and without financial compensation.[3] These and other cases in which Black people have been mistreated by the medical community have sown seeds of mistrust.

The Native population has been much more open to getting vaccinated. A survey of 1,435 Native Americans across 46 states found that 75% of participants were willing to receive a vaccine, according to a report by the Seattle-based Urban Indian Health Institute.[4] Having lived in Alaska for many years, this does not surprise me. The Native community holds their elders in high esteem and often live in multi-generational households. Protecting the elders would be consistent with Native core values.

For my part, I will be getting my booster dose, implementing public health measures such as wearing masks and social distancing, staying home when feeling ill, etc. I do it for my own health. As I said before, I’d rather be vaccinated than intubated. I am also doing it because our health system is stretched thin. If I need to go to the hospital at some point, it would be great if there was a bed for me. I know we still have questions that are not yet answered but if I have been able to address some of the questions for the Vaccine Hesitant, then my work here is done.

[1] Garde, D and Saltzman, j. The Story of mRNA: How a once-dismissed idea became a leading technology in the COVID vaccine race, STAT, retrieved from: https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/10/the-story-of-mrna-how-a-once-dismissed-idea-became-a-leading-technology-in-the-covid-vaccine-race

[2] Young, S., (2/3/2021). Black COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy rooted in mistrust, fear, WebMD, retrieved from: Medscape.com/viewarticle/945199

[3] Skloot, R.(2011). The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks, Crown Publishing.

[4] Hellman, M. (2/1/2021). How a Native American COVID-19 vaccination rollout is a model for community-centered approaches. Retrieved from:  https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/we-take-it-for-our-community-how-a-native-american-survey-and-vaccine-rollout-models-a-community-centered-approach

[newstfionline]

Tuesday, April 6, 2021

Biden Effort to Combat Hunger Marks ‘a Profound Change’ (NYT) With more than one in 10 households reporting that they lack enough to eat, the Biden administration is accelerating a vast campaign of hunger relief that will temporarily increase assistance by tens of billions of dollars and set the stage for what officials envision as lasting expansions of aid. The effort to rush more food assistance to more people is notable both for the scale of its ambition and the variety of its legislative and administrative actions. The campaign has increased food stamps by more than $1 billion a month, provided needy children a dollar a day for snacks, expanded a produce allowance for pregnant women and children, and authorized the largest children’s summer feeding program in history. “We haven’t seen an expansion of food assistance of this magnitude since the founding of the modern food stamp program in 1977,” said James P. Ziliak, an economist at the University of Kentucky who studies nutrition programs. “It’s a profound change.”

Police, communities across U.S. fight back against anti-Asian hate crimes (Reuters) More than a dozen San Jose, California, police officers walked through the white arches of the Grand Century Mall in “Little Saigon” to reassure a Vietnamese-American community fearful over the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes in the United States. Across the United States, law enforcement agencies are scrambling to better protect Asian communities amid a wave of violence targeting them since lockdowns to cope with the coronavirus pandemic began about a year ago. A recent report by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, showed that while hate crimes overall in the United States had fallen slightly in 2020, crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) had jumped by 145%. A vicious assault last week in which a man kicked a 65-year-old immigrant from the Philippines in New York City multiple times was captured on video and went viral, further stoking fears about anti-Asian hate crimes. New York City has deployed a team of undercover Asian police officers. Other major cities, from San Jose to Chicago, have boosted patrols in Asian neighborhoods and sought to forge closer ties with communities, some of which have sought to fill gaps the police can’t fill.

Florida works to avoid ‘catastrophic’ pond collapse (AP) Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Sunday that crews are working to prevent the collapse of a large wastewater pond in the Tampa Bay area while evacuating the area to avoid a “catastrophic flood.” Manatee County officials say the latest models show that a breach at the old phosphate plant reservoir has the potential to gush out 340 million gallons of water in a matter of minutes, risking a 20-foot-high (about 6.1-meter-high) wall of water. Authorities have closed off portions of the U.S. Highway 41 and ordered evacuations of 316 homes. Some families were placed in local hotels. Crews have been discharging water since the pond began leaking in March. On Friday, a significant leak that was detected escalated the response and prompted the first evacuations and a declaration of a state of emergency on Saturday. A portion of the containment wall in the reservoir shifted, leading officials to think a collapse could occur at any time.

Demonstrators protest a policing bill in England and Wales (Vox) Thousands of demonstrators marched across Britain on Saturday in protest of a massive new policing bill that would create new restrictions on protest in England and Wales and impose hefty fines for not following police instructions. The bill, officially known as the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, was introduced in early March and has been met with widespread pushback in England and Wales since then. It also includes sentencing and court reforms, among other changes, but protesters are specifically incensed by proposed new police powers concerning protests. According to the BBC’s Dominic Casciani, the bill would criminalize violating restrictions that protesters “‘ought’ to have known about, even if they have not received a direct order from an officer,” and “intentionally or recklessly causing public nuisance.” This weekend’s “kill the bill” marches aren’t the first. According to the Guardian, Bristol, in southwest England, has been the site of at least five protests over the last two weeks, including one that turned violent and saw at least two police vehicles set on fire earlier in March.

Marine Le Pen’s growing support (Financial Times) It would be a political earthquake as disruptive as the UK referendum vote for Brexit in 2016 and the election of Donald Trump as US president later that year. Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s extreme right Rassemblement National party, is doing so well in the polls that she threatens to foil Emmanuel Macron’s re-election bid and could win next year’s presidential vote to become the country’s first far-right leader since the second world war. Only last week, she likened herself to Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the UK’s Brexiters—and by implication former US president Trump—as a politician who could triumph with the support of all kinds of voters. “There’s no more split between left and right, there’s a split between the globalists and the nationalists,” she said.

Polish hospitals struggle with surge of virus patients (AP) Polish hospitals struggled over the Easter weekend with a massive number of people infected with COVID-19 following a huge surge in infections across Central and Eastern Europe in recent weeks. Tougher new pandemic restrictions were ordered in Poland for a two-week period surrounding Easter in order to slow down the infection rate. The country hit new records of over 35,000 daily infections on two recent days, and deaths have been in the hundreds each day. The aim of the new restrictions was to prevent large gatherings over the long weekend culminating with Easter Monday. Meanwhile, the government is also trying to speed up the country’s vaccine rollout, but the pressure on the country’s hospitals is still relentless.

Maoist Insurgents Kill 23 Indian Forces in Ambush, Officials Say (NYT) At least 23 Indian security forces were killed in an ambush by Maoist militants in the central state of Chattisgarh, officials said on Sunday, reviving concerns around a decades-old insurgency that appeared to have been largely contained in recent years. A large force of Indian security personnel had been carrying out a clearance operation in a densely forested area on the edges of the Bijapur district when they were ambushed by the insurgents on Saturday in a firefight that lasted four hours. Avinash Mishra, the deputy superintendent of police in Bijapur, said an additional 31 security personnel were wounded in the attack. The insurgents, who trace their roots to communist politics in the 1960s, use violence against the state in the name of championing the cause of India’s poor and marginalized. Their reach was once so widespread, and their attacks so frequent, that in 2006, India’s prime minister declared them the country’s “single biggest internal-security challenge.”

China is betting that the West is in irreversible decline (The Economist) Its gaze fixed on the prize of becoming rich and strong, China has spent the past 40 years as a risk-averse bully. Quick to inflict pain on smaller powers, it has been more cautious around any country capable of punching back. Recently, however, China’s risk calculations have seemed to change. First Yang Jiechi, the Communist Party’s foreign-policy chief, lectured American diplomats at a bilateral meeting in Alaska, pointing out the failings of American democracy. That earned him hero status back home. Then China imposed sanctions on British, Canadian and European Union politicians, diplomats, academics, lawyers and democracy campaigners. Those sweeping curbs were in retaliation for narrower Western sanctions targeting officials accused of repressing Muslims in the north-western region of Xinjiang.      China’s foreign ministry declares that horrors such as the Atlantic slave trade, colonialism and the Holocaust, as well as the deaths of so many Americans and Europeans from covid-19, should make Western governments ashamed to question China’s record on human rights. Most recently Chinese diplomats and propagandists have denounced as “lies and disinformation” reports that coerced labour is used to pick or process cotton in Xinjiang. They have praised fellow citizens for boycotting foreign brands that decline to use cotton from that region. Still others have sought to prove their zeal by hurling Maoist-era abuse. A Chinese consul-general tweeted that Canada’s prime minister was “a running dog of the us”.      Such performance-nationalism is watched by Western diplomats in Beijing with dismay. Envoys have been summoned for late-night scoldings by Chinese officials, to be informed that this is not the China of 120 years ago when foreign armies and gunboats forced the country’s last, tottering imperial dynasty to open the country wider to outsiders. Some diplomats talk of living through a turning-point in Chinese foreign policy. History buffs debate whether the moment more closely resembles the rise of an angry, revisionist Japan in the 1930s, or that of Germany when steely ambition led it to war in 1914. A veteran diplomat bleakly suggests that China’s rulers view the West as ill-disciplined, weak and venal, and are seeking to bring it to heel, like a dog.

Minorities in Myanmar borderlands face fresh fear since coup (AP) Before each rainy season Lu Lu Aung and other farmers living in a camp for internally displaced people in Myanmar’s far northern Kachin state would return to the village they fled and plant crops that would help keep them fed for the coming year. But this year in the wake of February’s military coup, with the rains not far off, the farmers rarely step out of their makeshift homes and don’t dare leave their camp. They say it is simply too dangerous to risk running into soldiers from Myanmar’s army or their aligned militias. “We can’t go anywhere and can’t do anything since the coup,” Lu Lu Aung said. “Every night, we hear the sounds of jet fighters flying so close above our camp.” The military’s lethal crackdown on protesters in large central cities such as Yangon and Mandalay has received much of the attention since the coup that toppled Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government. But far away in Myanmar’s borderlands, Lu Lu Aung and millions of others who hail from Myanmar’s minority ethnic groups are facing increasing uncertainty and waning security as longstanding conflicts between the military and minority guerrilla armies flare anew.

Tropical cyclone kills at least 97 in Indonesia, East Timor (Reuters) Floods and landslides triggered by tropical cyclone Seroja in a cluster of islands in southeast Indonesia and East Timor have killed 97 people, with many still unaccounted for and thousands displaced, officials said on Monday. At least 70 deaths were reported in several islands in Indonesia’s West and East Nusa Tenggara provinces, while 70 others were missing, after the cyclone brought flash floods, landslides and strong winds amid heavy rain over the weekend, disaster agency BNPB said.

Lawyer says mediation resolves feud among Jordan royals (AP) Mediation between Jordan’s King Abdullah II and his outspoken half brother, Prince Hamzah, successfully de-escalated one of the most serious political crises in the kingdom in decades, the palace and a confidant of the prince said Monday. The apparent resolution of the unprecedented public feud capped a weekend of palace drama during which the king had placed Hamzah under house arrest for allegedly plotting with foreign supporters to destabilize Jordan, a key Western ally. The announcement of the successful mediation came after Abdullah’s paternal uncle, Hassan, met with Hamzah on Monday. Hamzah was joined by his brother Hashem and three of their cousins. “In light of the developments of the past two days, I put myself at the disposal of His Majesty the King,” said the statement signed by Hamzah. He said he would remain loyal to the king and to Jordan’s constitution. Malik R. Dahlan, a professional mediator and a friend of the family, then issued a separate statement, saying the mediation has “been successful and I expect a resolution shortly.” He said that “this regrettable incident was the result of the clumsy actions of a senior security official and misrepresentation by a government official,” adding that “it should have remained a family matter.”

Netanyahu’s favours were ‘currency’, prosecutor says as corruption trial starts (Reuters) Israeli prosecutors accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of treating favours as “currency” on Monday at the opening of a corruption trial which, along with an inconclusive election, has clouded his prospects of remaining in office. Netanyahu, who has pleaded not guilty to charges of bribery, breach of trust and fraud, came to Jerusalem District Court in a dark suit and black protective mask, conferring quietly with lawyers as his supporters and critics held raucous demonstrations outside. Meanwhile, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin began consulting with party heads on who might form the next coalition government—a toss-up after the March 23 election, the fourth in two years, gave neither Netanyahu nor his rivals a clear mandate.

Pandemic Spreads Isolation (WSJ) A year ago when Japan was under a pandemic state of emergency, Seiji Saejima called his ex-wife for the first time since they divorced a few years earlier. He said she told him she was about to remarry and asked him not to call again. It was an unwelcome reminder of the isolation he was feeling. “I did not have many friends to contact even before,” said the 34-year-old, who works at a city government office near Tokyo. Then the pandemic forced reductions in activities that kept him connected, like going to singles’ mixers. “The coronavirus has made me realize I’m lonely,” he said. Recent data suggest many more people are having the same experience, and that is changing the thinking of some governments. Japan recently named a loneliness and isolation minister, following the U.K.’s example from three years ago. The U.K. named a minister after recognizing the impact of isolation on people’s health and its economy. One study linked deficiencies in social relationships to a 29% increase in heart disease. Another estimated that a chronically lonely person could cost the government, on average, the equivalent of an extra $16,600 over 15 years, owing to higher medical and other costs. “The magnitude of effect of social connection on mortality risk is comparable, and in many cases, exceeds that of other well-accepted risk factors, including smoking up to 15 cigarettes per day, obesity and air pollution,” said Julianne Holt-Lunstad, a Brigham Young University professor of psychology and neuroscience, in 2017 U.S. Senate testimony.

[lawrencedienerthings]

For diabetes patients, new health threats and cost concerns surface during coronavirus

#highschool🚿 🎓 🌴 🥂 😪 🌊

Colorado News

Samantha Almeida was working at a furniture store the summer before her junior year at Denver’s Thomas Jefferson High School, when her bosses started noticing signs that Samantha might have diabetes before she did.

Almeida would ask for extra bathroom breaks from her cashier’s station because she was drinking so much water. She seemed tired all the time. But her bosses weren’t interested in the root causes. They fired her.

In the fall of 2017, Almeida fainted at school. She woke up in the hospital, where doctors told her that her blood sugar was far too high. More tests came back, and they told her she had Type 1 diabetes — a surprise since there was no family history of the potentially debilitating disease. (Type 1 diabetes, in which the body stops producing insulin, occurs often in childhood, possibly from a combination of genetic and environmental factors; Type 2 diabetes—in which the body stops responding to or producing enough insulin—is more common, usually occurs later in life and is associated with obesity, poor nutrition and/or lack of exercise.)

The next two months were upsetting not just to Almeida, but her family as well. Diabetes management can be overwhelming, with the education, the constant blood testing and monitoring, the shots, the cost of insulin, the medical appointments, the every-bite nutrition calculations.

“At the time, we didn’t have enough money for the pump” — an implanted reservoir of insulin that is an enormous improvement over the traditional injections — Almeida said. But the lessons on her new lifestyle started to make sense, and she eventually was told that health insurance would pay for a continuous glucose monitor and the pump.

Almeida grew confident and experienced enough managing her treatment that school officials asked her to be a peer mentor for other students coping with the disease, some of them newly diagnosed. “It’s been like a roller coaster,” she said, “but I’m feeling good.”

Starting on the wrong side of the statistics

Almeida, who is Hispanic, started on the wrong side of seemingly immutable diabetes statistics —12.5% of Hispanics and 11.7% of non-Hispanic Blacks in the U.S. have diabetes, compared to 7.5% of whites. American Indians and Alaska Natives have a 14.7% diabetes rate, with rates in some individual tribes higher than 40%.

From 2002 to 2010, “Hispanic children and youth had the largest significant increases in incidence of type 1 diabetes,” per a 2020 report on diabetes prevalence and trends by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. From 2011 to 2015, the biggest rate increase in Type 1 cases was among non-Hispanic Asians and Pacific Islanders; overall, Type 1 case rates are highest among white children, while Type 2 cases are highest among children of color.

Access to the most advanced treatment also has racial disparities: 39% of Hispanic children had insulin pumps in a Pediatrics study of thousands of patients, compared to 61% of white patients and 26% among African Americans. Almeida beat the odds through Medicaid and Denver Health, and with careful attention from school-based health care providers.

The racial and income gaps in diabetes management and care access are worse than ever in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. People of color in Colorado and other states are dying from the virus at disproportionately high rates — in part because they are more likely to have untreated, underlying conditions like diabetes, which significantly increases risk of hospitalization from COVID-19. Loss of jobs and health insurance, again falling more heavily on people of color and lower-income wage earners, can make insulin and other health care necessities further out of reach. (Even among those still employed, wages among essential workers show stark disparities among race lines across all industries, per 2019 data.)

“We all have to attack this head on. And I am hopeful that this pandemic has showcased for all Americans that the things we are talking about are human rights,” said Tracey Brown, national executive director for the American Diabetes Association (ADA). “We know that every five minutes, someone is having an amputation because of diabetes. Someone is losing a limb. Now, we have to act to make sure things are done differently.”

Inequity in Colorado diabetes prevalence and treatment is clear from two reports drilling into local data.

Rate of diabetes is 68% higher in Adams County than in Douglas County

Maps of diabetes prevalence developed by the Colorado Regional Observation Health Data Service show much higher rates of diabetes in Denver metro-area communities with higher percentages of people of color and low-income residents. For example, Denver and Adams counties rates are 9.6% and 11.1% of the population, respectively, while Douglas and Boulder counties are 6.6% and 7.6%. That means the rate of diabetes in Adams County is 68% higher than in Douglas County.

Patients losing limbs to diabetes, as Brown mentioned, also happens at inequitable rates in metro Denver. A different set of data, in the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Series on diabetes studying Medicare patients across states, showed the rate of limb amputation from diabetes complications in the Denver area at 4.7 per 1,000 patients among Blacks, and 2.1 amputations per 1,000 patients for non-Blacks.

The imbalance extends to proactive diabetes interventions as well. Consistent cholesterol testing is a top protocol for optimal diabetes management—arterial blockages from fatty plaque lead to poor circulation in diabetic patients, increasing the chances of limb deterioration and, eventually, amputation. The Dartmouth study showed that 77.1% of non-Black diabetic patients in the metro area received cholesterol tests, versus only 68.1% of Black patients.

Colorado has been among the leaders in attacking one glaring inequity in diabetes care: the price of insulin, which can run to thousands of dollars a year. Patient advocates say Colorado’s 2019 bill capping the consumer’s out-of-pocket monthly insulin cost at $100 per prescription was the first of its kind in the nation, and other states and federal insurance programs are now making similar moves.

“It’s our goal to keep pushing until we get 50 states across the line,” said the ADA’s Brown. Advocates are also working with congressional leaders to get a zero-copay provision for insulin into Medicare, whose rates and rules are often followed by private insurance.

Lowering the cost of diabetes treatment is more important now than ever, Brown said, with COVID-19 having cost so many lower-income workers and people of color their jobs, and with the virus striking hardest at people with high rates of comorbidities like diabetes: “Those are the places we are leaning in, because it’s just so important right now to save lives.”

The price of insulin doubled in four years

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser is conducting a statewide patient survey of diabetes treatment and cost experience, as required by the 2019 insulin cap bill.

“Between 2012 and 2016, insulin prices doubled,” Weiser said in an interview. “In normal competitive markets, that doesn’t happen.

“As a moral matter, I don’t believe we should be in a situation where peoples’ lives are on the line and they are literally making life-and-death choices. We should make sure that everyone who needs [insulin] can get it and make it affordable. That’s an imperative and we take it very seriously.”

The attorney general and state lawmakers want to know from patients how prices vary by region, insurance provider or manufacturer; whether consumers are forced to make life-changing spending choices because of high costs; how they have tried to lower costs with “workarounds” (e.g., manufacturer coupons, or even stretching an insulin prescription over a longer period of time—a potentially life-threatening cost-savings tactic); and whether some populations experience these facets of the health care system differently than others.

In the face of systemic inequities in prevalence and experience of diabetes in Colorado, health care providers come up with their own methods to close the gaps.

Dr. Andrea Gerard Gonzalez is an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, and pediatric endocrinologist at the Barbara Davis Center for Diabetes. After finishing medical school in Mexico City, Gerard Gonzalez first practiced in a tiny village in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, with no running water or electricity, three hours’ drive from a hospital. When her first Type 1 diabetes case arrived on her doorstep, she had to keep insulin chilled by putting it in a cold river, in the same watering hole where she kept her Diet Cokes.

In the Denver metro area, Gerard Gonzalez concentrates on the disproportionately high number of childhood diabetes cases in the Latinx community, including helping newly diagnosed Type 1 families cope with the sudden demands of multiple appointments, constant glucose monitoring and self-administering shots, not to mention a complete nutrition overhaul.

Many of the families she works with have mothers holding down three jobs, Gerard Gonzalez said. Diabetes care at home is often given by older siblings and grandparents. Providers, meanwhile, are too stretched to spend hours of one-on-one time helping guide families through the volumes of information on nutrition, blood monitoring, new technology for insulin pumps, and extra medical appointments.

“It broke my heart because I came to one of the best places, and yet I discovered one of these huge disparities in outcomes and treatment of what Spanish-speaking patients were getting compared to everyone else,” Gerard Gonzalez said.

Few Spanish speakers got insulin pumps

Almost none of the center’s Spanish-speaking patients were getting the modern standard care of continuous monitoring and insulin pumps, Gerard Gonzalez said. So she and the center instituted group diabetes sessions, with up to 10 families in each, and invited siblings, grandparents and other caregivers. Sessions are led by providers and nutritionists who, like Gerard Gonzalez, are bilingual.

Six years after beginning to practice in Colorado, Gerard Gonzalez said, none of her patients at the Barbara Davis Center are currently on the less effective, short-acting insulin. A study she co-published in the journal Diabetes found that after two years of the special program, the percentage of Hispanic patients under 12 using the optimal pump technology grew from 17% to 40%.

With western Indigenous peoples reporting the highest diabetes rates of any racial or ethnic group, culturally sensitive medicine and education programs have worked for years to improve those rates. The Colorado School of Public Health’s Centers for American Indian and Alaska Native Health works all over the West — not only on reservations, but in urban settings “where 72% of American Indians live,” noted director Spero Manson, Ph.D., who is also a professor of public health and psychiatry. (Manson occupies The Colorado Trust Chair in American Indian Health within the Colorado School of Public Health.)

Type 2 diabetes in children has been considered an epidemic in Indigenous populations, Manson noted. But after decades of reform, including tribal and federally funded health services paying for extensive screenings for risk factors, obesity and diabetes rates are finally showing signs of reversing in those communities, Manson said.

“After years of increasing, the percentage of American Indian and Alaska Native adults with diabetes consistently decreased from 15.4% in 2013 to 14.6% in 2017. This represents a 5.2% decrease in prevalence,” according to a 2020 study published by the Indian Health Service.

“That doesn’t mean this epidemic is over, by any means,” Manson said. “It means these kinds of interventions we were able to mobilize are having an effect.”

Colorado families with immigrants from northern Mexico have additional challenges managing diabetes, said Dr. Richard Gonzalez, a physician licensed in Mexico who handles a public health screening and education program, called Ventanilla de Salud, out of the Mexican consulate in Denver. The arrangement is supported by Servicios de la Raza, a Denver-based, Latinx-focused health and human services provider.

Gonzalez surveyed and screened nearly 800 visitors to the consulate’s health center, and found 69% had some family history of diabetes. Thirty-five percent of females and 21% of males in the screening scored high-risk on an international scale, Gonzalez said, including a 40% obesity rate among the respondents.

The survey revealed common barriers to care among these largely Spanish-speaking patients, Gonzalez said:

Patients are uncomfortable talking through an interpreter. They want to give and receive health information directly in their first language, while Colorado clinics have a shortage of fluent Spanish-speaking providers.

Forty percent of the consulate visitors were uninsured.

Existing diabetes patients often return to Mexico to buy insulin, staying there or risking re-crossing, or ask relatives to bring insulin north. (The price of insulin in Mexico is typically hundreds or even thousands of dollars less per month than in much of the United States.) Some even return to Mexico for dialysis treatment for end-stage kidney disease, a common complication for diabetes.

Many respondents felt getting more involved in the U.S. health care or insurance systems would increase their risk of contact with immigration enforcement.

A large portion of the people who visit the consulate for health education are undocumented, Gonzalez said, barring them from Medicaid or Medicare. Extending Medicaid to undocumented people—a highly controversial, long-debated subject—would certainly help, he said. Barring that, though, he suggests the U.S. allow undocumented people to use Medicaid and then bill the government of Mexico for the costs.

Samantha Almeida, 19, works as a diabetes peer mentor for Denver Public Schools, helping other teens understand how to manage their condition. (Special to the Colorado Trust by Joe Mahoney)

As a diabetes peer mentor for Denver Public Schools, Samantha Almeida figures she’ll have plenty of work to do, indefinitely. It’s hard enough to get teenagers to take actions that will protect them in the long term, let alone in something as complex and demanding as diabetes care.

“One girl wouldn’t give herself insulin because she thought she’d be OK” without it, Almeida recalled. “But the more you eat without insulin, your A1C [blood sugar] goes up, and the more damage your body is doing to yourself. So I worked with her on how to count carbs and calories. And sometimes she wouldn’t eat throughout the day, and I would tell her she needed to eat.”

A buddy system helps young people diagnosed with diabetes from feeling overwhelmed, she said.

“When we are first diagnosed, it’s very hard for us, and something we’re going to have to deal with for the rest of our lives,” Almeida said. “So we really need mentors there to help us deal with it.”

Freelance writer Michael Booth wrote this story for The Colorado Trust, a philanthropic foundation that works on health equity issues statewide. It appeared at coloradotrust.org on June 22, 2020.

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[youngandhungryent]

Stay Ready: DJ Khaled Wears Full Hazmat Suit To Dentist Appointment

Source: WENN.com / WENN

While the nation is currently fighting against social injustice, the threat of another wave of COVID-19 still imminently looms in the background –a fact that DJ Khaled takes very seriously.

On Saturday (Jun 20), DJ Khaled took to Instagram to share a picture of himself wearing a full hazmat suit while having to make an emergency appointment with his dentist after having oral problems. Although he was stepping out, he made sure to let fans know that he’s very aware of the recently reported record high influx in COVID-19 cases in multiple states including Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona, and Florida.

Khaled who noted that he and his family have been in quarantine for more than 90 days, added he’d not taking any chances with the possibility of exposure.

“Play wit it if you want (

). I got kids I don’t play games

. First day out the crib in 3 and half months

”

View this post on Instagram

Play wit it if you want (

) I got kids I don’t play games

First day out the crib in 3 and half months

A post shared by DJ KHALED (@djkhaled) on Jun 19, 2020 at 1:27pm PDT

In addition to donning the hazmat suit, the We Da Best head honcho took fans along for the ride during his procedure by sharing photos and video footage of his emergency dental visit, revealing that he’s had trouble with a previous root canal for 15 years.

View this post on Instagram

taken out my root canal

that I had gave me pain over 15 years . I want to thank The office BLUM-Nico Oral Surgery Associates Dr.Nico and team who was excellent! Taking out the root canal very grateful for your help . Thank u Dr.Mereos Dr. Kopf for the recommendation team work @Isidorosmereos @precious.smiles NEW ALBUM IN THE WORKS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! @wethebestmusic

A post shared by DJ KHALED (@djkhaled) on Jun 19, 2020 at 5:07pm PDT

“I want to thank The office BLUM-Nico Oral Surgery Associates Dr.Nico and team who was excellent! Taking out the root canal very grateful for your help,” DJ Khaled wrote.

Concern regarding the virus is definitely warranted after more than twelve states have reported a significant spike since Friday (Jun 19). According to ABC News, Florida, Texas, Utah, South Carolina, Nevada, Georgia, Missouri, Montana, Arizona, California, Tennessee, and Oklahoma all reported record high spikes in new cases, with Oklahoma reporting a whopping 10,000 new confirmed cases last week.

On Sunday, the same day Oklahoma set a record number of daily new COVID-19 cases, and one day after Donald Trump‘s abysmal campaign rally in Tulsa, the state health department was urging anyone who had attended “large-scale gatherings in recent weeks” to get tested for COVID-19.

“As expected, Oklahoma’s urban areas as well as a few communities around the state are experiencing a rise in active COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations due to increased social activity and mobility,” Interim Commissioner Dr. Lance Frye said in a statement. “[We] need Oklahomans to get tested, even those without symptoms, so we can identify active cases and work together to minimize community spread.”

ABC News also reports that hospitalizations for COVID-19 are increasing in 17 states across the country, including Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah.

source https://hiphopwired.com/883357/dj-khaled-wears-full-hazmat-suit-to-dentist-appointment/

[californiaprelawland]

How COVID-19 Disproportionately Affects Minorities In America

By Paulina Cano, Loyola Marymount University Class of 2021

June 18, 2020

The Coronavirus pandemic is a crisis that is affecting the lives of millions of people worldwide. The persistent problem with COVID-19 is that this disease can cause sickness, death, and is more contagious than influenza. Health officials have confirmed that as of June 2020, the United States has over two million cases. The rise in case tolls demonstrates how the virus is surging rather than declining.

Studies by leading health experts provide evidence which show how Black Americans are more susceptible of dying from the virus compared to all other ethnicities. In Black Americans dying of Covid-19 at three times the rate of white people by Ed Pilkington from The Guardian, explains the death toll statistics between Black Americans and the rest of the nation. “Across the country, African Americans have died at a rate of 50.3 per 100,000 people, compared with 20.7 for whites, 22.9 for Latinos and 22.7 for Asian Americans”, says Pilkington.

Researchers argue that the federal government doesn’t have a legitimate plan to mitigate racial disparities. Instead, the “senior Trump administration officials have blamed the disparities on the high incidence among black people of underlying health conditions such as diabetes, hypertension and obesity”, says Pilkington. The Trump administration was heavily criticized for this statement because they accused Black Americans to being susceptible of the virus which is false.Anyone can come in contact with virus, and you can experience minor, severe, or no symptoms at all. Whether you are White, Black, Latinx,Pacific Islander, you are a victim to the virus, because no one has immunity to it. Therefore, a person’s race or ethnicity should not be the blame for increased mortality rates. Instead, we must further research why communities of color are disproportionately suffering more than others.

Low-income communities have higher COVID-19 death rates because they have limited access to testing and treatment for the disease. In the Los Angeles Times article, Racism and Inequity Fuel Coronavirus-Related Death Toll Among L.A. County Minorities, Officials say, by writer Rong-Gong Lin II, explains the correlation between higher death rates and lack of health services.For example, an existing problem in Los Angeles County is that there are only four locations in which you can get free testing for COVID-19. The issue with having limited locations is that many will be unable to benefit from getting tested, for reasons such as having no form of transportation or work requirements. This dilemma affects people from low-income neighborhoods and people who are undocumented. Specifically, because to have access toCOVID-19 testing,you either have to pay out of pocket or be insured. Therefore, free testing is the only option for residents in low-income neighborhoods and for people who are undocumented or uninsured. As a result, low-income residents’ inability to get tested adheres to the persistent issue of higher COVID-19 cases and death rates within low-income communities.

“Whether or not it looks bad now, the point is because of the limited resources in these neighborhoods, they are going to be experiencing a disproportionate number of deaths from here on and forward in the future, especially if there are no resources deployed to these neighborhoods to help minimize the impact of Covid,” said social epidemiologist Sandra Albrecht to Amanda Holpuch in the article Corona in Corona: deadly toll in a New York neighborhood tells a story of race, poverty and inequality from The Guardian.

People who have underlying health issues such as obesity, diabetes, hypertension, are more susceptible to contracting COVID-19. Statistics show that people of color are vulnerable to these underlying health issues. As a result, this awareness has been an explanation to justify why minority populations have disproportionate spikes in COVID-19 cases. “About 1 in 5 U.S. adults under age 65 are at higher risk for severe illness from COVID-19 because of an underlying health condition that can aggravate the disease. In minority communities, the numbers are higher. More than 1 in 3 (34 percent) American Indian/Alaska Native adults and 27 percent of black adults under age 65 are at higher risk of serious illness from COVID-19 due to underlying health conditions, a May analysis from KFF found”, says Rachel Nania from AARP.

In Chicago neighborhood Auburn Gresham, Black Americans and Latinx residents are dying at three times the rate as white residents in greater Chicago areas. Mayor Lori Lightfoot says that the lack of resources is the result of a system of injustice that limits low-income communities to resources such as nutrient dense foods, health services, jobs, good education systems and more.

"We're seeing this manifest in large urban areas with large black populations," says Lightfoot. "All over the United States — Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee and other places are experiencing the same thing, but we are going to step up and do something about it,” says Lightfoot to writer Cheryl Corley of NPR in Chicago Tackles COVID-19 Disparities In Hard-Hit Black And Latino Neighborhoods.

The Coronavirus pandemic has economically and socially wounded our nation. Statistical data done by leading health experts shows how people of color have increasingly higher COVID-19 cases and death rates compared to the rest of the nation. The disproportionate effect that COVID-19 has on minority populations is not biological, instead it’s rooted to the issues of inequality and

impacts of racism that people of color have encountered for hundreds of years. Low-income neighborhoods are susceptible to the virus because they are more exposed and less protected. Many residents work in front line jobs; therefore, they are more vulnerable to exposure. As a result, if residents do become infected, then they face fatality risks for the reason that many people who live in low-income neighborhoods suffer from underlying health conditions. People should not be a punished because they are impoverished, instead our federal government should prioritize their care above all others.Low-income residents do not have the means to attain optimum health. Therefore, local, state, and federal governments should fund low-income neighborhoods with resources that prevent these injustices from perpetuating in society.

To break the cycle of injustice, government officials should fund a recovery plan for low-income zip codes that would assure the health of all. This action would create a healthier and safer environment for all residents and their communities. If government officials were to take responsibility for the overdue damage that they cause to low-income neighborhoods, then we could see a decrease in COVID-19 cases and death rates for people of color. Moreover, government officials should improve resources in disadvantaged communities such as providing better housing, cleaner air, health care, better k-12 education, and more. This call to action would make residents of low-income communities feel less like a burden and more like a valuable citizen to society. When our country begins to care for the well-being of all, we will witness a decrease and even dismantle the racial disparities that oppress people of color.

________________________________________________________________

Corley, C.C., (June 9, 2020), Chicago tackles COVID-19 Disparities In Hard-Hit Black And Latino Neighborhoods, Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2020/06/09/869074151/chicago-tackles-covid-19-disparities-in-hard-hit-black-and-latino-neighborhoods

Holpuch, A.H., (June 15, 2020), Corona in Corona: deadly toll in New York neighborhoods tells a story of race, poverty and inequality, Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/15/coronavirus-corona-queens-ny-virus-shook-neighborhood

Lin II, R.G.L., (June 9, 2020), Racism and Inequity Fuel Coronavirus-Related Death Toll Among L.A. County Minorities, Officials say, Retrieved from https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-06-09/coronavirus-deaths-racism-blacks-latinos-pacific-islanders-inequity

Nania, R.N., (May 8, 2020),Blacks, Hispanics Hit Harder by the Coronavirus, Early U.S. Data Show, Retrieved fromhttps://www.aarp.org/health/conditions-treatments/info-2020/minority-communities-covid-19.html

Pilkington, E.D., (May 20, 2020), Black Americans dying of Covid-19 at three times the rate of white people, Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/20/black-americans-death-rate-covid-19-coronavirus

[gordonwilliamsweb]

Democratic Convention, Night 3: Making the Party Lines Clear

The third night of the Democratic National Convention was all about one thing: Sen. Kamala Harris of California becoming the first Black and Indian American woman to accept a major political party’s vice presidential nomination.

But key Democratic criticisms — many rooted in health care issues and the COVID-19 pandemic — were repeated throughout the evening.

Hillary Clinton took an early swipe at President Donald Trump’s coronavirus response, describing how he has fallen short despite coming in “with so much set up for him,” such as “plans for managing crises — including a pandemic.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reupped another criticism of Trump and his fellow Republicans: “Instead of crushing the virus, they’re trying to crush the Affordable Care Act and its preexisting conditions benefit,” she said.

During her acceptance speech, Harris issued her harsh rebuke: “Donald Trump’s failure of leadership has cost lives and livelihoods.”

Our partners at PolitiFact did a thorough rundown on many of the evening’s claims. Here’s one of our favorites:

“And while this virus touches us all, we’ve got to be honest: It is not an equal opportunity offender. Black, Latino and Indigenous people are suffering and dying disproportionately.” — Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris 

This is true, based on available data.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has broken down some COVID data by race and ethnicity; however, not all cases reported include demographic information. Of the cases that do, Hispanic/Latino people have represented 31% of cases and 16.9% of deaths. Black people account for 19.8% of cases and 22.3% of deaths. And American Indians and Alaska Natives make up 1.2% of cases and 0.8% of deaths.

This data isn’t balanced against what proportion of the population fits into each group. Other sources have attempted to provide such context.

The COVID Racial Data Tracker has asked every state to report complete data by race and ethnicity. These data sets are then analyzed against Census Bureau demographic statistics. According to the tracker’s website, Black people nationwide are dying from COVID-19 at 2.4 times the rate of white people. In May, NPR analyzed data from the COVID Racial Data Tracker and reported that in 42 states and Washington, D.C., Hispanics and Latinos make up a greater share of COVID-19 confirmed cases than their share of the population. White deaths from COVID-19 were found to be lower than their share of the population in 37 states and Washington, D.C.

In addition, The New York Times has analyzed CDC data by race and ethnicity. According to its July analysis, the Times found that Latinos and African Americans in the U.S. are three times as likely to become infected with COVID-19 as white people. And Blacks and Latinos are also twice as likely to die from COVID-19 as white people.

The New York Times also analyzed limited data from state and local health agencies on COVID-19’s impact on the Native American community in July. In its analysis, the rate of known cases in eight counties with the largest populations of Native Americans is nearly double the national average. There were also smaller counties with large Native American populations that had high COVID-19 case rates.

— Victoria Knight, Kaiser Health News

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

USE OUR CONTENT

This story can be republished for free (details).

Democratic Convention, Night 3: Making the Party Lines Clear published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

[stephenmccull]

Democratic Convention, Night 3: Making the Party Lines Clear

The third night of the Democratic National Convention was all about one thing: Sen. Kamala Harris of California becoming the first Black and Indian American woman to accept a major political party’s vice presidential nomination.

But key Democratic criticisms — many rooted in health care issues and the COVID-19 pandemic — were repeated throughout the evening.

Hillary Clinton took an early swipe at President Donald Trump’s coronavirus response, describing how he has fallen short despite coming in “with so much set up for him,” such as “plans for managing crises — including a pandemic.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reupped another criticism of Trump and his fellow Republicans: “Instead of crushing the virus, they’re trying to crush the Affordable Care Act and its preexisting conditions benefit,” she said.

During her acceptance speech, Harris issued her harsh rebuke: “Donald Trump’s failure of leadership has cost lives and livelihoods.”

Our partners at PolitiFact did a thorough rundown on many of the evening’s claims. Here’s one of our favorites:

“And while this virus touches us all, we’ve got to be honest: It is not an equal opportunity offender. Black, Latino and Indigenous people are suffering and dying disproportionately.” — Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris 

This is true, based on available data.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has broken down some COVID data by race and ethnicity; however, not all cases reported include demographic information. Of the cases that do, Hispanic/Latino people have represented 31% of cases and 16.9% of deaths. Black people account for 19.8% of cases and 22.3% of deaths. And American Indians and Alaska Natives make up 1.2% of cases and 0.8% of deaths.

This data isn’t balanced against what proportion of the population fits into each group. Other sources have attempted to provide such context.

The COVID Racial Data Tracker has asked every state to report complete data by race and ethnicity. These data sets are then analyzed against Census Bureau demographic statistics. According to the tracker’s website, Black people nationwide are dying from COVID-19 at 2.4 times the rate of white people. In May, NPR analyzed data from the COVID Racial Data Tracker and reported that in 42 states and Washington, D.C., Hispanics and Latinos make up a greater share of COVID-19 confirmed cases than their share of the population. White deaths from COVID-19 were found to be lower than their share of the population in 37 states and Washington, D.C.

In addition, The New York Times has analyzed CDC data by race and ethnicity. According to its July analysis, the Times found that Latinos and African Americans in the U.S. are three times as likely to become infected with COVID-19 as white people. And Blacks and Latinos are also twice as likely to die from COVID-19 as white people.

The New York Times also analyzed limited data from state and local health agencies on COVID-19’s impact on the Native American community in July. In its analysis, the rate of known cases in eight counties with the largest populations of Native Americans is nearly double the national average. There were also smaller counties with large Native American populations that had high COVID-19 case rates.

— Victoria Knight, Kaiser Health News

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

USE OUR CONTENT

This story can be republished for free (details).

Democratic Convention, Night 3: Making the Party Lines Clear published first on https://smartdrinkingweb.weebly.com/

[dinafbrownil]

Democratic Convention, Night 3: Making the Party Lines Clear

The third night of the Democratic National Convention was all about one thing: Sen. Kamala Harris of California becoming the first Black and Indian American woman to accept a major political party’s vice presidential nomination.

But key Democratic criticisms — many rooted in health care issues and the COVID-19 pandemic — were repeated throughout the evening.

Hillary Clinton took an early swipe at President Donald Trump’s coronavirus response, describing how he has fallen short despite coming in “with so much set up for him,” such as “plans for managing crises — including a pandemic.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reupped another criticism of Trump and his fellow Republicans: “Instead of crushing the virus, they’re trying to crush the Affordable Care Act and its preexisting conditions benefit,” she said.

During her acceptance speech, Harris issued her harsh rebuke: “Donald Trump’s failure of leadership has cost lives and livelihoods.”

Our partners at PolitiFact did a thorough rundown on many of the evening’s claims. Here’s one of our favorites:

“And while this virus touches us all, we’ve got to be honest: It is not an equal opportunity offender. Black, Latino and Indigenous people are suffering and dying disproportionately.” — Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris 

This is true, based on available data.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has broken down some COVID data by race and ethnicity; however, not all cases reported include demographic information. Of the cases that do, Hispanic/Latino people have represented 31% of cases and 16.9% of deaths. Black people account for 19.8% of cases and 22.3% of deaths. And American Indians and Alaska Natives make up 1.2% of cases and 0.8% of deaths.

This data isn’t balanced against what proportion of the population fits into each group. Other sources have attempted to provide such context.

The COVID Racial Data Tracker has asked every state to report complete data by race and ethnicity. These data sets are then analyzed against Census Bureau demographic statistics. According to the tracker’s website, Black people nationwide are dying from COVID-19 at 2.4 times the rate of white people. In May, NPR analyzed data from the COVID Racial Data Tracker and reported that in 42 states and Washington, D.C., Hispanics and Latinos make up a greater share of COVID-19 confirmed cases than their share of the population. White deaths from COVID-19 were found to be lower than their share of the population in 37 states and Washington, D.C.

In addition, The New York Times has analyzed CDC data by race and ethnicity. According to its July analysis, the Times found that Latinos and African Americans in the U.S. are three times as likely to become infected with COVID-19 as white people. And Blacks and Latinos are also twice as likely to die from COVID-19 as white people.

The New York Times also analyzed limited data from state and local health agencies on COVID-19’s impact on the Native American community in July. In its analysis, the rate of known cases in eight counties with the largest populations of Native Americans is nearly double the national average. There were also smaller counties with large Native American populations that had high COVID-19 case rates.

— Victoria Knight, Kaiser Health News

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

USE OUR CONTENT

This story can be republished for free (details).

from Updates By Dina https://khn.org/news/democratic-convention-night-3-making-the-party-lines-clear/

[liliannorman]

Dolphins can learn from their peers how to use shells as tools

For some bottlenose dolphins, finding a meal may be about who you know.

Dolphins often learn how to hunt from their mothers. But Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins in Western Australia’s Shark Bay are different. Some may pick up one clever foraging behavior from their peers. Researchers argue this in a report published online June 25 in Current Biology.

Previous studies had suggested dolphins can learn from peers. But the new report is the first to quantify the importance of social networks over other factors, says Sonja Wild. She’s a behavioral ecologist at the University of Konstanz in Germany.

Explainer: What is a whale?

Cetaceans include dolphins, whales and porpoises. They are known for using clever tactics to round up meals. Humpback whales off Alaska sometimes use their fins and circular bubble nets to catch fish. Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins in Shark Bay employ another tactic. They use sea sponges to protect their beaks while rooting for food on the seafloor. The animals learn the sponge trick from their moms.

Some Shark Bay dolphins also use a more unusual tool-based foraging method. It’s known as shelling. A dolphin will first trap underwater prey in the large shell of a sea snail. Then the dolphin pokes its beak into the shell’s opening. It can now lift the shell above the water’s surface to shake the contents into its mouth.

“It is pretty mind-blowing,” says Wild. She studied these dolphins while a graduate student at the University of Leeds in England. This brief behavior appears to be rare. From 2007 to 2018, Wild and her colleagues documented 5,278 dolphin group encounters in the western gulf of Shark Bay. There were only 42 shelling events. Only 19 dolphins exhibited the behavior.

Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins in Western Australia’s Shark Bay have a clever method for scrounging up a snack. A dolphin will trap underwater prey in the shell of a large sea snail. It then pokes its beak into the shell’s opening, lifts the shell above the water’s surface and shakes the contents into its mouth. In a recent study, researchers find that dolphins can learn this behavior from their peers.

The researchers then analyzed the behavior of 310 dolphins that had been seen at least 11 times. These included 15 shellers. They mapped the dolphins’ network of social interactions. Those interactions explained shelling’s spread better than other factors. This included genetic relatedness and the amount of environmental overlap between dolphins.

Wild likens the learning of this behavior to the spread of a virus. “Just by spending time with each other, [dolphins] are more likely to transmit those behaviors,” she says. The researchers estimate that 57 percent of the dolphins learned shelling from peers rather than on their own.

But the researchers may be too quick to dismiss the influence of the dolphins’ environment and what they learn from mom, says Janet Mann. She’s a biologist at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. She, too, studies dolphin behavior at Shark Bay.

“Those shells are found in particular habitats. And animals who overlap in those habitats would have access to those shells.” She adds that they would “also bump into each other more often.” A dolphin’s shelling behavior could also have been influenced during the long time the animal spent with its mother.

No question, she says, “Dolphins are smart: They watch each other and see what others do.”

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