A version of this article appeared in this week’s It’s Not Just You newsletter. SUBSCRIBE HERE to have It’s Not Just You delivered to your inbox every Sunday. And send comments to [email protected] Well hello! I’m so glad you’re here. This week: a letter to parents of teens, many of whom are struggling, a selection of expert pandemic parenting advice, plus some evidence of human kindness. DEAR PARENTS: IT’S NOT JUST YOU, THIS IS HARDOver the last few months, I’ve gotten so many emails from parents of teens—both readers of this newsletter and friends. And while the details vary, I can hear the thrum of fear in each one as they describe a child who seems to be slowly crumbling, or is in crisis. So this is a letter for all of you: You’re not alone. You’re not the only one feeling lost or like you’re the worst parent you know. So many of us have been where you are now, especially in an unimaginably fractured and stressful year, one that has made everything that’s already difficult about adolescence that much harder. Late at night, I’ve found myself parsing the day, thinking how I’d said exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time to a kid I wanted to connect with. Somehow I’d closed a door I’d hoped to open, or missed something I would have seen if I’d been better at this. Other times I’ve caught a glimpse of sadness and distance in the eyes of my child that made my heart shudder. The feeling is more than worry; it’s a kind of subterranean unease that ebbs and flows with the moods of your kid, and your own attempts at balance. So often we have no clue what’s really going on with these mostly-grown creatures of ours. It’s like trying to find your way using stars that keep moving and morphing. And who knows how much of this angst is related to the strange circumstances of this era, and how much is organic to your family, your kids, your decisions. <strong>Some days it feels like we’re all in that Star Wars trash compactor, but we keep going, telling our kids, “Just do your schoolwork; ignore the noise.”</strong>There’s just no precedent for us to draw on, no guide to parenting teenagers in the middle of a once-in-100-years pandemic paired with an economic catastrophe. And so we press on, trying to focus on the usual things like college applications or screen time. Decades from now, I imagine we might think it was all madness, this clinging to bits of normalcy. From increased anxiety and stress to rising loneliness, Gen Z teens and young adults have been hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the American Psychological Association’s latest survey, Stress in America 2020. It is an exceptionally vulnerable stage of life anyway, and this is a generation that has grown up with school-shooter drills and built-in angst about the long-term effects of climate change. So it isn’t surprising that too many are now grappling with serious depression, becoming self-destructive, or losing motivation for school. I wish I had a list of quick fixes to add here: Meditate with your kid every day! Enroll them in an outdoor exercise class! Binge watch Gilmore Girls! But of course, there isn’t a prescription that will make it all O.K. Still, there are things you can do: Forgive yourself, first of all. Take breath. This is hard, but you get to start fresh every day. And it’s good to remember that for many teens, having an adult who’s not you to talk to, someone they trust (and will text), can make a huge difference. And there’s one small ritual that might help keep the lines of communications open in your house, as it has mine. You could ask everyone in the family to say two good things about their day, and maybe one bad thing. It’s like a gratitude exercise, but also an opening for a conversation. If all you get is a list and no conversation, you still learn something about your kid, and they about you. And if a grilled cheese sandwich was a good thing that happened, there’s more than a little comfort in knowing that. Yours, Susanna ? P.S. I asked my kids and some of their college friends what advice they’d give to parents, and here’s what they had to say. “Talk to us in the in-between times,” they said, “not just when you’re worried and want to know if we’re O.K., or you want us to do something. Take an interest in the shows and videos we’re watching, or the books we bring home. Ask us to explain why we like this stuff. “Don’t get defensive and take what we say about what’s going on in our lives as a reflection on you personally. You can’t assume our problems are your failures. It’s not always about you. “You might want a reason why we’re doing something destructive, but we probably can’t give you a single reason. Focus on the emotion behind what we’re doing instead. Validate the way we feel; don’t try to tell us all the reasons we should feel better.” This week’s Coping Kit, below, offers some expert resources, seminars, and teachings for parents of teenagers and younger children. And if you think your kid’s issues are acute, trust your gut and call the emergency numbers listed, get support. If you’re new to It’s Not Just You, SUBSCRIBE HERE to get a weekly dose delivered to your inbox for free. COPING KIT ⛑️A Special Family Mental Health Edition COVID-19 Resource Guide for Parents & Guardians: Excellent multimedia resources for supporting teen mental health, managing the college application process during the pandemic, and more from The Jed Foundation. How to Help a Friend: Tips for teens (and parents) from The National Alliance on Mental Health (NAMI). How to Give Psychological First Aid: I found this to be a hugely helpful short video from the very engaging Ali Mattu, a clinical psychologist on how to stabilize someone in crisis. Plus find quick takes on coronavirus mental health issues here: The Psych Show with Ali Mattu. Includes tips on COVID anxiety and a message for graduating seniors. Does My Child Need Help? Guidelines on assessing your situation and finding help from the Child Mind Institute. FAMILY BASICS: A 6-Session Program for parents and caregivers of teens and young people who are experiencing mental health symptoms from NAMI. Therapist-Created Courses for Parents: Videos on helping children with depression, anxiety, self-esteem, and coping with grief. Plus an “Ask a Therapist” section with videos of therapists answering tough audience questions like: “My child is suicidal. What should I do to help?” with transcripts you can download. CRISIS TEXT LINE: Text HOME to 741741 from anywhere in the United States, anytime. A live, trained Crisis Counselor will help you move from a hot moment to a cool moment. <strong>Once we stop wishing it were summer, winter can be a glorious season in which the world takes on a sparse beauty and even the pavements sparkle. It’s a time for reflection and recuperation, for slow replenishment. </strong>The Kids Are Not Alright: A TIME cover on the rising epidemic of teen depression and anxiety. Check out Wintering, a lovely meditation on finding purpose in this overlooked part of the year from Katherine May. EVIDENCE OF HUMAN KINDNESS ❤️Here’s your weekly reminder that creating a community of generosity elevates us all. When a Pandemic of Love volunteer coordinator reached out to Tracy Fink, a leadership coach in Boston, to ask if she was still interested in being matched with someone in need, Tracy said “of course!” The volunteer explained that Tracy was being matched with a local woman named Jennifer who was struggling with bills, and instructed her to focus on making the connection and then to decide how she could best help Jennifer. At the end of the conversation, Tracy said that the volunteer thanked her for being brave. At first, Tracy was perplexed by the comment, but then, upon receiving the email from her match, she started to get nervous and thought, “What if this is too much? What if I can’t help her? What if I can’t go to her pain?” Spiraling, she took a step back, and then channeled her courage and read Jennifer’s email which began: “Even if you can’t help me, just the fact that I know there is somebody out there that cares, makes all the difference.” After connecting a few times, Tracy learned that Jennifer was months behind in rent which seemed daunting. But because Jennifer receives some housing assistance, the amount she owed was within Tracy’s means to pay not just for one month, but for two. So moved by the impact of this act of kindness, Tracy shared the experience with her son, Adam, who offered to pay Jennifer’s rent for a third month. Tracy believes that her donation helped her as much as it did Jennifer. Instead of worrying about her own pain or concerns, she explains that this connection to Jennifer and the chance to embody the action of giving helped her get out of her own head and into her heart. She adds that this story, which she shared on her Instagram is really about how two people saved each other.
This article is courtesy of Shelly Tygielski, founder of Pandemic of Love, a grassroots organization that matches those who want to become donors or volunteers directly with those who’ve asked for help with essential needs. Visit Pandemic of Love to give or apply for assistance. COMFORT CREATURES ? ? ?Our weekly acknowledgment of the animals that help us make it through the storm. Send your comfort creature photos and stories to me at: [email protected] Meet JAMES who is 32, and as his owner JAN says, there’s nothing more comforting than an old pony. ? Did someone forward you this newsletter? SUBSCRIBE to It’s Not Just You here. from https://ift.tt/3ae0nRK Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/
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Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies announced on Jan. 29 that its one-shot COVID-19 vaccine is 66% effective in protecting against disease, but 85% effective against preventing severe disease—results that could make it especially valuable in the effort to vaccinate parts of the world with weak health care systems. By comparison, the vaccines already authorized in the U.S.—one from Moderna and one from Pfizer-BioNTech—each require two doses, spaced three to four weeks apart. Janssen’s vaccine can also be stored in normal refrigerators, unlike Moderna’s and Pfizer-BioNTech’s, both of which need to be frozen. While the vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech are around 94%-95% effective in protecting against COVID-19, that’s after two doses of those shots, which are based on mRNA, a relatively new vaccine platform. Janssen’s vaccine relies on a more traditional approach: it uses a harmless human cold virus to deliver a SARS-CoV-2 gene to the human immune system, which then learns to protect the body against COVID-19. (SARS-CoV-2 is the virus that causes COVID-19.) “A one-shot vaccine is considered by the World Health Organization to be the best option in pandemic settings, enhancing access, distribution and compliance,” said J&J Chief Science Officer Dr. Paul Stoffels in a statement. “85% efficacy in preventing severe COVID-19 disease and prevention of COVID-19-related medical interventions will potentially protect hundreds of millions of people from serious and fatal outcomes of COVID-19.” The J&J results came a few days after Maryland-based Novavax reported that, in a Phase 3 trial, its vaccine was nearly 90% effective in protecting against COVID-19 disease. Those results are especially reassuring since that study was conducted among 15,000 people in the U.K., where a new mutant variant of SARS-CoV-2 is quickly gaining hold. The high efficacy suggests that people vaccinated with the Novavax shot, which is based on another proven technology of injecting proteins made by SARS-CoV-2 to stimulate an immune response, can expect good protection against that new variant. Dr. Paul Goepfert, director of the Alabama Vaccine Research Clinic at the University of Alabama and a lead investigator on the Janssen study, says he believes that the efficacy of the Janssen vaccine, particularly against emerging variant strains, justifies using it as soon as possible, and potentially boosting with an additional dose if studies support such a move. Confronting a rapidly mutating virus requires vaccinating as many people as possible as quickly as possible, Goepfert said—sentiment echoed by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases head Dr. Anthony Fauci during a Jan. 29 briefing. “Viruses can’t mutate if they can’t replicate,” Fauci said. “So we need to keep doing what we are doing, namely intensify our ability to vaccinate as many people as possible, as quickly as possible.” The efficacy of Janssen’s vaccine, while lower than that of Moderna’s and Pfizer-BioNTech’s versions, is likely still enough for authorization in most countries. Before the studies on the first vaccines were completed, for example, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, set a minimum threshold of 50-60% effectiveness to consider the shots for authorization. Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, the first two companies to report vaccine test results, far exceeded that and set a high bar. But Goepfert says it’s not a fair comparison. “We should not just look at the [Janssen results] and say that it didn’t work very well. That’s not the important takeaway here,” Goepfert says. “The Moderna and Pfizer studies were done at a time when the virus hadn’t mutated that much. And you have to remember that Janssen’s effectiveness is after one dose, compared to two doses of Moderna and Pfizer.” In the Janssen study, which involved more than 43,000 people in eight countries—the U.S., Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Mexico, Peru and South Africa—the single shot was 66% effective in protecting against moderate to severe COVID-19 disease, and 85% effective in protecting specifically against severe disease about one month after injection. The effectiveness varied by country—in the U.S., the study showed the vaccine was 72% effective in protecting against moderate to severe COVID-19 disease, but 66% in Latin American countries and 57% in South Africa. Those differences could reflect the rise of different mutant strains of SARS-CoV-2 around the world. In the study, most of the cases of disease in South Africa, for example, were caused by the mutant virus, which scientists have said shows signs of becoming resistant to the already-authorized vaccines. Janssen’s vaccine targets the spike protein that SARS-CoV-2 uses to attach to and infect human cells, and the variant circulating in South Africa has changed its genetic structure so that it attaches in a slightly different way. That means immune defenses like antibodies that are generated by vaccines and designed to block the original spike protein might not be as effective at blocking the variant. Still, Janssen’s study shows that the vaccine-induced immunity was enough to protect against COVID-19 disease, and perhaps more importantly, protect against death after infection. The study was conducted in collaboration with scientists from the NIAID and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and will continue to follow participants for two years. Goepfert says that the company is also studying a two-dose regimen as well to see if it can boost immune protection even further. Testing the already-authorized COVID-19 vaccines, as well as future vaccines, against emerging mutations will be a priority for scientists and regulators. So far, Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech and Novavax report that tests with blood taken from people vaccinated with their shots show they’re capable of neutralizing the U.K. and South Africa variants, although Moderna and Novavax found that recipients produced fewer antibodies against the South African strain. Still, all of the studies show the immune response generated by the vaccines remains strong enough to protect against disease. Staying on top of new mutations in the virus is a priority for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the agency’s director Dr. Rochelle Walensky during the Jan. 29 briefing. The CDC is expanding its viral sequencing efforts by working with government, academic and commercial partners to collect more samples from COVID-19 patients and genetically sequence the virus they contain in order to monitor changes in the viral genomes that might signal impending resistance to vaccines or drugs. “We’re asking surveillance from every state, about 750 samples per week, and with collaborations with university we hope to make that thousands per week,” she said. Janssen plans to submit a request for emergency use authorization in the U.S. and elsewhere. If authorized, it will be up to global health leaders to decide if the convenience of administering the single dose, and its ability to be stored under refrigerated conditions, is enough to justify the lower overall efficacy of Janssen’s shot. from https://ift.tt/2YuYOJu Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ As part of its COVID-19 vaccination efforts, the state of Virginia last week assembled a 12-person crack squad to a banal but vital task: data entry. Workers at many of the state’s vaccination sites, especially those in remote areas with limited internet connectivity, have been failing to input information about the people getting inoculated into the state’s database. The new team’s job is to help fix the problem, which has left gaps in state health officials’ understanding of who has been getting the shot—and who has not. “We’ve got to fix the data quality, data accuracy issue,” says Dr. Danny Avula, the director of Virginia’s vaccination effort. Such problems aren’t limited to Virginia. Nationwide, the U.S. vaccination rollout has been plagued by data gaps, which threaten to make it harder to hold leaders accountable for their goals, obfuscate if and when we reach the long-sought goal of herd immunity, and erode public confidence in the entire vaccination process. “The public has the right to know, ‘are we doing a good job or not?'” says Avula. “The more people know, the less they will make up, and therefore the less fear and anxiety will be disbursed in the community.” Moreover, the lack of adequate vaccination data could undermine efforts to ensure racial and ethnic equity in the process, further exacerbating pandemic-driven disparities. While some states are doing better than others, many are still not publishing key information like demographic breakdowns of who has been vaccinated and where those vaccinations occurred. Iowa and Minnesota, for instance, don’t include racial breakdowns in their published vaccination data, while Missouri and Connecticut are among the states that don’t publish real-time vaccination information at all. A representative from the Iowa Department of Public Health says the state is “working on a more robust reporting mechanism and hopes to have that online this week.” Connecticut tracks vaccination information and adjusts shipments of shots based on that data. The Minnesota and Missouri health departments did not respond to requests for comment. But, says Dr. Howard K. Koh, a professor of public health leadership at Harvard who served as Assistant Secretary for Health during the Obama Administration, “we don’t have a timely, coordinated national public health data infrastructure to track how the vaccination is proceeding.” Looking back just a few months demonstrates the perils these data gaps present. When mass COVID-19 testing first got underway in the U.S. last spring, many states were slow to break out results by race and ethnicity, masking the disproportionate toll the pandemic was taking—and continues to take—on Black, brown and other disadvantaged communities. “The consequences then and now I think are the same in terms of flying blind,” says Emily Zylla, a senior research fellow at the University of Minnesota’s State Health Access Data Assistance Center. “We are counting on this vaccine to get us out of the pandemic, and we’re going to be left with populations where they will continue to be exposed and bearing the brunt of this if we don’t get the vaccines to those high-risk areas.” Troubling demographic gaps are already apparent in some states that are publishing decent data. Virginia’s COVID-19 dashboard, for instance, appears to show large disparities in vaccine distribution among racial groups—but the data are incomplete; there are no race or ethnicity numbers for more than half of the 600,000 doses Virginia has administered as of Jan. 28. Pennsylvania and Florida are missing race or ethnicity data for around 200,000 of their 630,000 and 1,490,000 people vaccinated, respectively. In Delaware, there’s no race or ethnicity information tied to about a third of the administered vaccine doses overall, equalling more than 26,000 shots. Having a better sense of who’s being vaccinated and who isn’t is vital for state health officials, who need as much information as possible to decide where to send the limited amount of doses they’re receiving from the federal government. More and better data can also reveal other obstacles that can disrupt an equitable rollout. Undocumented immigrants, for instance, have faced increased risks over the course of the pandemic, occupy a large share of essential jobs and are likely to face additional hurdles in getting vaccinated, like language barriers. “Is a mass vaccination effort where you have a lot of law enforcement controlling traffic, is that going to be a detractor for our undocumented community? The answer is probably yes,” Avula says. “It’s things like that where we’ve got to adjust our approach and be really thoughtful about the lived experience of our marginalized communities.” Any single vaccination is good news at this point, but if we miss certain groups, it will take us longer to reach mass herd immunity—or the point at which enough people are inoculated that viral spread is seriously curtailed. “If we have communities that are left out of vaccine campaigns, or are vaccinated at low levels, the virus can still circulate in those communities,” writes Brooke Nichols, a health economist and infectious disease mathematical modeler at Boston University, over email. “If vaccine coverage is very uneven (or highly concentrated in some neighborhoods, and sparse in others), then it would take a greater number of vaccines to reach true herd immunity.” Nichols adds that vaccination data could also help leaders make better decisions about when to reopen certain facilities, like schools. “I’m worried that the data as it exists now cannot answer those questions for us,” she says. Resources appear to be the primary challenge for states attempting to collect and publish better vaccination data. Setting up such systems is a money- and labor-intensive process, no easy thing for public health departments facing inadequate funding and staffing while simultaneously fighting a once-in-a-generation pandemic. Privacy issues are cropping up, too, as some vaccine recipients are uncomfortable sharing their race or ethnicity, an aversion that is often justified in light of histories of discrimination. New problems can unexpectedly arise along the way as well—in Virginia, for example, 58,000 healthcare employee vaccination records were recently logged into the wrong platform, preventing them from showing up on the state’s dashboard; the state’s software engineers are working on a fix. One potential answer to this data crisis: more help from the federal government. While the Trump Administration was notorious for ignoring or obfuscating key pandemic data, President Joe Biden is taking a different approach. On his first full day in office, Biden issued an executive order that aims to improve federal collection and sharing of disease data, signaling his team will base more of its efforts on the numbers. But Biden’s plans will take time to implement. In the meanwhile, states can’t simply hit pause on their rollouts while they figure out data collection—instead, they need to adapt on the fly. Leaders in Virginia, for instance, are working on ways to ensure more data is collected, including a potential executive order. “These issues sound very staid and not very interesting to so many,” says Koh. “But it’s absolutely lifesaving work, and critical for public communication to show that we’re making progress.” from https://ift.tt/2MedH0j Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Less than a week after taking office, President Joe Biden announced three major steps to improve the country’s vaccination plans, and his Administration’s COVID-19 response team held its first press briefing. On Jan. 26, the President outlined the first three steps his team will take as part of a National Action Strategy for responding to the pandemic. First, the Administration will increase minimum weekly shipments of vaccines to states to 10 million doses, from the current 8.6 million. Next, Biden guaranteed these shipment numbers for the next three weeks, which allows states to plan out for the next month how many people they can vaccinate. (Uncertainty about the number of doses they were receiving with each shipment was a big complaint during the first weeks of the rollout under the Trump Administration’s’ Operation Warp Speed.) Finally, the federal government purchased 200 million additional doses of vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, ensuring the government has enough to inoculate the entire American public with two doses by the end of the summer—whether or not any other vaccines are approved in the interim. The day after this announcement, the federal government’s COVID-19 response team held its first press briefing, attended virtually by Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and chief medical advisor to the president; Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, chair of the COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force; Andy Slavitt, senior advisor to the White House COVID-19 response team; and Jeff Zients, White House COVID-19 response coordinator. The group provided updates on the state of the vaccine rollout, with Slavitt noting that the scientists—Fauci, Walneksy and Nunez-Smith—intentionally provided updates on the data and science of emerging mutant viruses first. “It was just refreshing to have a press conference in which the discussion was based on evidence, and we didn’t hear any outrageous things,” says Dr. Carlos del Rio, executive associate dean of Emory School of Medicine, who listened to the briefing. During his presentation, Slavitt noted that the Biden administration did not inherit a “fully developed strategy or infrastructure to make vaccines readily available to Americans as quickly as they need to be.” That’s already changing, he said, as this week, thanks to the team’s new actions, the federal government shipped 1 million vaccines on average a day, the necessary target to meet the President’s goal of vaccinating 100 million people in his first 100 days in office. Slavitt also said the Federal Emergency Management Agency committed $1 billion to support state vaccination sites, including mobile sites to help reach more people in the current priority groups who are either reticent to come to hospitals or have difficulty reaching them. That includes addressing current inequities in health care access that are having particularly devastating effects on people of certain racial and ethnic backgrounds, who have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19. Nunez-Smith said members of her task force, whose job it is to advise about the best ways to address these disparities, especially with respect to vaccination, will be formed soon. “We cannot beat the pandemic without making sure we execute a plan that reaches all communities,” she said. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is integral to success on that front. Walensky, Biden’s new pick to head the nation’s public health organization, summarized the sobering COVID-19 situation in the U.S. and the urgent need to vaccinate the public: though most of the major metrics—daily infections, hospitalizations and deaths—have been decreasing recently, she said, “expanding safe and effective vaccination is the key to ending the COVID-19 pandemic and bringing our country back to health.” That, she noted, does not mean following in the footsteps of the U.K., where health officials recently decided to delay the second dose of the current two-dose vaccines in order to get more people their first shot. Instead, Walensky reiterated CDC advice that people get their second dose 21 or 28 days after their first if it’s the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine, respectively. CDC also strongly recommends that people not mix and match vaccines from the two companies. Fauci provided a deeper look at the latest understanding of the three SARS-CoV-2 mutations that have been of concern of late—first reported in the U.K., South Africa and Brazil, respectively, and have all since been found in U.S. patients. In a study published on biorxiv, a pre-print server that releases scientific studies before they are peer reviewed, vaccine-maker Moderna and its collaborators at the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases reported that after testing antibodies generated by people vaccinated with its shot, it was confident that its vaccine protected against the U.K. and South African variants. The level of viral neutralizing activity was slightly lower against the South African version, but, as Fauci noted, “It is still well within the cushion of protection. You could diminish vaccine induced antibody efficacy by a few fold and still be well within the protective range with the vaccine.” Researchers are still studying the Brazilian variant, which was identified more recently, and don’t know yet how strongly immune responses to that mutant are. The more worrying problem these mutants pose, Fauci said, is that they may reduce the efficacy of drug treatments targeted at neutralizing the virus. The South African strain in particular has changes in areas that current drugs target, so scientists are keeping a close watch. Walensky said the CDC is relying on additional funding from Congress through Biden’s American Rescue Plan, an economic stimulus, to expand current genetic sequencing efforts on a national scale. “We will need access to more resources to do the amount of sequencing and surveillance needed to detect when these variants first start to emerge,” she said. Zients noted that “We are 43rd in the world in genomic sequencing, and that is totally unacceptable.” For now, the National Institutes of Health and the CDC are collaborating to conduct studies to better understand what genetic changes in the COVID-19 virus actually mean, including whether they have an effect on spreading more easily among people, or causing more severe disease. “All of that work is going on in real time literally as we speak,” said Fauci. Depending on the results of those studies, government researchers are ready to work with vaccine makers to adjust the vaccines if needed, or develop entirely new ones—something that Moderna president Dr. Stephen Hoge told TIME the company is already doing. from https://ift.tt/3r2B4ZL Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ The clash between the European Union and drugmaker AstraZeneca Plc over Covid-19 vaccine delays temporarily descended into chaos on Wednesday before the two sides confirmed that a crunch call to resolve the standoff will take place. Earlier on Wednesday, an EU official said the company had pulled out of the planned talks with the European Commission and government representatives. The official, who asked not to be named, said Astra executives had sent an email on Tuesday evening withdrawing “because there are too many moving parts.” The cancellation was disputed by Astra, and the EU subsequently said discussions were back on. The contradictory statements were just the latest twist in a saga that erupted late last week when Astra warned of delays at a production plant in Belgium. That was followed by public disagreement over contract terms, accusations of blame, and even threats to put limits on vaccine exports. The latest confusion — which pushed the life-and-death issue into the realm of farce — is also an echo of the broader disorganization that’s marked the EU’s rollout of coronavirus shots so far. Iskra Reic, Astra’s Executive Vice-President for Europe and Canada, will take part in the meeting, where the EU wants to get more details about the delay to the rollout of shots. Governments are desperate to speed up the vaccination, as it’s proved sluggish so far, and also keen to avoid taking the blame. The on-off status of the call emerged after Astra Chief Executive Pascal Soriot used an interview with European newspapers to deflect responsibility to the EU. He said the company has a so-called best-effort agreement that doesn’t specify a quantity. That’s because the EU insisted on receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine about the same time as the U.K. despite putting in its order three months later. A key part of the disagreement is the use of vaccines produced in U.K. factories. Speaking on condition of anonymity, an EU official said that Soriot’s claim that the U.K. has priority on vaccines from British plants doesn’t exist in the contract. The EU’s vaccination pace is lagging way behind the U.S. and the U.K. in terms of the share of its population inoculated, according to Bloomberg’s global tracker. Soriot said that once Astra gets EU regulatory approval — expected within days — it will ship at least 3 million doses immediately, with a target of 17 million by February. That should help Europe accelerate vaccinations and get economies closer to exiting damaging lockdowns that have crippled industries and caused growing discontent. Soriot suggested he understands that the situation is difficult for leaders across Europe, where Brussels has coordinated a vaccine-buying program. “Everybody is getting kind of a bit, you know, aggravated or emotional about those things.” he said in the comments published in La Repubblica and other newspapers. “But I understand because the commission is managing the process for the whole of Europe.” In an effort to alleviate supply shortages, French drugmaker Sanofi said it has agreed to help produce more than 125 million doses of the shot Pfizer Inc. developed with Germany’s BioNTech SE. That shot, and one by Moderna Inc., are already authorized for use. Sanofi will provide BioNTech access to its production sites in Frankfurt starting this summer, it said in a statement Wednesday. The goal is to accelerate efforts to package and distribute the vaccine, which needs to be kept at ultra-cold temperatures. from https://ift.tt/3olldnm Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ The United Kingdom passed the grim milestone of 100,000 COVID-19 deaths on Tuesday, only the fifth country to record a six-figure death toll, and by far the smallest. With the entire country still under a national lockdown to slow the spread of the virus, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Tuesday it was “hard to compute the sorrow” of the statistic in a national address, and offered his “deepest condolences to anyone who has lost a loved one.” Half of the more than 100,000 deaths in the U.K. have come since November, when the virus, which reached low levels in the population over the summer, began spreading with renewed speed. In December, scientists identified a new variant of the virus in the U.K. that was up to 70% more transmissible. On Jan. 22, Johnson said that variant could be up to 30% more deadly, too. The U.K.’s death toll is lower than the U.S.’s 425,000, but its population is only one-fifth of the size of America’s and its per capita death rate is higher by nearly 13%, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The only countries in the world that are worse affected than the U.K. in terms of per capita death rate are the small European nations of San Marino, Belgium and Slovenia. Prime Minister Johnson said that the U.K. government “did everything we could” to control the spread of the virus, but the opposition Labour Party and public health experts say that his government is responsible for a list of avoidable failures. The opposition Labour Party said the government had made “monumental mistakes” in its handling of the pandemic. “I just don’t believe that the government did do everything [they] could,” Labour’s health spokesman, Jonathan Ashworth, told the BBC on Wednesday. Why is the U.K.’s death toll so high?The U.K. has had two main surges of COVID-19 infections. At one stage at the beginning of the pandemic it was the worst-hit country in Europe in terms of infections and deaths; now, at the peak of the second wave, it again has more total cases and deaths than any other European country. In recent weeks, the government has blamed the new variant of the virus for the rise in cases and in deaths. “In fighting the old variant of the virus, our collective efforts were working and would have continued to work,” Johnson said on Jan. 4, announcing a new national lockdown. “But we now have a new variant of the virus.” Others blame the government itself. “It all comes down to failed leadership,” says John Ashton, a former regional director of public health in England, who points out that Britons make up a greater percentage of the world’s dead from COVID-19 than they did in the flu pandemic of 1918-19. “We’ve got modern medicine, and we’ve actually done worse than we did in 1918,” he says. “It looks as though we’re in a worse position than America.” Read more: Coronavirus Hit the U.K. Harder Than Any Other European Country. Here’s What Went Wrong Ashton points to a list of factors including historic under-investment in public health. But chief among the reasons for the U.K. being hit so hard is the government’s immediate response, he says. The government’s public health messaging was inconsistent, it lost the public’s trust through a series of scandals and policy U-turns, and more recently, it failed to take decisive measures during the Christmas period. In December, the government announced — and then partially backtracked on — plans to relax rules to allow families to meet for five days to celebrate the Christmas holiday, even as the new variant was spreading around the country. “In the third week of December, Johnson was still banging on about having five days of Christmas, against all advice,” says Ashton. “We were in a worse position with the new variant than we needed to be. We’ve been reaping the reward, if you will, about being slack in the lead-up to Christmas.” Is the U.K.’s lockdown working?On Jan. 4, Prime Minister Johnson announced the U.K. would have to go into another national lockdown because of the surge in infections across the country, driven by the more infectious new variant. Schools are closed, and most non-essential businesses and workplaces are out of bounds. People are only allowed to leave their homes for a limited list of reasons including exercise and buying food. Read more: A New, More Contagious COVID-19 Strain Has Been Reported in the U.K. Is It Headed for the U.S.? The data suggest it is working. Three weeks into that lockdown, the number of new cases per day has dropped from a peak of more than 81,000 on Dec. 29 to 39,000 on Jan. 19, the most recent day for which complete figures are available. Still, public health experts say, extended national lockdowns are a last-resort measure that should be avoidable if governments introduce targeted restrictions early. So, the lesson from public health experts: yes, the lockdown is working. But the lockdown — and the grim milestone of 100,000 deaths — could have been avoided altogether. How much worse could the U.K.’s COVID situation get?There are signs that the worst has passed. According to the U.K. government’s COVID-19 data, the average daily death toll is leveling off at around 1,000 per day, and the number of new daily cases is now on a downward trend, from a peak at the turn of the new year. Another reason for optimism is the U.K.’s advanced vaccine rollout, which the government has regularly pointed to as a source for hope amid a long, dark, winter lockdown. Britain has administered more vaccines per capita than any other country in the world except for Israel and the United Arab Emirates, according to Oxford University’s Our World in Data project. More than 6.8 million people in the U.K. (some 10% of the population) have now received the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, according to government figures. “We are now rolling out the biggest vaccination program in our history,” said Johnson on Jan. 4. “By the middle of February, if things go well and with a fair wind in our sails, we expect to have offered the first vaccine dose to everyone in the four top priority groups.” That includes all individuals aged 70 and over, frontline healthcare workers and nursing home residents and staff. But experts caution against the British government placing all its hope in vaccines alone. Ashton, the former regional public health director, says that the risk of the virus evolving faster than vaccine research means that ground-level public health investment is needed too, something that successive Conservative governments have neglected in the U.K. “We have to be very careful,” Ashton says. “You can’t put too much weight on vaccines saving us in this. You’ve got to simultaneously strengthen your public health, because it requires the classic stuff of rooting out outbreaks through local knowledge and local action. This virus is going to be with us for the foreseeable future, and it’ll keep evolving, we’ll keep getting new strains. We can’t just think science will save us. We have to do the public health stuff.” from https://ift.tt/3pphZR5 Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ First, the good news: in a study published Jan. 25 on a preprint server, Moderna says its COVID-19 vaccine continues to protect against two of the major mutant strains of SARS-CoV-2 circulating around the world: one that was first identified in the U.K. (called B.1.1.7) and one first seen in South Africa (B.1.351). Now, the not-so-good news. Blood from people vaccinated with the company’s shot did not generate as many immune antibodies against B.1.351 as they did against the non-mutant virus—in fact, this blood contained about six-fold lower levels of antibodies. However, in the study released on biorxiv by scientists from Moderna and their collaborators at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the researchers say that the level of antibodies still remains high enough to provide sufficient protection against COVID-19 disease. “I would say I remain vigilant but not concerned” by the effect of the mutations on protection provided by the vaccine, Dr. Stephen Hoge, president of Moderna, tells TIME. “Nothing we have seen so far has me terribly worried about the vaccine.” However, viruses constantly mutate, and eventually, one or a combination of changes could make the virus both more infectious and more deadly. Already, the U.K. strain is at least 50% more adept at spreading from person to person, and the South African strain has mutations in key areas that could help the virus to evade immune cells generated to fight it. While there isn’t immediate need to worry, Hoge says staying on top of the changes is critical. Moderna has been tracking mutations in SARS-CoV-2 since this summer, when the first major change (called D614G) from the original virus that emerged from China appeared. Since then, his team has tested blood from vaccinated people against more than 50 variants of the virus and none have raised concern about breaking through the protection provided by the vaccine. The current study involved blood samples from eight people who were vaccinated in Moderna’s Phase 1 safety trial. Scientists at Moderna tested this sera against lab-made versions of SARS-CoV-2 modified to contain the B.1.1.7 and B.1.351 mutations (among others) and found consistently that antibody levels remained high enough to neutralize each of the new viral variants. While the scientists did not test the sera against live virus with the mutations that are circulating among people now, the lab-made versions are a scientifically accepted stand-in until the actual live virus can be tested. “The benefit we have a year into the story is that we are starting to get really comfortable that the [lab] assays and [levels of neutralizing antibodies] are predicting what we see with the vaccines and infections in humans,” says Hoge. Testing these samples against the live mutant virus from South Africa would confirm that the antibodies formed do indeed neutralize it. Those viral samples have not yet been shipped to the U.S., he says, but Moderna’s collaborators at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) collaborators at NIAID are working on getting those samples for further study. In the meantime, Moderna is talking to the NIAID team about additional studies to test other strategies for its vaccine in case the South African variant does break through the current vaccine-provided protection. One option would be to add a third, booster dose of the existing vaccine to increase the immune response and make up for any drop in antibodies that might be caused by a mutated variant. The booster would likely be recommended for six months to a year after the second current shot. Another option would be to boost with a new vaccine, developed specifically against the B.1.351 strain. Over the past weekend, Hoge says his team has already started work, “in an abundance of caution,” on this new vaccine. One advantage of Moderna’s mRNA technology is its flexibility—because it is based on the virus’s genetic sequence, developing a new vaccine against a new variant would be a matter of “copying and pasting—we could past the South African strain mutations into our vaccine very quickly,” says Hoge, and have shots ready to test “in a matter of six to nine weeks.” The limiting factor would be testing the new vaccine for safety and efficacy, but even there, it’s possible it wouldn’t take as long as the first vaccine did since regulatory agencies like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration might see the new version as a strain change similar to the changes made each year to the flu vaccine. “The agency has experience with other situations where such changes are needed, for example, as is the case with influenza virus vaccines,” a spokesperson from the FDA said in a statement to TIME. “FDA has already given thought to developing a potential pathway, should changes need to be made to authorized COVID-19 vaccines or other products based on information on emerging variants.” If the annual flu shot is the model, then instead of extensive clinical studies involving tens of thousands of people, for example, the agency might only require studies with a few dozen. And there is already an ideal group of people who might volunteer for these studies for a revised COVID-19 vaccine: the same people who participated in the company’s Phase 1 studies who are now about one year out from their vaccinations. Hoge stresses that the company’s decision to develop a version against the South African strain is purely precautionary. “What we’re doing is bringing forward a [vaccine] candidate with the new information and moving to quickly test it to show we can close the gap on the South African strain,” he says. “If we do that, that’s great news. Then the question for everybody else becomes, do we leave it in the medicine cabinet and do nothing with it, and only pull it out in a hurry when we need it? Or do we make an updated vaccine now? Those are questions we can’t answer today because it depends on what happens over the next two to three months.” Hoge says that it’s simply prudent to prepare for the virus to possibly break through vaccine-induced protection. “We’ve got a great vaccine now so it’s not an emergency in that sense,” he says. “But this virus isn’t standing still and we also need to be trying to get ahead of it.” from https://ift.tt/36haP9M Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Welcome to COVID Questions, TIME’s advice column. We’re trying to make living through the pandemic a little easier, with expert-backed answers to your toughest coronavirus-related dilemmas. While we can’t and don’t offer medical advice—those questions should go to your doctor—we hope this column will help you sort through this stressful and confusing time. Got a question? Write to us at [email protected]. Today, E.B. in New York asks:
To state the obvious, we are in a strange limbo state right now. The vaccines we’ve eagerly awaited for almost a year are here, and yet…nothing about our daily lives has really changed. Unfortunately, that’s going to be the case for a bit longer. “The end is in sight,” says Dr. Colleen Kelley, a vaccine researcher and associate professor of infectious diseases at the Emory University School of Medicine in Georgia. “I just don’t know that it’s right now.” Your loved ones getting vaccinated is unequivocally a step forward, Kelley says. It would certainly be safer to visit with your parents or in-laws after they’ve gotten both vaccine doses, but the safest plan is to wait until you and your husband are also vaccinated, she says. The two coronavirus vaccines currently authorized for use in the U.S.—those made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna—are both extremely effective at preventing people from getting sick with COVID-19. That’s a huge benefit on its own, especially for people at high risk of severe illness, such as elderly adults and people with underlying medical conditions. But the outstanding question is whether COVID-19 vaccines also stop people from getting asymptomatically infected with the virus. Early evidence suggests both shots offer at least some protection against asymptomatic infection, and many experts are optimistic about their chances of stopping transmission, but the data are still coming together. If the shots turn out not to stop asymptomatic infections entirely, even your vaccinated parents could feasibly get your family sick if they picked something up while traveling to see you. Or, if you happened to be exposed to the virus, your parents could potentially carry it and pass it to others. And, while the authorized COVID-19 vaccines are very effective, there is always a tiny chance of them failing, leaving your parents at risk of illness. These are all worst-case scenarios, of course. But given the uncertainty and the extent to which COVID-19 is still spreading in the U.S., Kelley says you should wait a little while longer to visit with your parents and in-laws. If that’s not possible, you should take the same precautions you’ve been hearing about for a year: quarantining beforehand, and ideally staying outdoors and masked when possible. Here’s the good news, though. Once you and your husband are fully vaccinated (along with more of the general population), Kelley says you can feel much better about spending time with other vaccinated people indoors and unmasked—even if your toddler isn’t yet vaccinated. As you suggest, it may be a while before kids younger than 16 are eligible for COVID-19 vaccination, since pharmaceutical companies haven’t yet finished testing their shots on younger children. But “if the toddler is the only one who’s not vaccinated, I would say that’s a pretty darn safe scenario,” Kelley says. Luckily, young kids rarely get seriously ill with COVID-19, so once all the adults in the room are fully protected, Kelley says you can feel pretty comfortable with your parents or in-laws coming for a visit. “We’re not going to get to a zero-risk situation,” Kelley says, “but we are going to get to places that are safer and safer.” from https://ift.tt/3qNmtkE Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ A version of this article appeared in this week’s It’s Not Just You newsletter. SUBSCRIBE HERE to have It’s Not Just You delivered to your inbox every Sunday.
I am one of those people whose scars are visible—both physical and emotional ones. The scar you notice first when you meet me is on my upper lip. It’s not a surface mark; it’s an intractable knot that bunches the skin like an imperfectly mended hem. (My less tangible scars show up in other ways; just ask my family.) Over the years, that old wound of mine, that vulnerability, has given people permission to share their own less-visible vulnerabilities with me. And I’m not the first to make this observation, but I’ve learned that no matter how together someone may seem, most of us have a private list of broken bits—the things we think we need to conceal or erase. If only we could fix those asymmetries, we tell ourselves, or fill that gap and find that missing ingredient—whether it’s a title, a certain weight, the cure for some anxiety or acceptance in a group we covet—we’ll finally feel whole. When I heard the line in Amanda Gordon’s dazzling inaugural poem where she describes the United States as “a nation that is not broken, but simply unfinished,” I thought of all those things that make us feel unworthy, unfinished, or broken. How transformative would it be if we could embrace the idea that unfinished is our natural and permanent state? Is it possible for us to accept that there is no seamless fix for what ails us individually or as a community? Our path, if we’re lucky, is evolution without an end. We’ll carry with us the scars of this long year, and of all our history. And as someone who’s spent years trying to paper over, distract from or excise a deep scar, I can tell you: even if no one else sees it, you never forget it’s there. So as we go about mending a nation, and ourselves, perhaps we can take inspiration from Kintsugi, a very old Japanese tradition in which broken pottery pieces are put together with gold lacquer. You don’t hide the cracks; you celebrate the repairs. Golden rivulets bind shards of a bowl or cup. Scars become art. And the result is something more beautiful than perfect: something visibly resilient. ? COPING KIT ⛱️We’re heading toward the first anniversary of the stay-at-home orders wrought by the coronavirus pandemic, and for those without nearby family, it’s been tough. And it’s not over yet, so here are a few thoughts on dealing with isolation: How to Combat Pandemic Loneliness From making an old-fashioned voice call to a friend, to helping a stranger or walking outside and finding opportunities for ad-hoc interactions in the neighborhood or town, maintaining social connections is essential for mental health. Loneliness Is a Modern Invention. How understanding that history can help us get through this pandemic. A word about Amanda Gorman, the luminous 22-year-old poet who lifted a bruised and not so united United States with her stunning inaugural poem, “The Hill We Climb.” In that poem, Gorman challenged us to become the generous and resilient people she sees with those wise young eyes.
Gorman, who is the first National Youth Poet Laureate of the United States also wrote a poem in April in response to the pandemic. It’s called “The Miracle of Morning,” and you can hear her read it here, This is just one of the inspiring passages:
If you’re new to It’s Not Just You, SUBSCRIBE HERE to get a weekly dose delivered to your inbox for free. And! Check out this trailer for The Check-In, a new video chat with me and comedian and artist Lisa Beasley. Find The Check-In most Sundays after 1pm, on our Instagram channels: @susannaschrobs and @lisabexperience. EVIDENCE OF HUMAN KINDNESS ❤️Here’s your weekly reminder that creating a community of generosity elevates us all. Zoel Zohnnie, is a Navajo Native from Arizona, but calls the Four Corners region his home. At the onset of the pandemic, when his community issued a shelter-in-home order, Zoel, raised by his native elders to serve those in need, began to deliver safe, clean drinking water to families in the most remote areas of the Navajo Reservation. A significant percentage of that population does not have access to running water or clean water in their homes, a deficit that is particularly problematic during a pandemic when hand washing is critical. With his own pickup truck and a few barrels of water, Zoel (pictured above) began doing daily deliveries, and soon, word of his efforts spread throughout the Tribe. He was getting more requests on a daily basis than he could meet. He had to purchase another truck and a flatbed, and eventually two and then three, and more. Zoel needed funding to continue his grassroots efforts, which he formalized into the non-profit, Water Warriors United. Then he was introduced to Pandemic of Love through a mutual friend of the organization’s founder. Pivoting from its normal course of 1:1 matches between families in need and donors, Pandemic of Love designed a way for donors to “adopt a Navajo household” and purchase a delivered and installed barrel of water on an on-going basis for families on the reservation. Since their partnership began in late April, Water Warriors United has delivered over 325,000 gallons of water to families in need, and Zoel says the program has made his mother proud:
He also says he’s been inspired by the spirit of his ancestors, especially his father: “God has always put someone in my life who has helped me…I want to be that for others—I am a vessel for His work and I strongly believe that.” Zoel pledges that the grassroots Navajo Nation Water Campaign will continue as long as he has requests for water.
This story is courtesy of Shelly Tygielski, founder of Pandemic of Love, a grassroots organization that matches those who want to become donors or volunteers directly with those who’ve asked for help with essential needs. Visit Pandemic of Love to give or apply for assistance. COMFORT CREATURES ? ?Our weekly acknowledgment of the animals that help us make it through the storm. Meet MAX and MIMI, rescue kittens born at the start of the pandemic and adopted in June by EMILY. And here’s PHOEBE who has become very affectionate in her old age, shared by SUSAN in Eugene, OR. ? Did someone forward you this newsletter? SUBSCRIBE to It’s Not Just You here. from https://ift.tt/3oer6m0 Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Keeping up with the torrent of news over the last year has been overwhelming for all Americans. But it’s an especially difficult challenge for local newspaper editors like Reed Anfinson, who not only owns and publishes Swift County, Minn.’s Monitor-News, but writes nearly every news story it publishes, too. Anfinson, who also owns two other papers in nearby counties, has worked virtually seven days a week since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, including through a battle with the virus himself. For all his hustle, he still wishes he had time to write more about the people whose lives have been disrupted by COVID-19—or the money to hire reporters. While there’s more news to fill the pages of Anfinson’s papers this year, his publications have had to shrink to survive as cash-strapped businesses have pulled ads, forcing the papers to shed pages and cut staff positions and hours. Anfinson says more cost-saving measures will be necessary, but it will be hard to figure out what to do next. “We are so lean, we don’t have anywhere to cut,” he says. Local news outlets like the Monitor-News were in rough shape even before the pandemic. More than 2,000 U.S. newspapers have closed in the last 15 years, and 1,800 communities that had a local news outlet in 2004 didn’t have one at the end of 2019, according to research from the Hussman School of Journalism and Media at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Today, more than 200 counties do not have a newspaper or other source of “credible and comprehensive” information, and half have only one newspaper. COVID-19 has only hastened local outlets’ demise, costing communities what could otherwise be valuable sources of local information about viral spread, vaccinations and more. Among six chains that own hundreds of local papers, ad revenue dropped 42% during a quarter of 2020 compared to the year before, and circulation revenue dropped 8%, according to a Pew Research Center analysis. More than 60 local newsrooms shuttered over the course of 2020, while others have endured layoffs, furloughs and other cutbacks, according to journalism research organization Poynter. As local news outlets disappear, they leave behind an information vacuum that makes way for the spread of misinformation on social media and through “pink slime” media platforms, which appear to be organic local news but instead feature mostly algorithmically-generated articles repurposed from other outlets and public data sets. The consequences of the country’s local news drought have become especially apparent during the pandemic. Over the last year, political polarization and misinformation has caused some people to doubt even basic facts of the pandemic, from the accuracy of death rates to whether measures like face masks can slow the virus’ spread. In some communities, where many residents have pushed back on scientifically-proven measures like mask-wearing, local reporters have been one of the only bulwarks for the truth. Anfinson, for instance, has been hard at work dispelling rumors about the virus—including falsehoods about improper hospital use of COVID-19 funds—and taken on critics of social distancing and state mask mandates. But his efforts have cost him. “I know that my constant writing about that has lost me some subscribers and businesses at the newspapers,” Anfinson says. Nevertheless, he has pushed on with his coverage, with two key goals in mind: keeping his communities safe, and helping them recover from the pandemic’s economic devastation. If he fails, the towns his papers serve could be left without any local news coverage at all. “We know there’s nothing that replaces us,” Anfinson says. “In small town America, the newspaper is the only source of information.” The pandemic has also threatened some publications that were on sound footing at the beginning of 2020, like the weekly North Coast Journal in Humboldt County, Calif., where the newsroom shrunk from five employees to one full-time and one part-time employee last year after advertisers pulled away or closed. “There was a point early on where we didn’t know—there was major doubt about whether we would survive this as a company,” says Journal News Editor Thadeus Greenson. But the Journal pulled through after receiving a Paycheck Protection Program loan and rejiggering its advertising strategy. It was able to bring back three editorial staff members, and has offered invaluable reporting through the pandemic, publishing stories on food insecurity in the county and covering otherwise under-reported communities, like local indigenous tribes. In the COVID-19 era, the consequences of the local news crisis is most obvious when looking at the editorial resources available in communities where small newsrooms have survived. As the virus first struck the U.S. last winter, Echo Day, managing editor of the Leader in Covington, Tenn., for example, built a digital hub for outbreak information. There, readers could find out about school and festival closures, see where to pick up donated food, and read stories from the local community, like one about a woman who died of COVID-19 after resisting masking and social distancing guidance. Without the Leader, those tools and coverage may have never existed. “This was a project I felt strongly about doing, giving people this information,” says Day. “Because they wouldn’t get it otherwise.” Day and the Leader have faced challenges brought on by the pandemic, too. At the paper’s worst moment, four employees were quarantined with COVID-19. At one point, only her and another staff member were on the editorial team. Keeping up with pandemic news, combined with the regular news cycle, was just “overwhelming,” says Day. “There was so much information, and so much change,” she adds. The news cycle didn’t stop when Day herself contracted COVID-19 in October. Despite enduring headaches, a fever and shortness of breath, Day kept the paper going by working from home. She didn’t want to leave it all to one colleague, and she feared that the public wouldn’t otherwise get the information they needed. “There’s no other newspaper covering us. It’s just us, and it’s up to us and to be here and to cover all of the events that take place here—not just the big things that would catch the attention of the Memphis media,” says Day. “So I feel that responsibility to people.” from https://ift.tt/3o8njGU Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ |
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