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Contents contributed and discussions participated by ethanshilling

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ethanshilling

Several States Pausing Use of Johnson & Johnson Vaccine After CDC, FDA Advisory - The N... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...tes-johnson-vaccine-pause.html

world pandemic vaccine

shared by ethanshilling on 13 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • Several states quickly followed the call from federal health agencies on Tuesday to pause the administration of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine after six women in the United States developed a rare disorder involving blood clots within one to three weeks of vaccination.
  • CVS and Walgreens, the nation’s largest retail pharmacy chains, also said that they would immediately stop Johnson & Johnson vaccinations.
  • The C.D.C.’s outside advisory committee of independent experts has scheduled an emergency meeting for Wednesday.
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  • The White House on Tuesday said that the pause will not have a significant effect on the country’s vaccination campaign, which has accelerated in recent weeks as a rise in new virus cases threatens a fourth possible surge.
  • “Over the last few weeks, we have made available more than 25 million doses of Pfizer and Moderna each week, and in fact this week we will make available 28 million doses of these vaccines,” Jeff Zients, the White House Covid-19 response coordinator, said on Tuesday.
  • As of Monday, 36 percent of the country’s total population has received at least one shot of a vaccine, and 22 percent are fully vaccinated, according to data from the C.D.C.
  • Even though the reaction to the Johnson & Johnson shot is rare, any questions about the safety of the shots could bolster vaccine hesitancy.
  • Nearly seven million people in the United States have received Johnson & Johnson shots so far, and roughly nine million more doses have been shipped out to the states, according to data from the C.D.C. The six women who developed blood clots were between the ages of 18 and 48.
  • “I know there are people who have gotten the vaccine, who are probably very concerned. For people who got the vaccine more than a month ago, the risk to them is very low at this time,” Dr. Schuchat said.
  • On Friday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said that New York expected to receive 34,900 Johnson & Johnson shots, a decrease of 88 percent from the previous week
  • Dr. Zucker, New York’s health commissioner, said that the state would honor appointments made at state-run mass vaccination sites for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine by giving people the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine instead.
  • Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City said that the city would do the same, rescheduling appointments at city-run vaccine sites.“Every site has been told this morning to stop giving the J&J shots,” he said at a news conference.
  • Both Mr. Cuomo and Mr. de Blasio received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine at separate appearances last month, which they framed as an effort to boost confidence in that vaccine’s efficacy rate and to address vaccine hesitancy.
  • Regulators in Europe and elsewhere are concerned about a similar issue with another coronavirus vaccine, developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University researchers.
ethanshilling

Why the G.O.P. Can't Quit Trump - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...trump-republican-donors.html

trump GOP

shared by ethanshilling on 13 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • On Saturday, before a roomful of top Republican donors, former President Donald Trump called Senator Mitch McConnell a “stone cold loser” — and worse.
  • On Monday, Mr. Trump was rewarded with the first “Champion for Freedom” award, handed out by none other than the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the campaign finance arm of the Republican caucus that Mr. McConnell leads.
  • Big donors are beyond tired of Mr. Trump’s antics, but his small-dollar fund-raising is through the roof. If Mr. Trump is in a tug of war with the Republican establishment, he appears to have the upper hand — not just in the polls, but also in dollars.
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  • One establishment Republican insider with fears about Mr. Trump’s continued influence on the party told me today that the fund-raising totals were far more worrisome to moderate Republicans than his outlandish statements on Saturday — which felt like old hat.
  • “What surprised people and took them aback was the $85 million he raised,” the person said in a phone interview. “That is a bigger problem, frankly, than what he says.
  • It bears noting that the first quarter of the year, running from January through March, included the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and the fallout from Mr. Trump’s refusal to fully denounce the perpetrators.
  • Robert Cahaly, a Republican pollster and strategist, said that this trend was only the latest example of how Mr. Trump has shifted the power in Republican politics away from major corporations and establishment figures, and toward the grass roots — a demographic he firmly controls.
  • Even as two-thirds of Americans said in a CNN poll last month that they disapproved of how Mr. Trump had responded to the Jan. 6 attack, 63 percent of Republicans said he had responded to it well.
  • Mr. Trump’s command over small-dollar donors in the Republican base is enormous — as is his popularity. Which means that the very National Republican Senatorial Committee that gave Mr. Trump an award on Monday is holding its breath ahead of 2022.
  • Last week, the Senate Leadership Fund — a super PAC that funds Senate Republican campaigns — announced that it would back Ms. Murkowski in her bid for re-election.
ethanshilling

US to Increase Military Presence in Germany - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...us-military-germany.html

europe military russia

shared by ethanshilling on 13 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • The United States and NATO, anxious about a major Russian troop buildup on Ukraine’s border, signaled strong support for the Kyiv government on Tuesday.
  • And in what was considered another message to Moscow, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said in Germany on Tuesday that the United States would increase its military presence there by about 500 personnel and that it was scuttling plans introduced under President Donald J. Trump for a large troop reduction in Europe.
  • “The U.S. stands firmly behind the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of Ukraine,” Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken told Mr. Kuleba.
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  • “This meeting is extremely timely given what is happening along the Ukrainian border with Russia,” Mr. Kuleba said, calling it the “border of the democratic world.”
  • “In recent weeks, Russia has moved thousands of combat-ready troops to Ukraine’s borders, the largest massing of Russian troops since the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014,” Mr. Stoltenberg of NATO said
  • “These forces will strengthen deterrence and defense in Europe,” Mr. Austin said after meeting his German counterpart, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer. “They will augment our existing abilities to prevent conflict and, if necessary, fight and win.”
  • The increase in U.S. troops in Germany is a strong indication of the Biden administration’s commitment to NATO and to collective European defense.
  • One of the two new units will involve field artillery, composite air and missile defense, intelligence, cyberspace, electronic warfare, aviation and a brigade support element.
  • On Tuesday, Sergei K. Shoigu, Russia’s defense minister, said that “two armies and three airborne units were successfully deployed to the western borders of Russia”
  • Russia is widely seen as testing Mr. Biden and keeping the pressure on Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky, who has moved against some of the Kremlin’s favorite oligarchs.
  • Ian Bond, a former British diplomat who is head of foreign policy for the Center for European Reform, said that a war was unlikely now but could come this summer.
  • In any event, Mr. Bond said, the United States and NATO should both reassure Ukraine and “deter Russia by shifting the cost-benefit calculation in favor of de-escalation’’ — in particular by being clear to Moscow about what the consequences of a new military intervention would be.
ethanshilling

Biden to Announce Full Withdrawal of US Troops in Afghanistan by Sept. 11 - The New Yor... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...en-afghanistan-withdrawal.html

Politics US afghanistan

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  • President Biden has decided to withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan by Sept. 11, 20 years after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon launched the country into its longest war, United States officials said Tuesday.
  • “The Afghan government will struggle to hold the Taliban at bay if the coalition withdraws support,” the report said.
  • A new intelligence report released Tuesday offered a grim assessment of Afghanistan and the prospects for peace. American intelligence agencies assessed that a peace deal was unlikely in the next year, and that the Taliban would make battlefield gains.
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  • The decision will keep more than 3,000 American troops on the ground in Afghanistan beyond the May 1 withdrawal deadline announced by the administration of former President Donald J. Trump.
  • Military and other officials who favored troops remaining in the country longer had used a similar classified intelligence assessment to argue for a slower drawdown, worried that an exit of American troops could trigger a wider civil war and an eventual return of terrorist groups.
  • The report released Tuesday did not contain an assessment of the likelihood of a return of Al Qaeda to Afghanistan, and some senior officials remain skeptical the Taliban would allow it.
ethanshilling

After the Capitol Riot, Democrats Are Torn Over Working With the G.O.P. - The New York ... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-republicans-capitol-riot.html

US politics GOP history

shared by ethanshilling on 07 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • When a Republican lawmaker approached Representative Veronica Escobar, a Democrat, on the House floor recently with a routine request that she sign on to a resolution he was introducing, she initially refused.
  • Ms. Escobar personally liked the man, a fellow Texan, and she supported his bill. But she held the Republican, who had voted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election just hours after rioters stormed the Capitol, partly responsible for the deadly attack and questioned whether she could work with him.
  • In the immediate aftermath of the assault on the Capitol that left five dead, irate Democrats vowed to punish Republicans for their roles in perpetuating or indulging former President Donald J. Trump’s fiction of a stolen election that motivated the mob that attacked the building.
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  • Democrats introduced a series of measures to censure, investigate and potentially expel members who, in the words of one resolution, “attempted to overturn the results of the election and incited a white supremacist attempted coup.”
  • What has unfolded instead has been something of an uneasy détente on Capitol Hill, as Democrats reckon with what they experienced that day and struggle to determine whether they can salvage their relationships with Republicans — some of whom continue to cast doubt on the legitimacy of President Biden’s victory — and whether they even want to try.
  • Republicans have felt the breach as well. Representative Michael Waltz, Republican of Florida, who did not vote to overturn Mr. Biden’s victory but joined a lawsuit challenging the election results, said feelings ran raw after the mob violence at the Capitol.
  • Many House Republicans have refrained from discussing the attack, while some have tried to rewrite history and argue that they never claimed the election was “stolen,” despite their objections.
  • Adding to the tensions, most Republicans insist that they did nothing wrong, arguing that their push to invalidate the election results was merely an effort to raise concerns about the integrity of the vote.
  • In the days after the attack, the wounds it laid bare seemed almost too deep to heal. As the mob tore closer to lawmakers on Jan. 6, Representative Dean Phillips, a mild-mannered Minnesota Democrat known for fostering bipartisan relationships, shouted at Republicans, “This is because of you!”
  • The reluctance stems, at least in part, from politics. Democrats owe their majority to a group of lawmakers from competitive districts who say their constituents elected them to work with Republicans to get legislation done.
  • “I haven’t talked to a single Republican about that day. Nothing. At all,” said Ms. Wild, who has resumed working with Pennsylvania Republicans on legislation, even though most of them voted to overturn the election.
  • Representative Abigail Spanberger, Democrat of Virginia, who was in the House gallery on Jan. 6, said she had taken it upon herself to try to facilitate a reconciliation — or at least an airing out of differences.
  • One Democrat, Representative Brad Schneider of Illinois, recently removed a Republican from a bill the two had worked on together for years, in line with his new policy of collaborating only with lawmakers who publicly state that Mr. Biden was legitimately elected.
  • Still, Mr. Schneider said that many other Republicans were still questioning Mr. Biden’s legitimacy — and that some were even continuing to put lawmakers at risk with incendiary remarks.
ethanshilling

Devastation from Storms Fuels Migration in Honduras - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-honduras-central-america.html

world biden crisis

shared by ethanshilling on 06 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • Children pry at the dirt with sticks, trying to dig out parts of homes that have sunk below ground. Their parents, unable to feed them, scavenge the rubble for remnants of roofs to sell for scrap metal.
  • People have long left Honduras for the United States, fleeing gang violence, economic misery and the indifference of a government run by a president accused of ties to drug traffickers.
  • Then last fall, two hurricanes hit impoverished areas of Honduras in rapid succession, striking more than four million people across the nation — nearly half the population — and leveling entire neighborhoods.
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  • “People aren’t migrating; they’re fleeing,” said César Ramos, of the Mennonite Social Action Commission, a group providing aid to people affected by the storms. “These people have lost everything, even their hope.”
  • But last month, apprehensions at the southwest border of the United States hit a 15-year high, part of a sharp uptick since Mr. Biden took office.
  • The majority of families and unaccompanied children are coming from Honduras and Guatemala, the two countries hit hardest by the hurricanes — a sign that the president’s more welcoming policies on immigration have drawn people at a time when they are especially desperate to leave.
  • Still, Mr. Biden has sent a clear message to anyone considering crossing the border in the meantime: “Don’t come over,” Mr. Biden said in a recent interview.
  • Mexico has begged the Biden administration to send more disaster relief aid to Central America. Mr. Biden has contended that under former President Trump, “instead of going down and helping in a major way” after the disasters, “we did nothing.”
  • “We need to be aggressively addressing the levels of despair that the folks hit by these storms are facing,” said Dan Restrepo, a former top adviser to President Obama. “We need to go big now and we need to be loud about it, because that starts actually factoring into the calculus that people face today, which is, ‘Can I survive here or not?’”
ethanshilling

Thousands Protest Against Policing Bill in Britain, With Clashes in London - The New Yo... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...on-protests-policing-bill.html

britain protest police

shared by ethanshilling on 06 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • Thousands of people protested Saturday in several cities across England and Wales against a sweeping crime and policing bill, with some in London clashing with the police in scenes that may further fuel a raging national debate over law enforcement tactics in Britain.
  • In London, protesters peacefully marched from Hyde Park in central London to Parliament Square, but the gathering gave way to scuffles with officers in the evening, and 26 demonstrators were detained, the police said.
  • “After reviewing a huge body of evidence — rather than a snapshot on social media — we found that there are some things the Met could have done better,” the leader of the inspection team, Matt Parr, said of the Metropolitan Police.
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  • The faceoffs on Saturday come amid an increasingly tense environment between the police and demonstrators across Europe. Over the past year, protesters have clashed with the police during Black Lives Matter protests, anti-lockdown rallies and, in countries like France, against similar security laws.
  • “No E.U. country is immune to threats to democracy, and more concrete efforts are badly needed to revert worrying trends,” the Berlin-based Civil Liberties Union for Europe said in a report published last month.
  • Protesters also marched in Liverpool, Birmingham, Bristol and many other cities on Saturday, the latest events in what have become known as “Kill the Bill” demonstrations. Critics of the bill say it would hinder the right to protest and constitute an attack on democracy.
  • The clashes on Saturday may add to the ongoing debate about excessive force used by the country’s police, which in London have been shaken by several recent controversies.
  • Unlike the vigil organized last month for Ms. Everard, protests are now legal in England and Wales as long as event organizers make a risk assessment and take measures to limit the spread of the coronavirus.
  • Commander Ade Adelekan said in a statement Saturday night that a majority of demonstrators had adhered to social distancing rules and left when asked to by the police. But officers arrested protesters, he added, after a minority refused to comply with orders.
  • “We remain in the middle of a global pandemic and we have made great progress in controlling the spread of the virus,” Mr. Adelekan said. “We will not allow the selfish actions of a small number of people to put Londoners progress in jeopardy.”
ethanshilling

The plan for post-pandemic life in England includes free testing and Covid certificates... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ng-and-covid-certificates.html

Britain pandemic testing

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  • Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain offered a first detailed glimpse of what a post-pandemic society in England might look like on Monday, announcing free twice-weekly coronavirus tests and Covid status certificates that would allow people with immunity into crowded nightclubs and sporting events.
  • “I will be going to the pub myself and cautiously but irreversibly raising a pint of beer to my lips,” Mr. Johnson said at a news conference at 10 Downing Street, as he listed the next round of relaxed restrictions.
  • Trying to strike a balance between public health and personal liberties, he said Britain would design a system to certify the Covid status of anyone seeking to enter higher-risk settings.
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  • Britain has long resisted the idea of requiring people to carry identity documents, and for some in the country, this issue carries authoritarian overtones.
  • Mr. Johnson acknowledged the sensitivities and pointed out that the certification plan would not be rolled out for a few months. The government plans to test the program in pilot locations, from a comedy club and nightclub in Liverpool to the FA Cup soccer final at Wembley Stadium.
  • Britain plans to classify countries according to a traffic light system, with visitors from green countries not required to isolate themselves, visitors from amber countries required to isolate at home for several days, and those from red countries required to continue quarantining in hotels.
  • With more than 31 million people having gotten at least one vaccine “jab,” and the country still largely in lockdown, Britain has dramatically driven down its new cases, hospital admissions and deaths from the virus.
ethanshilling

Those 16 or Older in NJ Will be Eligible for a Vaccine on April 19 - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ey-covid-vaccine-eligible.html

US vaccine

shared by ethanshilling on 06 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • All New Jersey residents 16 or older will be eligible for Covid-19 vaccination beginning on April 19, Gov. Philip D. Murphy said on Monday.
  • Mayor Muriel Bowser of the District of Columbia joined the group of leaders expanding vaccine eligibility, saying on Twitter on Monday that all Washington residents 16 or older would be eligible on April 19.
  • In Maryland, those 16 or older are eligible to get a shot on Tuesday at state mass vaccination sites, Gov. Larry Hogan said on Monday. On April 12, he said, all Maryland residents 16 or older will be eligible at the other vaccine providers in the state.
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  • It is an announcement that heeds President Biden’s call for states to speed up their timelines for all adults to be eligible, as most other states already have.
  • But even as the rollout of vaccinations continues to pick up pace, federal health officials and public health experts have been warning that the country could face a possible fourth surge in coronavirus cases.
  • Last week, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, pleaded with Americans to “hold on a little while longer.”
ethanshilling

Pink Dolphins in Hong Kong Find Respite Thanks to the Coronavirus - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...hong-kongs-pink-dolphins.html

hong kong dolphins

shared by ethanshilling on 06 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • The most popular reward for hiking to the top of Fu Shan, a hill near Hong Kong’s westernmost point, is a selfie backed by the setting sun, the gleaming new bridge across the Pearl River or a flight landing at the nearby airport.But for those who look more closely, there is the chance of a rarer prize: a glimpse of Chinese white dolphins swimming among fishing boats and cargo ships in the milky jade water.
  • The species, also known as the pink dolphin for the flush coloration it gets while swimming actively in warm waters, is found through much of coastal south China and Southeast Asia.
  • The marine mammals have maintained a precarious existence in the Pearl River Delta, which has the world’s second-highest volume of freight shipments, several cities with populations in the millions and an unrelenting pace of development in and along its waters.
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  • But the number of dolphins in Hong Kong have declined as much as 80 percent over the past 15 years, according to a report by 15 conservation groups and regional universities, as pollution, marine traffic and large-scale land reclamation projects have made the environment increasingly hostile.
  • The construction of a new runway for Hong Kong’s international airport and a bridge that links the city with the western side of the Pearl River has also disrupted areas that were once prime dolphin habitat but now rarely see the animals.
  • “If we identify individuals, we can follow their life history — where they like to hang around, whether they have calves,” he said. “This is important, because one of the worries is reproductive rate of dolphins is quite low. To keep the population healthy, we want to see calves. But that’s not happening in Hong Kong.”
  • “All vessel traffic is an issue, but high-speed ferries are a particular issue,” said Laurence McCook, the head of oceans conservation for the WWF-Hong Kong. “They move so fast there’s a risk of vessel strike, but they also just physically disturb the dolphins because the dolphins run away from them.”
  • “People want to hear this news about the benefit of the pandemic for wildlife, but it’s not true for dolphins,” said Vincent Ho, the vice chairman of the Hong Kong Dolphin Conservation Society.
  • “Every time we have a project like the bridge,” Mr. Ho said, “they set up a marine park as some kind of compensation. But we think it’s too late.”
  • “What we have documented fairly clearly is that dolphins are moving back out into the ferry zone,” Mr. McCook said. “That actually is their most prime habitat under current circumstances.”
  • Conservation groups say they hope the benefits of the ferry suspension will encourage regional governments and ferry companies to reconsider routes across the Pearl River. By traveling somewhat farther south, they could bypass key areas of dolphin habitat along Lantau, Hong Kong’s largest island.
  • “Rerouting the ferries is not a magic cure-all,” Mr. McCook said. “But we think that can help us catalyze other actions and demonstrate it’s not a fait accompli that we lose the dolphins.”
ethanshilling

Netanyahu Gets the First Crack at Forming a New Government in Israel - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ahu-israel-new-government.html

politics israel

shared by ethanshilling on 06 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel was asked by the president on Tuesday to try to form a new coalition government, offering a possible path for him to remain in office even as he stands trial on corruption charges.
  • Still, even Mr. Rivlin expressed doubts about Mr. Netanyahu’s chances of success, a day after he met with representatives of all 13 parties elected to Parliament and received their recommendations for the premiership.
  • A political survivor and Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, Mr. Netanyahu has spent the last 12 years in office. But after four inconclusive elections in two years, he and his allies have failed to win enough support to ensure a parliamentary majority that could decisively end the country’s political deadlock.
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  • Mr. Netanyahu now has 28 days to try to cobble together a coalition that could command a majority of at least 61 in the 120-seat Parliament, with the possibility of an additional 14-day extension.
  • If he fails, the president, Reuven Rivlin, could task another candidate or refer the choice of a candidate to Parliament.
  • While the country remains split along the traditional fault lines of secular and religious, right-wing and left-wing and Jewish and Arab, the main rupture has increasingly come to revolve around the polarizing figure of Mr. Netanyahu himself.
  • In order to form the kind of “full-on right-wing government” Mr. Netanyahu promised his voters, the prime minister would need the support of another small right-wing party that has been sitting on the fence. He would also need the far-right flank of his potential coalition to agree to rely on the support of a small Arab, Islamist party that has become a potential kingmaker.
  • Mr. Rivlin referred to the legal and constitutional debate that has been roiling Israel, saying he was well aware of the criticism.
  • “It is the role of the Parliament to decide on the substantive and ethical question of the fitness of a candidate facing criminal charges to serve as prime minister,” he added.
  • “The president fulfilled his duty and he had no choice,” Mr. Lapid said shortly after Mr. Netanyahu was tasked with trying to form the government. “But giving the mandate to Netanyahu is a shameful disgrace that tarnishes Israel and casts shame on our status as a law-abiding state,” he added.
ethanshilling

San Francisco and Other Cities Try to Give Artists Steady Income - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-francisco-artists-income.html

san francisco art income

shared by ethanshilling on 06 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • In San Francisco, public officials have announced a pilot program that will provide a monthly stipend to artists. The mayor’s office recently unveiled the initiative, city payments that were approved by the arts commission, which will provide a guaranteed monthly income of $1,000 over six months to 130 eligible artists.
  • A similar experiment started in St. Paul, Minn., this week. There, a nonprofit organization is working with the city to disburse monthly $500 checks to 25 local artists for the next 18 months.
  • And more programs, not limited to arts workers, are springing up in cities like Oakland, Calif., and Atlanta, whose leaders are part of a 41-member coalition, Mayors for a Guaranteed Income.
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  • “We knew this health crisis would impact artists, and artists of color in particular,” San Francisco’s mayor, London Breed, said in a statement. “If we help the arts recover, the arts will help San Francisco recover.”
  • Since opening the application portal for artists on March 25, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, which is administering the guaranteed income program on behalf of San Francisco, said it has received more than 1,800 responses.
  • In St. Paul, the McKnight and Bush Foundations have helped get the guaranteed-income program off the ground. Laura Zabel, Springboard’s director overseeing the project, said that the monthly payments would help artists afford food and rent.
ethanshilling

White Evangelical Resistance Is Obstacle in Vaccination Effort - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ovid-vaccine-evangelicals.html

US vaccination religion

shared by ethanshilling on 06 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • Millions of white evangelical adults in the U.S. do not intend to get vaccinated against Covid-19. Tenets of faith and mistrust of science play a role; so does politics.
  • Stephanie Nana, an evangelical Christian in Edmond, Okla., refused to get a Covid-19 vaccine because she believed it contained “aborted cell tissue.”
  • Nathan French, who leads a nondenominational ministry in Tacoma, Wash., said he received a divine message that God was the ultimate healer and deliverer: “The vaccine is not the savior.”
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  • No clear data is available about vaccine hesitancy among evangelicals of other racial groups. But religious reasoning often spreads beyond white churches.
  • “If we can’t get a significant number of white evangelicals to come around on this, the pandemic is going to last much longer than it needs to,” said Jamie Aten, founder and executive director of the Humanitarian Disaster Institute at Wheaton College, an evangelical institution in Illinois.
  • There are about 41 million white evangelical adults in the U.S. About 45 percent said in late February that they would not get vaccinated against Covid-19, making them among the least likely demographic groups to do so, according to the Pew Research Center.
  • Many high-profile conservative pastors and institutional leaders have endorsed the vaccines. Franklin Graham told his 9.6 million Facebook followers that Jesus would advocate for vaccination.
  • Dr. Simone Gold, a prominent Covid-19 skeptic who was charged with violent entry and disorderly conduct in the Jan. 6 Capitol siege, told an evangelical congregation in Florida that they were in danger of being “coerced into taking an experimental biological agent.”
  • Some evangelicals believe that any Covid restrictions — including mask mandates and restrictions on in-person church worship — constitute oppression.
  • “Fear is the motivating power behind all of this, and fear is the opposite of who God is,” said Teresa Beukers, who travels throughout California in a motor home. “I violently oppose fear.”
  • “Go ahead and throw us in the lions’ den, go ahead and throw us in the furnace,” she said, referring to two biblical stories in which God’s people miraculously survive persecution after refusing to submit to temporal powers.
  • The vaccines do not include fetal tissue, and no additional abortions are required to manufacture them. Still, the kernel of a connection has metastasized online into false rumors about human remains or fetal DNA being an ingredient in the vaccines.
  • White evangelicals who do not plan to get vaccinated sometimes say they see no need, because they do not feel at risk. Rates of Covid-19 death have been about twice as high for Black, Hispanic, and Native Americans as for white Americans.
  • There has been a “sea change” over the past century in how evangelical Christians see science, a change rooted largely in the debates over evolution and the secularization of the academy, said Elaine Ecklund, professor of sociology and director of the Religion and Public Life Program at Rice University.
  • The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Dr. Anthony Fauci are not going to be able to persuade evangelicals, according to Curtis Chang, a consulting professor at Duke Divinity School who is leading an outreach project to educate evangelicals about the vaccine.
  • Mr. Rainey helped his own Southern Baptist congregation get ahead of false information by publicly interviewing medical experts — a retired colonel specializing in infectious disease, a church member who is a Walter Reed logistics management analyst, and a church elder who is a nurse for the Department of Veterans Affairs.
  • “It is necessary for pastors to instruct their people that we don’t always have to be adversaries with the culture around us,” he said. “We believe Jesus died for those people, so why in the world would we see them as adversaries?”
ethanshilling

Police Chief Says Derek Chauvin 'Should Have Stopped' Pinning George Floyd - The New Yo... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...george-floyd-murder-trial.html

US police trial

shared by ethanshilling on 06 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • The prospect that a police chief would take the witness stand against a fellow officer is exceedingly rare. But there was the chief of the Minneapolis Police Department on Monday, condemning the actions of Derek Chauvin, the officer charged with murdering George Floyd, as wrong by every imaginable measure.
  • “To continue to apply that level of force to a person proned out, handcuffed behind their back — that in no way, shape or form is anything that is by policy,” said the chief, Medaria Arradondo. “It is not part of our training. And it is certainly not part of our ethics or our values.”
  • Chief Arradondo said Mr. Chauvin’s actions might have been reasonable in the “first few seconds” to get Mr. Floyd “under control.” But, he said, “Once Mr. Floyd had stopped resisting, and certainly once he was in distress and trying to verbalize that, that should have stopped.”
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  • Chief Arradondo is the highest-ranking public safety employee to testify against Mr. Chauvin, with prosecutors also turning to Genevieve Hansen, an off-duty firefighter who tried to provide medical attention at the scene
  • Criminal justice experts said the police chief’s testimony might upend a tendency on the part of juries to give police officers the benefit of the doubt when they make decisions on the job.
  • “Generally, you’re thinking that police departments are going to defend their police officers,” said David Schultz, a visiting professor of law at the University of Minnesota. “Getting the police chief to come in and say, ‘This is not what our practices were, these are not our protocols, these are not our standards’ — I have to think that’s got to weigh very heavily on a jury
  • Asked to recall his own involvement in the case, Chief Arradondo said he was at home on May 25 when he was informed that a man had been arrested who was not expected to survive. The chief notified the state agency that investigates police use of force, called the mayor and went to his office, where he watched footage of the arrest from a city-owned surveillance camera, which had no sound, was taken from a distance and showed the officers from the back.
  • After watching Chief Arradondo’s testimony on Monday, Nekima Levy Armstrong, a civil rights lawyer, said she had been the resident who had originally alerted the chief to the video on the night Mr. Floyd died.
  • Chief Arradondo joined the Police Department in 1989, an era when, he said on Monday, de-escalation “wasn’t mentioned.” As a lieutenant, he sued his own department for racial discrimination.
  • On Monday, the lawyer for Mr. Chauvin argued that force is an unpleasant but necessary part of the job.The lawyer, Eric J. Nelson, began his cross-examination of the chief by asking, “When’s the last time that you’ve actually — I don’t mean to be dismissive, but actually arrested a suspect?”
  • Throughout his questioning, Mr. Nelson focused on the proposition that the department’s policies gave officers leeway to decide what was best in the moment: “Ultimately, it’s not an all-inclusive list of considerations for the reasonableness of the use of force, agreed?”Chief Arradondo agreed.
  • Mr. Chauvin’s defense is paid for by the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association, an organization of unions that has agreed to maintain a legal defense fund to cover all union members who become targets of criminal investigations.
  • It was video taken by a bystander, close up, painfully graphic and showing the nine and a half minutes that Mr. Chauvin had his knee on Mr. Floyd. It spread across the internet, setting off protests over racism and police abuse across Minneapolis and in cities across the country.
  • “He set a powerful example that police chiefs across the nation should follow when they know that their officers have violated people’s human rights and constitutional rights,” Ms. Armstrong said.
ethanshilling

Biden Plan Spurs Fight Over What 'Infrastructure' Really Means - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...biden-infrastructure.html

US infrastructure politics biden

shared by ethanshilling on 06 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • Republicans say the White House is tucking liberal social programs into legislation that should be focused on roads and bridges. Administration officials say their approach invests in the future.
  • The early political and economic debate over President Biden’s $2 trillion American Jobs Plan is being dominated by a philosophical question: What does infrastructure really mean?
  • That is the debate shaping up as Republicans attack Mr. Biden’s plan with pie charts and scathing quotes, saying that it allocates only a small fraction of money on “real” infrastructure and that spending to address issues like home care, electric vehicles and even water pipes should not count.
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  • Mr. Biden pushed back on Monday, saying that after years of calling for infrastructure spending that included power lines, internet cables and other programs beyond transportation, Republicans had narrowed their definition to exclude key components of his plan.
  • Behind the political fight is a deep, nuanced and evolving economic literature on the subject. It boils down to this: The economy has changed, and so has the definition of infrastructure.
  • Edward Glaeser, an economist at Harvard University, is working on a project on infrastructure for the National Bureau of Economic Research that receives funding from the Transportation Department.
  • “Infrastructure is something the president has decided is a centrist American thing,” he said, so the administration took a range of priorities and grouped them under that “big tent.”
  • “Much of what it is in the American Jobs Act is really social spending, not productivity-enhancing infrastructure of any kind,” R. Glenn Hubbard, an economics professor at Columbia Business School and a longtime Republican adviser, said in an email.
  • “I couldn’t be going to work if I had to take care of my parents,” said Cecilia Rouse, the chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. “How is that not infrastructure?”
  • Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, has called the Biden plan a “Trojan horse. It’s called infrastructure. But inside the Trojan horse is going to be more borrowed money and massive tax increases.”
  • Likewise, Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, said the proposal “redefines infrastructure” to include things like work force development.
  • The economy has evolved since the 1950s: Manufacturers used to employ about a third of the work force but now count for just 8.5 percent of jobs in the United States.
  • “Washington has an attention span of several weeks, and this debate is a century old,” he said. These days, he added, it is about digital access instead of clean water and power.
  • Some economists who define infrastructure more narrowly said that just because policies were not considered infrastructure did not mean they were not worth pursuing.
ethanshilling

Wisconsin Governor Declares State of Emergency Over Wildfire Conditions - The New York ... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...wisconsin-wildfire

wisconsin wildfire climate

shared by ethanshilling on 06 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • More than 300 wildfires have destroyed nearly 1,500 acres since the start of the year, and fire officials warn this could be a longer-than-average season.
  • Gov. Tony Evers of Wisconsin on Monday signed an executive order declaring a state of emergency in response to elevated wildfire conditions, underscoring statewide efforts to control fires that have already burned nearly 1,500 acres this year.
  • “With nearly the entire state experiencing high or very high fire risk, protecting Wisconsinites from the destructive dangers of wildfires is a top priority,” Mr. Evers said in a news release.
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  • While wildfires can occur at anytime of the year, the department said, the majority of fires happen between March and May, making spring the most critical fire season in Wisconsin.
  • Wisconsin has seen its share of destructive wildfires in the past 20 years. In 2013, a logging crew unintentionally started a fire that destroyed nearly 7,500 acres, including 23 residences, the department said. In 2005, a fire burned 3,410 acres and destroyed at least 30 residences.
ethanshilling

As Variants Have Spread, Progress Against the Virus in U.S. Has Stalled - The New York ... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...variants-cases-spread.html

US pandemic

shared by ethanshilling on 06 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • United States coronavirus cases have increased again after hitting a low point late last month, and some of the states driving the upward trend have also been hit hardest by variants, according to an analysis of data from Helix, a lab testing company.
  • “It is a pretty complex situation, because behavior is changing, but you’ve also got this change in the virus itself at the same time,” said Emily Martin, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.
  • Michigan has seen the sharpest rise in cases in the last few weeks. B.1.1.7 — the more transmissible and more deadly variant of the coronavirus that was first discovered in the United Kingdom — may now make up around 70 percent of all of the state’s new cases, according to the Helix data.
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  • Several states in the Northeast also have among the country’s worst outbreaks now. Connecticut, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, among others, are all experiencing marked rises in case counts, and labs have identified both the B.1.1.7 variant and large shares of another variant, B.1.526.
  • The B.1.526 variant, which first appeared in New York City in samples from November, appears in two forms: one with a mutation that may help the virus evade antibodies and another that may help it bind more tightly to human cells.
  • The outbreak in the Northeast is currently much worse than it is in California, but California faces a variant of its own that makes up a large share of cases.
  • Studies have indicated the variant first discovered in California, B.1.427/B.1.429, may also be more transmissible than earlier forms of the virus, but it does not appear to spread as quickly as B.1.1.7.
  • Like the variant first discovered in New York City, the B.1.427/B.1.429 variant has also been seen in high levels in neighboring states, including Arizona, but does not yet make up a significant number of cases outside the region.
  • In Michigan, Covid-19 hospitalizations are already more than three times higher than they were a month ago. Other states with rising cases are also seeing significant increases in hospitalized Covid-19 patients.
  • The vaccine rollout continues to speed up, and recent studies confirm that vaccines are effective against the coronavirus in the real world, giving experts hope that an end may be in sight. But with increased transmission, they say, comes a renewed need for caution in the immediate term.
  • “I think we’ve got to hang on just a little bit longer, being conservative and getting more people vaccinated,” Dr. Martin said. “I’d hate to see us having another hospital surge when we’re getting so close to being done with this. I’m definitely worried about it.”
ethanshilling

See a Map of Vaccination Rates for New York City - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...nyc-vaccination-rates-map.html

new york pandemic vaccine

shared by ethanshilling on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Just over a hundred days into New York City’s vaccination campaign, 30 percent of adults and half of those 65 and older have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine.
  • White and Asian New Yorkers have been vaccinated at higher rates than Black and Latino residents, who have been more likely to die from or be hospitalized with Covid-19 both in New York City and nationwide.
  • Some of the highest vaccination rates are in the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods — places where residents were most likely to leave the city at the start of the pandemic.
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  • Twenty percent of Manhattan adults have been fully vaccinated, compared with 12 percent of Brooklyn adults. One of the clearest demographic trends in who is getting vaccinated is age.
  • There are more than 1.2 million New Yorkers age 65 and older, rivaling the entire population of Dallas. Older adults were among the first in line for the vaccine, and in general, areas of the city with more older residents have a higher percentage of vaccinations than others.
  • While about half of all of these New Yorkers have had at least one dose, about 70 percent of those over 65 are not yet fully vaccinated, suggesting the city still has a ways to go even as eligibility expands to younger groups.
  • Neighborhoods with mostly white residents, like the Upper East and Upper West Side, Riverdale in the Bronx, Breezy Point in Queens, mid-island and the south shore of Staten Island, are outpacing city averages.
  • The majority Black and Latino neighborhoods in large swaths of Queens, Brooklyn, upper Manhattan and the southern Bronx are in some cases 20 to 30 percentage points behind neighborhoods at the top of the list
  • Reasons for the disparities vary, and they will not all be clear from simply looking at a map. Many seniors are homebound or have had trouble navigating complex and confusing websites to sign up for the vaccine (obstacles not just for seniors, really).
  • For non-English speakers, language barriers can create fear and confusion. For poorer residents, it’s simply more difficult (and more expensive) to take a few hours or a day or two off work to get a shot.
  • The city is averaging 60,000 to 70,000 shots per day. At that rate, it will take months to reach the remaining seven million New Yorkers, including children, who are not yet eligible for any vaccine.
ethanshilling

Canada Supreme Court Rules Federal Carbon Tax Is Constitutional - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...reme-court-carbon-pricing.html

canada carbon climate change politics tax

shared by ethanshilling on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • n a decision that marked an important victory for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s climate change agenda, Canada’s Supreme Court ruled that the federal government’s imposition of carbon taxes in provinces that oppose them was constitutional.
  • “This matter is critical to our response to an existential threat to human life in Canada and around the world,” the court wrote in a 6-to-3 decision. “Climate change is real. It is caused by greenhouse gas emissions resulting from human activities and it poses a grave threat to humanity’s future.”
  • The concept of carbon pricing has been widely endorsed by economists, and according to the World Bank, some form of it has been carried out or is in development in 64 countries, either through direct taxes on fossil fuels or through cap-and-trade programs.
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  • Several U.S. states have carbon pricing programs, notably California.
  • But several people familiar with the forthcoming infrastructure package in the United States said that there were no plans currently to price carbon emissions. Instead, the president plans to greatly raise fuel efficiency standards for cars, forcing automakers toward electric vehicles through regulation, not legislation.
  • Court challenges by those three provinces of Mr. Trudeau’s carbon pricing law ultimately led to the Supreme Court’s decision.
  • Like Republicans in the United States, conservative premiers in the oil-producing provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan have long strenuously campaigned against carbon pricing.
  • Republicans in Congress remain firmly opposed to a carbon tax and have voted repeatedly and nearly unanimously over the years to bar the government from imposing one.
  • While the Supreme Court decision’s detailed the dangers of climate changes to Canada and its coastlines, Arctic region and Indigenous people in particular, none of the three provinces that started the legal challenges dispute its effects.
  • In 2019, Mr. Trudeau set a minimum price for carbon. It will become 40 Canadian dollars a metric ton on April 1 and will reach 170 dollars a ton in 2030.
  • The federal government has stepped in only when a province, like Ontario under Mr. Ford, refused to price carbon. In those cases, it placed a tax on fuel and set other fees for industrial emissions.
  • Jason Kenney, the premier of Alberta, who canceled his province’s program, told reporters that he was disappointed with the decision but declined to say whether his province would come up with a carbon pricing system to replace the federally imposed one.
  • The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the law in part because the federal plan kicks in only if provinces do not set up their programs, thus maintaining the shared jurisdiction the two levels of government hold on environmental issues.
  • “Addressing climate change requires collective national and international action,” the court wrote. “This is because the harmful effects of GHGs are, by their very nature, not confined by borders.”
ethanshilling

New Study to Track Transmission Among Vaccinated College Students - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...spread-universities-study.html

US study pandemic

shared by ethanshilling on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Can people immunized against the coronavirus still spread it to others? A new study will attempt to answer the question by tracking infections in vaccinated college students and their close contacts, researchers announced on Friday.
  • The results are likely to be of intense interest, because they may help determine how careful vaccinated people need to be — whether they can throw away their masks, for example, or must continue to wear them to protect unvaccinated people.
  • The reason is that it’s not yet certain that vaccinated people cannot briefly be infected and transmit the virus. Clinical trials of the vaccines were designed only to assess whether the vaccines prevent serious illness and death.
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  • The new study will include more than 12,000 college students immunized with the Moderna vaccine at more than 20 universities across the United States. Half of the students will be randomly selected to receive the vaccine right after they are enrolled, while the other half will get the vaccine four months later.
  • By monitoring the students so closely, the scientists expect to be able to track infections in the first 24 or 48 hours, and determine how long an infected person may transmit the virus to others, Dr. Corey said.
  • College students are an ideal population in which to study transmission after vaccination. They have among the highest rates of coronavirus infection, in large part because they live in tightly packed dormitories and have more social contacts than older adults do, while fortunately, hospitalizations and deaths are comparatively low.
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