Tag: Reaching

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Politics

Taliban blocks Afghans from reaching Kabul airport opposite to commitments

Taliban blocks Afghans from reaching Kabul airport contrary to commitments

The Taliban are reportedly preventing Afghans from entering Kabul International Airport to flee the country in breach of their commitments to the US, a Biden government official said Wednesday.

This confirmation at a press conference came shortly after the US embassy in Kabul alerted people that it could not provide “safe passage” to the capital’s airport, where Islamist militants had overthrown the US-backed Afghan government with astonishing speed.

Assistant Secretary of State Wendy Sherman will address the situation in Afghanistan at the State Department in Washington, DC on August 18, 2021.

Andrew Harnik | Pool via Reuters

Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) And Mitt Romney (R-UT) urged the US not to forget journalists and aid workers in Afghanistan.

In a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, they said that around 200 journalists and aid workers and their families still want to evacuate Afghanistan. “Please make sure that journalists and support staff are not forgotten in the further evacuation flights,” said the senators.

Speaking at the Wednesday afternoon briefing, Assistant Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said, “We have seen reports that, contrary to their public statements and commitments to our government, the Taliban are preventing Afghans who want to leave the country from entering the airport.”

Read more about developments in Afghanistan:

The US military in Kabul and a team in Qatar are “working directly with the Taliban to make it clear that we expect them to safely and free from harassment to all American citizens, all third-country nationals and all Afghans who choose to do so allow”. “Said Sherman.

She added that “so far the Taliban’s commitment to safe passage for Americans has been solid,” although she noted that she did not know about “every case”.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin admitted on Wednesday, however, that the military is currently unable to safely escort Americans in Kabul to the airport for evacuation.

“I don’t have the ability to expand operations to Kabul right now,” Austin said.

About 2,000 people have been evacuated in the past 24 hours, Sherman said, with more than 4,840 processed for evacuation in the past few days.

Taliban fighters patrol the Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood in the city of Kabul, Afghanistan on Wednesday, August 18, 2021.

Rahmat Gül | AP

The Biden administration has come under increasing criticism for the chaos in Afghanistan, where the Taliban took control just weeks before the US ended its military presence after nearly two decades of war.

Even President Joe Biden’s Democratic allies called for an investigation into the government’s handling of the withdrawal.

The rapid advance of the insurgents took the US by surprise and sparked panic scenes at Hamid Karzai International Airport when thousands of Afghans stormed the runway, some still holding onto planes as they took off.

About 4,500 US soldiers were stationed at the airport to facilitate the evacuation. Some troops have reportedly fired warning shots into the air to control the crowd.

“The events and pictures of the past week were shocking for all of us,” said Sherman at the briefing, describing the situation as “extremely challenging and fluid”.

“This is an all-man-on-deck effort and we are not going to let up,” she said.

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Sherman was also questioned about a security alert from the US Embassy in Kabul early Wednesday warning that “US government-provided flights are departing” and that all US citizens and lawful residents, their spouses and unmarried children under the age of 21 may operate Years old, “should consider traveling to Hamid Karzai International Airport.”

But, the warning said in capital letters, the US “cannot guarantee a safe passage” to the airport.

Sherman said she has not seen any reports of Americans being “harassed or harassed” or prevented from getting to the airport.

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Entertainment

HBO and HBO Max Subscribers Seen Reaching 73 Million in 2021

HBO and HBO Max Subscribers Seen Reaching 73 Million in 2021

AT&T may not want HBO Max anymore, but the streaming platform is gaining traction with customers.

HBO and HBO Max, home to genre-bending franchises such as “Game of Thrones” and “The Sopranos” and Hollywood blockbusters like “Wonder Woman 1984,” have added 10.7 million customers in a little over a year, with 2.8 million coming in the three months ending in June, AT&T reported on Thursday. Those figures include both HBO Max and the HBO TV channel.

The company has 67.5 million subscribers to HBO and HBO Max, with 47 million in the United States. AT&T, which has struck a deal to sell its media businesses, expects HBO and HBO Max will have between 70 million and 73 million customers by the end of the year, exceeding earlier predictions.

Netflix, the most popular streaming service, has 209 million subscribers, with about 66 million in the United States. It gained customers in the second quarter, but growth has considerably slowed and it lost 430,000 subscribers across the United States and Canada, a sign that cracks are beginning to show in the streamer’s long-held dominance.

Speaking on the broader streaming industry, Jason Kilar, the chief executive of AT&T’s media arm, WarnerMedia, said in an interview: “The only thing I can promise you is change. There is no doubt that change is coming, and that’s appropriate because we live in a dynamic time.”

WarnerMedia, which includes CNN, the Warner Bros. film and television studios and the Turner cable networks, is about to become the property of Discovery Inc., as media companies continue to gobble each other up in an effort to take on Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. The deal, which is expected to close around the middle of next year, will create the second-largest media business in the United States, behind the Walt Disney Company and ahead of Netflix and NBCUniversal.

Mr. Kilar, who learned of the acquisition only weeks before it would be announced, could be out of a job after the deal closes.

Both companies are prohibited from working together until the merger is approved by government regulators, including striking any employment agreements. Still, such deals often involve tacit arrangements about leadership. Mr. Kilar said that he had met socially with David Zaslav, the head of Discovery, but that he hadn’t broached the topic of his employment.

“David and I have known each other for a long time,” he said, “and I think it’s fair to say there’s a lot of shared respect between the both of us.”

Mr. Kilar, who took charge of the company only 15 months ago, said he did not have plans to step away.

“There will be a point where I pick my head up next year where I think about this topic,” he continued. “But I certainly don’t intend to do it until 2022.”

Mr. Kilar, who was the founding chief executive of Hulu, is considered within Hollywood to be a bit of an iconoclast. In 2011, he broadsided the industry with a now-famous manifesto on the future of entertainment that, to many, came across as a blistering critique of Hulu’s corporate ownership.

The post panned traditional TV for running far too many commercials. Mr. Kilar also blasted cable, predicting that viewers would eventually drop expensive packages.

After Mr. Kilar joined WarnerMedia, he quickly shuffled the executive ranks and cut costs in an effort to streamline the business.

Then he angered Hollywood (again) by breaking with tradition and releasing the entire 2021 lineup of Warner Bros. films on HBO Max on the same day they were scheduled to appear in theaters. The move would have cost some of Hollywood’s biggest players back-end profits — the commission that top-flight producers and stars earn based on box office receipts — but the company quickly worked out deals to make sure they would be paid.

Unlike Netflix, Disney+ and HBO Max and other new entrants into streaming have legacy agreements with cable distributors and Hollywood studios that prevent a more full-throated approach to making films and TV shows immediately available online.

For Mr. Kilar, the move wasn’t about upsetting Hollywood, but rather was part of a larger strategy to goose HBO Max.

It seems to have worked. The release of made-for-the-big-screen spectacles like “Godzilla vs. Kong” on HBO Max helped to increase the service’s customer rolls.

Mr. Kilar intends to keep up that strategy through 2022. Warner Bros. will release 10 films exclusively for the streaming platform. And big-budget films like “The Batman,” a reimagining of the comic book character starring Robert Pattinson, will have relatively short windows in theaters of 45 days before they show up on HBO Max, according to Mr. Kilar.

“That’s very, very different than the way the world operated in 2019,” he said. “Ultimately, I do think that as long as you’re thoughtful about it, change could be very, very good for not only the customers but also the people we get to work with.”

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Health

Authorities assured of reaching vaccine goal

Government confident of reaching vaccine target

The Indian government is confident that the country will be able to meet an ambitious target of having more than 2 billion coronavirus vaccine doses by the end of the year, Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said.

Last month, Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said in a statement that India will have 516 million vaccine doses by July, including shots already administered, and that the number will rise to 2.16 billion doses between August and December.

“We have paid the two existing domestic manufacturers, Serum Institute (of India) and Bharat Biotech, advance money to produce vaccines for the whole of May, June, and July. We are only past May,” Puri told CNBC’s Tanvir Gill in an interview. He explained that the government is also in advanced stages of talks with other vaccine manufacturers.

The government is “absolutely confident of being able to meet this target by December,” Puri added.

In its forecast, the Indian government expects about 750 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine that is being locally produced by the Serum Institute of India and is known as Covishield. Another 550 million doses of Covaxin, which is developed and produced by Indian company Bharat Biotech, are also expected.

People walking past a wall mural depicting medical staff hitting the coronavirus with vaccine needle at Santacruz on March 29, 2021 in Mumbai, India.

Pratik Chorge | Hindustan Times | Getty Images

Both vaccines are being currently used in India’s inoculation campaign where more than 222 million doses have been administered as of Thursday — but a majority of them are first of the two doses required for immunity.

Russia’s Sputnik vaccine — the third shot to get approved — will contribute about 156 million to the predicted tally. Reuters reported that six Indian companies have already signed deals to produce around 1 billion doses of the vaccine annually and that Serum Institute is also seeking approval to make it.

The government also expects:

In addition, India has also authorized foreign-made vaccines that have been granted emergency approval by the U.S., U.K., European Union, Japan and World Health Organization-listed agencies.

Vaccines, the way forward

Experts agree that vaccination is the way forward for India — both to bring the economy out of the Covid crisis and to mitigate the effects of a third wave. But vaccine hesitancy, in part due to misinformation being spread about the shots, has been an issue both in India and globally.

Vaccines are also in short supply and that has slowed down domestic inoculation efforts and forced India to halt exports to other countries.

For his part, Puri said that proper dissemination of information and education around vaccination is needed and that the government is doing its part.

India is battling a devastating second wave of outbreak that started in February and accelerated in April and early May, which overwhelmed the country’s health-care infrastructure. The sector has struggled with shortages of beds, oxygen and medication as many doctors and other health-care workers succumbed to Covid-19.

A doctor walks past the banner announcing a Covid-19 vaccination drive in Hyderabad, India on May 28, 2021.

Noah Seelam | AFP | Getty Images

Some of that pressure eased once the central government and states stepped up their efforts to manage the outbreak while international aid poured in, providing some of the much-needed medical supplies.

Daily reported cases in India have declined from a peak of more than 414,000 in early May. So far, the South Asian nation reported more than 28.5 million cases and over 340,000 deaths.

Puri said the government has now mapped out ways to deal with challenges like oxygen shortages, where hard-hit areas ran out of stock and logistical difficulties made it harder for new supplies to reach them.

Initially, the government diverted oxygen meant for industrial use to medical facilities. Last month, it stepped up efforts to streamline the supply by allocating funds to install 500 medical oxygen plants across India within three months.

“If a third wave comes, and when it comes, depending on the requirements, our capacity to again repurpose and again to convert back to dealing with it, I think that infrastructure capacity is there,” Puri said.

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Health

Reaching ‘Herd Immunity’ Is Unlikely within the U.S., Specialists Now Consider

Reaching ‘Herd Immunity’ Is Unlikely in the U.S., Experts Now Believe

The skepticism of many Americans about the vaccines and the lack of access in some groups – homeless, migrant workers, or some color communities – make it a challenge to achieve this goal. Vaccine mandates only make this attitude worse, some experts believe.

A better approach would be to have a trustworthy person address the root cause of hesitation – fear, suspicion, misunderstanding, easy access, or a desire for more information, said Mary Politi, an expert on health decisions and communication at Washington University in St. Louis.

People often need to see others in their social circle accept something before they’re ready to try, said Dr. Politi. Highlighting the life benefits of vaccination, like seeing a family member or sending their children to school, might be more motivating than the nebulous idea of ​​herd immunity.

“That would resonate more with people than that somewhat elusive concept that experts are still trying to figure out,” she added.

Although children spread the virus less efficiently than adults, all experts agreed that vaccinating children would also be important in keeping the number of Covid cases down. In the long term, the public health system must also take into account babies and children and adults who fall into a higher risk group.

Annoying scenarios remain on the way to this long-term vision.

If enough people are not protected over time, highly contagious variants can develop that can breach vaccine protection, bring people to the hospital, and put them at risk of death.

“This is the nightmare scenario,” said Jeffrey Shaman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University.

How common and how severe these breakthrough infections are may determine whether the United States can keep hospital stays and deaths down, or whether the country is in “maddening turmoil” every few years, he said.

Categories
Health

Reaching ‘Herd Immunity’ Is Unlikely within the U.S., Specialists Now Consider

Reaching ‘Herd Immunity’ Is Unlikely in the U.S., Experts Now Believe

A better approach would be to have a trustworthy person address the root cause of hesitation – fear, suspicion, misunderstanding, easy access, or a desire for more information, said Mary Politi, an expert on health decisions and communication at Washington University in St. Louis.

People often need to see others in their social circle accept something before they’re ready to try, said Dr. Politi. Highlighting the life benefits of vaccination, like seeing a family member or sending their children to school, might be more motivating than the nebulous idea of ​​herd immunity.

“That would resonate more with people than that somewhat elusive concept that experts are still trying to figure out,” she added.

Although children spread the virus less efficiently than adults, all experts agreed that vaccinating children would also be important in keeping the number of Covid cases down. In the long term, the public health system must also take into account babies and children and adults who fall into a higher risk group.

Annoying scenarios remain on the way to this long-term vision.

If enough people are not protected over time, highly contagious variants can develop that can breach vaccine protection, bring people to the hospital, and put them at risk of death.

“This is the nightmare scenario,” said Jeffrey Shaman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University.

How common and how severe these breakthrough infections are may determine whether the United States can keep hospital stays and deaths down, or whether the country is in “maddening turmoil” every few years, he said.

“I think we’re going to look over our shoulders – or at least, public health officials and infectious disease epidemiologists will look over their shoulders and say, ‘Okay, the varieties out there – what are they doing? What can you? ” he said. “Maybe the general public can’t care too much about it again, but we have to.”

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Business

Pausing J&J Covid vaccine may have far reaching results: Dr. Kavita Patel

U.S. states face steep decline in J&J vaccine

Dr. Kavita Patel told CNBC on Tuesday that she believes the Food and Drug Administration’s recommendation that states stop using Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot Covid vaccine is likely to have a lasting impact on the country’s efforts to fight the pandemic.

“This is a devastating blow to this J&J vaccination effort in the US,” said Patel, a family doctor in Washington, DC, in an interview on Squawk Box. She also worked on health initiatives in the Obama administration while serving as director of policy for the Bureau of Interstate Affairs and Public Engagement.

Patel said the supply of Pfizer and Moderna’s two-shot vaccines will not be able to quickly meet the demand caused by the J&J hiatus. This will delay US vaccination efforts, she added.

The FDA recommendation, released Tuesday, came after six people in the US experienced rare and severe blood clotting problems after receiving the J&J vaccine.

In a tweet, the US regulator said its actions were taken “out of caution”.

All six cases occurred in women between the ages of 18 and 48, with symptoms developing six to 13 days after receiving the shot.

So far, J&J has said that there is “no clear causal link” between these rare events and the vaccine. The US drug giant also said it was working with regulators.

While she anticipates that Moderna and Pfizer will at some point be able to “fill some of that void,” said Patel, “it will be some time” before these other vaccine manufacturers have additional doses available in the US

A particular challenge in discontinuing the administration of J & J’s vaccine is that it only requires a single shot, while Moderna and Pfizer’s mRNA vaccines require two doses for complete protection of immunity.

“We just can’t replace it for the next week or three,” said Patel, a medical assistant for NBC News and a non-resident of the Brookings Institution. “This will delay our vaccination efforts.”

To compensate for this, the US could consider reducing second-dose administration to recipients of Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, Patel suggested.

The Chief Medical Officer of the White House, Dr. Anthony Fauci, has spoken out against requests earlier in the pandemic.

The second dose of Moderna is supposed to be given four weeks after the first, while Pfizer is three weeks apart.

“You will hear a renewal for calls to delay that second shot so we can get that many first shots in the arms. It’s not an unreasonable thing to think about now,” said Patel.

“If we postpone the second dose of Moderna or Pfizer for a week or two, it might actually help us fill some of that void faster,” she added.

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Health

Reaching herd immunity will probably be fairly a problem for Asia: UN official

Reaching herd immunity will be quite a challenge for Asia: UN official

SINGAPORE – Achieving herd immunity to Covid-19 could be difficult for developing countries in the Asia-Pacific region, a UN official told CNBC.

Herd immunity refers to the situation in which a disease cannot easily spread within a population because most people have become immune to it either from vaccination or from previous infection.

Around 60% to 70% of the population must be vaccinated to reach this state, said Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana, executive secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific.

“I think that’s quite a challenge,” she told CNBC’s Street Signs Asia on Wednesday.

“If we look at the data so far, the progress has been quite modest with the exception of some advanced countries,” she said during an interview at the Asian Development Bank’s Southeast Asia Virtual Development Symposium.

Although some countries have placed vaccine orders and others may even have supplies on hand, “implementation on the ground is quite slow,” she added.

Further challenges during the rollout

There are other challenges to successful vaccination programs as well.

Alisjahbana named the timely supply, limited financial resources and poor logistics infrastructure as obstacles that stand in the way of developing countries. Another approach is equitable access, which refers to equitable distribution to all who need it.

Richer nations have bought vaccines and placed bulk orders, leaving poorer developing countries at the bottom of the queue. Many of these countries may not have the money to buy enough cans.

A medical professional holds Covid-19 vaccine Covaxin vials during the nationwide vaccination campaign in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India on Saturday, February 6, 2021.

Vishal Bhatnagar | NurPhoto | Getty Images

Alisjahbana pointed out that there is help in the form of Covax, a global alliance trying to provide vaccines to poorer countries – but the supply is still limited for now.

“One of the main problems – especially now because it is still like that Early (in) the vaccination program and its implementation – is the adequate supply, “she said.

However, she noted that production is increasing and more vaccines are being approved by the World Health Organization and national authorities.

“I hope the vaccination schedule will be accelerated in the coming months, including in developing countries,” she said.

She expects vaccinations to increase in the second half of the year and further accelerate in 2022.

If countries can be consistent and speed up vaccinations for high-risk groups and key workers, economies and borders can open, she said.

“Economic activities, including tourism and so on, (the) flow of goods, the flow of people can resume,” Alisjahbana said.

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Health

Coronavirus Vaccines Are Reaching American Arms

Coronavirus Vaccines Are Reaching American Arms

President Biden is also pushing for faster vaccinations – a case he is expected to bring on Friday when he travels to Kalamazoo, Michigan, to visit the manufacturing facility of Pfizer, one of two manufacturers of federally approved vaccines.

Federal officials estimate that up to six million vaccine doses are still unnecessarily stowed away. The release could increase the number of doses used by more than 10 percent – significantly accelerating the pace of the country’s vaccination program at a time when speed is vital to saving lives, containing disease and fighting off more contagious variants of the virus could. To date, 56 million shots have been administered and only 12 percent of Americans have received one or more doses.

The idea of ​​cans lying in the refrigerator while millions of people are on waiting lists has deeply frustrated government officials. The problem has two roots.

First, when the federal vaccination program for long-term care facilities began late last year, the CDC relied on the number of beds, even though occupancy rates are the lowest in years. According to the American Health Care Association, a trading group, only 68 percent of beds in nursing homes and 78 percent of beds in assisted living are filled.

Then the CDC doubled that allocation to cover staff. While four-fifths of long-term care residents opted for a vaccination during the first month of the program, 63 percent of staff received no shots, the agency reported. Some of them have since been vaccinated, although it is not known exactly how many more.

Despite a lack of acceptance, the pharmacy chains that administer the program have continued to withdraw their allocations from the federal government. At one point in Virginia, Dr. Avula, if they had used less than one of the three cans they had on hand.

Clark Mercer, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam’s chief of staff, said of “good, corporate, risk-averse companies”, “If they can pull down, they will pull down.”