Tag: Survive

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WHO says it urgently wants $7.7 billion to assist poorer nations survive delta Covid variant

WHO says it urgently needs $7.7 billion to help poorer nations survive delta Covid variant

Director General of the World Health Organization Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on July 28, 2021.

Jaber Abdulkhaleg | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

The World Health Organization is calling for $ 7.7 billion, which officials say is badly needed to help low-income countries survive the Delta-Covid variant through the provision of vaccines, oxygen and medical care.

The funds will be used for the WHO’s Access to Covid-19 Tools program, or ACT, accelerator program that provides critical medical supplies to fight the coronavirus worldwide, said Dr. Bruce Aylward, senior advisor to the WHO director-general, during a question and answer session with WHO officials, streamed a live stream on their social media accounts on Tuesday.

Aylward said the funds are needed to partially cover a $ 16.8 billion shortfall that hampers WHO’s ability to fight the pandemic in developing countries with little or no access to vaccines.

“Aside from the moral question – people shouldn’t die if the technology is available elsewhere, you know, technology should help humanity as a whole – there is also the problem that we can’t solve this pandemic in one country at a time. “Said Dr. Mariangela Simao, WHO Deputy Director General for Access to Medicines, Vaccines and Medicines.

“That’s the reality,” she continued. “We have to help the countries move closer together. Otherwise we will live with this virus much longer than necessary.”

WHO officials have set a goal to vaccinate at least 10% of the world’s population by the end of September, at least 40% by the end of this year, and 70% by the middle of next year. Some nations around the world have not yet started their vaccination campaigns, while wealthier countries like the US and Israel have already fully vaccinated more than half of their populations.

Aylward said people in poorer countries who have a fever or other symptoms don’t have the test materials to know if it’s Covid or other diseases like malaria, tuberculosis, pneumonia or HIV. In addition to providing doses of vaccine, Aylward said the funding will also include Covid testing, oxygen treatments and masks.

Wealthy nations have spent trillions of dollars to mitigate the effects of the pandemic, he said. “Your economy tells you to vaccinate the world and of course we didn’t listen,” he said.

The WHO previously said it was in dire need of $ 7.7 billion to run the ACT Accelerator, and at that point was calling for an additional $ 3.8 billion to buy 760 million doses of Covid vaccine for delivery the next Year, reported Reuters.

“This is the defining moment of our time,” said Aylward. “At some point we look back and that will be the question: How did you behave in those crucial moments?”

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Health

Serving to Drug Customers Survive, Not Abstain: ‘Hurt Discount’ Beneficial properties Federal Help

Helping Drug Users Survive, Not Abstain: ‘Harm Reduction’ Gains Federal Support

GREENSBORO, NC – The skinny young man quietly walked into the room while waiting for the free supplies to help keep him from dying: sterile water and a stove to dissolve illegal drugs; clean syringes; Alcohol swabs to prevent infection; and naloxone, a drug that can reverse overdoses. A sign on the wall – “We stand to love drug users for who they are” – felt like a hug.

It was the first day on which the contact point in a residential area here opened its doors since it was closed due to the coronavirus in spring 2020. “I am very happy that you have all opened again,” the man, whose first name is Jordan, said a volunteer who handed him a full paper bag while heavy metal music played over a loudspeaker in the background. He asked for extra naloxone for friends in his rural county, an hour away, where it was in short supply during the pandemic.

The death toll from overdose rose nearly 30 percent to more than 90,000 in the twelve months that ended in November, according to preliminary federal data released earlier this month – suggesting 2020 beat recent records for such deaths Has. The astounding surge during the pandemic is due to many factors including widespread job losses and displacement; decreased access to addiction treatment and medical care; and an illicit drug supply that became even more dangerous after the country was closed.

But the forced isolation for people struggling with addiction and other mental health issues is possibly one of the greatest. Now, with the nation reopening, the Biden government supports the controversial approach the center is taking here known as harm reduction. Rather than giving drug users abstinence, the main goal is to reduce their risk of dying or developing infectious diseases like HIV by providing them with sterile equipment, tools to check their drugs for fentanyl and other deadly substances, or even a safe place to nap Will be provided .

Such programs have long been under attack to facilitate drug use, but President Biden has made expanding harm reduction efforts one of his drug policy priorities – the first president to do so. The American Rescue Act earmarked $ 30 million specifically for evidence-based harm reduction services, the first time Congress has raised funds specifically for that purpose. Funding, while modest, is a victory for the programs, both symbolically and practically, as they often run on tight budgets.

“It’s a tremendous signal to recognize that not everyone who uses drugs is ready for treatment,” said Daliah Heller, director of drug-use initiatives at Vital Strategies, a global health organization. “Harm reduction programs say, ‘Okay, you do drugs. How can we help you stay safe and healthy and alive in the first place? ‘”

Although some programs like this one, run by the North Carolina Survivors Union, managed to keep holding some supplies – handing them through windows, offering roadside collection, or even mailing them – practically all of them stopped during the pandemic To invite drug users. Many customers, like Jordan, stopped coming and lost a trustworthy safety net.

Some former Greensboro Center regulars have died or disappeared. Many lost their homes or jobs. At the same time, the center was flooded with new customers and is now having problems keeping enough supplies on hand.

“The struggle that people are having right now, unrecognized and unanswered, is really difficult,” said Louise Vincent, Executive Director of the Survivors Union.

Yet many elected officials and communities continue to refuse to provide people with medication for drug use, including recently introduced test strips to screen drugs for the presence of illegally manufactured fentanyl, which appears in most overdose deaths. Some also say that syringes from harm reduction programs litter the neighborhoods or that the programs lead to an increase in crime. Researchers deny both claims.

West Virginia has just passed law making syringe service programs very difficult to operate, despite an increase in HIV cases from intravenous drug use. The North Carolina Legislature pondered a similar proposal this spring, and elected officials in Scott County, Indiana, whose syringe exchanges helped contain a major HIV outbreak six years ago, voted this month to end it. Mike Jones, a local commissioner who voted to end the program, said at the time that he feared the syringes being distributed could contribute to overdose deaths.

“I know people who are alcoholics and I don’t buy them a bottle of whiskey,” he said. “And I know people who want to kill themselves and I won’t buy them a bullet for their gun.”

Many harm reduction programs are carried out by people who have previously or are still using drugs, and their own struggles with addiction, mental illness, or other health problems have also flared up during the pandemic. In Baltimore, Boston, New York and elsewhere, beloved movement leaders themselves have died of overdoses, chronic health problems, and other causes in the past year. Her death left gaps in efforts to continue providing services.

Ms. Vincent, whose own opioid addiction stemmed from a long battle with bipolar disorder, made a brief return to illicit drug use this spring. She was keen to prevent withdrawal, she said after trying unsuccessfully to switch from methadone to another anti-craving drug, buprenorphine. She later learned that the small amount of fentanyl she was using was mixed with xylazine – an animal sedative that can cause weeping ulcers on the skin. She ended up in the hospital with her hemoglobin level so low that she needed a blood transfusion.

At the start of the pandemic, Ms. Vincent said street drug prices soared. Then drugs that were sold as heroin, methamphetamine, or cocaine were trimmed with unknown additives. Fentanyl was ubiquitous – including increasingly in counterfeit pills sold as prescription pain relievers or anti-anxiety drugs. But also substances like xylazine, which appears in illegal drugs from Philadelphia to Saskatchewan.

“It’s just poison,” said Ms. Vincent, who is being treated with methadone again. “The drug supply is like nothing we’ve seen before.”

On the afternoon of the center’s reopening, a young woman asked for a refresher on how to inject naloxone and if Ms. Vincent could explain what a meth overdose looks like. An older man asked if there was anything to eat besides clean syringes; a volunteer put a pastry in the microwave for him.

In addition to running the program here, Ms. Vincent is the executive director of the National Urban Survivors Union, a larger nonprofit, promoting harm reduction services across the country. In 2016, her 19-year-old daughter died of a heroin overdose while she was in an inpatient treatment center where naloxone was not available, she said.

Naloxone is more common now, but Ms. Vincent wants another life-saving tool to be disseminated: drug control programs that would allow people to find out exactly what substances are in illicit drugs before using them. Such programs exist legally in other countries including Canada, the Netherlands and New Zealand. Another type of harm reduction program used in other countries – where people use illicit drugs under medical supervision if they overdose – remains illegal here after a group trying to start one in Philadelphia so far lost in court.

“We cWe could have a real-time monitoring system instead of waiting for death reports from the coroner, ”Ms. Vincent said. “It would change the game, wouldn’t it?”

She found the xylazine in the drugs she recently took with a device called a Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrometer that a donor gave to her group this year. It can determine which substances contain samples of street drugs in minutes.

Jordan, who is 23 years old, had traveled from Stokes County, near the Virginia border, where the pre-pandemic overdose rate was nearly double the national average. His cousin, he said, was hospitalized weeks earlier after overdosing on a “really bad batch” of fentanyl that were found to contain traces of heavy metals in tests.

“At least 50 people in my area were rescued from here by Narcan,” he said, picking up several boxes of 10 vials of the injectable form of the antidote. “Even my grandmother knows how to manage it.”

Many harm reduction programs, including this one, help or sometimes even offer people to put people on drug treatment. But Jordan is one of the many drug users who are not interested in this path, at least for the moment. The next programs are in Greensboro or Winston-Salem, each a healthy drive from home. And treating food cravings like buprenorphine or methadone, which have been shown to save lives, “doesn’t really work for me,” he said.

The county that includes Greensboro, North Carolina’s third largest city, had 140 fatal overdoses last year, up from 111 the year before. The numbers don’t include the people who died from infections caused by injecting drugs, including the fiancée of a woman who walked into the center at dusk on the day of the reopening and called out to Ms. Vincent, “Where’s Louise?”

She met Ms. Vincent when they were both patients in a methadone clinic six years ago and regularly came to the center for injections and naloxone. She and her fiancé had tried to stop drug use during the pandemic, unnerved by the strange new adulterants that were showing up in the stash. But her fiancé started developing a high fever last December and was admitted to a hospital intensive care unit, seriously ill with endocarditis, a heart valve infection that can result from injecting medication. He died just before Christmas.

“Do you all have a meeting tonight?” Asked Ms. Vincent, referring to the self-help groups the center held several times a week before the pandemic.

“You’ll start again soon,” Mrs. Vincent assured her. “Being connected is much more important than any of us thought.”

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Business

How Can the Metropolis of London Survive Brexit?

How Can the City of London Survive Brexit?

LONDON – Following this year’s Brexit, the UK government needed a new blueprint for the future of the country’s financial services as cities like Amsterdam and Paris vied to become Europe’s next investment and banking capital.

For some, the answer was Deliveroo, a London-based food company with 100,000 riders on scooters and bicycles. Despite losing more than £ 226 million (nearly $ 310 million) in the past year, Deliveroo offered the raw promise of many fast-growing tech startups – and it became a symbol of Britain’s new ambitions by choosing to Go public and list your stocks not in New York, but on the London Stock Exchange.

Deliveroo is a “true UK tech success story,” said Rishi Sunak, the UK’s chief financial officer, last month.

It was a false start. Deliveroo has since been dubbed “the worst IPO in London history”. On the first day of trading, March 31, the shares fell 26 percent below the market price. (It’s gotten worse.)

The flop has damaged the image of the City of London – the geographic and metaphorical name for the UK’s financial center – as it attempts to recover from the country’s exit from the European Union. Some of the effects of Brexit were immediately felt: on the first working day of 2021, trading in European stocks shifted from the venues in London to the major cities of the bloc. Then London’s share of trading in euro-denominated derivatives fell sharply. There is fear about what might go next.

Financial services are an integral part of the UK economy, accounting for 7 percent of gross domestic product – £ 132 billion in 2019, or around $ 170 billion. Exporting financial services and other professional services is something that sets the UK apart. Membership of the European Union allowed London to serve as the financial base for the rest of the continent and the city’s business grew. Four tenths of exports of financial services go to the European Union.

The government has embarked on a series of reviews and consultations on a variety of subjects, including IPOs and trading regulations, to seek ideas to bolster London’s reputation as a global financial center.

For many, the changes cannot come soon enough.

“The UK is not going to sit still and watch its financial services move to other European cities,” said Alasdair Haynes, founder of Aquis, a London trading venue and stock exchange. This will be exciting for the next three or four years, he said.

However, this optimism is not universal. The prospects for a warm and close relationship between the UK and the European Union have deteriorated significantly. The two sides recently finalized negotiations on a Memorandum of Understanding to set up a forum to discuss financial regulation. However, the forum is voluntary and the document has yet to be signed.

The European Union has made no secret of its plans to build its own capital markets, which could flourish if London is denied access. The “mood music in the EU,” said Andrew Pilgrim, who heads the UK government and financial services team at EY, focuses on having autonomy over one’s own financial services rather than relying on the UK.

It is becoming increasingly attractive for Great Britain to write its own financial rules. The trick is to attract more business without lowering regulatory standards in London, which many consider a strong win. A recent Duff & Phelps survey of senior financial managers found that fewer see London as the world’s leading financial center, but that it tops the rankings for the regulatory environment.

Here are some of the plans.

“I want to make the UK the best place in the world for high-growth, innovative companies,” Sunak told Parliament on March 3rd. On the same day, a government-commissioned review recommended changes to encourage technology companies to go public in London. Common New York ideas were suggested that would allow the founders to maintain more control of their company after they began selling shares.

Example: Companies with two share classes and different voting rights (like Facebook) can be listed in the premium section of the London Stock Exchange, which could pave the way for inclusion in reference indices. Or: to allow a company to go public while selling a smaller proportion of its shares than the current rules require.

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Updated

April 16, 2021, 10:48 p.m. ET

The timing of Deliveroo’s IPO was no coincidence. It was listed on double-class shares, which gave its co-founder William Shu more than half the voting rights for three years – a structure that should closely align with the review’s recommendations, the company said.

But the idea might be a no-starter among some institutional investors in London. Deliveroo flopped in part because they opposed the offer of shares with minimum voting rights.

Others, however, are enthusiastic about the ideas of the review carried out by Jonathan Hill, a former European Commissioner for Financial Services. Among them is Mr Haynes, whose company Aquis acquired a stock exchange last year to compete with the London Stock Exchange.

“I am very supportive of what Lord Hill did,” said Haynes, who wants his exchange to become “Europe’s Nasdaq” one day. It seeks to lure companies into some of the larger companies that get involved with perks such as a no-sell policy (a practice where investors bet against the price of a stock). The Nasdaq has a coveted reputation for listing technology giants like Microsoft, Apple, and Facebook.

London doesn’t have “that alternative for fast-growing companies,” said Haynes.

Mr. Hill’s report also urges London to become a more welcoming home for special-purpose acquisitions or blank check businesses, the recent craze in the financial markets that has caught on with investors and celebrities alike. SPACs are public shell companies that are listed on a stock exchange and then look for private companies to buy.

London was left in the SPAC passion. Last year, according to Dealogic, 248 SPACs were listed in New York and only four in London. In March, Cazoo, a British used car dealer, announced that it would go public through a SPAC in New York.

There are already signs that Amsterdam could take the lead in this booming business for Europe. This year there were two SPACs each in London and Amsterdam, but the value of the listings in Amsterdam is five times that of London.

The UK’s financial regulator announced that it would soon open consultations on SPACs and introduce new rules by the summer.

London already has a reputation for producing soaring financial technology companies like Revolut and Monzo, both of which expanded into the US, and Wise (formerly Transferwise), which was valued at $ 5 billion last year. All three are so-called challenger banks that offer financial services via apps without the need for stationary branches.

The government clearly wants to build on this dynamic. It released an independent review of the fintech industry in February and is already acting on some of its recommendations, including setting up an express visa procedure for people interested in coming to the UK to work for fintech companies. The review also recommended a program that will bring regulatory blessings to small businesses experimenting with new fintech offerings and services.

As the UK prepares to host the United Nations Climate Change Conference in November, the government aims to transform London into a global hub for investors looking to spend their money on green and sustainable initiatives.

Mr Sunak has previously said that the Treasury Department will require large corporations and financial firms to disclose all climate change risks to their businesses by 2025 and is working on a taxonomy to define what really counts as “green”. Next, millions of pounds will be invested in new research centers to provide climate and environmental data to financial companies.

The government is also seeking to reclaim the lost ground in Germany, France and other European countries by issuing green bonds to fund projects to combat climate change.

London’s financial industry is in no danger of collapsing, but with Brexit, one of the cornerstones of the UK economy is no longer looking as impressive as it used to be. And as London tries to keep up with New York, it looks over its shoulder at the financial technology coming out of Asia.

The government has continuously billed Brexit as an opportunity to do more business with countries outside the European Union. This will be vital when international companies wonder whether they want to set up their European business in London or elsewhere.

When it comes to the future of the UK, it is “almost a look back at the future of London as an international center as opposed to an international and European center,” said Miles Celic, the executive director of CityUK representing the industry. “It doubles on international business.”

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Entertainment

They’re Sacred Areas for Spain’s Flamenco Scene. Many Gained’t Survive Covid.

They’re Sacred Spaces for Spain’s Flamenco Scene. Many Won’t Survive Covid.

MADRID – They are often in dark, cavern-like rooms with a stage between the tables and chairs of the guests. These little clubs, called tablaos, acted as stepping stones for generations of flamenco artists in Spain to launch professional careers, much like the way many jazz musicians first became aware of the public in clubs like New Orleans.

But this intimate setup, designed to bring the audience close to the stage, has resulted in most tablaos failing to reopen, even after Spain lifted its toughest pandemic lockdown restrictions last summer. The situation has created an existential struggle for these cherished institutions at the heart of a national art form.

Juan Manuel del Rey, president of the national association of tablaos, said that if the government does not step in with more financial support, “We are now on the path to extinction.”

“You cannot work economically when you have almost more employees and artists than spectators,” he said.

While many theaters in Spain have reopened since last summer with reduced audience capacity, social distancing and other rules, this approach for tablaos has not been financially viable. Since the pandemic began, 34 of the national association’s 93 tablaos have permanently closed their doors, del Rey said.

Their disappearance comes when flamenco experienced one of its brightest moments, thanks in part to a tourism boom in Spain in recent years. Before the pandemic, foreign visitors flocked to the tablaos to discover a Spanish tradition that UNESCO is celebrating in the world’s intangible cultural heritage. After seven years of growth, the number of foreign visitors to Spain fell to 19 million last year, from almost 84 million in 2019.

The Spanish government donated a group of tablaos worth € 232,000, about $ 275,000, last year as part of more than € 2 million in support of the flamenco sector during the pandemic – a move the Ministry of Culture in a Described email as an “extraordinary effort”. However, tablao managers say the spate of recent closings shows that support was too little and too late.

In recent years, tablaos have provided work for 95 percent of Spanish flamenco artists, said del Rey. And many artists say they appreciate the creative benefits of working in informal places where they can test new ideas in front of an audience as they work towards bigger production.

Performing in a tablao “is something very unique because it is a place where I can reconnect with my inner feelings and share those emotions directly with the public,” said 35-year-old Jesús Carmona, who last year prestigious national dance award of Spain won in an interview.

“It also feels like coming home,” said Carmona, who first appeared in a tablao at the age of 10 and has since brought flamenco to many of the world’s greatest stages. “I kind of grew up in tablaos and I believe that you should never turn your back on the people and places that have helped you advance.”

On Saturday he danced in front of only 32 people in the Corral de la Morería, one of the most famous flamenco clubs in Madrid. The director of the venue is del Rey, the president of the national association. The club was founded by his father in the 1950s when tablaos began to flourish in Madrid and other parts of Spain.

Although he hosted this one-off show for Carmona on Saturday, he has otherwise closed the house since March last year. Del Rey limited audience numbers for the performance to a quarter of the 120 people the tablao could fit in before the pandemic when it also held two performances a night.

In Las Tablas, another tablao in Madrid, the venue’s two managers said they could have reopened their venue in February by taking on much of the work previously done by five employees on leave.

“We now also had to become a cleaning lady and waitress,” said Antonia Moya, one of the managers who was once a flamenco dancer herself. “This situation is simply not sustainable, but I also cannot imagine my life without this tablao and this flamenco.”

Some overseas visitors have managed to find their way to the fighting tablaos despite pandemic restrictions.

Last week the German student Sabina Reiter and a British friend attended her first flamenco performance in Las Tablas. “I love all kinds of music and dance and it feels wonderful not only to be able to spend an evening with my boyfriend in Madrid, but also to discover flamenco up close and not just on television,” said Reiter.

It’s that kind of response that makes the small venues so important to the art of performing. Jesús Fernández, a flamenco dancer who appeared this month on a show he also directed at the Centro Cultural Flamenco Tablao in Madrid, said such venues are “the best place for a flamenco dancer to try things out and forge an identity because you can improvise and see the public react in ways that are simply impossible in the more rigid format of a theater show. “

However, the reality of the pandemic has been inevitable for many tablaos across Spain, including the famous Palacio del Flamenco of Barcelona, ​​which recently closed its doors for good.

In Madrid last month, an outdoor farewell performance was held at the centuries-old Villa Rosa, whose colorful tiled walls have been shown in films by Pedro Almodóvar and other Spanish directors, combined with a protest rally where participants placed flowers and candles at the entrance.

Such losses mean Spain is in danger of losing “the university of our flamenco,” said Rosana de Aza, a flamenco show producer who has run tablaos in Seville and Madrid. “In the tablao, our artists were able to put everything they learned into practice and turn their passion into a profession.”

With the remaining tablaos struggling to keep paying rent for their closed venues, some managers believe their survival relies on raising awareness of the importance of flamenco among locals, some of whom have avoided tablaos as tourist venues.

“Some people, especially younger ones, were not aware of the importance of flamenco and tablaos for our collective identity, and not just for tourists,” said Mimo Agüero. the director of the Tablao de Carmen in Barcelona.

“Unfortunately,” she said, “we sometimes only realize the importance of what we can lose when we have actually lost it.”

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Health

Edward Jenner Pioneered Vaccination. Will His Museum Survive a Pandemic?

Edward Jenner Pioneered Vaccination. Will His Museum Survive a Pandemic?

BERKELEY, England – It has been named the birthplace of modern day vaccination.

More than 220 years ago, when they received the first vaccine against smallpox, people in an English village stood in front of a small wooden hut to have their arms scratched with a lancet.

The pioneering local doctor who administered the vaccine, Edward Jenner, called the humble building in his garden the “Temple of Vaccinia,” and it was from there that a public health movement developed that declared smallpox eradicated worldwide in 1980 .

But a new scourge has left this place – where the gnarled wooden walls of Dr. Jenner’s hut still stands in a house and garden museum dedicated to his legacy – and his future closed to the public on shaky ground. Although Dr. Jenner’s work has been cited repeatedly as the world headed for a coronavirus vaccine, the museum struggled to survive in its former home.

“I think the problem has been museum underfunding in this country for many, many years,” said Owen Gower, the manager of Dr. Jenner’s house, museum and garden. “Covid has really shed light on these issues, as it has with so many different problems.”

The museum is among the many independent cultural heritage sites across the UK to stand on this fringe since last year, as one of their main sources of income – visitors – was cut off when pandemic restrictions closed their doors.

Some could open for a few months in the summer and fall, others, like Dr. Jenner’s house, unable to take necessary action in a tight space with limited budgets, remained closed.

A look in the museum’s guest book reveals the final handwritten notes from February 2020. One of the surnames is accompanied by an all-too-familiar drawing of the spiked sphere of a virus, scribbled by a child’s hand.

Even before the pandemic, Dr. Jenners Museum struggling to find financial stability. Mr. Gower is the only full-time employee; A few part-time workers and dozens of volunteers keep the museum going.

“It’s always been a tough sell,” said Gower of the small museum in the sleepy country town of Berkeley, which is on a quiet lane off the beaten track in the UK.

Most visitors are local, although there are occasional medical fans who make their way from further afield into town on the River Severn north of Bristol.

The building was converted into a museum as a private home in the 1980s after centuries. The handful of rooms are filled with Mr. Jenner’s personal effects. Folding glasses, a strand of hair, lancets and medical drawings crowd into small glass showcases, while the displays on the upper floor are reminiscent of the march to eradicate smallpox.

One recent morning this month, Mr Gower was walking around the museum grounds, pondering how the pandemic has given him a new personal appreciation for the place as he sees parallels with the current vaccination campaign.

Updated

March 29, 2021, 10:36 p.m. ET

“Some people would have been very excited, hopeful, others probably a little more nervous,” he said of those who met Dr. Jenner from the 1790s onwards to scratch his lancet, a small medical blade.

Dr. Jenner’s vaccine is based on a technique called variolation, which has been practiced in Africa and Asia for centuries, and his approach was also based on local knowledge. His vaccine used samples of the milder disease, cowpox – as it had long been known in his rural community that women exposed to the disease in dairies were immune to smallpox.

The museum managed to scratch by 2020 even with the doors closed, thanks in part to a huge fundraiser at the start of the pandemic.

The UK government this month announced an increase in its Culture Restoration Fund by £ 300 million, or $ 412 million in its annual budget, and there are more immediate grants to provide critical backstops.

Most funding available, however, focuses on immediate aid rather than long-term planning, and last year’s fundraiser that saved the Jenner Museum from imminent closure made it out of the question for most programs.

With the coronavirus vaccine rollout in the UK going smoothly and the number of new infections after a winter of lockdown giving way to a summer of freedom, Mr Gower hopes he’ll soon be welcoming the first visitors to the museum again as the Albertine roses that the Crawl up the facade of the building, begin to bloom.

There are around 2,500 independent museums and heritage sites across England, often full of niche collections like the one in Dr. Jenner’s house. Last year, emergency funding kept the entire sector afloat, said Emma Chaplin, director of the Association of Independent Museums.

“Many museums spent their reserves last year when the focus was obviously on survival,” said Ms. Chaplin. But after weathering the immediate pandemic storm, the sites will need support this year and likely next year to survive, she added.

As the Jenner Museum reopens, Mr Gower is hoping to update the exhibits to include new relevant topics as the coronavirus pandemic wakes up. Mr Gower believes the museum’s namesake would have endorsed this if he had told the fuller history of vaccination around the world and highlighted the many contributions to life-saving medicine.

“We are very keen to move away from the idea that there is a hero in the history of vaccination,” said Gower, noting that Dr. Jenner’s breakthrough “was based on the work of other people”.

Mr. Gower believes that Dr. Jenner’s focus on collaboration – he never patented his vaccine, offered it for free, and taught other doctors how to do the procedure – also offers lessons for the current age. And as nations look for limited vaccine supplies and anti-vaccine campaigns take hold, the story of how we got here is more important than ever.

“He’s done remarkable things – and the number of lives saved and changed by vaccinations – it all started here,” Gower said. “But I think it’s also the idea that not only is it a thing of the past, but it also lasts.”

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Business

‘Keep Alive and Survive’: Ski Resorts Brace for a Pandemic Season

‘Stay Alive and Survive’: Ski Resorts Brace for a Pandemic Season

OLYMPIC VALLEY, California – A crowd of skiers recently zigzagged down the slopes at Squaw Valley Ski Resort. Couples and families wandered through the resort’s village, which was decked out in golden Christmas lights and frosted with snow.

It looked like the beginning of a happy season. On closer inspection, however, it turned out to be anything but that.

The patios in the restaurant were almost empty when masked workers with lime green disinfectant sprayers on their backs were swept through. This was part of the $ 1 million Squaw Valley spent on disinfecting equipment and other security measures. Scanty groups waited in socially distant rows at the ski lifts. The resort felt “so dead,” said one skier, Sabrina Nottingham, in part because it kept ticket sales below 50 percent of the norm.

Squaw Valley, a marquee for winter sports enthusiasts, is one of many ski resorts across the country preparing for an unpredictable season. Resorts have been forced to rethink how to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, and with vaccines still rolling out, they have made a variety of changes in places like Aspen, Colorado. Park City, Utah; Taos Ski Valley, NM; and Killington, Vt. Many place visitor restrictions and require ticket reservations; New Mexico has limited resorts to 25 percent of capacity.

The resorts are also minimizing personal interactions by installing kiosks for ticket collection, creating space between people for ski lifts and gondolas, requiring masks, limiting the number of people on an elevator at one time, and closing down indoor dining in some places.

While the pandemic has dealt a severe blow to the entire travel industry, ski resorts could have a disproportionate impact this winter due to their short business window. The ski industry had already suffered a blow back in the spring when the pandemic broke out and many ski resorts were forced to close prematurely, resulting in $ 2 billion in losses and laying off or vacation days for thousands of employees, according to the National Ski Areas Association trade group . The industry recorded the lowest number of visits since the 2011/12 season at 51 million, the association said.

Now resorts like Squaw Valley are setting their expectations low for the new ski season.

“I don’t think anyone in the industry is aiming for the best year ever,” said Ron Cohen, president of Squaw Valley and neighboring Alpine Meadows, who laid off 2,000 seasonal workers in the spring. “We want to keep our businesses so that after the end of Covid we have the opportunity not to suffer so much damage that we may not be able to get up.”

Mike Pierce, a spokesman for Mount Rose Ski Tahoe, a resort in western Nevada, said the attitude was “just to maintain and survive the status quo.” He declined to provide financial data but said, “If we break even it will almost be counted as a success.”

Even before the pandemic, the ski industry tried to arouse interest in the sport. According to the National Ski Association, the number of skiers has stagnated over the past decade. Adrienne Isaac, a spokeswoman for the trade group, said the resorts had tried to make skiing and snowboarding more accessible to newbies but had come to terms with the perception that it was mostly aimed at the rich and white. Climate change continues to affect snowfall, which can result in shorter seasons.

How the ski resorts develop this winter will have a domino effect on the tax revenue of the state economy. In New Mexico, the shortened ski season last winter and this spring generated $ 41 million in taxes, but George Brooks, the executive director of the state ski association, said he expected no more than 40 percent of that number in the coming months .

Vail Resorts, the world’s largest ski company with 37 ski resorts around the world, including 34 in the U.S., reported in a December 10th call for profit that it lost $ 153 million from August to October, more than the loss of 106 , $ 5 million in the US same time a year ago. Rob Katz, managing director of Vail Resorts, said season pass sales rose about 20 percent, but he expects fewer visitors and less sales this winter than previous seasons.

At smaller resorts, the pain may not be as severe. Diamond Peak Ski Resort in Incline Village, Nevada announced that it was about $ 1 million ahead of projections after the spring shutdown. Mike Bandelin, the resort’s general manager, said smaller resorts often operate at a loss in the last few weeks of the season, so closing early actually saved money.

Many resorts said they still expected some die-hard skiers and powderhounds to show up this winter, along with locals and those who have moved to second homes nearby. At the Winter Park Resort west of Denver, a swarm of eager skiers crowded the lift lines this month’s opening weekend. The resort was quick to take action to allow more distance, said Jen Miller, a spokeswoman.

Updated

Apr. 24, 2020, 8:33 am ET

But the visitors who won’t come, said the ski resorts and other ski experts, are most likely casual skiers and those who travel from long distances.

“We’re going to lose the mom and pop who want to raise their kids,” said Mr. Brooks.

In Colorado, the Aspen Skiing Company, which operates four ski resorts, has had stable business since reopening Nov. 25, but will miss the 20 percent of its annual visitors from other countries, said a spokesman, Jeff Hanle. He said Aspen may also see fewer travelers out of state, especially if they live in places where they will need to isolate on their return.

“You have to be a pretty committed skier to say, ‘I’m going to ski and I know when I go home I’ll have to quarantine,” he said.

Even if the resorts make it through the winter, smaller businesses that rely on skiers to get into town – like restaurants, hotels, and retail stores – may not be as lucky.

At Stratton Mountain Resort in Stratton, Vt., An Irish pub called Mulligan’s has laid off half of its staff. Since visitors to Vermont, which sources 80 percent of its ski traffic from other states, must be quarantined for a week or two before they can go anywhere, Mulligan’s owner Tom Rose expects up to a 60 percent loss of his normal winter sales.

“We survived Hurricane Irene. Our sales took a real leap after September 11th. We made it through the great recession, ”said Rose. But “this pandemic is by far the worst.”

There are some bright spots. Backcountry skiing or ski touring – which often involve climbing remote, snow-capped mountain ranges – is booming. According to the NPD Group, backcountry equipment sales increased 76 percent from August to October compared to the same period last year.

“The Covid environment, which favors socially distant outdoor recreational activities, as well as the restrictions in place in the ski resorts have increased interest in ski touring this season,” said Eric Henderson, spokesman for Snowsports Industries America trade group.

Those who have The trips to the resorts said they were glad they made the effort. Recently in Squaw Valley, Ms. Nottingham, 21, who was visiting San Luis Obispo with fellow California State University students, said the experience “felt safer than going to a grocery store because everyone is everyone, even though the resort is quiet was covered up anyway. “

Squaw Valley, which opened in 1949 and hosted the 1960 Winter Olympics, has seen significant changes in recent years. In 2010 it was bought by a private equity group called KSL Capital Partners and merged with neighboring Alpine Meadows the following year. Together, the two resorts span 6,000 acres, most of them in the Lake Tahoe region, and have 42 lifts and more than 270 trails.

In August, Squaw Valley announced that it would change its name by 2021, as “Squaw” is considered a racist and sexist term for Native American women.

But nothing the resort has been through can match the chaos of the pandemic, Cohen said. While refusing to disclose the financials for Squaw and Alpine, he described the spring’s losses as “devastating” and said the resorts are “operating on lower profit margins” and generating weaker sales this winter.

The disruption became doubly apparent this month when a new stay at home order went into effect in the region, forcing resorts to cancel hotel stays and adding another wrinkle to potential visitors.

For ski resorts, the mantra right now is “stay alive and survive,” said Cohen.

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World News

Turkey’s Coffeehouses, a Hub of Male Social Life, Could Not Survive Virus

Turkey’s Coffeehouses, a Hub of Male Social Life, May Not Survive Virus

ISTANBUL – For years, Varan Suzme has been visiting the Kiral Coffeehouse near his house, where men from his Istanbul neighborhood chat for hours, sip from tiny, steaming cups, and play backgammon and cards.

“I came here every day,” said Mr Suzme, 77, a retired clothes salesman. “This is our second home. It’s a place I love, I see my friends and I’m happy and I play. “

Until the pandemic. A lockdown earlier this year closed coffeehouses across the country, as well as bars and restaurants, and when the government allowed them to reopen in June it banned the usual games and said they increased the risk of virus transmission.

Customers, mostly middle-aged and retired, stopped coming for fear of the virus, and with banned games, coffee house owners saw business shrink. Even before another lockdown went into effect this month, they feared that the coronavirus could endanger the survival of many coffee houses and rob the country of an essential center of Turkish life.

The Turkish coffee house is a one-of-a-kind men’s reserve, ranging from a post office to a social club that is fueled with cups of coffee – or now, when tastes change, tea. In every neighborhood, from the narrow streets of Istanbul to the ancient cities dotted around the country, men stop on the way to and from work, retirees meet and exchange gossip and political parties.

“We miss our friends and play backgammon,” said Mamuk Katikoy, 70, when he recently came for an interview at the Kiral Coffeehouse in Istanbul’s Yesilkoy district. “I haven’t seen this man in eight months,” he said, greeting a 90-year-old friend who also stopped by.

Several coffee shop owners complained that the religiously conservative government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was against the games because of its association with gambling and that the ban was more ideological than hygienic.

The country was already in an economic downturn when the pandemic hit, and with scarce government aid, many businesses were forced to shut down for good.

Several famous cafes in Beyoglu’s artistic district have closed in recent months. They had introduced Italian espresso to Istanbul society – the now closed Simdi Cafe was famous for its espresso machine from the 1960s – and represented a prime of intellectual and artistic life in Turkey.

The traditional Turkish coffee house is a more humble affair where the regulars are mostly workers who play cards, backgammon, and “okey,” a game similar to rummy and played with numbered tiles. Some coffeehouses charge hourly fees for games that are in progress, while others make their living only from the drinks they serve.

But without games, the business between locks was so bad that most of the coffee houses were closed or had few customers. Owners warn that they may have to close permanently without further government help.

“Our stores are empty,” said Murat Agaoglu, head of Turkey’s Federation of Coffee Houses and Buffets, who predicted that 20 percent of the country’s coffee houses would shut down.

That could rob Turkey of a pillar of its communities that is almost as old as drinking coffee. The custom spread from Arabia north to Turkey and further to Europe in the 16th century.

The first coffee houses in Turkey were founded by two Syrian merchants in the Tahtakale district of what was then Constantinople, near the seat of power of the Ottoman Empire and in the teeming streets of the spice bazaar.

“At that moment, Istanbul was one of the most populous cities in the world,” said Cemal Kafadar, Professor of Turkish Studies at Harvard University. “Imagine the commercial potential of this innovation. Within half a century there were hundreds of coffee houses in the city. And since then we have been able to enjoy the blessed brew of this blessed bean privately or publicly. “

The court of the Ottoman sultans dealt with drinking coffee. Artisans made tiny, delicate cups and narrow-necked coffee pots, women began serving coffee to guests in their homes, and men gathered in coffeehouses and smoked tobacco in extravagantly long-stemmed pipes. Later the aqueduct became fashionable.

The coffeehouses became meeting places for business people to socialize, but they also became centers of literary activity and public entertainment. Some had reading rooms or housed storytellers and puppeteers. Many still have names that go back to their Arabic origins: “kahvehane”, which means “coffee house”, and “kiraathane”, which means “reading house”.

The coffeehouses inevitably became centers of political gossip and activism, as they did across Europe, and closed regularly as political agitation increased, Kafadar said.

Updated

Dec. 15, 2020, 3:03 p.m. ET

Over time they lost their standing in the eyes of the more educated urban public and gradually became cheap hangouts for workers. “From the middle of the 19th century, modernizers associated it with idleness and backwardness,” said Kafadar.

The traditional coffeehouses, which are regulated by the government, are allowed to sell tea, coffee, and other soft drinks, including salep, a popular orchid bulb drink from Ottoman times.

The drinks and games, as well as the prices, are listed in the license that is affixed to the wall of the coffee house. The prices are regulated and set low.

They serve traditional Turkish coffee, each cup individually brewed, bitter or sweet to taste, and small glasses of strong black tea. Aqueducts are still listed among the listings, but Mr Erdogan’s government banned indoor use more than a decade ago.

For Guven Kiral it was his life to run a coffee house. He inherited his from his father and moved it to new premises in the same neighborhood.

“This place is like my kid,” he said. “I have a son, but it’s like a second son to me.”

On busy days, 60 people would play, he said, but the pandemic has put an end to that, silencing the shuffling of cards and the sharp click and hit of backgammon pieces.

“When I open, customers come for tea and sit for a while, but then they say, ‘Sorry, there are no games’ and leave,” said Mr Kiral, who fears he will be forced to close down forever. “We’re racing downhill. The pandemic has caused us a great loss. “

He demonstrated his anti-virus hygiene system: spread out disposable tablecloths, break out a new deck of cards for each game, and soak the backgammon counters in detergent. The tables would be widely spaced and even expanded to separate customers, he said.

“The big problem is the ban on games, both for the customers and the people who work in these places,” said Bendevi Palandoken, head of the Turkish Chamber of Crafts, which represents owners and workers in 120,000 coffee houses across the country. “We want the government to reduce the burden of social security and cash benefits for breadwinners.”

A flyer on the wall at the Kiral Coffeehouse reads, “We ask the government, do you care?”

Mr Kiral said he would be heartbroken and lose business.

“For my regular guests, the separation will be the first. You won’t see any more people, ”he said. “We’d lose our jokes, our laughter.”

On a broader level, he said that the entire older generation would be punished. “The costs will be for a specific age group. You will have nowhere to go. “