UK’s BBC disparages scientific concerns over the unsafe reopening of schools

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/09/03/lint-s03.html




Thomas Scripps
19 hours ago







The World Socialist Web Site spoke with Lisa Diaz, a parent and leading member of the SafeEdForAll (Safe Education For All) campaign group, after an interview she gave to the BBC was used to belittle her scientific concerns over the unsafe reopening of schools.

Lisa's Diaz' video exposing the BBC's manipulation of her interview with the broadcaster (creditit: Liza Diaz @Sandyboots2020)

The BBC article, titled “Mixed emotions as pupils return to school across England” described Lisa as “fearful about the possible health effects [of Covid] on children,” adding, “although studies show they are much less likely to get seriously ill.” It referred to her genetic blood disorder “which makes her particularly concerned” and quoted her saying she was “‘devastated’ by the choice” to keep her kids out of school.

Lisa tweeted in response, with a video —which has received more than 177,000 views and been retweeted over 2,300 times—“Annoyed to be depicted as just an anxious mum in today’s @BBCNews article. Like it’s somehow MY problem for NOT wanting my children to catch a deadly virus which causes multi-organ damage & unknown long-term effects. Typical gaslighting. You should be calling out the Govt [government] not me.”

She was supported by leading US epidemiologist Dr Eric Feigl-Ding, who wrote, “Shameful that @BBCNews is accusing a mother worried about #COVID19 & #LongCovid in kids of being anxious—it’s another way of dismissing someone as ‘alarmist’ & ‘hysterical’.”

Speaking with the WSWS, Lisa explained that she had “mentioned in passing that of course I’m gutted for my son, of course I’m upset, he should be going to school, but I’m not going to send him into a Covid petri dish. That was the context. And they’ve taken it all out of proportion and only quoted those two little bits about my underlying health condition. I do have a condition, and it makes it even more callous the way I’ve been treated, but at the end of the day it’s irrelevant. Even if I was completely healthy it’s still an issue—healthy people die from Covid and get Long Covid.”

For most of her BBC interview, Lisa “focussed on the utter lack of mitigation within schools, how the meagre and measly mitigations that were in place in the last academic year have been rolled back; that there’s going to be no masks, no adequate ventilation, no HEPA air filters, CO2 monitors won’t be ready—though, in any case, that’s like putting a plaster on a gaping wound.”

She also explained how “the government are actively taking measures to encourage, as it were, the virus to spread in schools. They’re no longer isolating close contacts… I said about how they’re encouraging assemblies, about senior leadership in schools being told to only reach out for help when 10 percent of the school population has been infected.”

“I said [UK Prime Minister] Boris Johnson is a liar. He’s using our children in a murderous experiment. And I said these are not my words: this is Professor Michael Baker, an epidemiologist who advises the New Zealand government. I said it’s barbaric. I mentioned again about Boris Johnson lying because he admitted at one point that children are vectors of transmission, that school holidays would offer a firebreak.”

Lisa pointed to the catastrophic situation in the United States and rates of Long Covid and hospitalisation among children. “I said it’s not a benign illness in children and this is a myth that needs obliterating. That it causes potentially lifelong complications, damage to the respiratory tract, the heart, the brain, cognitive impairment. We have no idea the full extent of what we’re dealing with and we won’t know for years to come. I said there’s an increase in hospitalisations, that 1,153 children in England alone had been hospitalised [in July].

“There is nothing controversial about saying you don’t want your child to catch Covid, you don’t want your child to be exposed to risk in school. All I want is for schools to be made safe, if they can be made safe.

“I said what we really need to go for is a Zero Covid policy, because it’s completely unacceptable having nearly a thousand people die in a week. That is not living with Covid, that is dying with Covid. There is so much the government can do to drive cases down. Instead, they’ve no regard for human life, they’re selling it as ‘Freedom Day’ and the media are helping to cover it up.”

After her treatment in this interview, Lisa made the principled decision to tell the BBC not to use a to-camera piece she had provided to the broadcaster’s Breakfast news programme, tweeting, “Told @BBCNews that I don’t want them to use interview with me in their @BBCBreakfast piece on Monday. I’m not ‘fearful’, I’m informed. The Government are conducting a dangerous experiment on our kids. And you are complicit.”

She told the WSWS she had taken the decision “having seen this article and how it had been misconstrued and how everything that I’d said had been left out and I was just presented as almost neurotic, as somebody who’s just ‘fearful’. I’m not saying anything different from people with PhDs in epidemiology. Just because I’m a mum from Wigan, don’t patronise me.”

Lisa described the media’s role during the pandemic as “Absolutely pathetic. There has been a media blackout, radio silence. The media are completely complicit… But the reason why they’re doing that is because they’re in cahoots with the government—they want bums on seats so parents can get to work. They couldn’t care less if my child ends up with debilitating long Covid… In terms of what’s gone out in the mainstream media on Sky and the BBC, it’s actually criminal. I think it’s something like 777 people have died in the last week of Covid. Why is that not all over the news?”

Referring to the work of the WSWS, Lisa said, “you are doing a sterling job. Really, you should be in charge of the BBC!”

Many parents and educators have expressed outrage in the last few days at another BBC article headlined, “Long Covid in children 'nowhere near scale feared'”, also posted with the title, “Long Covid in children—time to be reassured”. The article cites a University College London study which has found that up to 14 percent of 11-17 years olds had symptoms linked with the Covid-19 virus 15 weeks after infection.

Deepti Gurdasani, a Senior Lecturer in Epidemiology at Queen Mary University, tweeted: “Not sure how this can be described as 'reassuring' at all. 1 in 7 children having persistent symptoms at 15 weeks with ~34,000 children estimated to be affected (very similar to ONS estimates). Quite shocked by some of the media spin I've seen on this.”

Lisa commented, “I’m not sure how much worse it can be than playing Russian roulette [with a child’s health]—seven to one. We’re talking about, 15 weeks afterwards, your child being in pain, and there was a big list of symptoms including debilitating exhaustion, headaches—imagine living with that. It’s not okay. How is that ‘not as bad’. How much worse do they want it to be? How can they paint this as a good result?

“And this is an ongoing study. This is the tip of the iceberg. We don’t know, in five, ten years, what the debilitating symptoms could look like. We don’t know [the long-term effects], but we know things are bad at the moment, so let’s use the precautionary principle and do everything we can to protect our children.

“Any normal person would say it’s not okay for one in seven children to be ill for weeks, and we don’t know if they’ll ever get better … The government are keen to say we’ve got to live with it like flu. Covid is nothing like flu.”

Referring to another BBC article posted a day later, “Schools aren't infection hubs, says public health boss,” Lisa added, “They just lie … It’s like saying black is white.”

The same article was also criticised by Dr Feigl-Ding, who tweeted, “Seriously, @BBCNews is now a full on @BorisJohnson propaganda mouthpiece machine now. This story is totally bullshit. Experts like @trishgreenhalgh agree.” Greenhalgh, Professor of Primary Health Care at Oxford University, said in response to the claim that schools were not transmission hubs, “They are, actually. Why wouldn't they be? Schools bring unvaccinated, mostly unmasked people together for prolonged periods in indoor spaces that are inadequately ventilated.”

Speaking about the political situation, Lisa said, “When the government fails to look after us, when the media fails to present the truth—that Covid isn’t a benign illness for children, that schools aren’t safe—then grassroots pressure groups like mine (SafeEdForAll) and concerned parents have to hold the government to account.” She added, “the Labour Party are absolutely pathetic, they’re totally complicit as well,” and “I’m shocked at the unions as well to be honest. They’ve got a duty of care to their members. How many more teachers need to die?”

Lisa pointed to reports by the Office for National Statistics that show workers in teaching and education have the highest rates of Long Covid outside of workers in health and social care. She noted, “I think another four children have died in August of Covid and one died on August 31 who was between 0 and 4 years old. Why’s that not on the news? And how many plane crashes a week is it that we’re looking at now [in terms of overall deaths]? It’s not okay and I will never be okay with that many people dying.”

After disastrous jobs report, Biden doubles down on reopening schools, ending pandemic relief

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/09/04/jobs-s04.html




Barry Grey
14 hours ago







On Friday, President Joe Biden responded to the Labor Department’s disastrous jobs report for August by brushing aside the sharp slowdown in hiring due to the spread of the Delta coronavirus and reaffirming his policy of economic reopening combined with the termination of pandemic-related social relief measures.

Joe Biden [Credit: Flickr.com, Gage Skidmore]

The employment report was issued three days before Labor Day, September 6, when federal unemployment benefits first enacted in March 2020 officially expire. Upwards of 7.5 million unemployed workers will be cut off of all jobless benefits. They will be stripped of a critical lifeline, as inadequate as it is at $300 a week, on which they have relied to avoid destitution and homelessness. An additional 3 million people still receiving benefits from their state system will suffer a $300 cut in total jobless pay.

The report shattered the administration’s claims of a surging economy and booming labor market, the pretext for ending vital benefits for the working class while continuing to pump $120 billion every month into the financial markets and provide virtually free and unlimited credit to the corporations and banks.

US nonfarm payrolls increased by only 235,000 in August, less than half the monthly average since January of 586,000, and far below economists’ predictions of 725,000. Job creation plunged from June’s figure of 962,000 and July’s total of 1,053,000.

This dismal result was likely an underestimation of the slowdown. The Labor Department data was collected in the second week of August, before the full effect of the fourth wave of the pandemic or the impact of Hurricanes Henri and Ida in the second half of the month.

The report’s breakdown of the job market clearly showed the decisive impact of the ongoing surge of COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths, fueled by the virulent Delta variant and facilitated by the ruthless reopening of businesses and, above all, schools, despite the explosive spread of the virus among children and educators.

The ruling class and its political servants in both parties are united in forcing workers back into unsafe workplaces and schools to feed the ravenous demand for corporate profits. But they are caught in a contradiction. The more they “reopen” in the midst of a rampaging pandemic, the more their efforts come up against the impact of the COVID surge on production and economic activity.

The economic recovery has been driven by increased employment in the low-wage service sector, particularly retail trade and “leisure and hospitality.” The latter has increased by 350,000 on average for each of the last six months, boosted by the dropping of all social distancing measures and the Biden administration’s proclamation of the imminent end of the pandemic and return to normal.

In August, however, as restaurant, dining and vacationing stalled due to the resurgence of the pandemic, this sector failed to register any increase in hiring. Retail payrolls declined.

The Wall Street Journal wrote:


The details of the report had the Delta variant written all over them. Hotels and other accommodation businesses, which in the half year through July added a seasonally adjusted average of 56,700 workers each month, added just 6,600. Restaurants, bars and other food services and drinking places shed 41,500 jobs in August; over the previous six months, they recorded average job gains of 227,400.

The cutoff of federal jobless benefits follows last week’s Supreme Court ruling terminating the moratorium on evictions ordered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as a public health measure. Various think tanks and advocacy groups estimate that as many as 11 million households are behind on their rent and will face eviction in the coming months.

At the same time, health insurers are beginning to charge COVID-19 patients for hospital stays and other medical treatment, adding an additional financial burden to devastating and often long-term health consequences of the virus.

In remarks from the White House on Friday, Biden callously dismissed the impact on workers of both the dismal jobs report and the cutoff of government benefits.

“Despite the impact of the Delta variant,” he said, “what we’re seeing is an economic recovery that is durable and strong. The Biden plan is working. We’re getting results. America is on the move again.”

Oozing a combination of cynicism and incipient senility, Biden went on to hail the Labor Day holiday as a celebration “honoring the dignity of work, honoring the American worker.”

He then indicated how he planned to “honor the American worker.”


Even as some of the benefits that were provided are set to expire next week, states have the option to extend those benefits and the federal resources from the Rescue Plan to do so. Not more federal taxes, state taxes, but they have the federal money to be able to do that.

This, of course, is a brazen lie. Twenty-six states weeks ago terminated the federal unemployment benefit programs prematurely, one of which is Democratic-controlled. They did so, moreover, with the explicit blessing of the White House, whose press secretary told reporters in June that Republican governors “have every right” to “not accept” federal unemployment benefit funds.

What Biden was really telling workers was: “Tough luck. You’re on your own.”

When it came to the pandemic profiteers, however, the president could not be more solicitous. After boasting that “there have been so many records the stock market has hit under my presidency,” he said, “[T]he very wealthy will—they’re still going to have three homes or four homes, if they want. It’s not going to change what schools they can send their kids to. It’s not going to change their standard of living. But just pay a fair share.

“Corporate America—it’s going to continue to do very well. … We’ll still have millionaires. We’ll still have billionaires. We’ll still have corporations that do incredibly well and CEOs that make a lot of money. But everybody has to start paying their fair share.”

There is no “fair share” in a society where billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk double their fortunes off of the death and suffering of millions of people in the US and around the world.

The homicidal policy of reopening the economy and letting the pandemic rip—rejecting science-based policies to eradicate the virus because they cut across corporate profit-making—is bound up with the termination of the meager social relief measures imposed at an earlier stage of the pandemic. They are two sides of the same coin.

This connection was spelled out by the financial press on Friday. The Financial Times wrote of the end of US jobless benefits:


Goldman Sachs economists estimate that July’s jobs growth would have been 400,000 higher had the enhanced benefits expired nationwide, and forecast next week’s termination to add 1.5 million in payroll gains by the end of the year.

On the reopening of schools, the Wall Street Journal noted:


Economists expect that school reopenings in August and September will help pull some parents, particularly mothers, back into the labor force as child-care responsibilities ease.

Workers—from autoworkers and bus drivers to school teachers and college professors—must be blackmailed into risking their health and lives, and the lives of their loved ones and friends, under the immediate threat of destitution, hunger and homelessness. Once back on the job, they face intensified exploitation, sweatshop conditions, intolerable work schedules and low pay—all for the purpose of extracting the maximum profit to back up the mountain of debt resulting from the bailout of the financial oligarchy.

This is how Biden and the American ruling class “honor” the American worker on Labor Day.

New York’s Ida disaster: A social crime in the center of world capitalism

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/09/04/pers-s04.html




Daniel de Vries
13 hours ago







The record rainfall that overwhelmed much of the Northeastern United States this week has left at least 48 dead and millions more grappling with the fallout from the historic flooding.

The remnants of Hurricane Ida dropped more than 2 inches (5 cm) of rain on 60 million people throughout the region, with densely populated portions of New York and New Jersey recording up to 9 inches (23 cm) overnight. In New York City’s Central Park, the storm gushed 3.15 inches (8 cm) of water in just one hour, blowing away the previous record set just 11 days earlier.

Flooding at Penn Station subway in New York City, September 1, 2021 [Photo by Twitter user @Debz1lla]

The massive flooding in New York City—the wealthiest city in the world and home to the world’s highest concentration of billionaires—has revealed the deadly consequences of the systemic defunding of social infrastructure and the impoverishment of masses of workers.

While the storm’s intensity was unprecedented, it was by no means unexpected. Scientists have warned for decades about the consequences of global climate change, including the inevitability of more intense tropical storms driven by warming oceans, which have absorbed 93 percent of excess heat associated with global warming. Hurricane Ida strengthened into a Category 4 storm in a matter of hours, fed by waters in the Gulf of Mexico that were 3–5 degrees Fahrenheit (1.7–2.8 degrees C) higher than the norm last century.

Along with the climatic impacts, scientists have also long sounded the alarm over the abysmal lack of preparedness. “Much of the infrastructure in the Northeast, including drainage and sewer systems, flood and storm protection assets, transportation systems, and power supply, is nearing the end of its planned life expectancy,” the US National Climate Assessment stated in its latest report in 2019. “Current water-related infrastructure in the United States is not designed for the projected wider variability of future climate conditions compared to those recorded in the last century.” The authors stressed that “significant new investments in infrastructure” are needed to protect life and property.

The flooding this week exposed the spectacular failure to act on these warnings. Roadways across the region were transformed into raging rivers, submerging cars and motorists alike. More than a dozen people died in vehicles in New Jersey. One driver was found dead after being swept nearly two miles by floodwaters.

The entire public transportation network in New York City ground to a halt Wednesday evening, not as a preparatory measure to protect the public but out of necessity once the system ceased to be navigable. Subway lines functioned as sewers and waterfalls cascaded down onto subway platforms, stranding passengers for hours.

A combination of rainwater and sewage engulfed homes across several states. At one housing complex in Elizabeth, New Jersey, floodwaters killed four residents and left 600 homeless. In New York City, at least 11 drowned after being trapped in flooded basement apartments.

Alongside the devastating scenes in the Northeast, residents along the Gulf Coast, where Hurricane Ida first made landfall, remain in dire conditions. At least 16 have died in Louisiana and Mississippi. The victims include four nursing home residents, who were evacuated to a filthy warehouse lacking facilities for the more than 800 residents herded inside two days before the hurricane struck. Officials determined that three of the four deaths were related to the storm.

Other causes of death include not only injuries sustained during the storm but also electrocution and carbon monoxide poisoning. It was not until Thursday, four days after Ida struck, that New Orleans officials announced they were organizing a voluntary evacuation to allow elderly and disabled residents to seek shelter outside of the state. Hundreds of thousands of households remain without power, with service not expected to be restored until next week at the earliest.

The impact of the storm has put a spotlight on the horrific social reality in the United States, especially in the heart of global capitalism, New York City. While the wealthy were well protected in their insulated penthouses and multistory brownstones, the brutal housing conditions for the working class were tragically exposed by the storm. At least 11 died in illegal basement conversions in Queens. Many more have been made homeless.

Unable to afford the extortionate rents even in the outer boroughs of New York City, tens of thousands of mainly immigrant workers are forced to take up residence in hazardous basement apartments. Some are occupied by families. Others are set up dormitory-style with a dozen or more beds rented out, sometimes in shifts. Barely habitable in the best of times, they become death traps under increasingly common flood conditions.

Just a handful of subway stops away from the center of global finance capital in Midtown Manhattan, the conditions for the “Other Half” in New York City resemble the depictions of the squalid and dangerous tenements on the Lower East Side that Jacob Riis exposed 130 years ago, long assumed to be in the distant past.

Hurricane Ida is not simply a tragic natural disaster. More fundamentally, it is a social crime. For decades, the ruling class has refused to provide funding for the maintenance of critical infrastructure, let alone building out infrastructure to handle forthcoming climate extremes. Nine years after Hurricane Sandy devastated the region, New York has not even completed all the needed repairs to the transit system. Much of the shoreline remains dangerously unprotected. Rather than mobilizing billions of dollars to provide adequate housing for the masses of workers, immense resources in the city have been squandered constructing luxury homes in the clouds for the wealthy.

Ida, which has devastated both the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, unfolds as wildfires are ravaging much of the West Coast. It comes on the heels of a relentless series of climate disasters around the world, including massive flooding in Germany, China and Tennessee, and unprecedented heat waves in the Pacific Northwest. A recent report from the World Meteorological Organization found that the number of climate-driven disasters has increased by a factor of five over the past 50 years, killing more than 2 million and inflicting more than $3.6 trillion in losses.

The worsening impacts of climate change on the working class are already regular features of life under conditions where global temperatures have risen 3.4 degrees F (1.1 degrees C) from pre-industrial levels. Another half a degree of warming is already inevitable due to the inertia of the climate system. Global capitalism is on a trajectory to blow past the meaningless commitments made by national governments to limit the increase to two degrees. The future of human civilization itself is at risk.

The policies of the ruling class are determined by its own social interests. Just over the past year, as millions have died from the pandemic and climate disaster after disaster has unfolded, trillions of dollars have been pumped into the markets to boost the financial oligarchy’s fortunes. In the past 12 months alone, the S&P 500 added more than $10 trillion to its market capitalization.

Meanwhile, what has been done to address climate change? After every disaster, the political establishment declares a wake-up call and mouths empty pledges to change course. Yet the modern-day tenements of Queens and the decaying subway system remain deadly. The climate vulnerabilities are growing, while the trillions needed to shore up infrastructure are instead floating into the coffers on Wall Street.

The refusal of the ruling class in New York City to invest in climate resiliency measures has been matched by the incapacity of the global ruling class to put in place any meaningful response to the crisis. The decades of attempts to construct an international regime to stop global warming, from the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 to the Paris Agreement in 2015, have failed miserably.

To effectively address the climate crisis, which at its core is an international issue, requires a level of planning and coordination impossible under a system divided into rival nation-states that subordinates every facet of social life to profit. It requires the mobilization of society’s resources to implement wholesale changes in the production of materials and generation of energy, rapidly transitioning to renewable power for industry, transportation and homes.

The class issues bound up with climate change are mirrored in compressed form in the pandemic. The horrific death tolls from COVID-19—officially more than 660,000 in the US and 4.5 million globally—have not triggered a rational response from the ruling class to pursue the eradication of the virus. Instead, billionaires in the US have feasted on death, growing $1.2 trillion richer during the pandemic.

In his preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Karl Marx wrote, “At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or—this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms—with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution.”

What has blocked a rational solution to both the pandemic and to climate change is 1) the private ownership of the means of production; and 2) the division of the world into nation-states. These are the “fetters” that are preventing the progressive development of humanity. Their elimination is the precondition for dealing with climate change and for opening up a path to an enormous technological and scientific development of human society in the interests of the vast majority, not the tiny few.

Arkansas is a shithole because of cowardly career politicians who pander to idiots

https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/npr/2021/08/11/1022877843/theres-vaccine-drama-in-arkansas-where-rates-are-low-and-everyone-has-an-opinion/



There's Vaccine Drama In Arkansas, Where Rates Are Low And Everyone Has An Opinion

The state has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the U.S. And this weekend, 80,000 doses will expire because of lack of demand. The campaign is on to get people to sign up.

PIEN HUANG | POSTED ONAUGUST 11, 2021, 4:47 PM




Kenny Nations, manager of the movie theater, changes the sign on the marquee; he is fully vaccinated and has tried to encourage co-workers to follow suit. // Liz Sanders for NPR

This weekend, 80,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines will expire in Arkansas. There simply weren't enough people in the state willing to get their jab — even though cases and deaths from the delta variant are rising there at an alarming rate.

"Prior to the vaccine, I was heartsick because people died and we couldn't help them. Now, they don't get the vaccine and we can't help them," says Tammy Kellebrew, a pharmacist who travels to rural hospitals across the state. "And so after every death, I go back to the pharmacy and I cry, and then I go back to work."

"I'm angry, upset, disappointed," says Dr. Jose Romero, health secretary for Arkansas. "As a nation, we've worked so hard to get this vaccine out. And not to have them accepted by the public is difficult to understand and difficult to accept."


Arkansas has one of the country's the lowest vaccination rates



Arkansas, a largely white, rural state powered by farming, factories and rugged individualism, has one of the country's lowest COVID-19 vaccination rates. Just 36% of the state's 3 million people are fully vaccinated.

In May, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson set a modest goal of administering at least one shot to 50% of the total population by the end of July. The state has made progress — but is falling short by more than 100,000 people.

The result of the vaccine resistance, along with the rise of the super-spreadable delta variant, is more COVID cases and more preventable deaths. Hospitals in Arkansas are again reaching critical capacity, and staff are exhausted.

Kellebrew wore a mask with Dr. Anthony Fauci's face on it to a town hall meeting held by Hutchinson in her hometown of Dumas, a small, majority-Black city in the southeast delta region on July 27. It was one in a series of community COVID-19 conversations the governor has been holding as he travels the state pleading with Arkansans to get the shot.

"I'm a Trump supporter and I am a Republican, and I got both vaccine [doses]," Hutchinson stated at another meeting on July 28 in Heber Springs, a lakeside retirement and resort community in the Ozark foothills. "It's not about politics. It's about my health."


Rumors include the vaccine making you magnetic



Reasons for vaccine resistance are diverse and many, says Col. Robert Ator, who heads the state's vaccine distribution program. "What started out as being a logistics and distribution kind of an exercise has turned out to be psychology," he says. "Our targeting strategy has been to work down on the micro level, to work with individual communities to understand what is the barrier in that area and let us address those."

For starters, there's a tide of misinformation along with distrust of the government. Debbie Reynolds attended the town hall in Heber Springs. She has not been vaccinated, and the meeting did not sway her. "They treat you like you're just too dumb to make good decisions for your family," she says. "How many people do you see laying around on the sidewalks and in their yards dying of COVID? Nowhere."

The battle to get more people vaccinated often comes down to the efforts of individuals like Dollie Wilson, a 71-year-old missionary who attended the meeting in Dumas. She plans to go door to door to persuade people to get vaccines and recently canvassed at a local Walmart. "I got cursed out by one person, but I got five people to sign up for the vaccine. It was well worth it," she says.

Cheryl Stimson, owner of the Dumas Family Pharmacy, has personally administered more than 5,800 shots in the community at churches, schools and local events. She has been trying to get every worker vaccinated at the city's various factories.

"I've been to all but one, and I'm trying to talk them into letting me come in," she says. "The plant manager has a lot of people who are leery of taking the vaccine for all various reasons. They're afraid it'll make them sick. They're afraid that they're conforming — that somebody's making them do something they don't want to do."

Kellebrew, who administers shots at vaccination clinics across the state, says she's trying hard to calm people's specific fears.

Once, at a grocery store, a woman told her she was nervous about getting the vaccine because of a rumor on the internet that it can make you magnetic. "I said, 'Do you really believe that?' And she said, 'Well, I'm not sure.' " Kellebrew recounts. So she found a magnet in the store and demonstrated on a person to whom she had just given the shot. "The magnet kept falling off her arm, and I said, 'Is that what you needed to see?' And she said, 'Yes. I think I'll get a shot.' " Kellebrew now travels with a magnet.


There are signs of change



Demand for vaccines has actually improved greatly in the past three weeks, according to Ator. He says the governor's town hall meetings are encouraging people — and the delta variant is scaring them. But with the rapid spread of the delta variant, now representing almost 90% of the sequenced virus cases in Arkansas, he worries it may not be enough. "My biggest concern is we're going to be a month too late, and we're going to have a lot of people suffer because of it."

State officials say that if they can find a way to punch through the hesitancy they're facing now, they could end up as a model for other slow-to-vaccinate parts of the nation as the delta variant spreads.

"There are a lot of places that may have higher vaccination rates than what we have in Arkansas, but they're certainly not high enough to suppress the spread of the delta variant," says Dr. Jennifer Dillaha, the state epidemiologist for Arkansas. "It may be just a matter of time before they get hit as well."

Arkansas people are slow learners

https://www.motherjones.com/coronavirus-updates/2021/08/covid-arkansas-asa-hutchinson-mask-madates/




As COVID Breaks Records in Arkansas, Its GOP Governor Regrets Ban on Mask Mandates
Asa Hutchinson is calling a special legislative session to roll it back.



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Tom Williams/ZUMA

The coronavirus is a rapidly developing news story, so some of the content in this article might be out of date. Check out our most recent coverage of the coronavirus crisis, and subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter.

As the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant shatters coronavirus case records in Arkansas, its Republican governor is scrambling to reverse a ban on local mask mandates he signed into law just months ago. But as Gov. Asa Hutchinson admitted in a press conference Monday, rolling it back will be difficult—and something he probably can’t do without broader support from his party’s lawmakers.

“In hindsight, I wish that had not become law,” Hutchinson told reporters. “But it is the law and the only chance we have is either to amend it or for the courts to say it has an unconstitutional foundation.” The governor, who last week declared a public health emergency amid surging COVID cases, is now calling for a special legislative session to amend the ban. But Hutchinson’s admission of regret may not be enough to convince the state’s GOP-controlled legislature.

Resistance to vaccines has exacerbated the crisis, with Arkansas communities accounting for some of the country’s lowest vaccination rates. Last week, Hutchinson faced vaccine hesitancy firsthand when he was roundly booed on stage after challenging the lie that vaccines cause fertility issues.



While Hutchinson was just one of many GOP governors to enthusiastically embrace a ban on mask mandates earlier in the pandemic, he is the first to try to roll back such an order. His move stands in stark contrast to other Republican governors still doubling down on them, as in Florida, Mississippi, and Texas, even as their states see cases explode. As I wrote earlier:


On Saturday, Florida recorded 21,683 new cases of COVID-19, breaking its one-day record for new cases. But even as the state swells with fresh infections, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis remains hellbent on his war against mask mandates. He even recently barred school districts from instituting mask mandates when classes reconvene in August.

DeSantis is far from alone in his bitter fight against mask-wearing, a measure health officials say is critical in the fight to contain the highly contagious Delta variant. In Mississippi, where ICU beds are nearing capacity with a surge of unvaccinated individuals, Republican Gov. Tate Reeves blasted the CDC’s mask guidelines as “foolish” and claimed that it reeked of “political panic.”

“It has nothing, let me say that again: It has nothing to do with rational science,” Reeves said on Thursday.

On Monday, President Biden directly called out Republican governors who are blocking schools and businesses in their states from instituting mask mandates, telling them to “get out of the way.”

“Some governors aren’t willing to do the right things to make this happen,” Biden told reporters. “I say to these governors, please help. If you aren’t going to help, at least get out of the way of the people who are trying to do the right thing. Use your power to save lives.”

'Activism Works': EU to Return Covid Vaccines to Africa After Backlash

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/09/03/activism-works-eu-return-covid-vaccines-africa-after-backlash



"We can and must overcome greedy pharma and selfish rich governments' business as usual."



JAKE JOHNSONSeptember 3, 2021


The European Union has agreed to return to Africa millions of Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine doses that were shipped out of the continent under a contract arrangement that drew widespread backlash from vaccine equity campaigners and African officials.

As the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, the South Africa-based pharmaceutical giant Aspen "has a contract with J&J to fill into vials and package the U.S. company's vaccine, with some 40% of its production slated for export to Europe through September and the rest going to African countries."

When the details of the contract first emerged last month, Fatima Hassan of the South Africa-based Health Justice Initiative called the agreement "the sickening result of the free market in a pandemic—while Africa waits for supplies and gets a drip feed, more vaccine stock is diverted to Europe."

But Strive Masiyiwa, head of the African Union's Vaccine Acquisition Task Team, said Thursday that the "arrangement has been suspended." Masiyiwa said less than 20 million doses were exported to the E.U. under the deal.

"All the vaccines from this facility are now under the control of the South African government," he added.


The People's Vaccine Alliance, a coalition of more than 70 international public health and human rights organizations, called the suspension of the agreement "a step in the right direction" and said that "African manufacturers should be allowed to produce for Africans."

"Activism works! We can and must overcome greedy pharma and selfish rich governments' business as usual," the coalition tweeted. "We need a people's vaccine."

According to the latest data, just 11% of South Africa's population—and less than 3% of the total population of the African continent—has been fully vaccinated. By contrast, around 70% of adults in the E.U. have been fully inoculated against Covid-19.

"In Africa, the issue is vaccine supply," Masiyiwa said Thursday. "Even if there are loud noises about vaccine hesitancy—and we will not dismiss it—but let’s get to 60%, OK, and then we worry about the 40%."

"But if 60% of our population right now are happy to take the vaccine," he added, "let's give it to them."

'Catastrophe' Feared as 35 Million People Are Set to Lose Jobless Aid in 3 Days

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/09/03/catastrophe-feared-35-million-people-are-set-lose-jobless-aid-3-days



"Millions will suffer as they lose this critical source of income and the loss of spending will suppress job growth."



JAKE JOHNSONSeptember 3, 2021


Millions of jobless workers are set to lose critical unemployment benefits in roughly 72 hours—and neither Congress nor the Biden administration seem prepared to do anything about it.


The consequences of government inaction in the face of what one analyst recently described as "the largest cutoff of unemployment benefits in history" could be massive, both for those directly impacted by the cuts and the still-ailing U.S. economy.Despite the ongoing threat posed by the highly transmissible Delta variant, the White House and Democratic lawmakers have provided no indication that they plan to prevent several pandemic-related unemployment programs from expiring on September 6, which—in a cruel irony—happens to be Labor Day.

As Matt Bruenig of the People's Policy Project noted Thursday, the Labor Department's latest weekly unemployment insurance (UI) report shows that "9.2 million people are currently receiving benefits from either the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) program or the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program," which were implemented last year to extend the duration of jobless aid and provide assistance to those who are typically ineligible for UI, such as gig workers.

"According to the Census Household Pulse Survey, the average household that is receiving UI benefits has 3.8 members in it," Bruenig observed. "This means that around 35 million people (10% of the U.S. population) live in households that are scheduled to lose unemployment income."

"These are not small cuts either," he continued. "Based on what happened in the states that already cut these benefits, we know that around half of those on UI will see their benefits drop to $0 while the remaining half will see their benefits cut by $300 per week, which is equivalent to $15,200 per year. Those formerly on UI will also cut their spending by about $145 per week ($7,540 annually), which will have negative effects on the revenue and employment of the businesses they patronize."



But even amid such dire warnings, the possibility of a UI extension has been virtually absent from discussions on Capitol Hill as Democratic lawmakers work to assemble a $3.5 trillion spending package aimed at achieving a range of longstanding policy goals, from major climate investments to Medicare expansion.

“The Biden administration has not made it a priority, and outside of Ron Wyden, you haven't heard too many people in the Senate be willing to push on that," Andrew Stettner, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, told Vox, referring to the Democratic senator from Oregon, a key architect of the soon-to-expire UI programs.

"It doesn't seem like right now there would even be 50 votes in the Senate" for an extension, Stettner observed.

Last week, Labor Secretary Marty Walsh and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that President Joe Biden believes it is "appropriate" for the $300-per-week federal UI boost to expire as scheduled. Twenty-six states—each led by a Republican governor except Louisiana—have already ended the emergency UI aid, and the Biden administration did not try to stop them.

Subsequent research has vindicated economists who warned that—contrary to the claims and predictions of Republican leaders—ending the benefits prematurely would do little to boost hiring. A Wall Street Journal analysis released Wednesday found that "states that ended enhanced federal unemployment benefits early have so far seen about the same job growth as states that continued offering the pandemic-related extra aid."

While Republicans have insisted that the emergency UI programs are dissuading people from returning to the workforce, analysts have pointed to the myriad other factors at play, including lack of child care and pandemic-related health concerns.

Dr. Rakeen Mabud, the chief economist at the Groundwork Collaborative, warned in a statement earlier this week that "amid increasing uncertainty in the trajectory of the pandemic, Monday's unemployment cliff could not come at a worse time."

"Millions will suffer as they lose this critical source of income and the loss of spending will suppress job growth, setting us back yet again in our efforts for an inclusive and equitable recovery," Mabud said.

Painful enough in itself, the benefit cut-off will come just days after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Biden administration's nationwide eviction moratorium, putting millions of people at imminent risk of losing their homes amid a deadly pandemic. The U.S. is currently averaging around 164,000 new coronavirus infections and 1,500 deaths per day.

"It's going to be a perfect storm for a lot of folks," Jordan Dewbre, a staff attorney for the New York-based community organization BronxWorks, said of the confluence of UI expirations and the end of the eviction moratorium. "We are still in the middle of a pandemic."

In a series of tweets on Thursday, Stettner of the Century Foundation warned that "this cliff dwarfs anything we have seen before." If the federal programs expire, jobless workers will be left with often-paltry state-level UI benefits or—if they've exhausted their eligibility for such assistance—nothing at all.

"The unwillingness to extend emergency benefits—or even debate it—shows how inured we've become to plight of the unemployed," Stettner wrote. "With eviction protections ending at the same time, long-term unemployed workers are now vulnerable to lasting economic damage. Black and Latino workers have the least in savings built up to navigate this transitional period."

"Congress should have the courage to reinstate benefits, especially in high unemployment states, if the Delta surge slows the recovery," Stettner added, "and make permanent changes to UI benefits so that we won't have to rely on emergency programs during the next economic crisis."