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Biden speech to put out imaginative and prescient for post-coronavirus world

Biden speech to lay out vision for post-coronavirus world

President Joe Biden will deliver a speech in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, DC on Saturday, March 6, 2021.

Shaw Thew | Bloomberg | Getty Images

President Joe Biden celebrates the one-year anniversary of the coronavirus shutdown Thursday night by remembering American victims and looking to a post-pandemic world.

“I’ll talk about what’s next,” Biden said Wednesday in a preview of what will be his first prime-time address as president. “I’m going to kick off the next phase of the Covid response, explaining what we’re doing as a government and what we’re going to ask of the American people.”

“There is light at the end of this dark tunnel,” he said.

Biden will also use the spotlight on his 50th day as president to kick off a winning lap after his $ 1.9 trillion Covid aid bill was finally passed in Congress.

Biden signed the bill on Thursday afternoon. He’ll be on a nationwide tour next week to announce his government’s first major legislative act.

The president will depart Tuesday for Delaware County, Pennsylvania, an electoral state that was key to Biden’s victory over former President Donald Trump.

Biden’s prime-time speech is scheduled for Thursday night just after 8 p.m. ET and will be broadcast from the east room of the White House. The address is expected to take less than 20 minutes, an administration official said.

The president will acknowledge the devastating death toll from the pandemic – at least 529,267 dead in the U.S., according to Johns Hopkins University – as well as the life-changing challenges caused by sudden lockdowns across the country, the official said.

Biden is also expected to emphasize his government’s efforts to rapidly ramp up the production, acquisition and distribution of Covid vaccines, an unprecedented operational endeavor, the official said.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden will “provide some more details” on how the government will fight the virus in the future.

In a comment Wednesday after meeting executives at Johnson & Johnson and Merck, Biden indicated that his prime-time address would bring a message of hope and promise.

But the Democratic President, in sharp contrast to his predecessor, suggested that this optimism should continue to be tempered with caution.

“We cannot give up our vigilance now or assume that victory is inevitable,” said Biden on Wednesday. “Together we will weather this pandemic and usher in a healthier, more hopeful future.”

“So there is real reason to hope folks,” he said.

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Politics

The U.S. Is Sitting on Tens of Tens of millions of Vaccine Doses the World Wants

The U.S. Is Sitting on Tens of Millions of Vaccine Doses the World Needs

“If we have a surplus, we’ll share it with the rest of the world,” Biden told reporters on Wednesday, speaking broadly about US vaccine supplies. “We will first make sure that the Americans are taken care of first.”

Johnson & Johnson, which has US approval for its vaccine but has missed its production targets in both the US and Europe, recently asked the US to loan 10 million doses to the European Union, but the Biden administration this also denied this request to American and European officials.

What you need to know about the vaccine rollout

The European Union has been heavily criticized for “vaccine nationalism” and protectionism, which escalated last week when Italy blocked a small dose delivery to Australia and intensified a tug-of-war over much-needed shots. Still, the European Union has exported 34 million doses of coronavirus vaccines to dozens of countries in the past few weeks despite shortages at home.

As frustrations subside, some European officials blame the United States. European Council President Charles Michel said the United States and Britain had “imposed a total ban on the export of vaccines or vaccine components made on their territory”. Jen Psaki, White House press secretary, was asked Thursday about American delivery of the AstraZeneca vaccine and told reporters that vaccine makers are free to export their US-made products while fulfilling the terms of their contracts with the government .

Since the vaccine was manufactured by AstraZeneca under the Defense Production Act, Mr Biden must authorize the shipment of cans overseas. Such a move could have a huge negative political impact while Americans are still calling for gunfire.

AstraZeneca is also likely to want liability protection for cans shipped overseas, as it would in the US if the vaccine were approved.

In the meantime, regulators in the US have been waiting for new AstraZeneca data, which is expected in the next few weeks from a phase 3 study that enrolled 32,000 participants, mostly in the US. AstraZeneca is unlikely to report results from an early look at its data like other vaccine manufacturers have. Instead, it will wait for more statistically significant results after study participants have been monitored for side effects longer and potentially more people in the vaccine and placebo groups have gotten sick, federal officials said. Experts believe the vaccine is unlikely to be any more potent than the Johnson & Johnson shot, which uses similar technology and only requires one dose.

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Business

These six islands have a few of the lowest Covid-19 charges on the earth

These six islands have some of the lowest Covid-19 rates in the world

Micronesia has only confirmed one case of Covid-19 so far. The Polynesian island of Samoa and the South Pacific island of Vanuatu only have three cases each.

Sounds like a safe travel choice? There is only one problem – none of them allow tourists.

Many islands that opened to tourists during the pandemic saw rising coronavirus infection rates shortly afterwards.

There are exceptions, however.

The following goals kept Covid rates low by imposing stringent protocols that often include “vacation on the spot” requirements.

Anguilla

Although the small Caribbean island of Anguilla opened to international visitors in November, only 18 Covid-19 cases have been recorded so far, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Travelers to the British Overseas Territory, located east of the British and US Virgin Islands, must be pre-approved for Covid-19 prior to arrival, upon landing, and again after an “on-the-spot” 10 or 10 year stay to test 14 days (depending on where travelers visit from).

Anguilla requires that all travelers be tested, including infants and young children.

Peter Griffith | Stone | Getty Images

During this time, travelers can stay in hotels, villas and dine in restaurants, provided they are “Safe Environment Certified” according to the Anguilla Tourist Board website. You can also play golf, scuba diving and go on offshore excursions, provided these are also state certified.

Travelers can request a “short stay” (less than three months) for approximately $ 250 per person. Remote workers, students, and their families can apply under a separate “Digital Nomad” program that costs $ 2,000 to stay for up to a year.

Vaccination Rate: 26% of the population had at least one dose on February 26 (unless otherwise noted, all vaccination rates are from Our World in Data website).

St. Kitts and Nevis

The 100 square mile island nation of Saint Kitts and Nevis has recorded 41 Covid-19 cases since the pandemic began.

When it reopened its borders more than four months ago, the twin island state did not assign any risk to travelers from different countries, as “all visitors come from an area with considerable risk”, according to the tourism authority’s website.

All arriving travelers, including children and vaccinated individuals, must be approved for entry and tested negative prior to their arrival.

Four Seasons Resort Nevis is on the list of approved hotels for travelers to stay in Saint Kitts and Nevis.

Courtesy of the Four Seasons Resort Nevis

However, St. Kitts and Nevis is more about testing than most of the others. The pre-departure test window is short (between 48 and 72 hours before departure) and the tests must be nasopharyngeal RT-PCR (reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction). Tests “performed in laboratories that have an ISO / IEC 17025 standard,” according to the website.

“Those traveling from the US should look for laboratories that are CLIA (CDC) certified, and those from the UK should look to UKAS approved laboratories,” it says, the latter referring to the UK accreditation service, one national body that evaluates tests and other services.

The website states that test results from the American laboratory company LabCorp will not be accepted. However, a Saint Kitts tourism representative told CNBC Global Traveler that this information is “out of date” and no longer applicable and that travelers can email questions about tests in advance.

Travelers arriving by plane must stay in their hotel for the first week of travel. However, you can interact with other guests and take part in hotel activities. Those who test negative on day eight can move around the island to choose locations, including the Brimstone Hill Fortress, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the historic sites in the capital, Basseterre. Note: UK travelers are required to quarantine themselves at their hotels and are currently not allowed to “vacation on the spot”.

Guests who test negative after 14 days on the island can integrate into the local population of around 53,000.

Vaccination Rate: Around 10% of the population as of March 10th (according to a country tourism representative).

Macau

Although the historic part of Macau is on a peninsula that is now connected to mainland China, Macau’s Cotai Island is a major tourist attraction because of its great casino complexes, including the 10.5 million square meter Venetian Macau.

Like Hong Kong, Macao is a special administrative region in China. Although it is mostly only open to residents of China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, it still accounts for nearly 20% of the world’s population.

The Cotai Strip is located on Cotai Island, a portmanteau that reflects the redevelopment project that joined the two Macau Islands of Coloane and Taipa in 2005.

Noppawat Tom Charoensinphon | Moment | Getty Images

Quarantine times vary from zero (for travelers from most of China) to 21 days (for travelers from Hong Kong). Casino stocks rebounded when Macau announced last month that Chinese travelers would no longer need negative test results to enter casinos (though they still need to have negative tests to get into Macau).

Macau has nearly 650,000 residents and is much larger than the other places on this list. So far, 48 Covid-19 cases have been confirmed. However, in China, coronavirus cases are counted differently than in most other countries by excluding asymptomatic positive cases from the official numbers.

Vaccination status: According to local reports, a rollout campaign with Chinese-made Sinopharm vaccines was started in February.

Grenada

Around 112,000 people live in Grenada. A total of 148 coronavirus cases have been confirmed.

Travelers who want to keep things simple will appreciate Grenada’s travel requirements. Before leaving, travelers must book accommodations, register for a certificate, and test a negative for Covid-19. Upon arrival, travelers must quarantine and pass a PCR test on the fifth day. The results will be presented about two days later.

Travelers to Grenada should expect a quarantine of about 7 days.

Westend61 | Westend61 | Getty Images

After that, visitors can leave their hotels and use certified tourism services, including taxis, dive companies, and glass-bottom boats.

Vaccination Rate: <1% of the population had at least one dose on February 16.

Dominica

Although the island nation of Dominica has 40,000 fewer inhabitants than Grenada, it has recorded three more cases than its Caribbean neighbor – or 151 in total.

After reopening for tourists in August, the island state between Martinique and Guadeloupe launched a program called “Safe in Nature” last October, with which travelers stay in certified accommodation and for the first five to seven days certified means of transport to selected locations on the island Island can take days of a trip. It’s part of what Dominica calls the “managed experience”.

The 275 square mile island nation of Dominica allows travelers from high risk countries to visit places like Trafalgar Falls and the Emerald Pool (shown here).

Jan Kokes | 500px | Getty Images

However, this only applies to travelers from high risk countries, including the US, Canada, UK, France, and Japan, although travelers from low and medium risk countries also participate in the program. Other travelers are “monitored” at their accommodation, which the Dominica Tourism Authority defines as face-to-face and telephone interviews and reviews.

Vaccination rate: 10% the population Has had at least one dose As of March 1st.

British Virgin Islands

With a population of 30,000, the British Virgin Islands have less than a third of the population of the US Virgin Islands. And its 153 confirmed Covid-19 cases are far fewer than the U.S. Virgin Islands, which has recorded 2,744 cases as of March 10.

The British Overseas Territory reopened on December 1st and requires travelers to test on arrival, download a tracking app (or wear a wristband monitor) and quarantine at their hotel or villa for four days. Tourists cannot move around the island during this time.

Tortola Island in the British Virgin Islands.

Walter Bibikow | DigitalVision | Getty Images

Anyone five years or older who passes a PCR test on the fourth day of travel is free to move around the British Virgin Islands afterwards.

Travelers are also required to stay in “Approved Gold Seal Accommodation,” which includes a list of locations on Tortola, Virgin Gorda, Jost Van Dyke, and Anegada, as well as Richard Branson’s luxurious private Necker Island.

Vaccination Rate: It was 13% of the population on March 5, according to a government press release.

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Business

Why Japan Is Holding Again because the World Rushes Towards Electrical Automobiles

Why Japan Is Holding Back as the World Rushes Toward Electric Cars

TOKYO – Just over a decade ago, Nissan was the first automaker to offer a production car that ran on batteries only. The hatchback, the Leaf, was a huge success, at least for electric cars. More than 500,000 copies had been sold by the end of last year.

But as the road that Nissan has taken becomes ever denser, Japan’s powerful auto industry is at risk of being left behind. As governments and automakers around the world make bold pledges to transition to all-electric vehicles, Japanese automakers and regulators are hedging their bets.

Japan dominates the global market for the current generation of climate-friendly vehicles – gasoline-electric hybrids – and hopes to capitalize on its huge investment in technology for as long as possible. However, with this short-term focus, there is a risk that the country’s most important industry will miss a transformative moment, said Masato Inoue, the lead designer of the original sheet.

“When it comes to disruptions, there is always fear,” said Inoue, who retired from Nissan in 2014. But, ready or not, he added, “a big wave of electric vehicles is really coming.”

Right now it’s just a wave. Electric cars account for less than 3 percent of global sales. Many buyers shy away from higher costs, limited range and long loading times. With the exception of a few luxury models, it is not easy to make a profit from the cars.

Still, the race for an all-electric future, long spearheaded by Tesla, has accelerated and broadened this year. In January, General Motors became the first major automaker to declare that it would eliminate all tailpipe emissions from its cars by 2035. Last week, Volvo promised to outperform its bigger competitors by promising to be all electric by 2030.

Alongside traditional automakers, startups like the Chinese company Nio and titans from other industries like Apple are looking for parts of the burgeoning market.

Automakers in the US, China, Europe and South Korea are already sprinting past their Japanese competitors. Toyota didn’t bring its first battery electric vehicle to the consumer market until early 2020, and then only in China. Honda relies on GM to manufacture electric vehicles for the US market.

Last year, Japanese automobiles made up less than 5 percent of battery electric vehicles sold worldwide, according to EV-volumes.com, a company that analyzes the electric car market. That proportion was largely due to the Leaf’s continued popularity: the automobile accounted for nearly 65 percent of all Japanese battery electric vehicles sold.

The electric vehicle rush has been fueled in part by plans in China, European countries and elsewhere to either require higher sales of electric cars or ban gasoline-burning vehicles in the coming years. Scientists say the transition from gas-powered vehicles is critical to tackling climate change and reducing smog.

Those moves have created a huge potential market for all-electric vehicles that investors clearly see as the cars of tomorrow: Tesla is more valuable than the next six automakers combined, despite only having a tiny fraction of their sales.

In Japan, however, automakers and the government are questioning some of the basic assumptions that power the electric train. They are skeptical – at least in the short to medium term – of the potential profitability and environmental superiority of electric cars.

In December, Japan announced that it would stop selling new gas-only cars by 2035. However, the government continues to view hybrids as an important technology and does not intend to follow the lead of places like the UK and California who plan to ban them. A Commerce Department official said in a recent interview. Japanese regulators announce that they will release details this year.

The opposition to the elimination of hybrids has found its strongest voice in Akio Toyoda, chairman of the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association and president of Toyota, the world leader in hybrid car sales.

The company sets the tone for the entire Japanese auto industry. The company owns Daihatsu and in recent years has partnered with three smaller automakers – Subaru, Suzuki and Mazda – a group that makes more than half of all Japanese cars to develop electric vehicles, including hybrids. It has also heavily promoted cars that run on clean-burning hydrogen, a technology that has not yet caught on in Japan or elsewhere.

During a press conference in December in his capacity as head of the automobile association, Toyoda derided the idea of ​​replacing Japan’s hybrids with all-electric vehicles and accused the Japanese media of increasing their economic and environmental viability.

Electric cars, Toyoda emphasized, are only as clean as the electricity that drives them and the factories in which they are built. Japan, Toyota’s second largest market, plans to become carbon neutral by 2050. However, as long as it continues to rely on fossil fuels to generate electricity, the environmental benefits of vehicles will remain a mirage.

Japanese automakers are “hanging on their fingernails,” he added, and if Japan mandates a move to all-electric vehicles, which have fewer components and are easier to manufacture, it could cost millions of jobs and destroy an entire ecosystem of auto parts suppliers.

According to a report from market research company IDTechEx, sales of gasoline-electric hybrids are expected to continue to grow through 2027. It is understandable, therefore, that Japanese companies – and regulators – want to try to recoup the country’s huge investments in hybrid technology and wait to see how consumer preferences and foreign regulatory systems develop, said James Edmondson, an analyst for the company.

“For manufacturers like Toyota and Nissan, the hybrids are so productive that there is a good business model for them. It is therefore in the government’s interest to keep pushing for them,” he said.

Kota Yuzawa, an auto industry analyst at Goldman Sachs, said it wasn’t about whether Japan’s automakers could make the transition. They have world-class technology and invest significant resources in developing more of it. “But they’re waiting for the timing to be right,” he said.

“The biggest questions are: Can you make a mass market vehicle? Can you break even? ” he added.

The answer is yes, said Mr Inoue, the leaf designer who now splits his time between running a consulting firm and teaching sustainable mobility design at IAAD, a design institute in Italy.

The transition from building hybrids to building all-electric vehicles is not easy, however. The two types of cars cannot be inexpensively manufactured on the same platforms, Inoue said. “If a lot of companies don’t change now, the efficient production of electric vehicles will be quite difficult in the future.”

With a history of mass producing electric vehicles, Nissan is arguably the best positioned Japanese automaker to compete in the zero-emission car market. But the company says it has lost its lead and is now trying to catch up.

Last summer it announced its most ambitious battery-electric vehicle since the Leaf, an SUV called the Ariya. And in January, the company said it would be carbon neutral by 2050, a decision that reflected a new change in national policy late last year.

But like the other Japanese automakers, it is moving cautiously.

“For Nissan’s key markets, every brand new vehicle offering will be electrified in the early 2030s,” the company’s chief sustainability officer Joji Tagawa said in an email. “In other markets, however, we will gradually switch to electrified vehicles.”

In the meantime, the company will be heavily promoting its newer hybrid technology it calls e-Power: essentially an electric motor powered by a gas generator.

In Japan, the government’s lack of enthusiasm for zero-emission cars is likely to put automakers at a serious disadvantage, said Kazuo Yajima, a former chief engineer at Leaf who now runs Blue Sky Technology, a company that develops micro-electric vehicles.

China and the European Union have lost the hybrid technology race, Yajima said. Hence, their governments have made a strategic decision to invest in the development of electric cars, including key technologies such as batteries.

Japanese automakers’ reluctance to take the plunge to all-electric vehicles could lead them to suffer the same fate as the country’s consumer electronics companies, which have largely become irrelevant for not staying ahead of market trends, according to Yajima.

Mr. Inoue agrees. The automotive sector is “the final battlefield” for Japanese industry, he said.

“Now Japan is winning,” he said, “but I think if we lose the opportunity to switch to electric vehicles in 10 years, we may lose.”

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Health

WHO scientist warns world is at ‘very dangerous’ stage as Covid instances rise

WHO scientist warns world is at 'very risky' stage as Covid cases rise

The world needs to step up its efforts to fight Covid-19 – and countries must not give up their vigilance, the World Health Organization’s chief scientist warned on Monday as coronavirus cases rise around the world.

“We are in a very risky phase,” said Dr. Soumya Swaminathan from the World Health Organization. “We have to double up, this is not the time to slack off.”

The WHO warned last week that the number of new Covid-19 cases is increasing with declines worldwide after six consecutive weeks. More than 2.6 million new cases were reported in the last week of February, a 7% increase from the previous week, according to the health department.

The Eastern Mediterranean, Southeast Asia, Europe and America all recorded increases of between 6% and 14%.

Although vaccines are on the rise for us in the nation, we cannot give up our vigilance.

Julie Morita

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

“This is partly due to lockdown fatigue, you know. It’s because people … may loosen up believing vaccines are on the way,” Swaminathan told CNBC’s Squawk Box Asia on Monday. New variants could also play a role, she added.

“We have to … do everything we know to keep these viruses under control, keep transmission under control until we have enough vaccines,” she said, warning health systems could become overloaded again.

“Health workers around the world are exhausted, they have been battling it for over a year now,” she added.

Other health professionals have also suggested that it is not time to get complacent.

Julie Morita, executive vice president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, said it was important to realize that infections, hospitalizations and deaths are still high even after falling from their peaks in the US

“It is still necessary that we wear our masks, social distance, avoid large crowds while we are vaccinated,” she told CNBC’s Street Signs Asia on Monday.

“Although vaccines are on the rise for us in the nation, we cannot give up our vigilance,” she said. “It’s way too early to relax.”

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Politics

For Biden, Deliberation and Warning, Perhaps Overcaution, on the World Stage

For Biden, Deliberation and Caution, Maybe Overcaution, on the World Stage

However, the first signs indicate that Mr Biden is moving more slowly on the world stage than he is at home. And that’s partly based on his belief, his national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in an interview, that the United States will only regain its global influence after taming the pandemic, restoring economic growth and resetting its relations with allies.

The most telling of his decisions concerns Saudi Arabia. After banning arms sales to stop what he described as a “catastrophic” war in Yemen, Mr Biden released an intelligence report on Prince Mohammed’s role in the assassination of dissident Jamal Khashoggi and imposed new sentences on the personal king of the Crown Prince Guard, the so-called Rapid Intervention Force. But Mr Biden stopped at the next step – apart from travel or the threat of criminal prosecution of the 35-year-old Crown Prince.

The president had not told staff in advance whether he would be in favor of direct action, despite saying in the campaign that the Saudi leadership had “no redeeming social value”.

Mr. Sullivan said he and his staff went to Mr. Biden with “a broad recommendation that recalibrating the relationship rather than breaking the relationship is the right course of action.”

Mr Biden, Mr Sullivan, said, “pushed us into our assumptions as he worked through the pros and cons of all aspects of the policy,” including the staff’s conclusion that the best way to do this was to keep a channel open for the Crown Prince . solve the war in Yemen. “

But the final decision was a reminder, other aides said, that Mr. Biden emerged from his three decades in the Senate with a belief in cultivating even the toughest of alliances – and a dose of realism that the United States couldn’t prevent the Crown Prince from doing, to become the next king.

“Unfortunately, every day we deal with heads of state and government who are responsible for actions that we find either offensive or disgusting, whether it is Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping,” said Antony J. Blinken, undersecretary of state and the longest serving foreign policy advisor to Mr Biden, said on PBS NewsHour on Wednesday.

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Business

First COVAX vaccine cargo arrives in Ghana, hope for creating world

First COVAX vaccine shipment arrives in Ghana, hope for developing world

A shipment of Covid-19 vaccines from the global COVAX vaccination program will arrive at Kotoka International Airport in Accra, Ghana on February 24, 2021.

Nipah Dennis | AFP | Getty Images

The first shipment of Covid-19 vaccines, delivered under the World Health Organization’s COVAX program, arrived in Ghana on Wednesday. This is a hopeful turning point for developing countries, who may be lagging behind in the global race to vaccinate a virus that has killed nearly 2.5 million people worldwide.

The flight brought 600,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is believed to be far easier to distribute in developing countries because it does not require extremely cold storage temperatures like the Pfizer-GenTech and Moderna vaccines.

The vaccines delivered on Wednesday will be prioritized for frontline medical professionals, those over 60 and those with pre-existing health conditions, according to the Ghanaian Ministry of Information.

“Today is the historic moment for which we have planned and worked so hard,” said UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore in a joint statement from her agency and WHO Ghana.

“With the first shipment of cans, we can deliver on the promise of the COVAX Facility to ensure that people from less affluent countries are not left behind in the race for life-saving vaccines.”

Airport workers transport a shipment of Covid-19 vaccines from Covax’s global Covid-19 vaccination program onto dolls at Kotoka International Airport in Accra on February 24, 2021.

Nipah Dennis | AFP | Getty Images

COVAX is a global plan jointly led by WHO, an international vaccine alliance called Gavi, and the Coalition for Innovation in Epidemic Preparation.

While wealthier nations drive costly vaccine development and procurement, poorer countries suffer the consequences of inequality. Mark Suzman, executive director of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said in December that it may be too late for the vaccines to be distributed fairly as rich countries have already closed massive deals.

Wealthy nations, making up just 14% of the world’s population, had secured 53% of the world’s top performing coronavirus vaccines by December, according to a group of human rights activists called the People’s Vaccine Alliance.

COVAX was founded to ensure fair access to vaccines worldwide. By the end of 2021, 20% of people in the 92 poorest countries in the world are to be vaccinated through donations. Several other middle-income countries will purchase vaccines through COVAX on a self-funded basis. The plan this year is to deliver 2 billion doses of vaccines that have been recognized by WHO as safe and effective.

The recordings shipped to Ghana were produced by the Indian Serum Institute, which has been granted access to the intellectual property that enables it to manufacture vaccines based on the Oxford-AstraZeneca formula. The African Union has secured around 670 million doses of the Serum Institute’s vaccine for its member countries. The goal is for 60% of the 1.3 billion people in Africa to be vaccinated in the next two to three years.

“By far the fastest of all time”

“This is amazingly important. We want the gap between vaccinating the rich and the poor to be narrowed to zero,” said Hassan Damluji, assistant director of global politics and advocacy at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in an interview with Wednesday CNBC.

“We know that it usually takes decades for a vaccine to be developed and used for the first time in rich countries and then to reach the poorest people in the world. So Ghana receives its first shipment, just three months after the first vaccine rollouts World are more than extraordinary, “he said. “It is by far the fastest ever.”

A health worker applies a Sinovac CoronaVac Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) vaccine to an elderly Citzen on February 18, 2021 in Sao Goncalo, near Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Ricardo Moraes | Reuters

The Gates Foundation has spent $ 1.75 billion fighting the coronavirus and has focused on vaccine development within COVAX.

Damluji noted that the program’s vaccine sourcing for poor countries was funded entirely by donors at a time when every developed world economy is in recession. “So it’s pretty remarkable,” he said.

Vaccine inequality will plunge countries into deeper poverty

The exclusion of poor countries from vaccination programs launched in wealthier countries will have devastating and lasting consequences, warn economists and public health experts that dramatically increase inequalities, hinder social and economic development and leave dozens of countries in significantly higher debt.

These inequalities, according to Oxford Economics, mean that the long-term economic damage of the pandemic will be twice as severe in emerging markets as it is in developed countries. A study by the RAND Corporation predicts the global economy will lose $ 153 billion in production annually if emerging economies do not get access to vaccines.

The countries of the COVAX donation plan are to receive doses that are appropriate for their populations: Afghanistan, for example, will receive 3 million doses, while Namibia will receive almost 130,000.

The Palestinian Territories expect to receive vaccines through COVAX in March. Iran and Iraq are part of COVAX, as are many lower-income countries in the Middle East. The wealthier Gulf States have sourced their own vaccine supplies directly from the manufacturers, while some, despite their own recessions, also contribute to the COVAX fundraising pool: Saudi Arabia donated $ 300 million and Qatar donated $ 10 million.

The U.S. hadn’t made a contribution to the COVAX facility under the Trump administration, but the Biden administration has pledged the largest donation to date – $ 4 billion.

Damluji pointed out the challenges of COVAX’s goals by running extensive vaccination campaigns in countries with faulty infrastructure, limited logistics and transportation, remote populations, and in some cases violence and war.

“This stuff is a moving target. Rightly the world’s attention is on it and wants to make sure it goes well,” he said. “But a few months ago we didn’t even know which vaccines would work. And now people need them on their doorstep.”

“There will be some complications as well,” he added. “It’s the biggest health procurement effort ever.”

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World News

New World Map Tries to Repair Distorted Views of Earth

New World Map Tries to Fix Distorted Views of Earth

Most of the world maps you have seen in your life have passed their prime. The Mercator was designed by a Flemish cartographer in 1569. The Winkel Tripel, National Geographic’s preferred map style, dates back to 1921. And the Dymaxion map, hyped by architect Buckminster Fuller, appeared in a 1943 issue of Life.

Enter a new map of the world that vies for global supremacy. As with sports, the card game can get stale at times when top competitors stick to the same old strategy, said J. Richard Gott, a Princeton astrophysicist who previously mapped the entire universe. But then comes an innovator: think of Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors splashing 3-pointers out of areas of the court that the rest of basketball didn’t think were worth guarding.

“We have kind of reached the limit of what you can do,” said Dr. God. “If you wanted a major breakthrough, you had to use a new idea.”

Dr. God’s version of Steph Curry’s wait-you-could-shoot-from-there-3? Use the back of the page as well. Make the world map a double-sided circle, like a vinyl record. You can put the northern hemisphere on top and the southern hemisphere on the bottom, or vice versa. Or to put it another way: You could empty the 3D earth in two dimensions. And if you do, you can blow the accuracy of previous maps out of the water.

Of course, no flat map of our round world can be perfect. First you need to peel off the skin of the earth, and then nail it down. This mathematical taxidermy leads to distortions. For example, if you have a Mercator projection on the walls of your classroom, you might think Greenland is as big as Africa (not even close) or Alaska is bigger than Mexico (also no). This distorted worldview could even subconsciously lead you to underestimate most of the developing world.

Shapes also change in map projections. Distances vary. Straight curve. Some projections, such as Mercator, aim to solve one of these problems, which exacerbates other errors. Other cards compromise, like the Winkel Tripel, because it tries to strike a balance between three types of distortion.

From 2006, Dr. God and David Goldberg, a cosmologist at Drexel University in Philadelphia, developed a scoring system that can summarize these different types of errors. The Winkel Tripel beat out other main competitors. One major source of the distortion remained, however: a mathematical cut that often runs from pole to pole in the Pacific. The resulting shape can never again be stretched and retracted into the unbroken surface of a sphere. “This is what makes the world violent,” said Dr. God.

His new type of double-sided card featuring Dr. Goldberg and Robert Vanderbei, a mathematician at Princeton, completely skips topological violence. The card simply continues over the edge. You could stretch a string across the side; An ant could go there. In a study draft, the team reports in a draft study that the card’s Goldberg-God distortion value blows all other cards currently in use out of the water without any reduction.

Cartographers who regularly study world maps – perhaps fewer than 10 people – now have time to react. “It never crossed my mind that it could be done this way,” said Krisztián Kerkovits, a Hungarian cartographer who works on developing his own projections.

While the new card works great against distortion, Dr. Kerkovits also introduced a new weakness. In contrast to Winkel Tripel and Mercator, you can only see half of the planet at a time. This undermines the basic requirement to hide the whole world for inspection on a single page or screen.

For Dr. God is no different from the 3D globe itself. But Dr. Kerkovits is not entirely sure: after all, you can always easily rotate a globe to see the neighbors of any point. But in the double-sided card, you may have to flip the whole thing over.

Ultimately, the success of a card depends on what applications it is used for and how its popularity grows over time. Dr. God, whose article also features double-sided projections of Jupiter and other worlds, envisions the new map style as a physical object that you can flip over in your hands.

You could cut one out of a magazine or keep a whole stack of them in a thin case that shows different planets or different layers of data. And he hopes that you may be tempted to use the appendix to his paper to try to print out and make your own.

“Tape it back to back with double-sided tape – I think that’s better than Elmer’s Glue, but you can use glue,” said Dr. God. Then cut it out. “Maybe use card stock,” he added.

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Entertainment

Johnny Pacheco, Who Helped Carry Salsa to the World, Dies at 85

Johnny Pacheco, Who Helped Bring Salsa to the World, Dies at 85

Johnny Pacheco, the Dominican Republic-born band leader and co-founder of the record label that made salsa music a worldwide sensation, died on Monday in Teaneck, New Jersey. He was 85 years old.

His wife Maria Elena Pacheco, known as Cuqui, confirmed the death at the Holy Name Medical Center. Mr. Pacheco lived in Fort Lee, NJ

Fania Records, which he founded with Jerry Masucci in 1964, signed the hottest talents in Latin American music of the 1960s and 1970s, including Celia Cruz, Willie Colón, Hector Lavoe and Rubén Blades. Mr. Pacheco, a talented flautist, went on and off the stage as the songwriter, arranger and leader of Fania All Stars, the first super group of salsa.

From the beginning he worked with young musicians who brought jazz, rhythm and blues, funk and other styles into traditional Afro-Cuban music.

In the 1970s, Fania, sometimes referred to as the Motown of Salsa, was a powerhouse of Latin American music, and the Fania All Stars toured the world. The label spawned burning creative collaborations, such as those between Mr. Colón, a trombonist and composer, and Mr. Blades, a socially conscious lyricist and singer; and to cultivate heroes like Mr. Lavoe, the Puerto Rican singer who fought drug addiction and died of AIDS complications at the age of 46.

Fania broke up in the mid-1980s due to royalty litigation, and in 2005, Emusica, a Miami company, bought the Fania catalog and began releasing remastered versions of its classic recordings.

Juan Azarías Pacheco Knipping was born on March 25, 1935 in Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic. His father, Rafael Azarias Pacheco, was a well-known band leader and clarinetist. His mother, Octavia Knipping Rochet, was the granddaughter of a French colonist and the great-granddaughter of a German merchant who married a Dominican woman who was born to Spanish colonists.

The family moved to New York when Johnny was 11 years old. He studied drums at Juilliard School and worked in Latin American bands before founding his own, Pacheco y Su Charanga, in 1960.

The band signed with Alegre Records and their first album sold more than 100,000 copies in the first year. According to its official website, it became one of the best-selling Latin albums of its time. Mr. Pacheco’s career started with the introduction of a new dance craze called Pachanga. He became an international star and toured the US, Europe, Asia and Latin America.

Fania Records was born from an unlikely partnership between Mr. Pacheco and Mr. Masucci, a former police officer who became a lawyer and fell in love with Latin music while visiting Cuba.

From its humble beginnings in Harlem and the Bronx – where releases were sold out of the trunk of cars – Fania brought an urban sensibility to Latin American music. In New York, the music had taken on the name “Salsa” (Spanish for sauce, as in hot sauce) and the Fania label began using it as part of their marketing.

Under the direction of Mr. Pacheco, the artists built a new sound based on traditional clave rhythms and the Cuban Son (or Son Cubano) genre, but faster and more aggressive. Much of the lyrics – about racism, cultural pride, and the turbulent politics of the era – were far removed from the pastoral and romantic scenes in traditional Cuban songs.

In this sense, salsa was “native American music that is just as much a part of the indigenous music landscape as jazz, rock or hip-hop,” wrote Jody Rosen in 2006 in the New York Times on the occasion of the new edition of the Fania master tapes – after years of being in Schimmel a warehouse in Hudson, NY

Recognition…Fania

Mr. Pacheco teamed up with Ms. Cruz in the early 1970s. Their first album, “Celia & Johnny”, was a strong mix of heavy salsa with infectious choruses and virtuoso performances. Thanks to Ms. Cruz’s vocal skills and Mr. Pacheco’s big band directing, it soon went gold, and its first track, the fast-paced “Quimbara,” helped drive Ms. Cruz’s career to Queen of Salsa status to lead.

The two released more than 10 albums together; Mr. Pacheco was the producer on her last solo recording, “La Negra Tiene Tumbao”, which won the 2002 Grammy for Best Salsa Album.

Over the years, Mr. Pacheco has produced for several artists and performed around the world. He contributed to film scores, including one for The Mambo Kings, a 1992 film based on Oscar Hijuelos’ novel The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. “For the Jonathan Demme film” Something Wild ” he teamed up with David Byrne, the head of Talking Heads, one of his many eclectic partnerships.

Mr. Pacheco, who has received numerous awards and honors in both the Dominican Republic and the United States, was inducted into the International Latin Music Hall of Fame in 1998. He wrote more than 150 songs, many of which are now classics.

For many years he directed the Johnny Pacheco Latin Music and Jazz Festival at Lehman College in the Bronx, an annual event in association with the college (broadcast live in recent years) which brings together hundreds of talented young musicians studying music in New York City schools provide the stage.

In addition to this woman, Mr. Pacheco’s survivors include two daughters, Norma and Joanne; and two sons, Elis and Phillip.

The salsa phenomenon that Mr. Pacheco created reached new heights on August 23, 1973 with a sold out volcano show at Yankee Stadium, where the Fania All Stars got 40,000 fans to a musical frenzy led by Mr. Pacheco, his was rhinestone-studded white shirt, bathed in sweat. The concert cemented the legendary stature of the band and his own.

Recognition…Fania Records

In 1975 Fania released the long-awaited double album “Live at Yankee Stadium”, which despite the name also contained material from a show at the Roberto Clemente Coliseum in Puerto Rico, which had a much better sound quality. The album earned the Fania All Stars their first Grammy nomination for Best Latin Recording.

In 2004, it was added to the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress.

Michael Levenson contributed to the coverage.

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World News

UK coronavirus variant ‘on target to comb the world,’ geneticist says

UK coronavirus variant 'on course to sweep the world,' geneticist says

Ron Votral will receive a vaccine against coronavirus disease (COVID-19) on February 9, 2021 at a drive-through vaccination center in Robstown, Texas.

Go Nakamura | Reuters

LONDON – A variant of the coronavirus, which first appeared in the UK and has since been identified in over 80 countries, could become the world’s dominant form of the virus, according to the head of the UK’s genetic surveillance program.

“The new variant has taken over the country and will most likely take over the world,” said Professor Sharon Peacock, director of the Covid-19 Genomics UK Consortium.

“I think the future will be key if something (a variant) is particularly problematic with the vaccines,” she told the BBC’s Newcast podcast.

The group that Peacock leads, founded in April 2020, brings together highly respected experts and institutes to collect, sequence and analyze genomes of the virus as part of the UK’s pandemic response. To date, the genetic history of more than 250,000 samples of the virus has been followed.

In September 2020 in Kent, southeast England, the consortium first discovered the more infectious mutation of the virus, known as the “British variant” and officially known as “B1.1.7”, through retrospective analysis of virus samples.

Viruses are constantly mutating, but experts are concerned when a virus mutates to become more transmissible, as in this case, or more deadly. The higher rates of infection associated with the variant identified in the UK are likely to result in more hospitalizations and, unfortunately, more deaths. As a result, containment has become a priority.

The variant quickly spread in southeast England and London and is now the dominant variety in Great Britain. It was also discovered in more than 80 countries, according to the latest World Health Organization census, prompting health officials to isolate cases. although this more virulent strain is believed to be already widespread.

Knowing the exact origin of the mutation is difficult, and given the work of the consortium, it was likely that new variants were found in the UK (other countries that have advanced genome sequencing of the virus, such as Denmark and South Africa, have also discovered variants ). Peacock, who is also a professor of public health and microbiology at the University of Cambridge, believed that sequencing of coronavirus variants would be required for at least 10 years.

There have been over 107 million coronavirus cases and over 2.3 million deaths worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Mutation mutated

Aside from the variant of the virus, which was first observed in south-east England, two new variants have emerged in a number of cases in the cities of Liverpool and Bristol, which scientists are currently monitoring.

The Bristol variant has been identified as a “variant of concern” by the UK Advisory Group on New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats.

Peacock said although mutant variants were a problem, the variant seen in and around Bristol was in “closed areas and in very small numbers” with only 21 cases discovered to date.

“It is inevitable that the virus will continue to mutate, but the point is that the B1.1.7 variant that we have been circulating for a few weeks and months will mutate again and get new mutations that will affect the way We could treat the virus in terms of immunity and vaccine effectiveness, “she added.

Dr. Catherine Smallwood, chief emergency officer in the WHO European team, said during a press conference on Thursday that variant B1.1.7 “is now very widespread in the communities in more than half of the countries in the (European) region”. The WHO European Region comprises 53 countries.

“And this particular type of concern, particularly in Western European countries, is spreading faster than other lineages in terms of prevalence. So it’s really important that we keep an eye on overall transmission rates because they can grow very quickly once they become dominant have an impact on the overall epidemic curve and will require a more restrictive approach to public health and society actions in order to reduce overall transmission rates. “