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Javier E

How South Korea Successfully Managed Coronavirus - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...ow-to-manage-covid-11601044329

korea pandemic response

shared by Javier E on 26 Sep 20 - No Cached
  • South Korea appears to have cracked the code for managing the coronavirus. Its solution is straightforward, flexible and relatively easy to replicate.
  • The country has averaged about 77 new daily cases since early April and recently suppressed a spike in infections. Adjusting for population, that would be the equivalent of about 480 cases a day in the U.S., where new daily cases have averaged about 38,000 over the same period.
  • South Korea halted virus transmission better than any other wealthy country during the pandemic’s early months. It was about twice as effective as the U.S. and U.K. at preventing infected individuals from spreading the disease to other
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  • South Korea’s economy is expected to decline by just 0.8% this year, the best among the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s forecasts for member nations.
  • When the supply of face masks ran short early on in the crisis, the government seized production.
  • The nation fast-tracked approval of domestic testing kits as soon as cases began hitting
  • It tapped into its relative wealth and hyperconnectivity, blasting text alerts to citizens if infections occurred in their area
  • The key to South Korea’s success came from blending technology and testing like no other country, centralized control and communication—and a constant fear of failure.
  • Some parts of its playbook wouldn’t work in most Western societies—and received backlash in South Korea as well
  • Nearly everyone in the country wears masks.
  • Every confirmed patient, even those with no or mild symptoms, gets isolated at hospitals or converted dormitories run by the government. Treatment is free.
  • As a result, South Korea never had to mandate a lockdown, so restaurants and business were able to stay open, cushioning the blow to the economy.
  • “No country has adapted to living with, and containing, the virus like South Korea,”
  • “You don’t need or want to eradicate the virus. But you modify your behavior and get on with life.”
  • It detected the country’s first case 10 days later using a test that screened for all known coronavirus strains—the same tactic practiced during the December simulation.
  • Health officials have unfettered access to individuals’ private mobile data, and early on used government websites to share the whereabouts of confirmed patients, plucked from smartphone GPS history
  • The government now offers anonymous testing and leaves out identifying information and specific names of places visited in contact-tracing disclosures.
  • After a major cluster linked to a megachurch in the city of Daegu emerged on Feb. 18, the government made a flurry of moves
  • Cases peaked in 11 days.
  • The day after cases reached a five-month high of 441 on Aug. 27, South Korea’s top public-health official gave a grim forecast: “We could see 800 to 2,000 infections next week
  • South Koreans took the advice and adjusted. Population mobility, as measured by local telecom operators, soon fell by one-quarter. Most schools closed and diners had to leave restaurants by 9 p.m. Aug. 27 turned out to be the peak.
  • At twice-a-day briefings, health officials express worry when they can only trace the origins of three-quarters of confirmed cases.
  • In total, South Korea, with a population of 52 million, has reported 23,455 cases and 395 deaths.
  • One reason South Korea was prepared: It learned painful lessons in 2015 from an outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome
  • “The only way to make the government prepared is to actually have an outbreak,”
  • After MERS, the government started twice-a-year training sessions simulating a rapid spread of viral disease
  • “Oddly enough, last December’s ‘war game’ was a novel coronavirus,”
  • After two weeks of aggressive social distancing, South Koreans could again head back to schools, gyms and sports stadiums.
  • One firm, Kogene Biotech Co., demonstrated a successful test and got the regulatory green light within four days. A second manufacturer would be added by Feb. 12. The tests all used the same methodology and could be sent to any of the country’s roughly 120 laboratories that promised turnaround times of between six to 24 hours.
  • Cases, which had been slowly rising, suddenly doubled in a day, to over 100. Experts predicted it would soon surge to levels seen nowhere else but China.
  • That triggered a Feb. 20 late-night message in a group chat with eight South Korean infectious-disease experts: “We need to quickly devise a way to conduct mass testing,”
  • an answer: drive-through clinics.
  • Dr. Kim sent a PowerPoint presentation to the group within hours, at 3:53 a.m., outlining how tests would take just 10 minutes and saved much-needed protective gear since outdoor workers didn’t have to change gowns after each patient
  • Two days later, cars rumbled through the country’s first drive-through clinic. Testing capacity multiplied 100 times, giving South Korea a critical early edge.
  • As South Korea’s coronavirus problems mounted, Mr. Moon intentionally kept his profile low. “His stance is that it’s more objective for an expert to hold the briefings, and that is the way to gain the trust of the people,”
  • Even with the swift response, a lack of hospital beds became a major issue. In just 11 days, South Korea’s case count had gone from 31 to 3,150. Thousands were waiting to be hospitalized. A handful died while waiting.
  • South Korea’s infectious-disease experts had a proposal. Confirmed patients should be divided into four categories, based on the risk profile and severity of symptoms, with only the most serious cases hospitalized. Those with mild or no symptoms should be isolated at makeshift treatment facilities.
  • Dr. Peck set up a meeting with senior officials from the Samsung conglomerate, asking that an empty facility near Daegu be lent to the South Korean government. By first having a company volunteer a venue, Dr. Peck recalled thinking, it would pressure South Korea’s health ministry to act.
  • About 80% of South Korea’s coronavirus patients have been hospitalized in the community treatment centers. Those who are asymptomatic or have mild symptoms are still sent there.
  • That changed in August. Unlike February’s outbreak, the new wave of infections fanned out across South Korea to all 15 of the country’s major cities and provinces. The country’s national testing capacity had by then expanded to 50,000 a day with test results notified within 24 hours, up from 20,000 in February
  • The U.S. conducted about 900,000 tests a day over the past week through Thursday, according to data from the Covid Tracking Project. But South Korea performs six times as many tests per confirmed Covid-19 case than the U.S. doe
  • South Korea’s three-tier system created in June for social distancing went off script. With health experts split on whether to adopt the maximum levels last month, a government advisory committee landed at a “level 2.5” social-distancing for the Seoul area that closed schools and banned church services and gatherings of more than 10 people.
  • On Tuesday, South Korea reported its lowest one-day infections in over a month, with just 61 cases.
carolinehayter

U.S., Russian Navies Get Into Brief Confrontation In Sea Of Japan : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...-in-brief-confrontation-at-sea

politics us military russia crisis Policy

shared by carolinehayter on 24 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • Russia says it caught a U.S. Navy ship illegally operating in Russian waters in the Sea of Japan and "chased off" the offending ship on Tuesday.
  • The area in question has been claimed by Russia as part of its territorial waters since 1984, but the U.S. does not recognize that claim.
  • a Russian destroyer, verbally warned the USS John S. McCain that it would be rammed if it didn't leave the area after it violated the boundary by more than a mile, according to Russia's Defense Ministry. The McCain, an Arleigh-Burke class destroyer, immediately returned to neutral waters after the warning, according to the Kremlin.
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  • However, the U.S. is telling a different story. It says that the McCain "asserted navigational rights and freedoms in the vicinity of Peter the Great Bay in the Sea of Japan."
  • The 106-nautical mile closing line at the mouth of the bay is "inconsistent with the rules of international law as reflected in the Law of the Sea Convention," according to the Navy.
  • Although not uncommon during the Cold War, the U.S. and Russian naval forces have had close encounters on the sea and air even in recent years. Russian ships and planes regularly challenge U.S. naval vessels.
  • Last year, the Admiral Vinogradov came within 50 to 100 feet of the USS Chancellorsville as the American ship was busy recovering a helicopter. The Chancellorsville had to take evasive action to avoid the Russian warship, the Navy says.
mimiterranova

Trump Waves To Supporters Outside Walter Reed In Brief Drive-By : Live Updates: Trump T... - 1 views

www.npr.org/...porters-outside-of-walter-reed

shared by mimiterranova on 05 Oct 20 - No Cached
  • President Trump briefly left Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Sunday evening to wave to supporters gathered outside. A masked Trump was seen waving to supporters from a black SUV. Other images showed Secret Service personnel in the vehicle with personal protective equipment on.
  • Some experts swiftly characterized Trump's drive-by greeting as reckless. Dr. James Phillips, chief of disaster medicine at George Washington University, lambasted the move as being made for "political theater."
  • "That Presidential SUV is not only bulletproof, but hermetically sealed against chemical attack. The risk of COVID-19 transmission inside is as high as it gets outside of medical procedures. The irresponsibility is astounding. My thoughts are with the Secret Service forced to play," he wrote on Twitter.
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  • American adults say they're drinking 14% more often during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a report in the journal JAMA Network Open. The increase in frequency of drinking for women was more pronounced, up 17% compared to last year.
  • Stores sold 54% more alcohol in late March compared the year prior, according to Nielsen.
  • "Alcohol compromises the body's immune system and increases the risk of adverse health outcomes," the WHO stated. "Therefore, people should minimize their alcohol consumption at any time, and particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic."
  • Two weeks after the killing of George Floyd, crowds inspired by Black Lives Matter protests in America marched to the statue of a slave trader named Edward Colston in the center of the English port city of Bristol. They wrapped ropes around the neck of the bronze effigy, pulled it to the pavement, rolled and dragged it through the streets, and then pushed it into the harbor.
  • Colston was Bristol's biggest philanthropist. His name adorned the city's concert hall, an office tower, as well as schools and streets. The plaque beneath the statue, which was erected in 1895, called him "one of the most virtuous and wise sons" of Bristol. What it failed to mention – and what angered the protesters – is that Colston made much of his fortune with the Royal African Company, which shipped tens of thousands of enslaved people across the Atlantic to work on plantations during Colston's tenure. An estimated one in five people died during the crossing.
  • A reader poll in the Bristol Post found about 60% of respondents backed protesters pulling down the statue, while around 40% thought it shouldn't have been toppled.
  • Bristol Mayor Marvin Rees, who has lived in Washington and Philadelphia, has had his own unnerving experiences with American police. He said he was flabbergasted when a cop in the U.S. once threatened to arrest him for jaywalking
  • After that, Rees says, he changed the way he dealt with police in the U.S. When asking for directions in New York City one day, he made sure to speak as he took care to approach an officer from the front.
  • Some white residents were doubly angry. They were still mad that the Colston statue had been pulled down illegally and that another statue had gone up without government authorization or public input.
  • "I think it's beautiful," Aidid said. "It stands for so much that Bristol has needed. When I walked past here today, I finally felt like it's not a direct insult to my humanity, to my life."
  • The next morning, government workers unbolted the statue and took it down, leaving the pedestal empty, once again.
  • In July, a London sculptor had his own statue hoisted up on the pedestal. It depicted a Black female protester holding her fist up in a Black power salute.
carolinehayter

Two Park Police Officers Face Manslaughter Charges in Virginia Shooting - The New York ... - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...n-ghaisar-police-indicted.html

police politics US Culture shooting

shared by carolinehayter on 17 Oct 20 - No Cached
  • Two U.S. Park Police officers in Virginia were indicted Thursday on state manslaughter charges in a 2017 case in which they fired nine shots at close range into the car of a 25-year-old man, a prosecutor announced.
  • Each officer was indicted on single charges of manslaughter and reckless discharge of a firearm
  • If convicted, the officers, members of the U.S. Park Police, a unit of the National Park Service within the Interior Department, face up to 15 years in prison, he said.
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  • The officers were placed on administrative leave after the shooting, a Park Police sergeant told The Washington Post.
  • A video of the shooting was released in 2018 by Chief Edwin C. Roessler Jr. of the Fairfax County Police Department
  • He died 10 days later.
  • The officers have said they acted in self-defense. In 2019, the Justice Department said it would not pursue charges against them because it was unable to disprove the officers’ claim of self-defense. At a news conference on Thursday to announce the indictments, Mr. Descano said this was a “complex and nuanced case” involving “the careful review of 10,000 pieces of documentary evidence, the chasing down of additional evidence and the conducting of in-person interviews” amid a pandemic
  • In November 2017, what started as a fender-bender turned into a deadly shooting in a matter of minutes. After a brief chase by the police, one of the motorists involved in the crash, Bijan Ghaisar, stopped at a stop sign. Two police vehicles surrounded his car and officers converged. Several shots were fired into his vehicle.
  • the episode began on Nov. 17 at 7:31 p.m. According to the report, Mr. Ghaisar was driving south on George Washington Memorial Parkway — a federal road — in a green Jeep when he abruptly “stopped in the roadway.” The car behind Mr. Ghaisar then rear-ended him, according to the report, and Mr. Ghaisar drove away.The driver who struck Mr. Ghaisar’s Jeep got a citation for failing to “maintain proper control,” according to the police report, which did not classify the episode as a hit-and-run.
  • It was not clear why the Park Police sought Mr. Ghaisar, given that they had cited the other driver.
  • The video captured by the county police begins about six minutes later, at 7:37 p.m. It appears to show the Jeep being pursued by a Park Police car, its lights flashing and sirens blaring. A Fairfax County police officer follows behind.The chase continues along several residential streets. At 7:41 p.m., the Jeep stops at a stop sign, and the Park Police vehicle wheels around in front of it, effectively blocking it.The video then appears to show one officer approach the Jeep’s driver-side door, with a gun drawn and pointed toward the door’s window. The Jeep moves slightly forward, and one gunshot rings out.After a brief pause, three more shots are fired as the car continues to lurch forward. Another officer then approaches, and the sound of a fifth gunshot can be heard on the video.
  • Two more gunshots can be heard.
  • Another two gunshots can be heard.
  • At the news conference on Thursday, Mr. Descano said: “I wish this could have been done in a faster fashion. However, there is no shortcut to justice.”
rerobinson03

Lie After Lie: Listen to How Trump Built His Alternate Reality - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...rump-voter-fraud-election.html

shared by rerobinson03 on 10 Feb 21 - No Cached
  • In hundreds of public statements from Nov. 4, 2020, to Jan. 6, 2021, Mr. Trump repeatedly used phrases like “we won the election” and “won it by a landslide,” and he said that the election was “rigged” and “stolen” by the Democrats. Such assertions have been proven false by the courts and elections officials across the country. Mr. Trump’s language later signaled to his supporters that they needed to “fight” because “you’ll never take back our country with weakness.”
  • In a 78-page brief submitted to the Senate on Monday, lawyers of Mr. Trump say that he did not direct his supporters to storm the Capitol.
  • Autocratic movements throughout history have been distinguished by leaders repeating lies and suggestions that whip up anger among supporters, Dr. Snyder said. “That is exactly what Trump did.”
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  • Mr. Trump’s defense team will assert that his false statements about the election are protected by the First Amendment, and that trying a former president at all is unconstitutional.
  • The Times reviewed hundreds of hours of footage from Jan. 6 of protesters, including the rioters that stormed the Capitol, and found evidence of how they mimicked — and amplified — Mr. Trump’s words.
  • A number of the rioters have said they did what they did because they thought it was what Mr. Trump wanted them to do.
yehbru

Opinion: The world watches, stunned as Trump is cleared - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

Politics US Trump Biden Impeachment Global

shared by yehbru on 15 Feb 21 - No Cached
  • The BBC was one of many outlets that carried the Senate proceedings live. France24 television broadcast much of the proceedings on their English and French services, with simultaneous translation into French, including the final vote and subsequent responses by Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer and Republican Mitch McConnell
  • It's likely that much (but not all) of the world has watched not out of pure curiosity or voyeurism but out of horror and fear, that Trump's actions and the fact that only seven of the 50 Republican senators were willing to vote for his conviction -- too few to cross the two-thirds majority threshold needed to convict -- have only accelerated the dimming of democracy and freedom America represented
  • Indeed, just as President Joe Biden was announcing he would sanction Myanmar's military leaders for seizing power by force of arms, the House impeachment managers were describing in brutal detail how then-President Trump sought to strongarm himself into a second term he'd failed to win at the ballot box.
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  • The great fear in many quarters abroad is that Trump's budding autocracy was not simply a brutal interregnum, and that Biden's administration is but a brief interlude before America plunges again into the deep spiral that has marked the last four years.
  • In some even quite liberal quarters abroad Trump's acquittal now simply reinforces a fundamental belief that America has strayed off course.
  • "speaks to something increasingly problematic about the American political system's ultimate ability to curtail presidential abuses of power: for many the impeachment process no longer presents much of a threat or deterrent to bad, or even illegal, behavior by the most powerful figure in the land," noted The Guardian newspaper.
  • President Biden was dialing up China's Xi Jinping, reading him the riot act as Trump never did -- warning him that America would no longer ignore gross human rights abuses from Xinjiang to Hong Kong, nor its military's threats from the South China Sea to Taiwan.
  • "Trump did not change my perception of America and Americans, he showed all of us the two faces of America, while many until now had seen only one."
katherineharron

Donald Trump's impeachment trial set to rock Washington and echo through the ages - CNN... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

trump

shared by katherineharron on 09 Feb 21 - No Cached
  • The simple question posed by Donald Trump's second impeachment trial that begins Tuesday is whether a president who loses reelection can get away with a violent coup attempt in a desperate bid to stay in power.
  • The answer contained in the former commander-in-chief's likely acquittal for inciting a deadly mob assault on the Capitol will echo through generations and may influence the outcome of some unknowable future test of US democracy.
  • Events of the next week or so will inform the country's capacity to move on from a traumatic presidency that left it as divided as at any time since the Civil War.
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  • Even after his presidency ended, Washington is under siege from extremism, Trump's trashing of truth with false claims of election fraud and unhinged conspiracies that show the fight to save US democracy did not end on Inauguration Day.
  • A majority of Senate Republicans have indicated that they will not wrestle with Trump's behavior but will take refuge in a questionable argument that a President who was impeached while in office for seditious behavior cannot be tried after returning to private life.
  • That means there is a little chance of a two-thirds majority to convict Trump among 100 senators who will serve as jurors in the chamber that became a crime scene to which many of them were witnesses.
  • While the managers will likely fail to secure a prohibition on Trump serving in federal office in future, they hope to so damn him in public perception that a political comeback in 2024 will be impossible.
  • Video of Trump declaring to an angry crowd he had called to Washington on January 6 "if you don't fight like hell, we are not going to have a country anymore," followed by clips of rioters shouting "fight for Trump" as they smashed their way into the Capitol will have a powerful effect.
  • The price to be paid for deserting an ex-president who still dominates his party is being demonstrated by the backlash directed at 10 Republicans who voted to impeach in the House.
  • It's possible a handful of Senate Republicans will emulate Utah's Sen. Mitt Romney, the only member of his party to vote to convict Trump in his first trial. And Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who voted to impeach Trump, wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post Monday encouraging Senate Republicans to vote to convict Trump, saying it "is necessary to save America from going further down a sad, dangerous road."
  • The claim that a former president cannot be tried after being impeached relies on a hyper-literal reading of the Constitution. Trump's supporters argue the trial is moot since impeachment is about removing a President from office and Trump has already left power.
  • The trial will consume hours a day over the next few weeks, but it will be only one half of a compelling political story that is unfolding in Washington.Biden, three weeks into his term, is intensifying his efforts to stand up his administration and to rescue the country with vaccines before new variants of Covid-19 trigger another deadly wave of infections.
  • The new commander-in-chief has steered clear of impeachment drama, leaving it to the new Democratic leadership on Capitol Hill to plow ahead.
  • Trump's hurriedly overhauled impeachment defense team on Monday laid out their strategy in pre-trial briefs.
  • "This was only ever a selfish attempt by Democratic leadership in the House to prey upon the feelings of horror and confusion that fell upon all Americans across the entire political spectrum upon seeing the destruction at the Capitol on January 6 by a few hundred people," the lawyers wrote.
  • The Trump defense will also revive one of the long-held tropes of the ex-President's apologists -- that his aggressive rhetoric should be taken figuratively not literally, with a claim that his call for the mob to "fight like hell" was metaphorical.
  • His team has also posited, despite multiple lawsuits and certifications of votes by states and Congress, that there is no evidence to disprove his false claims of voter fraud -- so prolonging the Big Lie that the election was stolen from the former President.
  • In a counter filling on the eve of the trial on Monday, Democratic House impeachment managers accused Trump's defense of indulging in "contortions" to support his discredited claims of a "rigged" and "stolen" election.
  • "President Trump violated his Oath of Office and betrayed the American people," the brief said. "His incitement of insurrection against the United States government -- which disrupted the peaceful transfer of power -- is the most grievous constitutional crime ever committed by a president."
  • The trial will begin just a month after a now infamous day, when Trump greeted a huge crowd in Washington already primed for revolt by his weeks of false claims of election fraud. The subsequent invasion of the US Capitol during a joint session of Congress to certify Biden's election victory led to five deaths and saw Trump fans parading unimpeded through the halls of the iconic building as lawmakers fled to safety.
  • "He wanted something to disrupt the electoral vote count that would mean he would no longer be President of the United States," Conway said."None of that is protected by the First Amendment. It's a flat out violation of his oath of office and it's impeachable and he should be punished by being barred from ever holding future federal office."
katherineharron

Impeachment trial: House managers show rioters attacking Capitol - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

trump

shared by katherineharron on 09 Feb 21 - No Cached
  • The second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump began Tuesday with the House impeachment managers showing Trump's speech on January 6 spliced with rioters violently breaching the US Capitol and attacking police officers.
  • The opening session of the trial was a debate on the constitutionality of the trial itself, but Democrats quickly turned their attention to the harrowing attack on the Capitol itself.
  • The Democrats video concluded with Trump's deleted tweet as the riot was unfolding, saying that "these are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away."
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  • "If that's not an impeachable offense, then there's no such thing,"
  • Democratic senators came away from a conference call Tuesday morning with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer under the belief that a final vote on conviction could occur Sunday or Monday if there are no witnesses, according to multiple senators on the call.House managers have not yet requested witnesses but are preserving that option in case they need witnesses' testimony to rebut an argument made by the Trump team, which would extend the length of the trial into at least next week. The timing is also a bit uncertain because it's unclear how much time the Trump team will use, but they're not expected to use their full 16 hours.
  • The case would be like a "violent crime criminal prosecution," one aide said.
  • The historic impeachment trial has a number of firsts: It's the first time in US history a president will be tried in the Senate court of impeachment for a second time. And it's the first time that a former president will face the prospect of conviction and disbarment of office.
  • Trump's team will have two hours to respond to the managers later Tuesday before the Senate will vote on the constitutionality of the trial for a former president.
  • the House managers and Trump's lawyers will each get two hours to debate the constitutionality of the trial, and then the Senate will vote on the matter. While that vote could halt the trial if the Senate voted it was unconstitutional, a similar procedural vote forced by GOP Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky failed 55-45 last month.
  • while Democrats are sure to win this vote, the constitutionality question looms over the entirety of the trial, because Republicans have coalesced around the argument as a reason to acquit Trump. Conviction requires two-thirds majority, or at least 17 Republican senators to join all members of the Democratic caucus.
  • Democrats have argued there's plenty of precedent to hold the trial for Trump, who was impeached by the House while he was still in office.
  • "The Framers' intent, the text of the Constitution, and prior Congressional practice all confirm that President Trump must stand trial for his constitutional crimes committed in office," the House managers wrote in a legal brief Monday. "Presidents swear a sacred oath that binds them from their first day in office through their very last. There is no 'January Exception' to the Constitution that allows Presidents to abuse power in their final days without accountability."
  • Trump's lawyers and many Republican senators, however, say they believe the trial is unconstitutional because Trump is no longer president.
  • Last month, five Republican senators voted against Paul's motion to dismiss the trial, and it's not clear if there have been any shifts. In a key sign showing the hurdles for convicting the former President, Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt, a member of Senate GOP leadership, said Monday he believes the proceedings are unconstitutional and he's seen nothing that will change his mind so far.
  • "I don't know of anyone that their mind is not made up ahead of the impeachment trial," said Sen. James Lankford, an Oklahoma Republican. "The first question on the issue of constitutionality, that drives a lot of it and everything else. I think people are pretty locked down."
  • After Tuesday's debate and vote, the House managers will have 16 hours over two days to make their presentation beginning Wednesday, followed by two days for Trump's lawyers. Senators will then have four hours to ask questions submitted in writing to both sides, and the Senate could debate and vote on whether to subpoena witnesses, though it remains unclear whether any will be sought at trial.
Javier E

The lost days of summer: How Trump struggled to contain the virus - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...a-aff6-220dd3a14741_story.html

trump virus pandemic crisis politics

shared by Javier E on 09 Aug 20 - No Cached
  • If the administration’s initial response to the coronavirus was denial, its failure to control the pandemic since then was driven by dysfunction and resulted in a lost summer, according to the portrait that emerges from interviews with 41 senior administration officials and other people directly involved in or briefed on the response efforts.
  • Right now, we’re flying blind,” said Thomas Frieden, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Public health is not getting in the way of economic recovery and schools reopening. Public health is the means to economic recovery and schools reopening. You don’t have to believe me. Look all over the world. The U.S. is a laggard.”
  • the White House had what was described as a stand-down order on engaging publicly on the virus through the month of June, part of a deliberate strategy to spotlight other issues even as the contagion spread wildly across the country. A senior administration official said there was a desire to focus on the economy in June.
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  • It was only in July, when case counts began soaring in a trio of populous, Republican-leaning states — Arizona, Florida and Texas — and polls showed a majority of Americans disapproving of Trump’s handling of the pandemic, that the president and his top aides renewed their public activity related to the virus.
  • Trump and many of his top aides talk about the virus not as a contagion that must be controlled through social behavior but rather as a plague that eventually will dissipate on its own. Aides view the coronavirus task force — which includes Fauci, Birx and relevant agency heads — as a burden that has to be managed, officials said.
  • . An internal model by Trump’s Council on Economic Advisers predicts a looming disaster, with the number of infections projected to rise later in August and into September and October in the Midwest and elsewhere, according to people briefed on the data.
  • As the nation confronts a once­in-a-century health crisis that has killed at least 158,000 people, infected nearly 5 million and devastated the economy, the atmosphere in the White House is as chaotic as at any other time in Trump’s presidency — “an unmitigated disaster,” in the words of a second former senior administration official.
  • “It’s extraordinary that a country that helped eradicate smallpox, promoted HIV/AIDS treatment worldwide and suppressed Ebola — we were the world’s leader in public health and medicine, and now we can’t even protect our own people from the most devastating epidemic in decades.”
  • Asked who was to blame for the pandemic’s dark summer turn, Pelosi said, “1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”“The delay, the denial . . . the hoax that it’s going to go away magically, a miracle is going to happen, we’ll be in church together by Easter, caused death,” Pelosi added.
  • In Trump’s White House, there is little process that guides decision-making on the pandemic. The president has been focused first and foremost on his reelection chances and reacting to the daily or hourly news cycle as opposed to making long-term strategy, with Meadows and other senior aides indulging his impulses rather than striving to impose discipline.
  • “He sits in the Oval Office and says, ‘Do this,’ or, ‘Do that,’ and there was always a domino blocker. It was John Bolton or H.R. McMaster on national security or John Kelly. Now there are no domino blockers.”
  • What’s more, with polls showing Trump’s popularity on the decline and widespread disapproval of his management of the viral outbreak, staffers have concocted a positive feedback loop for the boss. They present him with fawning media commentary and craft charts with statistics that back up the president’s claim that the administration has done a great — even historically excellent — job fighting the virus.
  • “Everyone is busy trying to create a Potemkin village for him every day. You’re not supposed to see this behavior in liberal democracies that are founded on principles of rule of law. Everyone bends over backwards to create this Potemkin village for him and for his inner circle.”
  • Although Fauci, Birx and other medical professionals sit on the coronavirus task force, many of the more pressing decisions lately have been made by the smaller group that huddles in the morning and mostly prioritizes politics. The cadre includes Meadows, senior adviser Jared Kushner and strategic communications director Alyssa Farah.
  • The policy process has fallen apart around Meadows, according to four White House officials, with the chief of staff fixated on preventing leaks and therefore unwilling to expand meetings to include experts or to share documents with senior staffers who had been excluded from discussions.
  • Luciana Borio, a director for medical and biodefense preparedness at the National Security Council during the first two years of the Trump administration, decried “a response in disarray hampered by a lack of clear, consistent public health-oriented guidance to the public.
  • “It’s very difficult to know who to trust,” Borio said. “To expect the public to sort out the facts in a time of tremendous stress leads to inconsistent and disparate actions, and that really hurts our collective effort to fight the virus.”
  • What also has frustrated a number of the president’s allies and former aides is that he simply seems uninterested in asserting full leadership over the crisis, instead deferring to state leaders to make the more difficult decisions while using his presidential bully pulpit to critique their performances.
  • “A suppression-level effort to shrink and not just mitigate the spread of covid requires a national strategy that includes standards and significant federal funding. Such a strategy is lacking right now.”
  • The Trump administration has resisted devising a national testing program and instead ceded the task to state governments, even as cases of infection average more than 60,000 a day and some people wait 10 days or longer for test results, delays that render the results essentially useless.
  • While some states have been able to largely meet the needs of their populations, the federal government is the only entity with the power to coordinate testing across state lines, push and enable manufacturers to increase production of test kits and supplies, surge those supplies as needed and ensure fair payment.
  • Without federal coordination, states, businesses, hospitals — and soon schools and universities — find themselves competing with each other for limited supplies, often overpaying as a result.
  • Despite repeated calls to invoke the Defense Production Act to help resolve testing-supply shortages, the administration has resisted doing so. Trump and several White House aides have instead continued to think that it is politically advantageous to cede the issue to the states to avoid taking ownership or blame for the issue, even though testing shortages are largely seen as a federal failure.
  • “Other countries have taken this virus seriously, trusted their public health officials and scientists, and now they’ve flattened the curve,” he said. “Meanwhile, our situation gets worse and worse every day and some Americans think, ‘Oh, that’s just the way it is.’ But that isn’t how it has to be.
  • He’s just not oriented towards things that even in the short term look like they’re involving something that’s hard or negative or that involves sacrifice or pain,” a former senior administration official explained. “He is always anxious to get to a place of touting achievements and being the messenger for good news.”
nrashkind

NY governor allows outdoor dining in phase two, jabs at Trump Bible photo - Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...rump-bible-photo-idUSKBN23A2M8

shared by nrashkind on 04 Jun 20 - No Cached
  • New York will allow outdoor dining during phase two of reopening, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced on Wednesday, with restaurants in seven of 10 regions given the green light beginning on Thursday.
  • Cuomo also criticized U.S. President Donald Trump for a staged photo holding a Bible in front of a church near the White House, a visit made possible after protesters were cleared with rubber bullets and tear gas.
  • Under the plan to restart economic activity shut during coronavirus pandemic lockdowns, restaurants and food services are not set to reopen fully until phase three. The hospitality industry and some lawmakers have been pushing to allow outdoor dining to help struggling businesses.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • New York City, which is set to enter phase one of reopening on Monday, and is not among the regions where outdoor dining can resume this week.
  • “You can’t use the military as a political weapon,” Cuomo said.
  • “The president held up the Bible the other day in Washington, D.C. Here in New York we actually read the Bible,” Cuomo told a briefing before reading some passages.
  • He noted that Trump did not read any passages from the Bible at his photo session at St. John’s Episcopal Church.
  • Cuomo said protesters in New York City were mainly peaceful on Tuesday and praised the police department’s handling of the events. A day earlier the governor had criticized the NYPD and the mayor.
  • “New York City last night was much better,” Cuomo told the briefing. “The protesters were mainly peaceful, the police officers had the resources and the capacity to do their job.”
Javier E

Covid testing is about saving lives. Trump thinks it's just about numbers. - The Washin... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...a-9f5e-56d8239bf9ad_story.html

testing trump numbers

shared by Javier E on 17 May 20 - No Cached
  • President Trump paused to muse about the pros and cons of testing people for the coronavirus. “The media likes to point out” that the United States has the most covid-19 cases in the world, he observed. “But we do, by far, the most testing. If we did very little testing, we wouldn’t have the most cases. So, in a way, by doing all of this testing, we make ourselves look bad.”
  • The United States does not do “the most testing,” at least not on a per capita basis — not by a long shot
  • And if the United States did “very little” testing, that would not change the number of people infected, although it would hamper efforts to reduce that figure and limit our understanding of where the virus is spreading.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • Tests are perfect, in Trump’s mind, when they tell you what you want to hear — but not so great when they deliver bad news.
  • But if a test is going to produce an unwelcome result, why do it?
  • Numbers are crucial to the way Trump sees the world.
  • He cares passionately that people believe his claims that he has billions of dollars. He considered his (partly) abandoned nightly crisis briefings as TV shows whose success should be judged by the only metric for such events that matters to him: ratings. He began his presidency with an insanely obsessive row about how many people attended his inauguration. He understands the economy solely through the vicissitudes of the stock market
  • From the beginning of the coronavirus crisis, Trump has been primarily concerned less with protecting lives and more with projecting positive statistics.
  • According to the book “Fear,” by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward, Trump’s main concern in internal discussions about tax cuts was to have memorable figures: “I like those big round numbers. Ten percent, 20 percent, 25 percent.”
  • Today, Trump is caught in a contradiction he cannot resolve: He likes the number of tests performed to go higher and higher but refuses to acknowledge the implications of their results.
  • His fury arose from the basic premise of the question: What the reporter was implying was that there is supposed to be a relationship between testing on the one side and reality on the other
  • when Katie Miller, Vice President Pence’s press secretary, tested positive for the virus: Trump said the result illustrated why “the whole concept of tests aren’t necessarily great.”
  • What Trump stopped short of saying is that a “good” test suddenly turns “bad” when it produces the “wrong” result
  • His ambivalence about testing — love the statistics, hate the results — leads him into wild inconsistency. Today he takes credit for the large numbers of tests done nationally (“nearly double the number of any country”), yet only a month ago he said flatly that governors were “responsible for testing”
  • those obstinate tests do have results, and they show a country with 5 percent of the global population having a third of the world’s known cases of covid-19
lmunch

Pfizer's Vaccine Offers Strong Protection After First Dose - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...covid-vaccine-pfizer.html

politics US pfizer vaccine crisis pandemic

shared by lmunch on 08 Dec 20 - No Cached
  • The coronavirus vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech provides strong protection against Covid-19 within about 10 days of the first dose, according to documents published on Tuesday by the Food and Drug Administration before a meeting of its vaccine advisory group.
  • Last month, Pfizer and BioNTech announced that their two-dose vaccine had an efficacy rate of 95 percent after two doses administered three weeks apart. The new analyses show that the protection starts kicking in far earlier.
  • What’s more, the vaccine worked well regardless of a volunteer’s race, weight or age. While the trial did not find any serious adverse events caused by the vaccine, many participants did experience aches, fevers and other side effects.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Pfizer and BioNTech began a large-scale clinical trial in July, recruiting 44,000 people in the United States, Brazil and Argentina. Half of the volunteers got the vaccine, and half got the placebo.
  • Many experts have expressed concern that the coronavirus vaccines might protect some people better than others. But the results in the briefing materials indicate no such problem.
  • Even if the vaccine is authorized by the F.D.A., the trial will continue. In the briefing documents, the companies said that they would encourage people to stay in the trial as long as possible, not knowing whether they got the vaccine or the placebo, so that the researchers could continue to collect information about whether the vaccine was safe and effective.
  • The F.D.A. concluded that there were no “meaningful imbalances” in serious health complications, known as adverse events, between the two groups. The agency noted that four people in the vaccinated group experienced a form of facial paralysis called Bell’s palsy, with no cases in the placebo group. The difference between the two groups wasn’t meaningful, and the rate in the vaccinated group was not significantly higher than in the general population.
  • The new Pfizer analysis revealed that many volunteers who received the vaccine felt ill in the hours after the second dose, suggesting that many people might have to request a day off work or be prepared to rest until the symptoms subside. Among those between ages 16 and 55, more than half developed fatigue, and more than half also reported headaches. Just over one-third felt chills, and 37 percent felt muscle pain. About half of those over age 55 felt fatigued, one-third developed a headache and about one-quarter felt chills, while 29 percent experienced muscle pain.
ethanshilling

Supreme Court Hears Holocaust Survivors' Cases Against Hungary and Germany - The New Yo... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...holocaust-hungary-germany.html

politics holocaust cases

shared by ethanshilling on 08 Dec 20 - No Cached
  • The justices struggled to decide whether a 1976 law that bars most suits against other nations allows Jewish victims to sue over the theft of their property.
  • The Supreme Court, wary in the past of cases concerning conduct by and against foreigners that took place abroad, heard arguments on Monday over whether American courts have a role in deciding whether Hungary and Germany must pay for property said to have been stolen from Jews before and during World War II.
  • The Trump administration took issue with the rulings, filing briefs and presenting arguments supporting efforts to limit review in American courts.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • The Hungarian case, Republic of Hungary v. Simon, No. 18-1447, was brought by 14 Holocaust survivors, four of them United States citizens, who said their property was stolen by Hungary and its state-owned railway, which deported hundreds of thousands of Jews to Nazi death camps in the summer of 1944.
  • Gregory Silbert, a lawyer for Hungary, said its courts should be allowed to address the matter.
  • Three-judge panels of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled against both Hungary and Germany, saying the cases could proceed
  • The basic legal question for the justices in both cases is whether the disputes should be resolved by American courts
  • The German case, Federal Republic of Germany v. Philipp, No. 19-351, concerns the Guelph Treasure, a trove of medieval religious art that was once owned by a consortium of Jewish art dealers in Frankfurt and that is now estimated to be worth $250 million.
  • Benjamin W. Snyder, a lawyer for the federal government who argued in support of Hungary, took a position that frustrated several justices.
  • “The State Department simply doesn’t feel that it has sufficient information to provide the court with a recommendation,” Mr. Snyder said.
  • Ms. Harrington responded that her case, a potential class action, was at an early stage and that “it’s pure speculation at this point” to try to calculate her clients’ damages.
  • A supporting brief from Hungarian Holocaust victims argued that trying to sue in that country was pointless. It described a case brought there by a 92-year-old plaintiff whose suit was dismissed for lack of evidence beyond her sworn testimony and who was ordered to pay the government’s legal fees.
  • “This would put courts of the United States,” Mr. Kneedler said, “in the business of making sensitive judgments about the conduct of foreign governments, including perhaps some of our closest allies
katherineharron

Trump relying on government officials in final campaign stretch - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

election trump

shared by katherineharron on 30 Oct 20 - No Cached
  • As President Donald Trump makes a hurried final push for reelection, he is relying not only on his campaign staff but on government officials to transmit his message to voters
  • his White House press secretary has appeared on television from campaign headquarters, identified as a campaign adviser. His top White House immigration adviser convened a campaign-organized briefing to assail Joe Biden
  • Seldom does a day go by in a battleground state where a Cabinet member from the Trump administration is not paying a visit -- often with a government announcement in tow.
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • One Cabinet official has already run afoul of the rules, according to an independent government watchdog agency; another, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, is now under investigation for the speech he delivered from Jerusalem to the Republican National Convention.
  • Trump is hoping officials on the government payroll can help fill the void.
  • Trump has pressed administration officials to finalize announcements in the weeks leading up to the election that could woo key voters, including a plan that would cover the cost of a potential coronavirus vaccine for Medicare and Medicaid recipients or an initiative that would help lower the prices of prescription drugs.
  • Trump's efforts have differed in their explicitly political nature.
  • His decision to host the final night of the Republican National Convention on the White House South Lawn seemed both to encapsulate his disregard for separating the two and to permit more rampant politicking by his team.
  • Trump himself is not bound by the Hatch Act. But the example he sets has clearly been adopted by other members of his administration, whose salaries are funded by taxpayers but who have nonetheless engaged in explicitly political activity over the past weeks. Trump has joked in the past that those found in violation of the Hatch Act won't face consequences, according to people who have heard the conversations.
  • White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany has made several appearances from what appeared to be the Trump campaign headquarters studio in Arlington, Virginia
  • "We hand out masks, we encourage people to wear them, we temperature check, we provide hand sanitizer. That's what the campaign does," she said.
  • "People like Kayleigh can volunteer for the campaign, but obviously not in their government capacity or using their government authority," said Jordan Libowitz, communications director for CREW, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
  • But she was not the only White House official to participate in campaign activities this week. Stephen Miller, who has orchestrated Trump's hardline immigration policy, spoke in his "personal capacity" as a "Trump campaign adviser" during a briefing with reporters on Wednesday, baselessly claiming that Biden would "incentivize child smuggling" if elected president.
  • And Ivanka Trump, ostensibly a White House senior adviser, has been on the campaign trail constantly in support of her father.
  • As Vice President Mike Pence rallied supporters in Des Moines on Thursday, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt was also in Iowa, touring the historic Surf Ballroom in the city of Clear Lake.
  • Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette has jetted to states that closely hew to Trump's political map, including Wisconsin, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Trump has made energy -- and in particular fracking -- a key element of his closing message against Biden.
  • Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has traveled in her official capacity to promote school reopening across the country, another item Trump touts during his campaign rallies. On Thursday, DeVos participated in a "Moms for Trump" campaign event in Detroit.
  • Cabinet officials are permitted by law to discuss the President's actions and how they affect Americans, but they are prohibited from making direct pitches to support Trump's reelection while acting in their official capacity.
katherineharron

As Trump refuses to concede, his agencies awkwardly prepare what they can for a Biden t... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

biden trump

shared by katherineharron on 16 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • The federal agencies were required by law to prepare for a transition before the 2020 election, but the flurry of activity that would normally be taking place during a presidential transition sits on hold thanks to President Donald Trump's refusal to accept the election results.
  • Agency officials in the Trump administration put in charge of the transition are in the awkward place of effectively twiddling their thumbs until the General Services Administration, an agency led by a Trump appointee, signs off on the election results
  • Cabinet leaders, meanwhile, have suggested there will be a second Trump term,
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • "This is not direction from the current political appointees from the Trump administration, it's from basically the staff below the political level," the staffer said.
  • "We had a call yesterday and talked quite a bit about this, and the direction we received was to expect a transition, start planning for it, think about the things that the Biden team would likely want to see and start brushing up on those documents and start thinking about how do we frame our programs, and our work in a way that is attractive to the Biden administration," the staffer told CNN.
  • One Department of Energy division is starting to quietly prepare for the incoming Biden administration even though no official connection has been made, according to one staffer in the department.
  • "The silence is still deafening," a DHS official said when asked about outreach from leadership on the transition. The department seems to be in a "wait and see" mode, the official added, saying that any transactions with the Biden team prior to official certification appear "unlikely at this point."
  • "They have done everything they can do. Now they just wait," said a source familiar with the process.
  • department officials realize they have no other option but to remain patient, recognizing that they will eventually get to work with the incoming team, they also believe the department needs a tremendous amount of attention and would like the Biden team to get in as soon as possible.
  • A Treasury staffer said the Treasury Department has been "running through a standard transition process," which began a month out from the election. That process is ongoing, the source said, though there has been no communication regarding landing teams from the Biden transition yet.
  • until there is a declaration certifying the election, personnel should refrain from speaking directly with members of the Biden team and continue to go through the department's transition office, a department official told CNN.
  • The office spaces for the transition teams --- both the State Department career officials assigned to the job by the department and the Biden State Department team -- are sitting vacant.
  • Trump has refused to accept the outcome, spreading false claims of widespread voter fraud while his campaign has filed a flurry of lawsuits that aren't going to overturn the results of the election.
  • some of Trump's Cabinet officials have stayed loyal to his false claims, suggesting there will be a second Trump term.
  • At a news conference on Tuesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed, "There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration."
  • "Obviously, if there's a transition here, we're going to ensure it's a professional, cooperative one," Azar said.
  • Biden's team is moving forward with its transition, naming a lengthy team for all of the agencies that is beginning the work of selecting Cabinet leaders and staffing up, even though it is currently shut out from funding -- and the agencies themselves. Biden's team is downplaying the significance the delayed transition will have on the incoming administration.
  • there are tangible effects to the delay.
  • Normally, a President-elect would immediately begin receiving the same classified briefings as the President. But so far those briefings have not happened for Biden, as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has not engaged with the Biden team.
  • While Biden's coronavirus team has been reaching out to states and the medical community to hit the ground running once Biden is inaugurated, the transition team does not have access to the administration's Covid-19 data and virus distribution plans.
  • "Not only are they not getting access to classified information or already appropriated funds, they aren't getting their review teams into the agencies, and getting ahold of the real budget picture in the agencies and the real personnel picture," said Denis McDonough, who was President Barack Obama's chief of staff.
  • "Much of the story of this last administration and the next couple of months is a disdain for the workings of government," Chertoff said. "It's almost as if it's a determination that they want to wreck government and make it as hard as possible for government to do its job. The problem is that leaves a lot of people dead, as we've seen with the virus."
  • The Biden team is also aware that even when they are able to speak with current defense officials after the General Services Administration signs off on Biden's victory, those officials may not be eager to engage or be as forthcoming as the ones who have already departed.
rerobinson03

The Vaccines Are Supposed to Be Free. Surprise Bills Could Happen Anyway. - The New Yor... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...vaccines-surprise-bills.html

shared by rerobinson03 on 17 Dec 20 - No Cached
  • Congress passed legislation this spring that bars insurers from applying any cost sharing, such as a co-payment or deductible. It layered on additional protections barring pharmacies, doctors and hospitals from billing patients.
  • To consumer advocates, the rules seem nearly ironclad — yet they still fear that surprise vaccine bills will find their way to patients, just as they did with coronavirus testing and treatment earlier this year.
  • Americans vaccinated this year and next generally will not pay for the vaccine itself, because the federal government has purchased hundreds of millions of doses on patients’ behalf.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • The Affordable Care Act provides additional protections, because it requires most health insurers to fully cover all federally recommended preventive care.
  • Some insurers, including Aetna and certain Blue Cross Blue Shield plans, have already announced that they will not bill patients for the vaccine or its administration.
  • The federal government has used other levers to curtail surprise vaccine bills. When it offered enhanced Medicaid payment rates this spring, it required states to fully cover coronavirus vaccines for all their enrollees as a condition of receipt. All 50 states accepted the extra funding, and are now subject to those
  • What makes the vaccine protections unique is that there are requirements on both the insurers and the providers,”
  • That’s different from the rules around coronavirus treatment, which regulated insurers’ cost sharing but did not take steps to curtail billing by doctors and hospitals. That meant some patients received bills they didn’t expect.
  • requirements.
  • Experts also worry about uninsured Americans. The United States does not have a national program to cover vaccination costs for them. For coronavirus, it is instructing health providers to submit costs associated with vaccination to a $175 billion Provider Relief Fund created last spring.
  • Additional fees could accompany a vaccine. Some providers are accustomed to charging a visit fee for all in-person patients. Most emergency rooms charge “facility fees,” the price of coming in the door and seeking care, as do some hospital-based doctors.
  • Federal law is quite clear that patients should not have to pay for the vaccine and its administration. But there isn’t language that defines what counts as “vaccine administration,” and whether the visit fee makes the cut.
  • The question that I’m still not clear on is what happens if someone walks into an outpatient department that charges a facility fee and gets a vaccine,” said Kao-Ping Chua, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Michigan who has studied coronavirus medical billing. “Is there a possibility they could get charged? I think the answer is yes.”
clairemann

Dorf on Law: Will the SB8 Case Allow SCOTUS to Appear Moderate? If So, What Follows? - 0 views

www.dorfonlaw.org/...se-allow-scotus-to-appear.html

us politics SCOTUS abortion

shared by clairemann on 29 Oct 21 - No Cached
  • Later today merits briefs will be filed in the expedited SCOTUS cases on SB8. So will amicus briefs, including one from me and other federal courts scholars
  • that the SB8 litigation is, in important ways, about the Court's own authority.
  • Allowing Texas to circumvent abortion precedents while they remain on the books would embolden further acts of defiance, I suggest.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • First, let's be clear that the Court could and likely will decide the SB8 case without saying anything about the continuing vitality of the abortion right. That's easy to see if a majority holds on procedural grounds that neither the U.S. nor the abortion providers (in the companion case) can bring suit for injunctive relief. If the federal court plaintiffs lack standing or a cause of action, or if the Court holds that state court judges are not proper party-defendants, or that for injunctive relief to be effective it must--but is not permitted to--run against private non-parties, then the Texas law will remain in effect pending resolution in state court and a possible eventual return to the US Supreme Court posing the question whether a six-week ban is permissible on the merits.
  • For the U.S. and/or the abortion providers to win, at least one of the Justices who might vote to overrule Roe v. Wade in Dobbs would need to nonetheless allow a challenge to SB8 to go forward. Why would they do so? Perhaps they'll see the case in purely procedural terms. If the stakes were lower, it would be relatively easy to imagine any Justice thinking Case X is ripe for overruling but until we overrule it, state legislatures must abide by it.
  • Let's assume for the sake of argument that that happens--say that next month the Court rules 5-4 that the Fifth Circuit was wrong to lift the preliminary injunction in the DOJ case. Then suppose that a different 5-4 majority or a 6-3 majority rules in late June that the Mississippi law is constitutional but that they're not deciding whether to overrule Roe (even though they would have de facto overruled much of Roe). At that point the news coverage would indeed likely be muddled. Is there still a constitutional right to abortion? When? Where? Pro-choice activists might have a harder time mobilizing voters based on Dobbs if there is also floating around the notion that the Supreme Court had invalidated the Texas law just a few months before--even though that would have been only a procedural holding.
  • (2) Quite apart from the substance, the procedural grounds for reinstating the injunction are strong. I acknowledge that there are genuine questions of standing, causes of action, remedy, proper defendants, and more, but the bottom line for me is fairly straightforward: As I argue in the column, the case fundamentally presents a question whether states and other government actors can use trickery to evade their constitutional obligations. Tax law has a substance-over-form principle that should be universal. Texas has made no secret of the fact that it crafted SB8's trapdoors with the clear purpose of preventing lawsuits and thus chilling the exercise of a constitutional right. Permitting this kind of evasion and defiance will invite more.
sidneybelleroche

US, Russia to try more diplomacy amid tensions over Ukraine | AP News - 0 views

apnews.com/...a3da26cb574ce4beaf5616573f16c0

shared by sidneybelleroche on 21 Jan 22 - No Cached
  • Top U.S. and Russian diplomats agreed Friday to keep talking in the standoff over Ukraine, even though their meeting produced no movement in the crisis that has seen Moscow mass tens of thousands of troops at the border and the West ramp up supplies of weapons to Kyiv.With fears of an invasion of Ukraine running high and seemingly intractable demands, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met for about 90 minutes in Geneva at what the American said was a “critical moment.”Expectations were low going in, and there was no breakthrough.Blinken told Lavrov the U.S. would give Russia written responses to Moscow’s proposals next week and suggested the two would likely meet again shortly after that — offering some hope that any invasion would be delayed for at least a few more days.
  • Blinken said the U.S. would be open to a meeting between Putin and U.S. President Joe Biden, if it would be “useful and productive.” The two have met once in person in Geneva and have had several virtual conversations on Ukraine that have proven largely inconclusive.
  • The Pentagon said the USS Harry S Truman aircraft carrier and its strike group will participate in a NATO maritime exercise in the Mediterranean, which will continue through Feb. 4 — something that has been planned since 2020, said Pentagon press secretary John Kirby. He said officials considered whether to go ahead with the exercise, because of the ongoing tensions, and decided to move ahead.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • After the meeting, Blinken spoke by phone with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba to brief him on his talks this week and reaffirm U.S. support for Kyiv’s sovereignty and stress that no decisions would be made without his country’s input, State Department spokesman Ned Price said. He also will brief the foreign ministers of Washington’s European allies.
  • The United States and allies say countries like Ukraine are entitled to their own alliances as part of sovereign security measures, but Lavrov countered that Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe have also agreed that no nation can ensure its security by undermining security of others.
lucieperloff

Your Friday Briefing: Boosters and Vaccine Equity - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-who-ukraine-russia-biden.html

pandemic economics inequality

shared by lucieperloff on 10 Dec 21 - No Cached
  • As wealthy nations step up their booster campaigns to confront the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, the World Health Organization is concerned that vaccine equity could be further undermined.
  • Most current infections, which are still overwhelmingly being driven by the Delta variant, are affecting unvaccinated people, the W.H.O. said, which means that getting vaccines to those who have no protection should be the priority.
Javier E

Opinion | Vaccine Hesitancy Is About Trust and Class - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...vaccine-hesitancy-covid.html

collective action pandemic politics history crisis culture common

shared by Javier E on 04 Dec 21 - No Cached
  • The world needs to address the root causes of vaccine hesitancy. We can’t go on believing that the issue can be solved simply by flooding skeptical communities with public service announcements or hectoring people to “believe in science.”
  • For the past five years, we’ve conducted surveys and focus groups abroad and interviewed residents of the Bronx to better understand vaccine avoidance.
  • We’ve found that people who reject vaccines are not necessarily less scientifically literate or less well-informed than those who don’t. Instead, hesitancy reflects a transformation of our core beliefs about what we owe one another.
  • ...43 more annotations...
  • Over the past four decades, governments have slashed budgets and privatized basic services. This has two important consequences for public health
  • First, people are unlikely to trust institutions that do little for them.
  • second, public health is no longer viewed as a collective endeavor, based on the principle of social solidarity and mutual obligation. People are conditioned to believe they’re on their own and responsible only for themselves.
  • an important source of vaccine hesitancy is the erosion of the idea of a common good.
  • compared with white Americans, communities of color do experience the American health care system differently. But a closer look at the data reveals a more complicated picture.
  • Since the spring, when most American adults became eligible for Covid vaccines, the racial gap in vaccination rates between Black and white people has been halved. In September, a national survey found that vaccination rates among Black and white Americans were almost identical.
  • Other surveys have determined that a much more significant factor was college attendance: Those without a college degree were the most likely to go unvaccinated.
  • Education is a reliable predictor of socioeconomic status, and other studies have similarly found a link between income and vaccination.
  • It turns out that the real vaccination divide is class.
  • “People are thinking, ‘If the government isn’t going to do anything for us,’” said Elden, “‘then why should we participate in vaccines?’”
  • during the 1950s polio campaigns, for example, most people saw vaccination as a civic duty.
  • But as the public purse shrunk in the 1980s, politicians insisted that it’s no longer the government’s job to ensure people’s well-being; instead, Americans were to be responsible only for themselves and their own bodies
  • Entire industries, such as self-help and health foods, have sprung up on the principle that the key to good health lies in individuals making the right choices.
  • Without an idea of the common good, health is often discussed using the language of “choice.”
  • there are problems with reducing public health to a matter of choice. It gives the impression that individuals are wholly responsible for their own health.
  • This is despite growing evidence that health is deeply influenced by factors outside our control; public health experts now talk about the “social determinants of health,” the idea that personal health is never simply just a reflection of individual lifestyle choices, but also the class people are born into, the neighborhood they grew up in and the race they belong to.
  • food deserts and squalor are not easy problems to solve — certainly not by individuals or charities — and they require substantial government action.
  • Many medical schools teach “motivational interviewing,”
  • the deeper problem:
  • Being healthy is not cheap. Studies indicate that energy-dense foods with less nutritious value are more affordable, and low-cost diets are linked to obesity and insulin resistance.
  • Another problem with reducing well-being to personal choice is that this treats health as a commodity.
  • This isn’t surprising, since we shop for doctors and insurance plans the way we do all other goods and services
  • mothers devoted many hours to “researching” vaccines, soaking up parental advice books and quizzing doctors. In other words, they act like savvy consumers
  • When thinking as a consumer, people tend to downplay social obligations in favor of a narrow pursuit of self-interest. As one parent told Reich, “I’m not going to put my child at risk to save another child.”
  • Such risk-benefit assessments for vaccines are an essential part of parents’ consumer research.
  • Vaccine uptake is so high among wealthy people because Covid is one of the gravest threats they face. In some wealthy Manhattan neighborhoods, for example, vaccination rates run north of 90 percent.
  • For poorer and working-class people, though, the calculus is different: Covid-19 is only one of multiple grave threats.
  • When viewed in the context of the other threats they face, Covid no longer seems uniquely scary.
  • Most of the people we interviewed in the Bronx say they are skeptical of the institutions that claim to serve the poor but in fact have abandoned them.
  • he and his friends find reason to view the government’s sudden interest in their well-being with suspicion. “They are over here shoving money at us,” a woman told us, referring to a New York City offer to pay a $500 bonus to municipal workers to get vaccinated. “And I’m asking, why are you so eager, when you don’t give us money for anything else?”
  • These views reinforce the work of social scientists who find a link between a lack of trust and inequality. And without trust, there is no mutual obligation, no sense of a common good.
  • The experience of the 1960s suggests that when people feel supported through social programs, they’re more likely to trust institutions and believe they have a stake in society’s health.
  • While the reasons vary by country, the underlying causes are the same: a deep mistrust in local and international institutions, in a context in which governments worldwide have cut social services.
  • In one Syrian city, for example, the health care system now consists of one public hospital so underfunded that it is notorious for poor care, a few private hospitals offering high-quality care that are unaffordable to most of the population, and many unlicensed and unregulated private clinics — some even without medical doctors — known to offer misguided health advice. Under such conditions, conspiracy theories can flourish; many of the city’s residents believe Covid vaccines are a foreign plot.
  • In many developing nations, international aid organizations are stepping in to offer vaccines. These institutions are sometimes more equitable than governments, but they are often oriented to donor priorities, not community needs.
  • “We have starvation and women die in childbirth.” one tribal elder told us, “Why do they care so much about polio? What do they really want?”
  • In America, anti-vaccine movements are as old as vaccines themselves; efforts to immunize people against smallpox prompted bitter opposition in the turn of the last century. But after World War II, these attitudes disappeared. In the 1950s, demand for the polio vaccine often outstripped supply, and by the late 1970s, nearly every state had laws mandating vaccinations for school with hardly any public opposition.
  • What changed? This was the era of large, ambitious government programs like Medicare and Medicaid.
  • The anti-measles policy, for example, was an outgrowth of President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and War on Poverty initiatives.
  • Research shows that private systems not only tend to produce worse health outcomes than public ones, but privatization creates what public health experts call “segregated care,” which can undermine the feelings of social solidarity that are critical for successful vaccination drives
  • Only then do the ideas of social solidarity and mutual obligation begin to make sense.
  • The types of social programs that best promote this way of thinking are universal ones, like Social Security and universal health care.
  • If the world is going to beat the pandemic, countries need policies that promote a basic, but increasingly forgotten, idea: that our individual flourishing is bound up in collective well-being.
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