Month: July 2021

Categories
World News

Your Monday Briefing – The New York Occasions

Your Monday Briefing - The New York Times

In the UK, an average of nearly 45,000 cases of the coronavirus per day were reported over the past week, an 83 percent increase from the average two weeks ago. The death toll has risen 141 percent as England’s chief medical officer warned hospital admissions could double every three weeks and hit “scary numbers”.

Despite these troubling statistics, England is set to lift its final restrictions today, even though more than 500,000 people were quarantined by the National Health Service’s test-and-trace app after coming in contact with someone who had positive for the coronavirus.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his chief financial officer, who both had contact with an infected cabinet minister, are among the quarantined. Downing Street originally said yesterday that they would avoid quarantine, which sparked a quick and violent backlash from critics accusing them of double standards.

British Politics: Johnson is under fire for refusing to condemn crowds who booed England’s national football team for kneeling in protest against racial injustice. His refusal is a strong echo of former President Donald Trump’s targeting NFL players kneeling in the U.S. for the same cause

Here are the latest updates and maps of the pandemic.

For other developments:

  • Indonesia, the fourth most populous nation, now has the highest number of new coronavirus infections in the world, with 57,000 new cases reported on Friday. Experts estimate that the real number is three to six times as high.

  • American tennis star Coco Gauff has tested positive for the coronavirus and will not be participating in the Tokyo Olympics, which is contributing to the first cases in the athletes’ village.

  • After scandals and outrages, congested host cities, and now a pandemic, some are wondering if the games are worth the effort.

  • Some local governments in China have begun requiring all students – and their families – to be vaccinated before students can return to school this fall.

First person: “The flash floods brought so much with them – cars and containers and torn trees – that it was impossible to launch lifeboats,” said one witness. “I’ve never seen such a raging, rushing river.”

Destruction: Videos, photos and a map show the extent of the damage.

Floods in Europe are just one sign of a global warming crisis, which highlights the reality that the world’s richest nations are unprepared for its aftermath. However, whether mounting disasters in developed countries, including forest fires in Canada and scorching weather in California’s wine country, will affect climate policy remains to be seen.

The extreme weather disasters come a few months before the UN-led Glasgow climate negotiations in November, which is practically a moment of reckoning whether the nations of the world will agree on ways to contain emissions enough to mitigate the worst effects of climate change.

The European Commission last week presented an ambitious roadmap for change that includes a tax on imports from countries with less stringent climate policies. However, it is widely expected that the proposals will meet with fierce objections both inside and outside Europe.

Quotable: “Although not everyone is equally affected, this tragic event is a reminder that no one is safe in a climate emergency, whether they live on a small island nation like mine or a developed Western European country,” Mohamed Nasheed, former president of the Maldives, said of the flood .

Scenes in Siberia: The people of northeast Siberia are suffering from the worst forest fires they can remember. Thick smoke hung over Yakutsk, the coldest city in the world. Outside the city, villagers were digging trenches to keep fires away from their homes and fields.

Four months after the mega-ship Ever Given got stuck in the Suez Canal, neither the canal nor the shipping industry addressed some of the most critical problems that led to the bottoming out. Our investigation examines what went wrong.

Emmanuelle Polack is a 56-year-old art historian and archivist who tries to uncover the difficult history of some of the Louvre’s precious works – and to help them find their way back to their rightful owners.

France has been criticized for lagging behind countries like Germany and the United States in identifying and returning works of art looted during World War II. The Louvre has recently tried to change its image and examine the provenance of its works more thoroughly.

The museum houses more than 1,700 stolen works of art that were returned to France after the Second World War and for which no legal owners have yet reported.

For Polack, the key to uncovering the secret stories of works of art suspiciously changed hands during the Nazi occupation is to follow the money. She sifts through the Louvre’s voluminous files to see how works of art have been bought and sold over the years. The backs of paintings often give clues of sales, restorations, and framers that could lead back to their owners.

“During the occupation, I kept a secret garden above the art market for years,” she says. “And finally, it is recognized as a crucial study area.”

Read more about the Louvre’s restitution efforts.

This icebox cake adds a twist to banana pudding by using chocolate waffles instead of the classic vanilla.

Naomi Osaka, a new three-part miniseries on Netflix, cleverly explores the psychology of the tennis star rather than focusing on her technical skills.

In “The Cult of We”, Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell investigate how Adam Neumann, a co-founder of WeWork, built a billion dollar company from renting joint workspaces.

Categories
Health

The place Does Weed Come From? A New Examine Suggests East Asia.

Cannabis Was Domesticated in East Asia, New Study Suggests

By sequencing genetic samples of the plant, they found that the species had most likely been domesticated by the early Neolithic period. They said their conclusion was supported by pottery and other archaeological evidence from the same period that was discovered in present-day China, Japan and Taiwan.

But Professor Purugganan said he was skeptical about conclusions that the plant was developed for drug or fiber use 12,000 years ago since archaeological evidence show the consistent use or presence of cannabis for those purposes began about 7,500 years ago.

“I would like to see a much larger study with a larger sampling,” he said.

Luca Fumagalli, an author of the study and a biologist in Switzerland who specializes in conservation genetics, said the theory of a Central Asian origin was largely based on observational data of wild samples in that region.

“It’s easy to find feral samples, but these are not wild types,” Dr. Fumagalli said. “These are plants that escaped captivity and readapted to the wild environment.”

“By the way, that’s the reason you call it weed, because it grows anywhere,” he added.

The study was led by Ren Guangpeng, a botanist at Lanzhou University in the western Chinese province of Gansu. Dr. Ren said in an interview that the original site of cannabis domestication was most likely northwestern China, and that the finding could help with current efforts in the country to breed new types of hemp.

To conduct the study, Dr. Ren and his colleagues collected 82 samples, either seeds or leaves, from around the world. The samples included strains that had been selected for fiber production, and others from Europe and North America that were bred to produce high amounts of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the plant’s most mood-altering compound.

Dr. Fumagalli and his colleagues then extracted genomic DNA from the samples and sequenced them in a lab in Switzerland. They also downloaded and reanalyzed sequencing data from 28 other samples. The results showed that the wild varieties they analyzed were in fact “historical escapes from domesticated forms,” and that existing strains in China — cultivated and wild — were their closest descendants of the ancestral gene pool.

Categories
Politics

Traditionally Black Faculties Lastly Get the Highlight

Historically Black Colleges Finally Get the Spotlight

John S. Wilson Jr., who served as President of Morehouse College and White House adviser on historically black colleges, said the institutions collectively known as HBCUs need to seize this moment.

“Is this a lasting moment that represents a new era?” Said Dr. Wilson, whose forthcoming book Up From Uncertainty focuses on the future of historically black colleges. “I think this answer could be ‘yes’ for many HBCUs. Unfortunately, I think it will be ‘no’ for some institutions too. “

Most black colleges and universities were founded in the 19th century to train people to be freed from slavery. Some students literally had to build their schools: at Tuskegee University in Alabama, they dug up the clay and shaped and burned the bricks that were used to build their campus.

The schools became centers of learning and intellectualism that produced most of the country’s black doctors, teachers, and judges and alumni such as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., filmmaker Spike Lee, writer Toni Morrison, and the Rev. Raphael Warnock, Democratic Senator from Georgia.

The more established colleges have used the new money to build on their legacies. For example, Spelman and Morehouse, both in Atlanta, and Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia, have started entrepreneurship programs. And Howard in particular is able to attract talented faculty members who would otherwise have gone elsewhere.

Ms. Hannah-Jones, a New York Times Magazine staffer who won a 2020 Pulitzer Prize for her work on the 1619 project, turned down an offer from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill after controversy over whether to get a job would. She chose Howard and brought $ 20 million in donations from the Knight Foundation, Ford Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and an anonymous donor.

Categories
Health

Kamala Harris heads to Walter Reed for routine checkup

Kamala Harris heads to Walter Reed for routine checkup

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris will give a round table speech on voting rights in Washington on July 14, 2021.

Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Vice President Kamala Harris is visiting Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Sunday for a routine medical appointment, a White House official told NBC News.

There is currently no evidence that the appointment is related to the vice president’s meeting last week with Texas Democratic lawmakers, some of which have since tested positive for Covid-19.

Symone Sanders, senior advisor and main spokesperson for Harris, said Saturday that the vice president and her staff were not at risk of exposure to the virus at the meeting.

Based on the schedule of positive Covid-19 tests, it was determined that Harris and her staff “were not at risk of exposure because they were not in close contact with those who tested positive and therefore do not need to be tested or quarantined. Said Sanders. “The Vice President and her staff are fully vaccinated.”

Categories
World News

Israeli spy ware used to focus on telephones of journalists and activists, investigation finds

Israeli spyware used to target phones of journalists and activists, investigation finds

An Israeli woman uses her iPhone in front of the building of the Israeli NSO group in Herzliya near Tel Aviv on August 28, 2016.

Jack Guez | AFP | Getty Images

According to a comprehensive investigation by the Washington Post and 16 other news organizations, private Israeli spy software was used to hack dozens of smartphones belonging to reporters, human rights activists, business people and the fiancé of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The military-grade spyware was reportedly licensed by Israeli spyware company NSO Group. The investigation found that the hacked phones were on a list of more than 50,000 numbers in countries known to monitor people.

The list of numbers was made available to the Post and other media organizations by the Paris-based nonprofit journalism organization Hidden Stories and the human rights group Amnesty International.

The NSO Group denied the results of the report in several statements, arguing that the investigation contained “unconfirmed theories” based on “misleading interpretation of leaked data from accessible and overt basic information”.

The NSO Group also said it would continue to investigate all credible allegations of abuse and take appropriate action.

NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware is licensed to governments around the world and can, according to the report, hack a cellphone’s data and activate the microphone. NSO said the spyware is only used to monitor terrorists and other criminals.

Read the full report here.

Categories
Entertainment

Can I Go to See This Present? Should I Put on a Masks? It Relies upon.

Can I Go to See This Show? Must I Wear a Mask? It Depends.

During its preview performances in June, New York Classical Theater was allowed to put on “King Lear” for only up to 75 audience members outdoors. Those patrons were socially distanced on picnic blankets, wore masks and could not eat or drink during the play.

That same month, Foo Fighters played a full-capacity show inside Madison Square Garden for 15,000 vaccinated fans. Few had face coverings on; none were required to.

As New York and the rest of the country begin the slow journey back toward something resembling prepandemic life, rapidly shifting protocols in the state and across the country have created starkly different environments at theaters, music venues and sports arenas as venue operators seek to balance lingering coronavirus concerns with their business plans and their customers’ desire for normalcy.

The differing approaches at venues perhaps just miles apart has resulted in what some arts officials said has been head spinning confusion and a sense of whiplash.

“There is frustration,” said Stephen Burdman, the artistic director of NY Classical Theater. “Things have not been communicated well.”

In mid-June, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo lifted most of the state’s Covid-19 restrictions after 70 percent of New York adults had gotten at least one dose of the vaccine, essentially clearing the way for most spaces to do as they please — at least as far as the state was concerned. The state does not mandate that a venue check a person’s vaccination status; and in all but the biggest indoor venues, the masking and social distancing policy is now left to the discretion of the people running performances.

Many venues have sought to create an environment with as few reminders of the pandemic as possible. When Bruce Springsteen ushered in the return of Broadway last month, he played for a packed St. James Theater of 1,721 sparsely masked, vaccinated fans. At the al fresco amphitheater on Little Island, more than 600 people have been piled together onto curved wooden benches — few of them wearing masks.

And at Feinstein’s/54 Below, officials pointed out that making vaccinations a requirement for attendance has had an additional benefit: Patrons do not need to wear masks as they enjoy drinks, supper and a show.

“Safety is paramount,” said Richard Frankel, one of the owners of the venue. “After safety, we want people to be comfortable and happy.”

Those wishing to attend the Off Broadway sound experience “Blindness” at the Daryl Roth Theater, for example, are no longer asked to fill out a health questionnaire or have their temperature checked. But the venue continues to require audience members to be socially distanced and wear face coverings while inside the theater.

The Public Theater is among the institutions that have sought to find a middle ground.

Officials announced in early June that they planned to allow only 428 people to attend each performance of its acclaimed Shakespeare in the Park, citing state rules as the reason they had to set such sharp limits on attendance. Then on June 24, the Public said it would significantly increase the capacity of the Delacorte Theater to 1,468 seats for its free performances of “Merry Wives” because the state had lifted its restrictions.

“The governor’s decree to lift restrictions acknowledges a beautiful reality: We are finally starting to recover from Covid-19,” the Public’s artistic director, Oskar Eustis, said in a statement.

Now the Delacorte has both “full capacity” sections for people who show proof of full vaccination and “physically distanced” sections for others. Everyone, regardless of vaccination status, must wear a face mask at all times to enter the theater and when moving around. But whether audience members must wear a mask while seated depends on which section they are seated in.

Arts officials also have to contend with city and union rules created to ensure performances are safe. Though New York Classical Theater performs outdoors, it still had to abide by restrictions imposed by its city parks permit and by the actor’s union, which sets out the rules under which its members are allowed to work.

The theater’s city permit for June preview performances set a cap on how large the audience could be, though city officials say that cap was lifted on July 6. The rule the theater followed on audience masking was set by the actors’ union, Actor’s Equity. The union said that rule was in place only until early June, though Burdman said he was not told of any updates to the rules until June 30.

Burdman said he was disinclined to detail his pandemic-related rules for performance during an interview in early July for fear his understanding would be out of date by the time an article appeared.

“Things are changing honestly so rapidly, I don’t want something to go to press and not be in compliance,” he said. “No one is totally clear.”

Asked Friday about the current state of play, Burdman said the rules had finally become clear. Audiences no longer need to socially distance or wear masks, they can once again eat and drink during the performance and capacity limits have been restored to normal levels.

Frankel said the speed of change had also overtaken Feinstein’s efforts to create a nice, highly organized safety manual. His staff began compiling it as early as April 2020, but it had to be updated so many times over the course of a year, that by the time it was printed, it was almost immediately rendered obsolete. “It was such a beautiful document,” he lamented.

Big indoor event venues still must follow somewhat more stringent state guidelines. People who show proof of vaccination no longer need to wear masks or socially distance inside such venues. But unvaccinated people must show proof of a recent negative coronavirus test to be admitted and must wear masks while inside.

“It’s a little bit overwhelming to be back with people again,” said Molly Wissell, 31, of Virginia as she waited to enter the Foo Fighters concert at Madison Square Garden last month. “Standing in line and not having our masks on makes me feel like I’m doing something wrong.”

One concert attendee packed tightly in the stands bragged openly about having gained admittance even though he said he had not been vaccinated.

Roughly an hour earlier, Marianna Terenzio, 30, of Battery Park, said she was glad there were rules in place limiting who could attend the show.

“I like that they are asking people to show vaccination proof,” she said. “I feel safer for sure.”

Michael Paulson, Julia Jacobs and Jon Caramanica contributed reporting.

Categories
Politics

How Senate Democrats’ $3.5 trillion funds tackles local weather change

How Senate Democrats' $3.5 trillion budget tackles climate change

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and President Joe Biden arrive at the U.S. Capitol for a Senate Democratic luncheon on July 14, 2021.

Drew Angerer | Getty Images News | Getty Images

President Joe Biden and Senate Democrats have vowed to push forward a $3.5 trillion budget resolution framework that would fund a clean energy transition and policies to combat climate change.

The blueprint, which contains nearly all the elements of the president’s American Families Plan — including funding for child care, paid leave and education — comes after Biden’s climate proposals were slashed from the bipartisan infrastructure deal during negotiations with Senate Republicans.

The plan involves tax incentives for clean energy and electric vehicles, as well as major investments to transition the economy away from fossil fuels and toward renewable sources such as wind and solar power.

The resolution also proposes a clean energy standard, a mandate that would require a portion of U.S. electricity to come from renewables.

Such a mandate has received widespread support from environmental activists and scientists, who say it’s critical to meet the president’s commitment to slash carbon emissions in half over the next decade and put the U.S. on track to become carbon neutral by 2050.

Democrats are looking to pass the bill later this summer on a party-line vote. If the budget resolution is signed into law, it would be the biggest legislative push in U.S. history to combat climate change.

The last big effort to pass climate legislation was in 2009, when congressional Democrats failed to approve a carbon pricing system under former President Barack Obama.

The resolution includes the creation of a civilian climate corps program for young people, which would produce more jobs that address climate change and help conserve the planet.

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There is also proposed funding for energy-efficient building weatherization and electrification projects, as well as language about methane gas reduction and polluter import fees to raise revenue and increase greenhouse gas emissions reduction efforts.

Progressive Senate Democrats have so far praised the inclusion of climate policy in the resolution. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., the Budget Committee chairman, earlier this week said the agreement will start “the process of having this great country lead the world in transforming our energy system.”

However, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., the moderate Democrat whose support may be critical in the bill’s passage, told reporters that he’s “very, very disturbed” by climate provisions that he believes could eliminate fossil fuels.

“I know they have the climate portion in here, and I’m concerned about that,” said Manchin, who is chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The Democrat did not rule out his support for the resolution.

EPA Administrator Michael Regan on Wednesday said that the inclusion of a clean energy standard in the resolution has received “a very favorable response from many people on both sides of the aisle.”

“There are things in there for the American people that equate to jobs, global competitiveness, a strong infrastructure and preparation for climate change,” Regan said during an interview on NPR.  

Congress is working on the resolution in tandem with the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure plan, which is still being drafted.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said he wants to have votes on the budget resolution and the infrastructure bill before the Senate goes on recess in August.

— CNBC’s Christina Wilkie contributed to this report.

Categories
Health

How Covid-19 Has Upended Life in Undervaccinated Arkansas

How Covid-19 Has Upended Life in Undervaccinated Arkansas

MOUNTAIN HOME, Ark. – When the boat factory in that green town in the Ozark Mountains offered free coronavirus vaccinations this spring, Susan Johnson, 62, a receptionist there, declined the offer, thinking she would be safe as long as she never leaves her home without a mask.

Linda Marion, 68, a widow with chronic lung disease, worried that a vaccination could actually trigger Covid-19 and kill her. Barbara Billigmeier, 74, an enthusiastic golfer who has withdrawn from California, believed she didn’t need it because “I never get sick”.

Last week, all three patients were on 2 West, an overflow ward now primarily devoted to treating Covid-19 at Baxter Regional Medical Center, the largest hospital in northern Arkansas. Ms. Billigmeier said the scariest part was that “you can’t breathe”. For 10 days, Ms. Johnson relied on her lungs to be supplied with oxygen through nasal tubes.

Ms. Marion said that at one point she felt so sick and scared that she wanted to give up. “It was just awful,” she said. “I felt like I couldn’t take it.”

But despite all the hardships, none of them changed their minds about the vaccination. “It’s just too new,” said Ms. Billigmeier. “It’s like an experiment.”

As much of the nation tiptoes toward normalcy, the coronavirus is once again inundating hospitals in places like Mountain Home, a town of fewer than 13,000 not far from the Missouri border. One of the main reasons, say health officials, is the emergence of the new, far more contagious variant called Delta, which is now responsible for more than half of all new infections in the United States.

The variant has opened up a new divide in America, between communities with high vaccination rates, where it barely makes waves, and those like Mountain Home that are under vaccinated, where they turn life upside down again. Part of the country breathes a sigh of relief; a part is holding its breath.

While infections increased in more than half of the country’s counties last week, those with low vaccination rates were far more likely. Among the 25 counties with the highest increases in cases, all but one had vaccinated less than 40 percent of residents and 16 had vaccinated less than 30 percent, according to an analysis by the New York Times.

In Baxter County, where the hospital is located, fewer than a third of residents are fully vaccinated – below both the state and national averages. In the surrounding counties that the hospital serves, even fewer people are protected.

“It’s absolutely flooded,” said Dr. Rebecca Martin, a pulmonologist, on the round of 2 West one morning last week.

In the first half of June, the hospital had an average of only one or two Covid-19 patients a day. On Thursday, 22 of the unit’s 32 beds were occupied by coronavirus patients. Five more were in the intensive care unit. Within a single week, the number of Covid patients had increased by a third.

Overall, Arkansas ranks at the bottom end of the state for the percentage of the vaccinated population. Only 44 percent of residents received at least one shot.

“Boy, we’ve tried pretty much anything we can think of,” said Robert Ator, retired National Guard Colonel who leads the state’s vaccination efforts, in an interview. For about every third resident he said: “I don’t think there is anything we could do in the world to get them vaccinated.”

The state pays a price for this. Hospital admissions have quadrupled since mid-May. More than a third of the patients are in the intensive care unit. Deaths, a lagging indicator, are also expected to rise, health officials said.

Dr. José R. Romero, the state health director, said he still believes that enough Arkansans are vaccinated or immune to Covid-19 that the “darkest days” of December and January were behind them. “What worries me now is that we will have a climb or a climb,” he said, “then the winter will add another climb, so we will have a climb in addition to a climb.”

Dr. Mark Williams, the dean of the University of Arkansas College of Public Health for medical sciences, said the Delta variant would turn his predictions for the pandemic upside down. It is spreading “very quickly” in the unvaccinated population of the state and threatens the ability of hospitals to cope with it. “I would say we are definitely at the alarming stage,” he said.

At Baxter Regional, many doctors and nurses are gearing up for another wave while they are still exhausted from battling the pandemic they thought had subsided.

“I got flashbacks like PTSD,” said Dr. Martin, the pulmonologist obsessed with caring for her patients. “That sounds very selfish, but unfortunately it’s true: the fact that people aren’t vaccinated means that I can’t go home and see my kids for dinner.”

The Biden government has pledged to contain outbreaks by providing Covid-19 tests and treatments, promoting vaccines with advertising campaigns, and sending community health workers door-to-door to convince those who hesitate.

But not all of these tactics are welcome. Dr. Romero said Arkansas would like to accept more monoclonal antibody therapies, a Covid-19 treatment widely used in outpatient settings. But Mr Ator, the vaccine coordinator, said that knocking would “probably do more harm than good,” as local residents suspect federal authorities are suspicious.

Both said the Arkansas public has been saturated with vaccination campaigns and incentives, including free lottery tickets, hunting and fishing licenses, and booths offering shots in state parks and high school graduations.

Updated

July 18, 2021, 2:49 p.m. ET

The last mass vaccination event was May 4th, when the Arkansas Travelers, a minor league baseball team, had their first game since the pandemic outbreak. Thousands gathered at the Little Rock Stadium to watch. Fourteen shots accepted.

Even healthcare workers have shied away from being vaccinated nationwide, said Dr. Romero.

In April, state lawmakers added another roadblock, making it essentially illegal for state or local facilities, including public hospitals, to have a coronavirus vaccination as a condition of education or employment until two years after vaccination is fully licensed Food and Drug Administration to request. That almost certainly means that no such requirements can be enacted until the end of 2023.

Only the fear of the Delta variant seems to drive some off the fence.

When the pandemic broke out, Baxter Regional became a vaccine distribution center and vaccinated 5,500 people. However, according to Jonny Harvey, his coordinator for occupational medicine, only half of the 1,800 employees accepted syringes. By early June, demand had dropped so much that the hospital was administering an average of one per day.

Now, Harvey said, he is ordering enough vaccine to give 30 shots a day because people are increasingly afraid of the Delta variant. “I hate that we have the boom,” he said. “But I think it’s good that we vaccinate people.”

Vaccines are also suddenly becoming more popular at the state’s only academic medical center in Little Rock, operated by the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. In the past two weeks, the proportion of hospital staff who have been vaccinated has increased from 75 percent to 86 percent.

But these encouraging signs are being outweighed by the increasing number of Covid-19 patients. Little Rock Hospital hosted 51 patients on Saturday, more than ever since February 2. There was one coronavirus death in April. In June there were six.

Dr. Williams, who recorded the coronavirus trajectory, said the surge in infections and hospital stays reflected what he saw in October. And there are other worrying signs as well.

A larger proportion of those who are now infected need hospitalization. And there, said Dr. Steppe Mette, the chief of Little Rock Hospital, seemed to need a higher level of care than those who were sick of the original variant. Even though they are younger.

The median age of a coronavirus patient in Arkansas has dropped nearly a decade since December – from 63 to 54 – reflecting the fact that three-quarters of senior Arkansans are at least partially vaccinated. But some patients at Little Rock Hospital are in their 20s or 30s.

“It’s really daunting to see younger, sicker patients,” said Dr. Mette. “We didn’t see that level of disease earlier in the epidemic.”

Young, pregnant coronavirus patients used to be rare in the hospital. But in the end four or five of them ended up in the intensive care unit. Three were treated with a machine called ECMO – short for extracorporeal membrane oxygenation – a step that is seen as a last resort after ventilator failure. The machine directs blood from the body into a device that adds oxygen and then pumps it back into the patient.

Ashton Reed, 25, a district attorney general coordinator, was about 30 weeks pregnant when she was admitted to the hospital on May 26, critically ill. To save her life, the doctors delivered her baby by emergency caesarean section and then hooked her up to the ECMO machine.

In a public announcement later urging vaccination, her husband said she moved from sinus problems to life support within 10 days.

“I almost died,” she said. “My opinion about the vaccine has definitely changed.”

Last month, the hospital had to reopen a coronavirus ward that it closed in late spring. A second reopened on Monday.

Many of the nurses there wore colorful stickers that said they had been vaccinated. Ashley Ayers, 26, a traveling nurse from Dallas, didn’t. Noting that vaccines typically took years to develop, she said she was concerned that vaccination could affect her fertility – although there is no evidence to support it.

“I just think it was rushed,” she said.

David Deutscher, 49, one of her patients for almost a week, is no longer a holdout. A specialist in heating and air conditioning and an Air Force veteran, he said he fought Covid at home for 10 days before going to the hospital with a 105-degree fever.

The experience shook him to the core. He burst into tears describing it and apologized for being an emotional wreck.

When he did not get better with monoclonal antibody treatment, he said, “That was probably the greatest fear I have ever had.” He called a friend, the daughter of a medical researcher, from his hospital bed. “Please don’t let me die,” he said.

He said he never got vaccinated because he thought a mask would be enough. He’s had the flu once in the past 21 years.

“When I started to feel better,” said Mr. Deutscher, “I answered the phone and just called everyone to tell them to get the vaccine.” He didn’t even wait for his release.

The corona virus was “not a joke,” he told his friends. Three of them got a shot.

Mr. Deutscher went home on July 9th and brought a song for one of his five grandchildren that he had written in his hospital bed. His theme was the value of life.

Robert Gebeloff contributed the reporting and Kitty Bennett contributed the research.

Categories
Health

Music competition within the Netherlands results in over 1,000 Covid infections

Music festival in the Netherlands leads to over 1,000 Covid infections

Members of the public walk at Vondelpark in Amsterdam on a sunny day on March 30, 2021.

EVERT ELZINGA | AFP | Getty Images

A festival in the Netherlands shocked officials after 1,000 coronavirus infections were linked to the event despite requiring an “entry test”.

The Verknipt outdoor festival, which took place in Utrecht at the beginning of July, was attended by 20,000 people over two days. Each participant had to show a QR code stating that they had been vaccinated, had recently had a Covid infection or had a negative Covid test.

The organizers insisted that the event was carefully planned and controlled, but despite this, 1,050 people who attended the festival have since tested positive for Covid, according to the Utrecht Regional Health Authority.

“We can’t say that all these people infected themselves at the festival, it could also be that they got infected on the trip to the festival or the evening before the festival or an after party. re (the cases) are all connected to the festival, but we cannot 100% say that they were infected at the festival, “said Lennart van Trigt, a spokesman for the Utrecht Health Department (GGD).

Nonetheless, he said the number of cases was “pretty staggering” and could increase slightly in the coming days.

The event highlighted problems with the “entry test,” added van Trigt, which allowed people to take Covid tests up to 40 hours before the event, which opened up the possibility of contracting Covid in the meantime.

“We have now found out that this deadline is too long. We should have had 24 hours [period], that would be much better because in 40 hours people can do a lot of things like visit friends and go to bars and clubs. So in a 24-hour period, people can do fewer things and it’s safer, “he said.

Another problem was that people in the Netherlands could get a Covid pass for the festival immediately after vaccination, while in reality it takes several weeks for immunity to build up after a Covid vaccination.

“We were a little too happy with the trigger,” said Van Trigt, noting that there were lessons to be learned from.

The mayor of Utrecht, Sharon Dijksma, was particularly condemned while attending the ill-fated festival.

The Netherlands has seen a staggering increase in Covid cases in recent weeks, especially after lifting bar and club restrictions in late June and subsequently increasing Covid among younger people.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and his Health Minister Hugo de Jonge apologized on Monday, saying the government made a “misjudgment” of lifting restrictions too early.

De Jonge also apologized for his “Dansen met Janssen” (“Dancing with Janssen”) campaign, which promoted the unique Janssen Covid vaccine to young people so that they could go out to party.

After the government admitted that “the coronavirus infection rate in the Netherlands has increased much faster than expected since the society was almost completely reopened on June 26,” the government announced last Friday that nightclubs and live performances would be at least until August 13th to be closed again.

The country’s “R” number is now 2.17, meaning any person with Covid-19 is likely to infect at least two other people.

An additional 10,492 cases were reported in the country on Wednesday, more than the average number of daily cases (8,395) over the past seven days. The majority of new cases affect people between the ages of 20 and 29 years.

Categories
Politics

Fb To Biden: ‘We Aren’t The Cause Vaccination Objective Was Missed’

Facebook To Biden: 'We Aren't The Reason Vaccination Goal Was Missed'

WASHINGTON – Facebook and the Biden government had an increasingly vicious back and forth over the weekend after the government condemned the social media giant for spreading misinformation about the Covid-19 vaccines.

On Sunday, General Surgeon Vivek Murthy reiterated warnings that false stories about the vaccines had become a dangerous health hazard. “These platforms need to recognize that they have played an important role in increasing the speed and extent with which misinformation spreads,” Murthy said on CNN on Sunday.

In a blog post on Saturday, Facebook asked the administration to stop “pointing the finger” and set out what it had done to encourage users to vaccinate. The social network also described how it cracked down on lies about the vaccines, which officials said led to people refusing to be vaccinated.

“The Biden administration has chosen to blame a handful of American social media companies,” said Guy Rosen, Facebook’s vice president of integrity, in the post. “The fact is that the adoption of vaccines by Facebook users in the US has increased.”

Mr Rosen added that the company’s data showed that 85 percent of its users in the United States were or were about to be vaccinated against the coronavirus. While President Biden’s goal was to have 70 percent of Americans vaccinated by July 4th, which the White House missed, “Facebook isn’t the reason it missed that target,” Rosen said.

Facebook’s response followed a firm condemnation of the company by Mr Biden. When asked on Friday about the role of social media in influencing vaccinations, Mr Biden stated in unusually strong language that the platforms “kill people”.

“Look,” he added, “the only pandemic we have is that of the unvaccinated, and that – and they kill people.”

Other White House officials have also increasingly commented on how social media has stepped up vaccine flights.

On Thursday, Mr Murthy accused social media companies of not doing enough to stop the spread of dangerous misinformation about health, calling it a national health crisis that fueled refusal to vaccinate among Americans. On Friday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki also called for misinformation “that is causing people not to take the vaccine and people to die from it.” She said the White House was responsible for bringing up the issue.

The White House declined to comment on Facebook’s blog post on Saturday.

On Sunday morning, Mr Murthy also responded to allegations made by a Facebook official who spoke anonymously to CNN, saying the government was looking for “scapegoats for missing its vaccination targets.”

Updated

July 18, 2021, 12:38 p.m. ET

The company representative told CNN before Mr Murthy’s appearance on the news network that Mr Murthy had “praised our work” in private conversations while he had publicly criticized the company.

Mr. Murthy disproved the characterization.

“I’ve been very consistent in what I’ve been saying to tech companies,” Murthy said Sunday morning on CNN. “If we see good steps, we should acknowledge them,” he said, adding, “But I also said that it was not enough. We are still seeing an increase in misinformation on the Internet. “

Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites have long struggled with their role as platforms for speech while protecting their users from disinformation campaigns such as Russian efforts to influence presidential elections or false statements about the pandemic.

In the past few months, Facebook has taken steps against anti-vaccination advertisements and misrepresentation about the vaccines. In October, it announced that it would no longer allow ads against vaccinations on its platform. In February, the company went ahead and said it would remove false claims posts about vaccines, including claims that vaccines cause autism or that it is safer for people to contract the coronavirus than receiving the vaccinations.

But online misinformation about the vaccines has not been eradicated. Lies have been spread that vaccines can alter DNA or that vaccines won’t work.

On Saturday, Mr Rosen said in the blog post that American Facebook users’ reluctance to take vaccines had decreased by 50 percent since April and vaccine acceptance had increased by 10 to 15 percentage points, or from 70 percent to over 80 percent.

“Although social media plays an important role in society, it is clear that we need a society-wide approach to end this pandemic,” said Rosen. “And facts – not allegations – should help support this effort.”

The White House’s frustration with Facebook has increased over several months, said those knowledgeable about the matter. While the Biden government asked Facebook to share information about the spread of misinformation on the social network, the company refused to cooperate, the people said.

On Friday, White House digital director Robert Flaherty said in a tweet: “I think the question remains simple: How many people have seen misinformation about Covid vaccines on Facebook?”