Tagged: COVID-19

Selected Media

WHO authorizes AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine for emergency use

By Maria Cheng

Read the full article from AP News, here.

The WHO’s green light for the AstraZeneca vaccine is only the second one the U.N. health agency has issued after authorizing the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in December. Monday’s announcement should trigger the delivery of hundreds of millions of doses to countries that have signed up for the U.N.-backed COVAX effort, which aims to deliver vaccines to the world’s most vulnerable people.

Selected Media

The US Regulatory System and COVID-19 Vaccines: The Importance of a Strong and Capable FDA

By Joshua M. Sharfstein, Jesse L. Goodman, and Luciana Borio

Read the full article from Journal of the American Medical Association here.

“For many in public health and medicine, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in the US has been a frustrating journey from one disappointment to the next: late access to testing, insufficient staff and inadequate funding for contact tracing, jumbled communications, and, at the end of 2020, a chaotic launch of vaccination efforts. But in one area, from the beginning of the pandemic to the present, the US has excelled: facilitating the rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines.”

Selected Media

What’s at Stake in the Fight Over Reopening Schools

By Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

Read the full article from The New Yorker here.

“Chicago schools were slated to reopen in the fall, when the school year began, but rising rates of community spread and a lack of proper protections resulted in the continuation of remote learning. Chicago Public Schools then announced that it would plan to reopen in January—just as infection rates and deaths were rising exponentially across the country. Chicago teachers voted with their feet. When they were asked to report to their buildings on January 4th, only forty-nine per cent did.”

Selected Media

How the United States Chose to Become a Country of Homelessness

By Dale Maharidge

Read the full article from The Nation, here.

In the ensuing months, tens of thousands of Americans have been evicted; according to the Eviction Lab, landlords have filed more than 162,500 eviction notices in the 27 cities it tracks. But the worst of the crisis has been averted so far by a patchwork of state moratoriums that have been supplemented, in turn, by a patchwork of federal efforts. In March, Congress passed a temporary eviction moratorium as part of the CARES Act; after that expired, in September, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stepped in with its own temporary moratorium. Most recently, as part of the stimulus package passed in late December, Congress provided $25 billion in rental assistance to states and localities and extended the eviction moratorium to January 31. Renters breathed a sigh of relief.

Selected Media

The Chamber of Commerce Wants to Slash COVID-19 Relief Checks. We Can’t Let Them.

By Andrew Perez

Read the full article from Jacobin, here.

The nation’s biggest business lobby is pushing Democrats to slash COVID-19 relief checks for middle-class families, despite new census data showing that nearly half of those families have lost income because of the pandemic. Top Democrats are now reportedly considering excluding millions of those families from the checks, and President Biden himself has said he is willing to negotiate with Republicans on limiting eligibility for the checks.

Uncategorized

This is how long it could take to vaccinate all the adults in the US against Covid-19

By Deidre McPhillips

Read the full article from CNN, here.

In the past seven days, about 914,000 doses have been administered daily. If vaccination continues at this same rate, every adult in the US could be fully vaccinated by summer 2022, according to a CNN analysis. If vaccination picks up to 1 million shots per day, in line with Biden’s promise, that timeline could bump up to spring 2022. To fully vaccinate all adults in the US by the end of the year, the pace would have to increase to about 1.3 million doses administered per day.

Uncategorized

CDC reports record number of daily Covid-19 vaccinations as states struggle with supply

By Theresa Waldrop

Read the full article from CNN, here.

The CDC said Friday that nearly 1.6 million more doses of the vaccines have been administered, bringing the total of doses given to more than 19 million. And 1 million new shots were reported in the previous 24-hour period, according to changes in CDC data from Wednesday morning to Thursday morning. That was only the second time a one-day increase rose above 1 million. The number of administered doses reported this week also was 22% higher than last week. While vaccinations are taking off, more states are complaining that they don’t have enough vaccine. New York will run out of Covid-19 vaccine doses Friday after using 97% of the first doses it received, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said.

Selected Media

Black America Has Reason to Question Authorities

By Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

Read the full article from Thhe New Yorker here.

“The skepticism among the Black public is not rooted in the same kind of anti-scientific sentiment that has motivated those small communities that reject vaccines in general. Instead, Black concerns are enmeshed within a history of Black health care that is replete with acts of cruelty and depravity and has caused Black communities to regard the health-care professions with warranted suspicion. More important, racism in the provision of medical treatment in the United States has tainted the ways that health-care professionals view Black suffering and symptoms, and Black bodies, more generally.”

Selected Media

Grassroots push for more COVID-19 vaccines in Buffalo Black and Brown communities

By Thomas O’Neil White

Read the full article from WBFO here.

“Acknowledging that racism is a public health threat to communities of color, the Buffalo Common Council and local healthcare advocacy groups are prioritizing the equitable distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine to the city’s Black and Brown communities. The acknowledgement is part of a larger challenge to the pervasiveness of systemic racism, with health care being one of its pillars.”

Selected Media

Black people are dying from coronavirus — air pollution is one of the main culprits

By Jared Dewese

Read the full article from The Hill here.

“Harvard researchers recently found that even the smallest increase of exposure to a common air pollutant is associated with a 15 percent increase in the death rate from COVID-19 (on top of increased risk of lung cancer and heart problems). Fossil fuel plants are among the top emitters of this particle, along with other pollutants that can cause or worsen asthma and shortness of breath. Partly due to a history of redlining, African Americans live closer to fossil fuel infrastructure than the rest of the population: A 2017 joint report from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Clean Air Task Force found that more than a million African Americans live within a half-mile of an oil and gas facility.”

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