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Javier E

Grounding the Boeing 737 Max was a no-brainer. Trump's corporatocracy stood in the way. - The Washington Post - 0 views

  • Trump’s late uncle didn’t tell him to protect Boeing. That was Boeing’s chief executive, a frequent visitor to Trump properties, phoning Trump with a plea not to ground both the 737 Max 8 and Max 9.
  • That corporations make safety decisions for Trump (himself a failed airline owner) isn’t surprising. The acting head of the Federal Aviation Administration is formerly of American Airlines and of the Aerospace Industries Association, of which Boeing is a prominent member. Trump is expected to nominate a former Delta Air Lines executive for the top FAA job. His acting defense secretary is a former Boeing executive.
  • In Trump’s broader corporatocracy, a former oil-industry lobbyist acts as interior secretary, a former pharmaceutical executive is health and human services secretary, and a former coal lobbyist runs the Environmental Protection Agency. Fully 350 former lobbyists work, have worked or have been tapped to work in the administration
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  • The 24 at the Transportation Department lag behind only the 31 at HHS and 47 in the executive office of the president.
  • The swamp has overflowed, with lobbyists employed by Trump quintupling over two years. Boeing, American Airlines and 31 other corporate entities landed at least five former lobbyists apiece. Public Citizen reported that, five months into the administration, nearly 70 percent of top nominees had corporate ties.
  • In addition, the billions of dollars that corporate executives invest in lobbying and campaign contributions have generated healthy returns: a corporate tax cut, an assault on regulations and unrelenting efforts to shrink enforcement. The president, who previously attempted to privatize 30,000 FAA jobs, again proposed slashing the FAA in his budget this week.
  • Corporate victories keep coming. The Los Angeles Times just obtained emails showing that EPA officials moved to block NASA from monitoring pollution levels. Politico recently obtained data that showed that the Interior Department gave oil drillers nearly 1,700 waivers of safety rules implemented after BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.
  • The Union of Concerned Scientists has documented more than 70 “attacks on science,” many benefiting corporations: censoring scientific language, suppressing studies, weakening advisory panels and such. The group suspects “inappropriate corporate influence” in rolling back fuel efficiency, chemical and methane standards, repealing the Clean Power Plan, suppressing known health risks, expanding oil and gas leasing and bailing out the coal industry, among others.
Javier E

White America's racial resentment is the real impetus for welfare cuts, study says - The Washington Post - 0 views

  • opposition to welfare programs has grown among white Americans since 2008, even when controlling for political views and socioeconomic status.
  • White Americans are more likely to favor welfare cuts when they believe that their status is threatened and that minorities are the main beneficiaries of safety net programs, the study says.
  • T hat also hurts white Americans who make up the largest share of Medicaid and food-stamp recipients.
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  • The findings suggest that political efforts to cut welfare programs are driven less by conservative principles than by racial anxiety, the authors conclude
  • Those results show that the push to cut welfare programs is not driven by pure political motives, such as decreasing government spending or shrinking government bureaucracy, Wetts said.
  • Between 2008 and 2012 in particular, they found, opposition to welfare rose among all Americans -- but far more sharply among whites, who also began scoring higher on racial resentment scales during that period
  • These trends weren’t necessarily linked, however. So to determine if there was a connection, Wetts and Willer designed two more experiments: one in which they quizzed respondents on their feelings about welfare after seeing a graph about U.S. demographic change, and another in which respondents took a similar quiz after viewing information on average income by race and the demographics of welfare beneficiaries.
  • White Americans called for deeper cuts to welfare programs after viewing charts that showed they would become a racial minority within 50 years. They also opposed welfare programs more when they were told that people of color benefit most from them.
  • “My main hope here is that people take a step back, look at what these sorts of programs do for the poor, and think about what’s driving opposition to them.”
  • “We find evidence that these shifts [in sentiment against welfare programs] are specifically directed at programs people see as benefiting minorities instead of whites,” she added.
  • Wetts isn’t ruling out the possibility that alternate factors could also be at play, of course. Some researchers have found that people embrace more conservative politics during periods of rapid social change -- not necessarily because they fear their racial status is threatened, but because they fear change is happening too fast
  • Researchers have also shown that white Americans' racial prejudice affects their views on everything from healthcare policy to the death penalty to dogs
  • On the same day Wetts' paper published, a separate study in the journal Environmental Politics found that people with high levels of "racial resentment" are more likely to believe that the scientific consensus on climate change is false.
  • "More and more, white Americans use their racial attitudes to help them decide their positions on political questions such as whom to vote for or what stance to take on important issues including welfare and health care."
  • The Trump administration has begun allowing states to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients, and has proposed tripling the rents for the poorest households receiving federal housing assistance. The House is also scheduled to vote again next month on a plan to cut $9 billion from food-stamp benefits over 10 years and require most adults to hold a job  to receive payments.
  • Figures from the federal government and the Kaiser Family Foundation show that white Americans make up 36 percent of food-stamp recipients, 43 percent of Medicaid recipients and 28 percent of recipients for cash welfare.
Javier E

New Data Shows Republicans' Health Care Self-Own Is Taking Its Toll - Talking Points Memo - 0 views

  • the Trump administration’s health care agenda is whacking red states hardest
  • By the end of the Trump administration’s first year in power, the uninsured rate in non-expansion states was more than twice the rate in states that accepted federal funding to expand Medicaid under Obamacare.
  • The analysts found that “the uninsured rate among adults who identify as Republicans jumped from 7.9 percent in 2016 to 13.9 percent in the first quarter of 2018. The uninsured rate among those who identify as Democrats, on the other hand, held steady at 9.1 percent over that same time period
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  • Southern states, which are largely Republican-controlled, also showed a marked increase in their uninsured rates — from 16 percent in 2016 to over 20 percent in early 2018. These states had a higher uninsured rate than states in the Northeast, Midwest, and West.
  • Going forward, the health care gap between Democrats and Republicans is set to widen further.
  • Four states with GOP governors — Kentucky, Indiana, Arkansas, and New Hampshire — have already won federal permission to impose work requirements and other restrictions on their Medicaid programs, policies predicted to strip hundreds of thousands of people of their coverage and drive the uninsured rate higher in those states. Many more states have submitted requests to HHS for permission to implement similar rules.
katherineharron

Fissures widen between White House and health agencies over coronavirus - CNNPolitics - 0 views

  • Fissures between the White House and national health agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have begun to expand as the coronavirus pandemic spreads to more American states, creating dissonance between President Donald Trump and the professionals tasked with containing the virus further.
  • The cracks are falling along predictable lines. While health officials have sought to present a realistic and cautious picture of the national situation, Trump and his political allies are hoping to relay an altogether different message: that the virus is contained, Americans face little risk, and life should proceed as normal.
  • From its earliest days, Trump has sought to downplay coronavirus' risks and lashed out when those within his administration appeared to be doing otherwise. He told a collective of executives at the World Economic Summit in Davos, Switzerland, in mid-January that it would not pose a major threat to the United States, an attendee told CNN.
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  • This week, some White House officials privately said certain steps taken over the past two months by the CDC were ill-advised. A delay in developing adequate tests -- a critical breakdown in the administration's response -- is being pinned on the leaders of the CDC, FDA and HHS by Trump's allies, who say the failure has led to embarrassing questions of competence for the administration.
katherineharron

Pelosi slams White House for limiting coronavirus task force testimony - CNNPolitics - 0 views

  • House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Monday slammed the Trump administration's move to restrict coronavirus task force members from testifying before Congress this month.
  • The White House issued a memo seeking to limit task force members' hearing appearances after recently blocking Dr. Anthony Fauci from testifying before a House subcommittee this week. Fauci is still expected to appear before a Republican-led Senate committee later this month.
  • "For primary response departments, including HHS, DHS, and State, in order to preserve department-wide resources, no more than one COVID-related hearing should be agreed to with the department's primary House and Senate authorizing committee and appropriations subcommittee in the month of May, for a total of no more than four COVID-related hearings department-wide," the memo states.
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  • "During the early days of the coronavirus outbreak, Task Force members were on the Hill 24/7. They've been working non-stop since the beginning, and the workload has not diminished," the official said. "Given the continual press briefings and agency-led briefings with committees, I don't think anyone can reasonably say we aren't being transparent, but we need to make sure the Task Force members have the time they need to focus on the task at hand, not on preparing for 4-hour hearings several times a week."
  • And while McEnany said the White House is open to providing officials as witnesses during testimony in the Democratic-led House, the source close to the task force said the administration is more amenable to testimony in the Republican-held Senate
anonymous

CDC Likely To Extend Eviction Moratorium With Millions Of People Behind On Rent : NPR - 0 views

  • The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has taken a key step toward extending an order aimed at preventing evictions during the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak. The CDC order is currently set to expire in less than 2 weeks.
  • Housing advocates have warned for months that allowing this protection for renters to lapse would spark a tsunami of evictions, putting upward of 1 million people out of their homes. The CDC has now sent a proposal to the Office of Management and Budget for regulatory review. The CDC hasn't responded to a request for comment. And the listing on the OMB site doesn't indicate how long the CDC might extend the eviction order for. The move doesn't mean absolutely that the the agency will extend the order. But that now appears likely.
  • "It means that CDC likely intends to extend and perhaps improve the CDC order on evictions," says Shamus Roller, the executive director of the National Housing Law Project
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  • Nearly 10 million Americans are behind on their rent payments, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In the last two COVID-19 relief bills, Congress has approved more than $50 billion for rental assistance.
  • But the state and local application portals that the money will flow through are only just now opening up to take applications. So the vast majority of people who need the help won't have gotten it by the end of March when the CDC eviction order expires.
  • Studies have found that evictions spread COVID-19 and result in more deaths from the disease since people are forced into more crowded living situations and often double up with other families or family members.
  • Landlord groups have applauded the rental assistance money from Congress, but they are opposed to the CDC extending its order, saying landlords need to have the right to move forward with eviction cases a year into the pandemic.
clairemann

Arizona's Ducey calls Harris the 'worst possible choice' to fix border | Fox News - 0 views

  • Gov. Doug Ducey, the Arizona Republican, didn’t mince words Wednesday shortly after he learned that President Biden was tapping Vice President Harris to oversee the effort to resolve the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border.
  • Ducey, who was in Tucson, told reporters that Harris is "the worst possible choice" for the job. He also said that Harris’ selection is evidence that Biden has trivialized the situation. He said Harris just "flat out" doesn't care.
  • It notified Congress on Wednesday that it will open a new 3,000-person facility in San Antonio and a 1,400-person site at the San Diego convention center. HHS is also opening a second site in Carrizo Springs and received approval from the Defense Department Wednesday to begin housing teenagers at military bases in San Antonio and El Paso, Texas.
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  • "It’s not her full-responsibility job, but she is leading the effort because I think the best thing to do is to put someone who, when he or she speaks, they don’t have to wonder about, is that where the president is," Biden said, according to The Washington Post. "When she speaks, she speaks for me."
mimiterranova

Biden Expands Obamacare, Eliminates Trump-Era Abortion Policy : President Biden Takes Office : NPR - 0 views

  • President Biden signed two executive actions Thursday that are designed to expand access to reproductive health care and health insurance through the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid.
  • "There's nothing new that we're doing here other than restoring the Affordable Care Act and restoring Medicaid to the way it was before [Donald] Trump became president. Because by fiat, he changed — made [it] more inaccessible, more expensive and more difficult for people to qualify for either of those two plans," Biden said in a brief Oval Office signing ceremony.
  • "This is going back to what the situation was prior to Trump's executive order."
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  • instructs the Department of Health and Human Services to open a special enrollment period for the Affordable Care Act through HealthCare.gov,
  • "As we continue to battle COVID-19, it is even more critical that Americans have meaningful access to affordable care," a White House fact sheet reads.
  • His second executive action aims "to protect and expand access to comprehensive reproductive health care" by rescinding the Mexico City policy, also known as the global gag rule. This policy, reinstated and expanded by the Trump administration, bars international nongovernmental organizations that provide abortion counseling or referrals from receiving U.S. funding. Biden on Thursday called the gag rule an "attack on women's health access."
  • Last November, the Trump administration and several Republican-led states argued at the U.S. Supreme Court that the program should be voided, which would have eliminated popular elements of the law such as protections for those with preexisting conditions.
  • The Supreme Court will hear a case that could decide the legality of work requirements for Medicaid recipients.
  • Biden is reversing course and directing federal agencies to reconsider those work requirement rules. He is also asking agencies to review policies that undermined protections for people with preexisting conditions, including complications related to COVID-19.
  • The administration faced pressure to open HealthCare.gov for anyone to enroll in the Affordable Care Act in response to the pandemic, but it never did.
  • For decades, Democratic and Republican presidents have alternately rescinded or reinstated the global gag rule, with Democrats, such as Biden, opposing the policy. Republicans have argued that the rule would reduce the number of abortions.
  • However, a study released last year suggested the policy failed to reduce the rate of abortions and ultimately had the opposite effect. The study said the rate of abortions increased by about 40% in the countries studied — most likely because the funding ban caused a reduction in access to contraception and a consequent rise in unwanted pregnancies.
  • Under the actions announced on Thursday, the president is telling federal agencies to review a Trump-era rule that limited the use of Title X federal funds meant for family planning and reproductive health services for low-income patients. Under this program, organizations that provided abortions or abortion counseling could not have access to those federal funds. The White House said, "Across the country and around the world, people — particularly women, Black, Indigenous and other people of color, LGBTQ+ people, and those with low incomes — have been denied access to reproductive health care."
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    I did highlights but they didn't show up
aleija

The U.S. Is Sitting on Tens of Millions of Vaccine Doses the World Needs - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Tens of millions of doses of the coronavirus vaccine made by the British-Swedish company AstraZeneca are sitting idly in American manufacturing facilities, awaiting results from its U.S. clinical trial while countries that have authorized its use beg for access.
  • “We understand other governments may have reached out to the U.S. government about donation of AstraZeneca doses, and we’ve asked the U.S. government to give thoughtful consideration to these requests,”
  • But although AstraZeneca’s vaccine is already authorized in more than 70 countries, according to a company spokesman, its U.S. clinical trial has not yet reported results, and the company has not applied to the Food and Drug Administration for emergency use authorization. AstraZeneca has asked the Biden administration to let it loan American doses to the European Union, where it has fallen short of its original supply commitments and where the vaccination campaign has stumbled badly.
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  • Last May, the Trump administration pledged up to $1.2 billion to AstraZeneca to finance the development and manufacturing of its vaccine, which it developed with the University of Oxford, and to supply the United States with 300 million doses if it proved effective.
  • The United States may only briefly, or never, need the AstraZeneca doses if they are cleared for emergency use.
  • “If we have a surplus, we’re going to share it with the rest of the world,” Mr. Biden told reporters on Wednesday, speaking generally about the U.S. vaccine supply. “We’re going to start off making sure Americans are taken care of first.
  • The administration says it is increasing the supply to eventually vaccinate children and possibly to make booster doses or to guard against emerging variants that may be able to escape the protection conferred by some vaccines.
rerobinson03

When Your Job Harms Your Mental Health - The New York Times - 0 views

  • But like the sports star, many of us have been stuck in situations that were detrimental to our mental health — at work or in our personal lives — feeling torn between societal expectations and self-preservation.
  • Her decision to avoid the press did not go over well with tennis officials. Ms. Osaka was fined $15,000, and the leaders of the four Grand Slam tournaments — the Australian, French and United States Opens, and Wimbledon — threatened to expel her from the French Open.
  • A survey of over 5,000 employees conducted last year by the advocacy group Mental Health America found that 83 percent of respondents felt emotionally drained from work and 71 percent strongly agreed that the workplace affects their mental health. While the respondents were not representative of the general population — they most likely found the survey when visiting the organization’s mental health screening tools — their responses show just how anxious some workers have become.
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  • Women and people of color may shoulder a disproportionate amount of emotional stress both in and outside of the workplace.
  • Women are at least twice as likely to have had depression as men, according to federal data. And Black people are less likely than non-Hispanic white people to receive treatment for depression or prescription medications for mental health
  • For example, you might notice that you dread starting work each day, or you feel so anxious that you have trouble thinking about everything that you’re supposed to do. Perhaps your emails are piling up and you aren’t communicating with people as much as you typically would. If you’re feeling ineffective in your job, you may also start to engage in more negative self-talk, like: “I’m no good at my job anyway. I’m useless,” Dr. Gold said.
  • Once you realize you need help, seek out a trusted friend, mentor, co-worker, peer group or therapist, said Inger Burnett-Zeigler, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine who researches Black women’s mental health.
  • Remember that you are a worthy and valuable human being, separate from your job function, productivity and even how you might be evaluated by others,” Dr. Burnett-Zeigler said. “When feelings of self-doubt and not belonging show up, don’t lose sight of the unique talents and ideas that you bring to the workplace.”
  • It is illegal for an employer to discriminate against you simply because you have a mental health condition.
yehbru

The best way to get to the bottom of the Covid-19 lab leak theory (opinion) - CNN - 0 views

  • On Wednesday, President Joe Biden called for an inquiry by US intelligence agencies into the true origins of Covid-19.
  • The "lab leak" explanation, which was panned and dismissed by a number of analysts, gained new life after the Wall Street Journal reported on a previously undisclosed US intelligence report revealing that three researchers from the Wuhan lab became so sick with Covid-19-like symptoms in November 2019 -- before official reports of the first outbreak -- that they had to seek hospita
  • The Biden administration should itself -- separate and apart from the World Health Organization -- lead a multilateral effort to investigate the origins of the virus.
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  • The lab leak theory has been judged by at least one US intelligence agency as the more likely explanation for Covid-19's origins, while two agencies think the virus was more likely spread to humans from an infected animal
  • An investigation into the true origins of the virus is essential not only for scientific reasons, but also because policymakers around the world need this knowledge to better prepare themselves for future pandemics.
  • It should be no surprise, then, that the WHO's own investigation into the origins of Covid-19 concluded that a lab leak was probably not the cause of the pandemic and that infection from natural sources was more likely. But investigators were only permitted to examine research conducted by Chinese state scientists and did not have full access to the data or facilities that would have allowed them to assess whether the virus that causes Covid-19 may have been present before cases of the disease were first confirmed in China in December 2019.
  • Beijing, for its part, considers the case closed and has argued that the attention should be turned to other countries for the role they may have played in the early days of the pandemic.
  • More specifically, the Biden administration is calling on the WHO to complete a second phase of its investigation in a way that allows "international experts the independence to fully assess the source of the virus and the early days of the outbreak."
  • Biden has been eager to redouble our engagement and work together with America's friends and allies around the world. Getting to the root cause of a pandemic that has already killed nearly 3.5 million people globally presents a golden opportunity to do just that.
yehbru

Biden budget would give CDC biggest funding boost in nearly 20 years - 0 views

  • The budget blueprint for fiscal 2022 would include $8.7 billion in discretionary funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to budget documents shared by the Office of Management and Budget.
  • The agency said that budget bump would build on the CDC investments doled out in the American Rescue Plan, the $1.9 trillion Covid relief plan that Biden signed into law in March.
  • The new funding would be used to “support core public health capacity improvements in States and Territories, modernize public health data collection nationwide, train new epidemiologists and other public health experts, and rebuild international capacity to detect, prepare for, and respond to emerging global threats,” the OMB said.
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  • While the CDC funding request is a big increase from recent years, it comprises just a small slice of Biden’s $6 trillion budget proposal for 2022.
  • The budget materials say $153 million would be allocated for the CDC’s Social Determinants of Health program to work on “improving health equity and data collection for racial and ethnic populations.”
  • The government would also provide $100 million for the CDC’s Climate and Health program as part of a $1.2 billion investment in strengthening resilience to wildfires, floods, droughts and other climate-related disasters.
  • Overall, HHS is requesting $133.7 billion in discretionary funding — a $25.3 billion, or 23.4%, bump from the enacted budget of fiscal 2021.
anonymous

White House Announces $10 Billion For COVID-19 Testing In Schools : Coronavirus Updates : NPR - 0 views

  • The Biden administration announced Wednesday that it will spend $10 billion to expand testing for schools, to aid in the president's goal to get schools open once again.The funds will come from the American Rescue Plan, the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package President Biden signed last week.
  • every state in America will have access to millions of dollars to set up screening testing programs, to add a layer of protection for schools, teachers and students,"
  • Allocations for each state were announced, ranging from $17 million for Wyoming to nearly $888 million for California. The District of Columbia and U.S. territories will receive funding, as will New York City, Los Angeles County, Chicago, Houston and Philadelphia. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will provide technical assistance to state and local health departments to set up school testing programs where they don't yet exist.
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  • due to limited capacity, until now testing in the U.S. has largely been used diagnostically
  • In addition to diagnostic testing, the new funding will enable schools to use frequent testing as a screening tool, which can "identify asymptomatic disease and prevent clusters before they start,"
  • The CDC released additional guidance that focuses on testing in specific settings, including correctional and detention facilities, non-health care workplaces, higher education institutions, and homeless shelters and encampments.
  • the investments and guidance are intended to clear the way toward schools opening.
  • "The question I think for the administration, and for schools in the country, is not whether they can open, but how,"
anonymous

Trump Administration Allows Doctors Flexibility To Prescribe Buprenorphine : NPR - 0 views

  • The Trump administration introduced new addiction treatment guidelines Thursday that give physicians more flexibility to prescribe a drug to patients struggling with opioid addiction.
  • "As emergency physicians, we see every day the devastating effects that the opioid crisis has had on the communities we serve—a crisis that has unfortunately only worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic,"
  • The obstacle discouraged doctors from pursing buprenorphine as an addiction treatment for patients, despite evidence it was highly effective in preventing a relapse,
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  • "The medical evidence is clear: access to medication-assisted treatment, including buprenorphine that can be prescribed in office-based settings, is the gold standard for treating individuals suffering from opioid use disorder,"
  • The administration's move comes at a time when the U.S. is again facing record levels of drug overdose deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
  • More than 83,000 people died of drug overdoses in the U.S. in the 12 months ending in June 2020, the CDC said.
  • The Department of Health and Human Services is eliminating the requirement that physicians obtain a special federal waiver in order to prescribe buprenorphine,
  • The American Medical Association also praised the move, saying it will allow earlier intervention by doctors treating patients suffering addiction.
  • "With this change, office-based physicians and physician-led teams working with patients to manage their other medical conditions can also treat them for their opioid use disorder,"
  • Harris also said allowing doctors to treat opioid addiction as they treat other medical conditions, without additional regulatory hurdles, will reduce the stigma that has often shaped the healthcare response to substance use disorders.
  • doctors who possess a Drug Enforcement Administration registration will still be limited to treating no more than 30 in-state patients with buprenorphine for addiction treatment at any one time.
  • The guidelines are not considered a new law or federal regulation, making it very easy for the President-elect Joe Biden administration to walk back this policy if so desired. Giroir told Stat News that he thinks that scenario is unlikely, saying, "I doubt it seriously."
aidenborst

Despite Trump administration promise, government has no more 'reserve' 2nd vaccine doses - CNNPolitics - 0 views

  • Hopes of a surge in Covid-19 vaccine shipments under a new policy to release second doses held in reserve appear to be evaporating -- with the revelation that those doses have already been distributed, contrary to recent indications by the Trump administration.
  • When Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar was asked Friday whether there is in fact a reserve of second doses left to release, he said, "No. There's not a reserve stockpile."
  • The revelation appears to contradict what Azar announced on Tuesday at an Operation Warp Speed briefing, where he said the administration would be "releasing the entire supply for order by states, rather than holding second doses in reserve."Read MoreAnd it adds another level of confusion for state officials, who have scrambled to distribute the vaccines after being tasked to do so by the federal government.
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  • Michael Pratt, a spokesman for Operation Warp Speed, also denied the notion the reserve was "exhausted" in a statement to CNN.
  • "It's just so disappointing," he added. "People are desperate for the vaccine, and we have worked so hard to be able to expand who's eligible, and to not be able to do it is just crushing right now."
  • Oregon Health Director Patrick Allen, in a letter to Azar in which he recounted a call with Brown and Operation Warp Speed CEO Gen. Gustave Perna on Thursday, demanded that the HHS chief reconcile his statement about "releasing the entire supply" with this revelation.
  • "I do not believe I misunderstood," Allen said. Allen confirmed that Oregon will have to delay its plan to start vaccinating seniors January 23, since no surge in vaccine is coming.
  • "I am demanding answers from the Trump Administration. I am shocked and appalled that they have set an expectation on which they could not deliver, with such grave consequences," Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, a Democrat, tweeted Friday. "This is a deception on a national scale. Oregon's seniors, teachers, all of us, were depending on the promise of Oregon's share of the federal reserve of vaccines being released to us."
  • Vaccine maker Pfizer says it has second doses of coronavirus vaccines ready to ship as needed.
  • "We are hearing there is not a stockpile of vaccine for second dose but that it was more of a 'paper exercise,' " said Dr. Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer for the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. "The stockpile appears to be all on paper; they were tracking anticipated need but not actually holding back product."
  • "I think the original message got lost in a lot of overpromising," Plescia said. "Until there is a more robust supply we need to be clear with the public that opportunity to get the vaccine is limited."
  • "It was a complete surprise," Freeman told CNN on Friday, adding, "To hear that this had been done for several weeks was actually shocking to us."
  • "I don't know if the right hand knows what the left hand is doing here," she said, adding that there's a risk that people will not be inoculated correctly if the federal government isn't providing reliable numbers for its vaccine supply.
  • While vaccines were developed in record time, the process of getting them into Americans' arms has moved far more slowly than officials promised. That's largely because the Trump administration left it up to each state to figure out the herculean task of vaccinating its population. But the administration's constantly fluctuating estimates about how much vaccine will be available have also made it difficult for states to craft vaccination plans, state officials have said.
cartergramiak

Opinion | My Country Suddenly Turned on Me - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Countries invent stories and myth in order to make sense of trauma, too. One reason the scars of the Civil War have never fully healed is that we’ve never, as a nation, agreed on a single narrative about what it was all for.
  • Now we are engaged in a great debate about the lessons and meaning of the Trump era. To progressives like me, the past four years have been a period of mendacity, incompetence, racism and — in the end — insurrection. The wounds are fresh.
  • When I saw Joe Biden and Kamala Harris sworn in, I felt, briefly, as if all the injuries of the past four years might, with time, recede. As Michael Gerber, editor of American Bystander, so poignantly noted on the day of the inauguration, “As a person with a disability, it’s just nice to have a president who won’t make fun of me.”
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  • I actually stood up for the Pledge of Allegiance and sang along with the national anthem. Nonetheless, the scars of the Trump years are likely to endure. A new era, alas, doesn’t mean that the last one didn’t happen.
  • As an L.G.B.T.Q. American, I’ve spent the past four years fearing that every new day will bring some new indignation — like Ben Carson calling women like me “big hairy men,” or the time the administration considered erasing transgender individuals as a legal entity altogether. Or simply the policy enacted as Mr. Trump was on his way out the door, wiping out nondiscrimination protections for queer Americans.
  • As Mary Tyler Moore imitating Abe Lincoln might have said: “Oh, Mr. Grant. Let us strive on to finish the work we are in and to bind up the nation’s wounds.”
anonymous

Why Coronavirus Vaccine Distribution is Taking Longer Than Expected - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Health officials and hospitals are struggling with a lack of resources. Holiday staffing and saving doses for nursing homes are also contributing to delays.
  • In Florida, less than one-quarter of delivered coronavirus vaccines have been used, even as older people sat in lawn chairs all night waiting for their shots. In Puerto Rico, last week’s vaccine shipments did not arrive until the workers who would have administered them had left for the Christmas holiday. In California, doctors are worried about whether there will be enough hospital staff members to both administer vaccines and tend to the swelling number of Covid-19 patients.
  • Compounding the challenges, federal officials say they do not fully understand the cause of the delays. But state health officials and hospital leaders throughout the country pointed to several factors. States have held back doses to be given out to their nursing homes and other long-term-care facilities, an effort that is just gearing up and expected to take several months. Across the country, just 8 percent of the doses distributed for use in these facilities have been administered, with two million yet to be given.
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  • We’ve taken the people with the least amount of resources and capacity and asked them to do the hardest part of the vaccination — which is actually getting the vaccines administered into people’s arms,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, the dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health.Coronavirus Briefing: An informed guide to the global outbreak, with the latest developments and expert advice.Sign UpFederal and state officials have denied they are to blame for the slow rollout. Officials behind Operation Warp Speed, the federal effort to fast-track vaccines, have said that their job was to ensure that vaccines are made available and get shipped out to the states. President Trump said in a tweet on Tuesday that it was “up to the States to distribute the vaccines once brought to the designated areas by the Federal Government.”“Ultimately, the buck seems to stop with no one,” Dr. Jha said.These problems are especially worrisome now that a new, more contagious variant, first spotted in Britain and overwhelming hospitals there, has arrived in the United States. Officials in two states, Colorado and California, say they have discovered cases of the new variant, and none of the patients had recently traveled, suggesting the variant is already spreading in American communities.The $900 billion relief package that Mr. Trump signed into law on Sunday will bring some relief to struggling state and local health departments. The bill sets aside more than $8 billion for vaccine distribution, on top of the $340 million that the C.D.C. sent out to the states in installments in September and earlier in December.
  • Over all, Maryland has given nearly 17 percent of its vaccine doses. In a Wednesday appearance on CBS, Gov. Larry Hogan attributed the slow process to challenges across the board — from the federal government not sending as many doses as initially predicted, to the lack of logistical and financial support for local health departments.
  • In a news conference on Wednesday, Operation Warp Speed officials said they expected the pace of the rollout to accelerate significantly once pharmacies begin offering vaccines in their stores. The federal government has reached agreements with a number of pharmacy chains — including Costco, Walmart and CVS — to administer vaccines once they become more widely available. So far, 40,000 pharmacy locations have enrolled in that program.
  • But public health officials warned that reaching these initial groups, who are largely being vaccinated where they live or work, is a relatively easy task. “This is the part where we’re supposed to know where people are,” said Dr. Saad B. Omer, the director of the Yale Institute for Global Health.
anonymous

U.S. Officials Say Covid-19 Vaccination Effort Has Lagged - The New York Times - 0 views

  • “We know that it should be better, and we’re working hard to make it better,” said Moncef Slaoui, a leader of the federal effort to accelerate vaccine development and distribution.
  • As of Wednesday, more than 14 million doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines had been sent out across the United States, up from 11.4 million doses on Monday morning. But just 2.1 million people had received their first dose as of Monday morning, according to a dashboard maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
  • When he takes office on Jan. 20, Mr. Biden said, he will use a law called the Defense Production Act to “order private industry to accelerate the making of the materials needed for the vaccines as well as protective gear.” The Trump administration has already used that law to speed manufacturing, however, and Mr. Biden has given few details about how his plan will be any different. He has promised to administer 100 million shots — or enough for about 50 million people if using the two-dose vaccines — in the first 100 days of his term.
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  • The federal government has reached agreements with a number of pharmacy chains — including Costco, Walmart and CVS — to administer vaccines in their stores and other locations once vaccines become more widely available. So far, 40,000 pharmacy locations have enrolled in that program, General Perna said.“What we should be looking at is the rate of acceleration over the coming weeks,” Dr. Slaoui said, “and I hope it will be in the right direction.”
aidenborst

Opinion: Criminal justice reform can start with employers who give felons a second chance - CNN - 0 views

  • We waste far too much human capital in a system that penalizes too many people for too long.
  • About 19 million Americans are burdened with a felony record, yet fewer than half of those transgressions were serious enough to require an actual prison sentence.
  • An improved criminal justice environment fosters prosperity and builds a society of stronger workers and consumers. For too long, the business community has had only a peripheral role in debates about how to reform our criminal justice system, but Corporate America should recognize that it has a strong business interest in the outcomes and must take a greater leadership role. It must embrace second chance hiring, the employment of people with criminal records.
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  • This is also critical if we are to overcome the demographic hurdles our labor market faces as Baby Boomers retire and the influx of Millennials slows.
  • The ugly truth of our criminal justice system is that one in three Black men in the United States has a felony record, putting them at a severe disadvantage.
  • Admirable commitments by companies to be more inclusive in hiring must be coupled with an intentional process for second chance hiring. My research has shown that "disposable employee" labor, in which the employer is trying to get the cheapest effective wage possible through minimum wage jobs that are subsidized by temporary tax credits (Work Opportunity Tax Credits), will not work because they do not adequately distinguish who is ready for reemployment nor do they make the sufficient investment to support rehabilitation.
  • Done right, second chance hiring that offers the needed training and support repays the required investment with loyal, productive and profitable employees (the upfront costs can even effectively be offset by tax credits). Without such an approach, our labor force cannot hope to reflect the diversity of our population.
  • Employment is foundational to rehabilitation for the millions of Americans with records and the more than 600,000 who exit prisons each year.
  • Even those businesses such as schools, defense contractors and financial institutions that have regulatory constraints on who they can hire have important roles to play. They can support education, reentry and workforce development nonprofits or advocate for policies that improve employment outcomes. 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