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Ramstein Air Base Turns into Non permanent Refuge for Afghans

Ramstein Air Base Becomes Temporary Refuge for Afghans

AIRSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany – As the working day at the US air force base in southwest Germany came to an end, “The Star-Spangled Banner” sounded from loudspeakers set up in the huge system.

Minutes later the loudspeakers turned up again, this time to the Arabic rhythm, and called on the Muslims for late afternoon prayer.

The recording is just one of the remarkable changes that have taken place at the sprawling Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany in the past two weeks. Teams from the U.S. military, State Department, Department of Homeland Security, and other agencies have rushed to greet, house, screen, and dispatch thousands of people – U.S. citizens and Afghans – to the United States.

After Kabul fell to the Taliban on August 15, the United States began flying thousands of people out of Kabul every day. Many were taken to US military facilities in Qatar or Kuwait. But at the end of this week these bases could no longer safely support. Ramstein, which served as an important transit point for troops and equipment in Germany during the 20-year war in Afghanistan, was called up for another assignment.

When the first arrivals touched down on Aug. 20, Brig. Gen. General Joshua Olson, commandant of the 86th Airlift Wing, told reporters the base could accommodate 5,000 evacuees. Two weeks later, it is home to almost three times as many.

“When we got to Ramstein, I just felt like I was finally safe,” said Hassan, a young Afghan who had worked as an interpreter for US special forces in Helmand province and who was on an evacuation flight last week. For security reasons he did not want to give his last name because he had left his family behind in Kabul.

After months of hiding and traveling unsuccessfully to Kabul airport to snag a flight, Hassan said that he shares a tent with several dozen other people at a U.S. air base and has nothing to do but soccer He didn’t mind playing volleyball or waiting for the next meal.

“I’m just glad I’m here,” he said.

Many of the troops and officials involved in the Ramstein evacuation mission had spent time in Afghanistan themselves believing they were part of an effort to help the country build a better, more democratic future. For them, it is more than just a job to make the Afghans in Ramstein feel good and to get them to the USA as soon as possible. It’s personal.

“We all know someone who was left behind,” said Elizabeth Horst, who spent a year in Afghanistan in 2008-09 and was sent from the US Embassy in Berlin to lead the civilian side of the Ramstein evacuation operation. “Being part of it helps,” she says.

Your working day begins with an inter-agency meeting, in which around three dozen people crowd around a conference table and keep each other informed. Victories are highlighted – for example, an unaccompanied toddler reunited with parents – as are challenges such as the number of people still missing luggage.

Updated

Sept. 1, 2021, 8:56 p.m. ET

The focus of the evacuation mission is on getting US citizens and their families home and Afghans to safety while maintaining the security of the air base and US borders. This means that all arrivals will have a health screening before they meet with U.S. border officials, who will perform biometric checks on all passengers.

“Nobody who has not been cleared gets on a plane,” said Ms. Horst. By Wednesday, about 11,700 people had flown to the US or other safe location. So far, none of the evacuees has been refused entry to the United States, she said.

Not everything went smoothly. After recruiting grassroots staff and volunteers to set up camp beds in the tents, many of the arriving Afghans said they prefer to sleep on blankets on the floor, as they did in Afghanistan. Others did not know how to use the long rows of portable toilets that are cleaned six times a day.

“Hygiene is an ongoing battle,” said Lt. Col. Simon Ritchie of the 86th Medical Group, who is responsible for the initial screening of all newcomers. Before the biometric screening, the temperature is measured and examined for diseases and injuries.

Colonel Ritchie said he saw gunshot wounds and broken bones, people who needed medication for diabetes or blood pressure, and a lot of diarrhea and dehydration, especially in the children. Sometimes he notices a young child who is so stressed and overwhelmed that he and a parent pull them aside and send them into a dark, quiet tent.

“All you need is a good nap,” he said. A special seating area was set up so that a sick person’s family could wait for the patient to return to them, in order to maintain one of the primary goals of the evacuation of keeping families together – and reuniting those who were separated.

Understanding the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan

Map 1 of 6

Who are the Taliban? The Taliban emerged in 1994 amid the unrest following the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989. They used brutal public punishments, including flogging, amputation and mass executions, to enforce their rules. Here is more about their genesis and track record as rulers.

Who are the Taliban leaders? These are the top leaders of the Taliban, men who for years have been on the run, in hiding, in prison and dodging American drones. Little is known about them or how they plan to rule, including whether they will be as tolerant as they say they are. A spokesman told the Times that the group wanted to forget their past but had some restrictions.

Many of the families number more than a dozen members and others have grown on the base since landing. Captain Danielle Holland, an Air Force gynecologist, said she sent three mothers in labor to a nearby army hospital, but three other babies came so quickly that they were born in the ambulance tent set up at the base.

“Pretty much every woman of childbearing age is either pregnant, breastfeeding, or both,” said Captain Holland, adding that an Afghan mother told her that the tented birth was the most comfortable of her eight births. “These women are very stoic,” she said.

The team not only met the evacuees’ immediate needs by providing them with two meals a day and unlimited access to drinking water, but also to ensure they know where they are and where they are going.

Physically tired, many worry about family members still in Afghanistan who they couldn’t reach – the tents have no power outlets to charge cell phones or access to communications – and were stressed about the uncertainty of their future, said Captain Mir M. Ali, an imam in Ramstein.

In addition to providing tents that can serve as mosques and organizing the regular call to prayer, Captain Ali spoke to the evacuees. “I remind them that their situation has improved with every step they have taken.

The diplomat Mrs. Horst now hopes to reunite the people with the luggage that many had to leave behind on the way – like in Qatar. Many do not want to continue their new lives in the United States without the few belongings they could stuff into plastic bags or blankets tied in bundles from Afghanistan.

“Luggage is important to people,” says Ms. Horst. “It keeps her last bit of home.”

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World News

Air-con and local weather change: Begin-ups making an attempt to assist

Air conditioning and climate change: Start-ups trying to help

This June was the hottest in American history. The 116-degree heat melted power cables in Portland, Oregon, and smashed previous temperature records. Seattle recorded an all-time high of 108 degrees, as did the Canadian province of British Columbia, at a whopping 121 degrees.

As the world warms, more people are installing air conditioning. Global energy demand for cooling has more than tripled since 1990 and could more than double between now and 2040 without stricter efficiency standards.

But air conditioning itself is a major contributor to global warming. Altogether, building operations that include heating, cooling and lighting account for 28% of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions. That’s more than the entire global transportation sector.

But SkyCool, Gradient and a number of other companies are working on the problem. They’re trying to apply new technologies to the traditionally inflexible heating and cooling industry, finance the upfront costs, communicate the value to property owners and make sure it’s all done equitably. 

Watch the video to learn more.

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Health

Air Air pollution’s Invisible Toll on Your Well being

Air Pollution’s Invisible Toll on Your Health

President Biden’s proposed infrastructure plan calling for huge investments in clean energy, public transportation and electric vehicles would do a lot more than slow the rate of devastating climate change. It would also protect the health of every American, especially young children and older adults, by reducing the harmful effects of the invisible air pollutants inhaled year after year.

Toxic substances like fine particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide and ozone form primarily when fossil fuels are burned and enter the atmosphere in the exhaust from motor vehicles, heating units and smoke from wildfires. Inhaling such pollutants can cause bodily damage that lasts for years, if not for life, and may even lead to death.

Air pollution has long been recognized as a human health hazard, prompting the enactment of the Clean Air Act of 1963. Under the act, air quality standards are periodically revised by the Environmental Protection Agency. Though these standards are meant to be based on up-to-date research, they are subject to economic and political pressures, sometimes at the expense of public health.

Those most vulnerable to illness and premature death related to air pollution include children, pregnant women, the elderly and those with pre-existing heart or lung disease. The risk is greatest among people who live in poor neighborhoods, many of which are close to major roads or near industrial sources of pollution.

Since 1990, implementation of the amended Clean Air Act has resulted in about a 50 percent decline in emissions of key air pollutants. Still, new research has shown that this decline is not nearly enough to protect the most vulnerable Americans from the damaging effects of air pollution. A 17-year study based on hospital records of more than 63 million older adults has shown that as recently as 2016, as a group they faced serious health risks from breathing levels of pollutants even at pollution levels that are below current national and international guidelines. For example, for each unit increase in long-term exposure to fine particulates in the air (measuring 2.5 micrometers in diameter and invisible to the naked eye), 2,536 people were hospitalized with strokes.

The report, published in the journal Circulation, found that years of breathing low concentrations of fine particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide and ozone “poses a significant risk to cardiovascular and respiratory health among the elderly population of the United States.” Translation: Older people are more likely to suffer a heart attack, stroke, atrial fibrillation and pneumonia because of air pollution, resulting in thousands of additional hospital admissions each year.

A team of 12 scientists, headed by Mahdieh Danesh Yazdi of the Harvard School of Public Health, based this finding on an analysis of air pollution exposure and health outcomes among all fee-for-service Medicare beneficiaries aged 65 and older who were living in the United States between 2000 and 2016.

“Each unit increase in levels of particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide and ozone were associated with thousands of additional admissions” to hospitals each year, the team reported. Dr. Yazdi, a professor and research fellow in environmental health, said in an interview that “hundreds of thousands of lives could be saved” by improving the quality of the air that Americans breathe.

With half the population of the United States routinely exposed to levels of common pollutants shown to be hazardous in the study, the researchers concluded that “this issue should be of great concern to clinicians and policymakers alike.”

By making the data on air quality and health outcomes publicly available, Dr. Yazdi said, the team hoped to give people “some power” to improve air quality and better protect public health.

“Both clinicians and patients can be advocates and apply pressure on public officials to control the sources of pollution and improve the air we all breathe,” she said. “Even if air pollution can’t be fully mitigated, we should strive to do better. Levels of pollutants now considered safe can still have harmful effects and result in bad outcomes.”

The team also suggested that people pay attention to the air quality where they live and do their best “to avoid harmful exposure over long periods of time.” There was a dramatic example of such avoidance last summer when wildfires burned across the state of California, forcing many people to remain indoors with windows and doors shut to minimize breathing smoke-related pollutants.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, “Larger and more intense wildfires are creating the potential for greater smoke production and chronic exposures in the United States, particularly in the West.”

But while such extreme short-lived instances of severe air pollution are readily identified, so-called background levels remain unnoticed and unmonitored by the general public, leaving millions of people susceptible to the insidious damage they can cause. You can get a reasonable estimate of these levels by checking the Air Quality Index where you live each day, and avoiding prolonged or heavy exertion outdoors on days when air quality is poor.

Worldwide, an international research team reported last year, air pollution “accounts for about 9 million deaths per year,” they wrote in Frontiers in Public Health. “The health of susceptible and sensitive individuals can be impacted even on low pollution days.”

Particulate matter contains tiny liquid or solid droplets that are easily inhaled. In addition to damaging the lungs, these microscopic particles can enter the bloodstream and have damaging effects elsewhere in the body, including the brain.

People over 75 in the new study were more likely to be hospitalized than those closer to 65, and whites faced a greater risk of admission than Black individuals from exposure to particulate matter. But exposure to nitrogen dioxide, also a product of burning fossil fuels, was shown to be more harmful to Blacks than to whites.

Furthermore, for the study population overall, the greatest risk of hospital admissions occurred at lower concentrations of air pollutants, the team reported.

Other studies have shown that even short-term exposure to low levels of pollutants can be hazardous to people with conditions like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma. Exposure to air pollution early in life can result in respiratory, cardiovascular, mental and perinatal disorders, according to the United States Global Change Research Program.

Air pollution can also have indirect health effects because of its close link to climate change. Pollutants increase the amount of sunlight that reaches the earth, warming it, and warmer climates increase the spread and intensity of infectious diseases that can result in epidemics

Given that most of pollutants we inhale enter the atmosphere from sources like industrial machinery, power plants, combustion engines and cars, efforts to switch from fossil fuels to clean energy sources like wind power and powering vehicles with electric energy instead of gasoline and diesel can have a major impact on air quality.

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Business

United Airways Desires to Carry Again Supersonic Air Journey

United Airlines Wants to Bring Back Supersonic Air Travel

The era of supersonic commercial flights came to an end when the Concorde completed its last trip between New York and London in 2003, but the allure of ultrafast air travel never quite died out.

President Biden mused about supersonic flights when discussing his infrastructure plan in April. And on Thursday, United Airlines said it was ordering 15 jets that can travel faster than the speed of sound from Boom Supersonic, a start-up in Denver. The airline said it had an option to increase its order by up to 35 planes.

Boom, which has raised $270 million from venture capital firms and other investors, said it planned to introduce aircraft in 2025 and start flight tests in 2026. It expects the plane, which it calls the Overture, to carry passengers before the end of the decade.

But the start-up’s plans have already slipped at least once, and it will have to overcome many obstacles, including securing approval from the Federal Aviation Administration and regulators in other countries. Even established manufacturers have stumbled when introducing new or redesigned planes. Boeing’s 737 Max was grounded for nearly two years after two crashes.

The deal is United’s latest attempt to position itself as a risk taker shaking up an industry that is just getting back on its feet after a devastating pandemic. The airline announced a $20 million investment in an electric air taxi start-up, Archer, in February, and it is working on a “steady drumbeat” of more such bets, said Michael Leskinen, who heads corporate development at United.

“We are really confident in the future,” Mr. Leskinen said. “Aerospace takes a long time to innovate. And so if you don’t start setting these opportunities out now, you will have missed them.”

United and Boom would not disclose financial details, including the cost of each plane, but Mr. Leskinen said the economics should be about the same as a new Boeing 787, a wide-body plane that airlines typically use on international routes. United has committed to buying the planes if Boom manages to produce them, secure regulatory approvals and hit other targets, like meeting its sustainability requirements.

Boom also plans to make planes for Japan Airlines, an investor in the company.

What is not clear is whether Boom has solved the problems that forced British Airways and Air France to stop using the Concorde on trans-Atlantic flights — high costs, safety concerns and flagging demand.

“There was no airline interest,” Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry analyst and consultant, said about why supersonic flights languished. “And a big part of the lack of airline interest was there were no engines that were commercially available that would allow a supersonic jet to be economically viable.”

Two decades later, some start-up companies, including Boom and Spike Aerospace, are pushing ahead with new designs and plans.

Today in Business

Updated 

June 2, 2021, 4:35 p.m. ET

Boom, which is working with Rolls-Royce, the British jet engine maker, said its plane would be more efficient than the Concorde; United estimates it will be 75 percent more efficient. Boom’s planes will not be as noisy as the Concorde because their engines will create a sonic boom only when flying over water “when there’s no one to hear it,” said Boom’s chief executive, Blake Scholl, who previously worked at Amazon and Groupon.

In recent years, many people have also grown increasingly concerned about air travel’s contribution to climate change. Supersonic jets are expected to use more fuel than regular jets per passenger per mile, according to experts.

Mr. Scholl said the engines on Boom’s planes would rely entirely on sustainable aviation fuel, which can be made from waste, plants and other organic matter. Experts say such fuel could reduce emissions, but its supply is limited, it is expensive and its use does not eliminate greenhouse gas emissions.

United said it was too early to know how much it would charge for the flights, which it would run out of its hubs in Newark and San Francisco to start. But another big question mark about the plane is how many people will be willing to spend the thousands of dollars that each ticket on a supersonic flight is likely to cost.

United has long focused on business travelers, including by adding flights to Israel, China and other destinations popular with executives and by offering more business class seats on its planes. Mr. Leskinen called the idea of supersonic travel a “really powerful tool for business.”

“You can have a business meeting and still be home to have dinner with your family,” he said.

But corporate and international travel is expected to rebound slowly from the pandemic, and some experts say it might not recover fully for years because companies have realized that they can be effective without as many in-person meetings.

“The key to the success of supersonic transportation is the overlooked, underappreciated corporate travel manager, who is probably relegated to one of the worst offices in his or her company — and his primary task is to minimize corporate spending on business travel,” said Mr. Harteveldt.

If flights save a third of the travel time but also cost a third more, travel managers may end up saying, “I don’t know if we can justify that,” he said.

Categories
Business

U.S. air journey reaches pandemic excessive as peak season kicks off

U.S. air travel reaches pandemic high as peak season kicks off

Travelers wait in line at a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screening checkpoint at Orlando International Airport on the Friday before Memorial Day. As more and more people have received the COVID-19 vaccine, American Automobile Association (AAA) is predicting more than 37 million Americans will travel more than 50 miles this Memorial Day weekend, many for the first time since the pandemic began.

Paul Hennessy | LightRocket | Getty Images

Air traveler volumes hit the highest levels since before the coronavirus pandemic began during Memorial Day weekend, the latest sign of recovery for the sector.

The Transportation Security Administration screened an average of 1.78 million people from Friday through Monday, hitting a peak of 1.96 million on Friday. Those volumes are more than six times higher than a year ago, but still 22% below Memorial Day weekend in 2019.

The surge in travelers is pushing up the price of vacations, including airfare, hotel rates and car rental prices. Domestic leisure fares are near 2019 levels, airline executives have said.

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Politics

Air Drive Tries Digital Actuality to Stem Suicide and Sexual Assault

Air Force Tries Virtual Reality to Stem Suicide and Sexual Assault

MCGUIRE AIR FORCE BASE, N.J. — The three airmen sat quietly adjusting their headsets, murmuring to their colleague, who was in distinct trouble. “Everyone goes through rough patches sometimes,” each said, a few moments apart, to the same despondent and mildly intoxicated man, whose wife recently left him and who seemed immersed in suicidal thoughts.

The airman on the other end of the headsets was virtual, but the conversation was all encompassing, a 30-minute, occasionally harrowing journey among three actual airmen and a virtual actor, whom they each tried to coax into getting help.

The three were trying out a new virtual reality program this month that the Air Force is using to target two problems that continue to vex military leaders: suicide and sexual assault within the ranks. Years of prevention training — often in the form of somnolence-inducing PowerPoint presentations — have done little to stem the rates of either problem.

Whether the virtual reality model can ultimately do better remains an open question. But military officials are encouraged by the early self-reported responses to the training.

Over 1,000 Air Force personnel have participated in the training so far; 97 percent of those who tried it would recommend it, and trainees reported an increase in the likelihood to intervene with a person in crisis, Air Force officials said. And among those ages 18 to 25 — a generation more used to interactive virtual experiences that makes up the bulk of new recruits — the impact increased sevenfold. Officials intend to train at least 10,000 airmen with the program this year.

The training is meant to take on problems that, if anything, have worsened in the military in recent years. Between 2014 and 2019, the suicide rate for all active-duty troops increased from 20.4 to 25.9 suicides per 100,000 according to Pentagon data; in the last three months of 2020, suicides among National Guard troops nearly tripled to 39 from 14 over the same period the prior year.

In 2019, the Defense Department found that there were 7,825 reports of sexual assault involving service members as victims, a 3 percent increase from 2018.

The Army recently reprimanded 12 soldiers in an Illinois-based Army Reserve unit and took disciplinary actions against two senior leaders for mishandling sexual assault complaints, with investigators noting that leaders lacked “basic knowledge and understanding regarding core tenets” of the Army’s sexual assault prevention program.

One of the few effective tactics for both problems, experts say, is intervention by bystanders. They may witness harassment in a bar, for instance, or increasingly alarming messages on social media representing a suicide threat.

In the military, intervening, especially against someone of a higher rank, can be culturally difficult, especially for younger recruits. “Barriers sometimes get in the way from people intervening,” said Carmen Schott, the sexual assault prevention and response program manager for the Air Force’s Air Mobility Command. “If someone is higher rank, you might be more timid to say something. The Air Force has put a lot of effort into making clear nothing negative will happen if you intervene.”

The aim of the virtual reality program is to act out scenarios with airmen in simulated environments. The technology allows the airmen to select from cues at the bottom of the screen to have an interactive “conversation” with a photo-realistic virtual actor, one whose facial expressions and reactions are meant to make the training more effective.

In this behavioral rehearsal, airmen learn what may be useful to say, such as asking their buddy if he has a gun in his house, and why some other responses — like “man up” — are not helpful. Participants get feedback on their “empathy” score and tips on how to improve in future encounters.

“Virtual reality training puts the user in a scenario, not in a classroom where you are zoning out and on your cellphone,” Ms. Schott explained. “You are an active participant. You have to be ready. I think that it is going to help airmen retain and remember knowledge. We don’t want people to feel judged. They may not make perfect decisions, but they will learn skills.”

Kevin Cornish, the chief executive of Moth+Flame, a virtual reality learning firm in Brooklyn, looked a little like an interloper on the Air Force base here, a casually dressed artist among uniforms. Mr. Cornish, who was working on Taylor Swift music videos when he became entranced by the immersive experience of a 360-degree camera used in one of them, said that there was “something so invigorating about somebody making eye contact and talking to you.”

He said he was increasingly seeing companies turn to virtual reality to simulate difficult work conversations and game out scenarios, especially around diversity and inclusion.

As the airmen took turns interacting with their suicidal virtual colleague via their headsets, some spoke quietly and a bit awkwardly, while others sounded like stage actors as they tried to persuade their fellow airman to hand over his gun and go with them to see a supervisor. Sometimes they would nod as they listened, or lower their voices or wipe a tear.

“I loved that it was hands-on,” said Annette Hartman, 23, a senior airman. “It was better than sitting through a briefing and waiting to sign off on a roster. Some of the responses I wouldn’t have thought to say, like, ‘Have you thought about suicide? Do you have a gun?’”

That type of experience is set to expand: Another bystander program, which will roll out in July, will place the users in a bar, watching a scene of sexual harassment unfold.

“In an immersive experience, you get much closer to the feelings of a real story than you do with a computer screen,” said Nonny de la Peña, the chief executive of Emblematic Group and an early creator of virtual reality experiences. “We are starting to see that our world is not flat, and learning and experiencing and connecting is not going to be flat much longer.”

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Health

Specialists Urge Air High quality Requirements as Safeguard Towards Coronavirus

Experts Urge Air Quality Standards as Safeguard Against Coronavirus

Clean water in 1842, food safety in 1906, ban on leaded paints in 1971. These sweeping public health reforms have changed not only our environment but also expectations of what governments can do.

According to a group of 39 scientists, now is the time to do the same for indoor air quality. In a sort of manifesto published Thursday in Science magazine, researchers called for a “paradigm shift” in the way citizens and government officials think about the quality of the air we breathe indoors.

The timing of the scientists’ call to action coincides with the large-scale reopening of the country as coronavirus cases drop sharply: Americans are about to return to offices, schools, restaurants, and theaters – exactly the kind of crowded indoor spaces that the coronavirus is thought to thrive.

There is little doubt that the coronavirus can linger in the air indoors and soar well beyond the recommended six-foot distance, the experts said. The accumulated research places policymakers and civil engineers under an obligation to provide clean air in public buildings and to minimize the risk of respiratory infections.

“We expect clean water from the taps,” said Lidia Morawska, group leader and aerosol physicist at the Queensland University of Technology in Australia. “We expect clean and safe food when we buy it in the supermarket. We should also expect clean air in our buildings and in all common spaces. “

Fulfilling the group’s recommendations would require new workplace air quality standards, but the scientists claimed that remedial action needn’t be onerous. Indoor air quality can be improved with a few simple fixes: adding filters to existing ventilation systems, using portable air purifiers and ultraviolet lights – or just opening windows where possible.

Dr. Morawska led a group of 239 scientists who last year called on the World Health Organization to recognize that the coronavirus can spread in tiny droplets, or aerosols, that drift through the air. WHO had insisted that the virus only spread in larger, heavier droplets and by touching contaminated surfaces, which went against their own 2014 rule of assuming that all new viruses are in the air.

The WHO admitted on July 9th that aerosol transmission of the virus could be responsible for “Covid-19 outbreaks that have been reported in some closed settings, such as in a public house. For example, in restaurants, night clubs, places of worship or workplaces where people may shout, speak or sing ”, but only at a short distance.

The pressure to take measures to prevent airborne spread has increased recently. In February, more than a dozen experts requested the Biden administration to update workplace standards for high-risk environments such as meat packers and prisons where Covid outbreaks were widespread.

Last month, a separate group of scientists detailed 10 lines of evidence demonstrating the importance of indoor air transmission.

On April 30, the WHO pushed forward and allowed aerosols to “float in the air or move more than 1 meter (long range)” in poorly ventilated rooms. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which were also slow to update their guidelines, realized last week that the virus can be breathed indoors, even if a person is more than three feet from an infected person.

“You have ended up in a much better, more scientifically feasible place,” said Linsey Marr, Virginia Tech airborne virus expert and signatory of the letter.

Updated

May 17, 2021 at 11:35 a.m. ET

“It would be helpful if they ran a public service messaging campaign to promote this change more widely,” she said, especially in parts of the world where the virus is soaring. For example, in some East Asian countries, stacked toilet systems could transport the virus between the floors of a multi-story building, she noted.

Further research is also needed to determine how the virus moves indoors. Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory modeled the flow of aerosol-sized particles after a person in a three-room office with a central ventilation system had a five-minute coughing fit. Clean outside air and air filters reduce the flow of particles in this room, the scientists reported in April.

A rapid exchange of air – more than 12 in an hour – can move particles into connected rooms, just as second-hand smoke can pour into lower levels or nearby rooms.

“A lot more ventilation is a good thing for the source room,” said Leonard Pease, chemical engineer and lead author of the study. “But this air goes somewhere. Perhaps more ventilation is not always the solution. “

In the United States, the CDC’s license can cause the Occupational Safety and Health Agency to change its air quality regulations. Air is harder to hold and clean than food or water. However, OSHA already prescribes air quality standards for certain chemicals. The guide for Covid does not require ventilation improvement except in healthcare.

“Ventilation is really part of the approach OSHA takes to all airborne hazards,” said Peg Seminario, who served as the AFL-CIO’s director of safety and health at work from 1990 until her retirement in 2019 these approaches should apply to the air. “

In January, President Biden instructed OSHA to issue temporary emergency guidelines for Covid by March 15. OSHA missed the deadline, however: the draft is reportedly under review by the White House regulator.

In the meantime, companies can do as much or as little as they want to protect their workers. Citing concerns about the continuing shortage of protective equipment, the American Hospital Association, an industry trade group, endorsed N95 respirators for healthcare workers only during medical procedures known to produce aerosols or when in close contact with an infected person Patients have. These are the same guidelines that the WHO and CDC offered at the start of the pandemic. Face masks and plexiglass barriers would protect the rest, the association said in a March statement to the House Committee on Education and Labor.

“They are still stuck in the old paradigm, they have not accepted the fact that speaking and coughing often produce more aerosols than these so-called aerosol producing processes,” said Dr. Marr from the hospital group.

“We know plexiglass barriers don’t work,” she said and can actually increase the risk, possibly because they obstruct proper airflow in a room.

The improvements don’t have to be expensive: in-room air filters cost less than 50 cents per square foot, although a lack of supply has raised prices, said William Bahnfleth, professor of architectural engineering at Penn State University and head of the Epidemic Task Force at Ashrae ( the American Society for Heating, Cooling and Air Conditioning Engineers), which sets standards for such devices. UV light built into a building’s ventilation system can cost up to $ 1 per square foot. Those that are installed room-by-room perform better, but could cost ten times as much, he said.

If OSHA rules change, demand could lead to innovation and lower prices. There are precedents to believe that this could happen, according to David Michaels, a professor at George Washington University who served as OSHA director under President Barack Obama.

When OSHA tried to control exposure to a carcinogen called vinyl chloride, which is the building block of vinyl, the plastics industry warned about it threatening 2.1 million jobs. In fact, within a few months, companies have “actually saved money and not a single job has been lost,” recalls Dr. Michaels.

In either case, absentee workers and healthcare costs can prove more costly than ventilation system updates, the experts said. Better ventilation helps thwart not only the coronavirus but other respiratory viruses that cause influenza and colds, as well as pollutants.

Before people realized the importance of clean water, cholera and other water-borne pathogens claimed millions of lives worldwide each year.

“We live with colds and runny nose and just accept them as a way of life,” said Dr. Marr. “Maybe we don’t really have to.”

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Business

Singapore, Hong Kong push again launch date for air journey bubble

Singapore, Hong Kong push back launch date for air travel bubble

Crew members and travelers of Singapore Airlines in the transit hall of Changi Airport in Singapore on January 14, 2021.

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SINGAPORE – Singapore and Hong Kong have again postponed the start date of a long-awaited deal on air bubbles, the two cities announced on Monday.

The travel bubble, which would have allowed travelers to skip the quarantine, was due to begin May 26. The program has had several rounds of delays since it was first launched in November 2020.

The Singapore Department of Transportation said in a statement that “with the recent increase in unlinked cases in the community, Singapore is unable to meet the criteria to launch the travel bubble”.

Meanwhile, the Hong Kong government said in a statement that further updates will be made on or before June 13th.

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Entertainment

Jack Terricloth, Punk Rocker With a Cabaret Air, Dies at 50

Jack Terricloth, Punk Rocker With a Cabaret Air, Dies at 50

To old friends who met him backstage, he was Pete Ventantonio, a punk rocker from Bridgewater, New Jersey. On his records he sometimes preferred bizarre credits such as Marcello DiTerriclothia or Favorite Singer who goes with everything.

But to the fans who raved about his concerts, he was Jack Terricloth: the singing, roaring, devilishly smarmy singer and ringleader of the World / Inferno Friendship Society, a band with a constantly changing line-up that defies punk with the decadent theatrics of Weimar merged with cabaret.

For more than 20 years, the group built an iconic following with a rock sound embellished by piano, violin, and a brass section. His live shows – with Jack Terricloth in a dark suit and combed hair like a 1930s dandy – were key to the rise of the so-called punk cabaret movement in the mid-2000s, which included Gogol Bordello and the Dresden Puppen .

While Brooklyn-based World / Inferno is largely ignored by the mainstream music industry, it has made its way into one of Jack Terricloth’s key projects with major art institutions such as the Public Theater in New York and the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, SC: an exploration of the life of Peter Lorre, known for actors like “Casablanca” and “M.” well-known character actor with glasses eyes.

“I find Peter Lorre an oddly charismatic, extremely creepy person who I think most punk rockers can relate to,” he said in a 2009 interview with the New York Times. He’s the outsider, the outsider. “

For fans and fellow musicians, Jack Terricloth was an inspiring, albeit distant, personality who preached what he saw as the central philosophical doctrine of rock’n’roll: the freedom to reject society’s programming and reinvent yourself.

He was found dead Wednesday at his home in Ridgewood, Queens. He was 50 years old. His sister Lisa Castano said the cause was hypertensive cardiovascular disease.

He was born Peter James Ventantonio on June 11, 1970 and grew up in Bridgewater. His father, James Ventantonio, was a lawyer and local judge; his mother, Anita (Winkler) Ventantonio, was a primary school teacher.

As a teenager, he took inspiration from punk rock and stars like David Bowie creating their own roles, said Mike Cavallaro, a childhood friend who played with him in Sticks and Stones in the 1980s and 1990s.

In the mid-90s, when punk became mainstream, Peter began conceiving a genre offshoot that would include theatrical presentation and a charismatic, world-weary frontman character. The World / Inferno Friendship Society’s first album, “The True Story of the Bridgewater Astral League,” in the style of a musical, was released in 1997.

“We’re a punk rock band and we play punk rock shows, but our music couldn’t be more different,” he told the Times. “Children see us and think, ‘Boys in suits and makeup on a hardcore show? Come on.’ But we always have them on the third song and then they have to accept something that affects the punk rock scene and the world. We have now entered the great dialogue that is our culture. “

The album “Addicted to Bad Ideas: Peter Lorre’s 20th Century” (2007) became the band’s greatest moment. It has been converted into a self-described “punk song game” of the same title that has been performed in rock clubs and in high profile art series such as Peak Performances at Montclair State University in New Jersey.

After their concerts, the group often mingled with their fans – who called themselves Infernites. Performances, such as the lavishly staged annual Halloween shows, were viewed as shared rituals by both the audience and other musicians.

“He made you feel like you were part of a secret society,” said Franz Nicolay, who played keyboard in the band in the 2000s, in an interview.

In addition to his sister, Jack Terricloth survived his partner Gina Rodriguez.

The group’s self-mythologization sometimes clouded their history. Even the name Jack Terricloth has various apocryphal origins. Mr. Cavallaro remembered that his friend had bought it from an old friend. Others said he took the name to differentiate himself from another Pete in his early days in the New Jersey punk demimonde.

The ultimate reason seemed less important than the act of self-invention, and its audience was there.

At the beginning of last year the World / Inferno Friendship Society released an album entitled “All borders are porous for cats” and, like artists everywhere, was founded by the pandemic. But Jack Terricloth was determined to find a way to keep his Halloween tradition alive for his biggest fans, said Bill Cashman, his friend and manager of the group.

So the band developed a scavenger hunt, with clues to the location of an outdoor performance scattered across Brooklyn. Roughly 50 to 60 fans reached the show on the roof of the Brooklyn Children’s Museum.

“It meant a lot to us to do this, even if we did it for a small number of people,” said Cashman. “Just to do our thing.”

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Business

Delta Air Strains (DAL) outcomes Q1 2021

Delta Air Lines (DAL) results Q1 2021

A Delta Airlines Boeing 757-251 approaches Washington Ronald Reagan National Airport (DCA) in Arlington, Virginia on February 24, 2021.

Daniel Slim | AFP | Getty Images

Delta Air Lines reported another quarterly loss on Thursday but expects to break even in June as demand for travel rebounds after a deep slump in the Covid pandemic.

Delta and its competitors continue to lose money, but have become optimistic about bookings improving as more travelers are vaccinated, travel restrictions are lifted and more attractions reopen. The airline said domestic leisure bookings rebounded to about 85% from 2019 levels, although international and business travel remains depressed.

Bookings in March doubled from January, CEO Ed Bastian told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street”. However, he added that the demand for business travel for this time of year is only 20% of the norm.

“When I look at the first quarter, it became clear to us that our business has taken a turn,” said Bastian. “We have seen a huge increase in bookings over the past few months.”

The Atlanta-based airline, which was the first to report results this quarter, posted a net loss of $ 1.18 billion on revenue of $ 4.15 billion from January through March, a 60% decrease from that month Delta generated $ 10.47 billion in Q1 2019 based on that, which is a loss of $ 3.55 per share, compared to a forecast of $ 3.17 per share.

Delta forecast a 50% to 55% drop in revenue for the second quarter compared to the same period in 2019 with planned capacity one-third lower than two years ago. The cost of cutting fuel costs will rise 6% to 9% this quarter, it said. These costs include a race to train pilots paused during the pandemic or flight pilots flying various types of aircraft in time for the midsummer travel season.

The capacity and revenue forecast “calls for a slower than expected near-term recovery,” Cowen & Co. wrote in a note after the results were released.

Delta’s shares fell more than 3% in the early afternoon.

Bastian said in an earnings release that the company expects “positive cash generation for the June quarter and sees a way to return to profitability in the September quarter as demand continues to recover”.

Here’s how Delta outperformed Wall Street expectations in the first quarter, based on Refinitiv’s average estimates:

  • Adjusted earnings per share: a loss of $ 3.55 versus an expected loss of $ 3.17 per share
  • Total sales: $ 4.15 billion versus expected $ 3.91 billion in sales

The airline is the last US airline to block center seats. This practice started earlier in the pandemic to make customers feel better about flying. Delta will be releasing this policy next month.

A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published on Wednesday found that laboratory models show that physically distancing passengers on board can reduce exposure to the virus that causes Covid-19 by up to 57%. The study did not consider face masks that are required by the federal government on flights.

Bastian defended the decision to sell all seats on Delta’s planes and disagreed with the study’s conclusions as the researchers failed to enforce pandemic safety protocols.

“Our experts tell us that given the vaccination rates they are at and the demand for such a high vaccination rate, it is perfectly safe to sit in that middle seat,” he said.