The Ripple Effect Is a Major Concern. Chicagoans Worry Lollapalooza May Become a COVID-19 Hotspot7/30/2021 When music fan Noah Zelinsky bought tickets to the Chicago music festival Lollapalooza in May, he thought it might signal something of a return to normalcy after more than a year of isolation. “There’s so much pent up excitement, being the first major thing back,” he says. But a lot can change in two months. “Now, there’s a lot of fear countering that.” As Lollapalooza arrives, along with its potentially hundreds of thousands of attendees, in Grant Park, worrying signs abound: the highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus has spread across the U.S., with Chicago’s COVID-19 daily case rate quintuple what it was a month ago, albeit nowhere near the heights of this spring. And recent music festivals, including the Verknipt festival in Utrecht, Netherlands, and Rolling Loud in Miami, have been connected to outbreaks among their attendees and surrounding communities. Whether or not Lollapalooza, which runs from July 29 through Aug. 1, succeeds in holding COVID-19 at bay could make the festival a tipping point in whether or not the country’s triumphant reopening continues as planned throughout the summer and fall. “I think it has the makings [of a superspreader event],” Theresa Chapple-McGruder, a Chicago area maternal and child health epidemiologist, told TIME. “When we’re in a place where rates are rising, we need to put prevention strategies in place. I don’t see how a large festival like this could meet that criteria of slowing the spread.” Relaxed safety requirements in the face of rising casesLollapalooza has been a Chicago institution for 15 years, regularly drawing 100,000 people each day of the typically four-day event. This year, the lineup includes Miley Cyrus, Tyler the Creator and the Foo Fighters, and marks the first major cross-genre festival to return to the U.S. since the pandemic’s start. Lollapalooza’s parent company, Live Nation, has been working closely with public officials, including Chicago Department of Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady, to implement safety guidelines, including a system to check if attendees have valid COVID-19 vaccine cards, vaccine records or negative tests upon entering, and to advocate that everyone wear masks while on festival grounds. “It’s outdoors. We’ve been having large-scale events all over the city since June without major problems or issues,” Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said in a press conference this week. On Thursday, the first day of the festival, organizers said that 90% of attendees have showed proof of vaccination, with 600 people turned away for lack of paperwork. However, in the two months since the festival was reannounced in May—when full weekend passes rapidly sold out, perhaps in part because the event was canceled last year—the Delta variant has spread rapidly throughout the U.S., accounting for 83% of new COVID-19 cases, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said last week, with most clustered in unvaccinated populations. The number of new cases reported daily in Chicago had dropped to as low as 34 in late June, but is now back up to 192 a day, although hospitalizations remain drastically lower than their peak this spring. (Hospitalizations typically lag behind increases in case rates.) “We’ve seen data suggesting that vaccinated people are more likely to be breakthrough cases now than at other points in time with other variants, and that vaccinated people who are breakthrough cases may spread just as easily as unvaccinated people,” Chapple-McGruder says. “Those two pieces really lead to the concern about community transmission.” Even as cases rise, Lollapalooza has relaxed its requirements for unvaccinated attendees. While Lightfoot had said in May that festivalgoers needed to show a negative COVID-19 test taken 24 hours or less before entering, that number has now been increased to 72 hours, allowing a much longer window to theoretically contract the virus before the festival. Earlier this month, the Verknipt festival in the Netherlands admitted unvaccinated attendees as long as they had a negative test taken within 40 hours of entering. The festival was later linked to 1,000 COVID-19 cases among its 20,000 attendees, and Lennart van Trigt, a representative of the Utrecht health board, admitted that the event’s policies were misguided. “In 40 hours people can do a lot of things, like visiting friends and going to bars and clubs,” Van Trigt said. COVID-19 tests also aren’t 100% accurate and can be easily faked—and there is a lag between when people contract the virus and when they might return a positive test. Not all recent similar events have suffered from outbreaks. The Exit Festival, an electronic music festival in Serbia which welcomed some 45,000 people a day, recorded zero infections according to a study published a week afterward. Serbia has had relatively low COVID-19 rates, but festival organizers told Billboard that more than half of its attendees were foreign visitors; their monitored sample of festival guests was tested for COVID-19 both when entering the gates and a week later. On the other hand, there have been reports of numerous COVID-19 cases connected to last weekend’s hip-hop festival Rolling Loud in Miami. Tens of thousands of people showed up daily to the festival, which did not require masks, vaccinations or negative tests. This week, the rapper Dess Dior and the actor Alexa Leighton, among others, announced on social media that they had tested positive for COVID-19. Their infections coincided with a larger spike in Florida at large, in which COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations have risen dramatically. Potential for spread far beyond Chicago city limitsCritics of Lollapalooza are worried that the festival could spread COVID-19 in two dimensions: first in the Chicago area, and second, everywhere people travel back to after the weekend ends. Lollapalooza is a commuter festival—set in the middle of downtown Chicago, with many festivalgoers arriving by public transit from other parts of the metropolis. If that trend holds, it could make for buses and trains on the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) jam-packed with a mix of unvaccinated festivalgoers and essential workers returning to in-person work, every day of the festival. “Many people who rely on using public transportation are essential workers who don’t have remote accommodations--and there’s going to be a domino effect, where they’re going to be on the same CTA car or [in the same] bars and restaurants as all these people coming in from outside the city,” says Elena Gormley, an organizer for Social Service Workers United-Chicago. If the festival turns out to be a superspreading event, there could be significant trickle-down effects. Mayor Lightfoot told the New York Times’ Kara Swisher that if Chicago’s daily case rate jumps over 200, she would consider reimplementing a mask mandate as well as other measures. Jim DeRogatis, a longtime prominent Chicago music journalist, told the Washington Post that the impact of another shutdown on Chicago’s independent venues could be catastrophic. “If infections start again in a serious way and the city has to start shutting down again, I don’t see how they survive,” he said. Others are more concerned about what happens when the festivalgoers return home to places with lower vaccination rates. (About 52% percent of Chicago’s population has been vaccinated, which is slightly higher than the national average.) Chicago health officials just added nine states to the city’s travel advisory—including nearby states like Missouri, Arkansas and Tennessee--which encourages unvaccinated travelers from those states to either obtain a negative test or quarantine. But it will be difficult for health officials to track those people if they arrive and leave by car. “We don’t even have to look as far as neighboring states: I think it’s going to be an issue with neighboring counties and cities to Chicago,” Dr. Chapple-McGruder says. “The ripple effect is a major concern for me.” Putting faith in festival organizers and fellow attendeesOn the subreddit r/Lollapalooza, a conversation emerged this week about COVID-19, with some expressing concerns and others readily dismissing them. “If I get it, I get it. I’m gonna enjoy this weekend. Been waiting a fat minute for a someone [sic] normal summer,” wrote one commenter. Noah Zelinsky, who is 21 and from Chicago, is attending the festival with his friend Savanna Savoy, 18, who drove down from Minnesota to attend. They say they have friends flying into Chicago for the festival from across the east coast, and that they are both vaccinated and eager to return to live music—a once-essential aspect of their lives—despite the widespread consternation about the festival they are seeing online. “Now that there’s an opportunity to go out, it shouldn’t be an issue for those who are vaccinated, since we’re the ones who were staying home for so long,” Savoy says. Savoy and Zelinsky say they plan to wear their masks for most of the outdoors festival, while acknowledging the organizers’ guidance to stay 6 feet away from people will likely be impossible. They also plan to go to some of the festival’s afterparty concerts, which take place indoors. “We’re putting a lot of hope in the other people around us,” Zelinsky says. Dr. Chapple-McGruder recommends that festivalgoers wear their masks outside and particularly in crowded spaces, find less-crowded places to eat and take public transit during off-peak hours. “If you live with or can’t avoid contact with high-risk individuals, maybe reconsider your attendance,” she says. Meanwhile, nearby businesses are contemplating the risk-reward ratio, with some taking the plunge into opening up to a wider, more maskless clientele for the potential economic benefits. Billy Dec, who owns the Underground nightclub less than a mile from the park, hosts all-night afterparties for Lollapalooza artists and attendees every year, and is looking forward to welcoming revelers back: “There are a lot of people that are really positive about what the festival is doing for the spirit of a city that this year has been really tough on,” he says. However, he says he will keep his club’s capacity much lower than in years past. “We’re going to be over-careful about capacity at the door,” he says. “We’re going to keep our numbers low.” Table to Stix Ramen, in Evanston, will be part of the festival’s Chow Town area; it closed for a full week prior in order to prepare for the potentially huge and hungry crowds. While chef and owner Kenny Chou typically has five employees, he will be bringing 20 onsite and says he has discussed the risks with them. “Every one of my staff members is vaccinated and will be attending, with full knowledge of the risk of the delta variant,” Chou wrote in an email. “We know it will be difficult social distancing with this large of a crowd. I trust the coordinators and the Lollapalooza staff to keep everyone safe.” from https://ift.tt/3j3H2XY Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/
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When school facilities closed for in-person learning in early March 2020, the assumption was that the shutdown and pandemic would be temporary blips in the memory of our students. Some 16 months later, school facilities are finally preparing to re-open for in-person learning. We could go about business as usual, but after the devastation of the pandemic, and the increasingly widespread climate-change-linked weather disasters, it’s obvious we should not. Emerging from the crisis of COVID-19 gives us an opportunity to rethink our public schools, to simultaneously the structural inequalities that pervade the system, and prepare it for the climate emergency ahead. Lawmakers have had difficulty grappling with the layering of immediate and longer-lasting crises. That’s where we think the Green New Deal for Public Schools, introduced to Congress by Representative Jamaal Bowman (NY) on July 16, comes in. Building on the research of our climate + community project, its basic premise is that we have to tackle our society’s gravest problems not one by one, but in their entirety, through ambitious physical and social investments that lift up the workers and communities that have suffered the most disinvestment throughout American history. We want to fight systemic racism, poverty, and environmental breakdown with comprehensive, holistic policies. The legislation authorizes $1.4 trillion in spending over the next decade to upgrade and decarbonize every public school in the U.S. with new solar panels, batteries, and green retrofits, while also investing in adequate staffing levels for every vulnerable school in the country. By greening schools, we can create centers of climate resilience infrastructure in every community and help to address the legacy of educational inequity that creates an uneven landscape of public schools. The bill would cut annual carbon pollution by the amount equivalent to taking 17 million cars off the road, eliminate health toxins (like mold and lead) in school facilities, and provide decent staff-to-student ratios in every school. We estimate that this would create over 1.3 million jobs per year, including 272 million skilled construction and maintenance jobs. With this level of public green investment, the government would provide a massive boost to the workers and businesses who will green the entire country’s building stock in the decades ahead. Every American would benefit from lower costs and technological improvements. For years, educational advocates at the local, state, and federal level, have been pushing the federal government and other leaders to improve school facility conditions. In 2020, nearly 25 years after the last census of school facility conditions, the Government Accountability Office issued a report estimating that about 54% of public school districts need to update or replace multiple building systems in their schools. An estimated 41% of districts need to update or replace heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems in at least half of their schools. The American Society of Civil Engineers has estimated that schools need nearly $400 billion dollars in investment over the next decade just to operate at a decent level, without even accounting for the climate crisis. The shortcomings affect educational outcomes. Research demonstrates that extreme heat and ineffective cooling systems directly contribute to poorer educational outcomes. In recent years, millions of K-12 students have missed school due to extreme temperatures and inadequate heating and cooling systems; research suggests investment in centralized air conditioning could mitigate the disparity in educational performance between schools with adequate HVAC systems and those without by up to 73%. School cancellations have disproportionately impacted school facilities in the least affluent and least white communities, due to the country’s documented redlining practices. The pandemic exposed an intersectional crisis of care as low-income, nonwhite women and their households experienced the highest rates of fatalities, unemployment, disability, exposure, and isolation. They also bore the brunt of COVID-19 public school closures due to decades of underinvestment in their children’s public schools. Educators and their unions, who clearly understood the risks of in-person learning in substandard school facilities, rightfully challenged plans to reopen school buildings as COVID-19 surged last winter. The teachers’ efforts were not in vain: many parents are now reconsidering sending their children back into school facilities until these aging HVAC systems are repaired. Meanwhile, our research suggests that many educators across the country are reconsidering their careers given the stress of this past year as they had to react to ever-changing school district directives, care for their students even more than usual, all while being blamed for the downsides of remote learning. This is especially true in less affluent and less white communities, where paltry spending and underinvestment in public education has had a profound effect on labor conditions for teachers and staff. The reopening of schools today is an opportunity to alleviate this potential crisis of care. Using the CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index and national student-to-teacher ratios, The Green New Deal for K-12 Schools directs resources to public schools and communities that federal, state, and local officials have overlooked for decades. Indeed, the $1.4 trillion dollars that the bill calls for over the next decade would use grants to fund schools in the bottom third of those rankings to retrofit their school facilities, with $250 billion earmarked to shore up the leaky teacher pipeline, improve local curriculum and program development, and to instill the needed mental and physical health professionals in our K-12 facilities. Each year, the country’s K-12 public schools educate over 50 million students. We cannot continue to teach them, and to force educators to labor in outdated facilities with unreliable systems that produce substandard economic, educational, and health outcomes. We cannot abandon schools to toxic building systems while the rest of the economy is greened. And we cannot continue to perpetuate inequality in our schools, with only affluent, and mostly white, communities benefiting from adequate investment. The Green New Deal for Public Schools is, we believe, the best way forward for our public schools, that transforms how we conceive, design, and use this critical neighborhood infrastructure of care for a healthy and green future. from https://ift.tt/377iGqH Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ In mid-June, U.S. maps tracking the spread of COVID-19 began showing a cluster of cases growing in the middle of the country. The epicenter lay in Missouri, particularly its more rural and remote areas. At the time, Missouri had something that other states didn’t: the Delta variant. To be fair, the highly transmissible Delta variant had at that point already crept into other states. But it had truly established itself in Missouri. Among the 25 states the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s website reported on at the time, Delta was showing up in less than 5% of swab samples in 15 of them. Colorado had the second-highest rate, at 12%. But Missouri was something else: nearly 30% of COVID-positive swabs were linked to the Delta variant. As of July 28, Missouri is reporting a seven-day average of new daily cases of 27.3 per 100,000 people, up from 5.4 during the first week of May, before Delta took hold there. In the weeks since, the Delta variant has become, or is on the brink of becoming, the dominant variant in every region of the continental U.S. The CDC is now reporting that Delta is so prevalent in the region encompassing Missouri, Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska that it’s now effectively the only variant, accounting for an estimated 96% cases. These states, and others with high levels of Delta, including Florida, Louisiana and others in the Gulf region, are now seeing overall cases spike. https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/wAEsU/5/ As the first U.S. state to suffer a major Delta outbreak, Missouri is a harbinger for other regions of the country that also have low vaccination rates and a mix of rural areas and small towns with a handful of mid-sized cities—which is to say, much of the country. The following charts demonstrate the strength and swiftness of the Delta strain in a state particularly vulnerable to an outbreak—and why our efforts to stay ahead of the virus aren’t working. Where Delta took holdMissouri has a relatively low vaccination rate, with 41% of the population fully dosed as of July 26, compared to about 50% nationwide and 67.3% in Vermont, the most-vaccinated state. But Missouri’s vaccinated population isn’t uniformly distributed across the state. Boone County, home to 180,000 people and the state’s largest university, has the highest vaccination rate among Missouri counties at 48%. Places with larger populations like Kansas City (39%), St. Charles County (45%) and St. Louis County (also 45%) help pull the overall state vaccination rate higher. But in smaller and generally more rural counties—that is to say, most of the state’s geographic area—vaccination rates drop off, leaving residents vulnerable. The below chart, which includes counties and cities with more than 20,000 people (collectively accounting for nine in 10 Missourians), shows that places with the highest COVID-19 case rates tend to be smaller counties with lower vaccination rates. https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/n0Ean/4/ What this chart doesn’t show is how much the Delta variant is to blame for Missouri’s high overall case rates. That’s because not all positive COVID-19 test swabs get sent to the lab for genomic sequencing—health agencies use only a random sample of swabs to estimate a variant’s prevalence. So there’s no way to know for sure who had the first Delta case in the state, or to do contact tracing specifically for Delta-infected people. It ‘hit the gound running’But there are other ways to track the Delta variant’s spread in Missouri and elsewhere. Marc Johnson, a professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at the University of Missouri, is a kind of COVID-19 detective, tracking where and when variants are popping up around the Show-Me State by analyzing samples from sewersheds across Missouri on a weekly basis. (Sewersheds are land areas that share a common wastewater system, and can be a useful epidemiological tool.) While Johnson can’t identify the first people who carried the Delta variant in Missouri, he knows roughly where they used the bathroom. Wastewater can also be a predictive tool, because the coronavirus can shed genetic material in feces days before an infected person shows symptoms—or meets up with friends at a bar. On May 10, Johnson’s team found the Delta variant in Missouri for the first time, in a sample taken from a sewershed encompassing the Ozark town of Branson. Branson’s population is only 11,000, but it’s a hotspot for concerts and other summertime amusements that draw more than 8 million visitors annually, according to the city’s Convention and Visitors Bureau. For Johnson, that meant one thing: the Delta variant was in Branson, but it wasn’t going to stay there. Read more: The 6 Factors That Will Determine the Severity of the COVID-19 Surge in the U.S. This Fall It’s just a theory at this point that Delta’s intrastate journey was fueled by people visiting and then leaving Branson. But the variant popped up in other sewersheds a week after his team first discovered it there, including up north in Linn County, where the virus “hit the ground running,” says Johnson. With a population of just 12,000, Linn has recorded 250 cases since the beginning of May, accounting for nearly a third of the total cases recorded there since the start of the pandemic 17 months ago. “It was on national news how bad it was there,” says Johnson. “I was looking at whether that was going to be the same in other places. And it generally was. Almost everywhere where the Delta appeared—there was sometimes a delay, sometimes it was three weeks later—but then, pretty much without exception, it did eventually lead to this big increase.” Given that the earliest upticks were happening in more rural and less vaccinated areas, Johnson initially thought that the virus was “picking and choosing” places to infect based on vaccination rates. But by early June, Delta appeared in more populated hubs like Springfield and Joplin, which have relatively higher vaccination rates—and local cases then ticked up. The chart below shows all of the places where Johnson’s team is testing. Although the individual lines are hard to track, the trend is clear: once Delta rolls into town, it spreads fast, even in some places with relatively higher vaccination rates. https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/fAajC/6/ For example, Boone County, Missouri’s most vaccinated, is now reporting an average of 32.6 new daily cases per 100,000 people, compared with just 2.2 on Memorial Day. The city of Joplin had knocked its average daily count down to 3.4 cases per 100,000 in late March, but hasn’t dropped below 40 in the last month. To Johnson, the spikes in even relatively highly vaccinated parts of Missouri are a reminder that, while the shots can reduce COVID-19’s severity, they can’t prevent 100% of infections. “People need to understand that the vaccines are extremely good at keeping people out of the hospital, at keeping people alive, but they’re not armor,” he says. “You can still be infected and can still infect other people. That doesn’t mean you can’t live your life, but if you don’t want to get sick, you can still use the easy precautions of wearing a mask if you’re in a crowded place, or avoiding indoor venues where people are screaming without masks on.” Indeed, the CDC’s newly revised mask mandate is based on thinking similar to Johnson’s. Vaccinations are not keeping upWhen COVID-19 vaccines started rolling out in the U.S. last winter, a pattern developed in Missouri, as it did elsewhere: each time the state expanded eligibility, eager people who were waiting to qualify would rush in. Then the numbers would drop off until eligibility expanded again. The last such bump was just after May 13, when people between the ages of 12 and 15 first became eligible. But in early June, the number of people getting their first shot had fallen to levels not seen since the earliest days of the rollout, when supply was limited and appointments were hard to come by. In part, that’s because the virus appeared to be under control, reducing people’s sense of urgency. Missouri was at that point reporting fewer than 300 new cases a day, giving the appearance that the virus was being snuffed out—even though Delta was already circulating. As the chart below shows, Missouri’s vaccinations are on the rise again. And this time, it’s not because of expanded eligibility—it’s because people who have been eligible for months yet remained on the fence are finally coming around, possibly out of fear of the Delta variant. https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/edXsy/6/ A closer look at the summertime uptick shows that people all over the state are now getting their first shots—including in places with lower vaccination rates and higher case rates. While that’s good news, it’s not entirely a reason to celebrate. Even given the recent uptick, the gap between Missouri’s most protected and least protected areas remains staggeringly wide; the counties with above-average case rates have lower initial vaccination rates than counties with below-average case rates had two months ago. https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/9GXci/2/ For now, Delta is hammering some pockets of the U.S., like Missouri and nearby states, far more so than others. But cases are rising across the country, suggesting we may be in the midst of yet another wave, especially in under-vaccinated areas. And when the virus is allowed to spread, it has an opportunity to mutate into new strains, which could prove even more capable of evading our vaccines. The Delta surge is also unlikely to die out before the school year, when millions of children—many of them unvaccinated—will be mingling together in classrooms. More and more employers, meanwhile, are demanding remote workers return to the office, though some are mandating vaccines or testing. With so many factors in flux, it’s impossible to predict how the U.S. Delta surge will play out. But if Missouri offers any lesson for the rest of the country, it’s that it’s far from time to let our guard down. from https://ift.tt/3laOIdC Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Im a Pandemic Dad Whos Been Covering COVID-19. I Dont Know How to Think About the Risk Anymore7/28/2021 I’ll say this for the pre-vaccine days: it was far easier to think about risk when the only sensible option—for those lucky enough for it to even be an option—was to hunker down, avoid as much contact with other people as possible, and wait out the storm. But a year of self-imposed isolation, fueled partially by fear and partially by a moral imperative to not infect others, has a way of scrambling your brain in a way that makes it hard to figure out what’s “safe” now that we’ve entered this strange, half-vaccinated liminal phase. After getting my shots this past spring, it took me weeks to feel anything resembling normal while spending time with family and friends indoors again. Now, with the Delta variant fueling a potential fourth wave while only half the country is vaccinated and many people are acting as if the pandemic is over, it’s harder than ever to gauge the risk to myself and, more importantly, my nearly two-year-old son. It would help if you and I could think this through together. I, a 32-year-old vaccinated man with no relevant pre-existing conditions, am very safe from developing severe COVID-19. Yes, breakthrough cases happen—they were always going to happen; the vaccines were judged on their ability to prevent serious disease, not infection—but they are rare, and serious cases among the inoculated are rarer still. The result: this has become, as U.S. President Joe Biden recently put it, a “pandemic of the unvaccinated;” nearly all the latest deaths are among those who didn’t get their shots. The logical side of my brain knows all this, but the anxiety-driven corners of it also know that breakthrough cases still happen, and there’s a non-zero chance I could be one of those cases, and wind up very sick, or die, or end up with inexplicable Long COVID symptoms that plague me for months, years, or the rest of my life, making it harder to be the father I want to be. My answer to all this is to keep avoiding large indoor crowds, to steer clear of anyone I know to be unvaccinated, and to start wearing my mask at the grocery store again, CDC guidance otherwise be damned. I’ve gotten used to the hermit life—a little too used to it, probably—and another few months of laying low won’t kill me. Judging the risk to my son, unfortunately, is far harder. Like all Americans under 12, he remains unvaccinated, though I would bring him in for the shot in a heartbeat given the chance. Children mostly do not get seriously sick from COVID-19; only about 350 have died of the virus in the U.S. so far, per the American Academy of Pediatrics, a vanishingly small case fatality rate of 0.01%. But, again, it does happen, and every headline I see about an eight-, six-, or three-year-old who died from a serious case makes me want to take my son, climb into a doomsday bunker and return only when it’s time for his bar mitzvah. That childhood COVID-19 fatalities are skyrocketing in Indonesia is a particularly harrowing data point, though many children there, and in other low-income parts of the world, are likely at higher risk because, tragically, they suffer from poor access to health care, malnutrition, and other factors that make them more vulnerable to disease in general. In talking with other parents with kids around my son’s age, it’s become clear that to become a first-time parent in the pandemic is a unique experience, and one that warps how you think about parenting and risk tolerance, possibly forever. My purely anecdotal findings suggest that parents of slightly older kids—kids who became actualized human beings with likes, dislikes and aptitudes well before COVID-19 sent everything sideways—are generally a little more willing to accept the (again, very low) risk the virus poses to their children; they have already learned the inevitable lesson that you can’t protect your kids from everything scary forever. My fellow pandemic first-time parents, meanwhile, are—again, speaking generally—freaked right the hell out. I suspect that becoming a parent always changes how you think about risk, both regarding yourself and the tiny blob you’ve suddenly been tasked with caring for—regardless of the historical and geographical context. But there is probably something unique about entering parenthood at a moment when “risk tolerance” became the defining question of human existence. My wife and I have, for now, only slightly recalibrated how we think about the risk our son now faces. Earlier this summer, when cases were low and Delta wasn’t a concern in the U.S., we took him to the zoo; we probably wouldn’t do that now. He’s still in day care, something I wrestle with every day. He clearly loves “school,” as we call it, and he’s bringing home new skills (he recently started, out of nowhere, walking backwards) and words almost every day, marking significant milestones in his physical and mental development. But exposure to COVID-19 in that environment seems inevitable, despite the efforts his day care center is making to keep the kids safe, and it tears me up inside that there’s a potential future in which he gets very sick because mom and dad needed to work in order to feed, clothe, and shelter him—and, ironically enough, pay for daycare. I have more or less accepted that the draw-dropping transmissibility of the Delta variant means that I, my son and my wife will all probably be exposed at some point or another, no matter the effort we make to avoid it. When and if that happens, I have to trust that the vaccines will protect my wife and I, while my son will fend it off by virtue of his age. I’m not throwing caution totally to the wind—we’re not taking him to crowded indoor spaces like museums, and I’m avoiding such spaces myself. But small visits with vaccinated family members are very much on the table—indeed, I’m currently writing this from my in-laws’ basement; my son is upstairs with Nana and Opa. Our thinking may change if the situation gets dramatically worse, or if new data suggest a greater risk to kids (hopefully, the CDC’s revised masking guidance will make life safer for unvaccinated children). But this virus has already taken too much from him, and it wouldn’t be fair to once again totally isolate him from his loved ones, no matter how badly I just want to protect him at all costs. We are, after all, doing other ostensibly dangerous stuff with him, like driving, an activity that in 2018 resulted in the deaths of 636 children in the U.S., per the CDC, about double the number known to have died of COVID-19 so far. I just hope that’s the right decision. from https://ift.tt/3BMFTMS Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Simone Biles Olympic Team Final Withdrawal Could Help Athletes Put Their Mental Health First7/27/2021 When Simone Biles strode into Ariake Gymnastics Center for the women’s gymnastics team competition on July 27, the expression on her face said it all. Normally all smiles and easy-going, Biles appeared sternly serious and maybe even troubled. That expression only deepened after she landed her vault in the first round. Intending to do a two and a half twisting vault, Biles lost her bearings in midair and only managed one and a half twists. The low difficulty and execution scores only sealed the deal. “That score unfortunately would go up like that for the team, and I felt I robbed them of a couple of tenths when they could have been higher in the rankings,” she said. “I was definitely not my best work.” Biles then talked to the team trainer and her coach, Cecile Landi, and told them the team would have to go on without her. “I was not going to cost the team a medal,” she said. “I needed to call it. They said, if Simone says this, we need to take it seriously.” “Calling it” meant withdrawing from the team final. As millions of viewers around the world, and gaggle of reporters in the arena were left wondering—was she injured? Was she feeling sick? What many didn’t really consider—or considered and dismissed quickly—was that Biles simply wasn’t feeling mentally fit to compete. Biles’ decision comes as athletes, particularly since Michael Phelps revealed his struggle with depression, have come forward about their experiences with anxiety, depression and other mental health concerns. Just a little over a month ago, Naomi Osaka pulled out of the French Open after citing the hurtful effect of press conferences on her mental health, and her struggles with depression. And this year, for the first time at this Olympics, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) sent a group of mental health professionals for the first time to accompany the team in Tokyo. The greatest gymnast of all time prioritizing her mental health on the biggest stage in sports—the Olympic Games themselves—could mark a new era of mental health awareness among athletes. Read more: How Olympians Are Fighting to Put Athletes’ Mental Health First There were hints that the pressure was building for Biles, who has been the face of these troubled Olympics, and its potential savior as the leader of Team USA who was expected to repeat gold in the team event and defend her all-around title. During the Olympic Trials in June, the normally precise and consistent Biles made a string of uncharacteristic errors on the second day of competition, which appeared to have spilled over to the qualification round in Tokyo, which determines which eight teams will move on to the team event, and which athletes will compete in the all-around competition and the event finals. Biles stepped far out of bounds during the floor routine and during vault. Afterward, she wrote on social media that “I truly feel do feel like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders at times. I know I brush it off and make it seem like pressure doesn’t affect me but damn sometimes it’s hard hhahaha! The Olympics is [sic] no joke!” Biles has worked with a therapist since she came forward in 2018 as a survivor of sexual abuse by former national gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar. Before the Tokyo Olympics, she said that the postponement of the Games also weighed heavily on her, as it meant not only another year of training, but also another year of working with USA Gymnastics, which she and her fellow survivors feel failed to protect them and take accountability for the Nassar scandal. The process for competing at these Olympics in particular also added an unprecedented level of complexity, confusion and anxiety. Along with the stress of performing under the expectations of the world, athletes are also competing in Tokyo under the shadow of COVID-19, which means daily testing, restricted movements and constant reminders of an invisible enemy that could strike at any time and wipe away years of training by eliminating you from competing. Days after arriving in Japan, an alternate on the women’s gymnastics team tested positive, and she and a close contact are in isolation. While Biles didn’t mention the experience, it likely shook the entire team since they shared training facilities, used the same equipment, and lived in the same “bubble.” Read more: Naomi Osaka: ‘It’s O.K. to Not Be O.K.’ Biles alluded to the “long year” when noting the variables that went into her decision to withdraw. But ultimately, she took the proactive step of recognizing, and addressing a concern before it spiraled out of control. Biles said she had never felt as unsettled about a competition as she did before the team final, and earlier in the day was shaking and unable to nap like she normally does before a big meet. Losing her bearings in a vault she has performed hundreds, if not thousands of times, was a red flag for her. And Biles knows better than anyone that her mind and body simply weren’t in sync. “I felt the girls needed to do the rest of the competition without me,” she said. “I needed to let the girls do it and focus on myself.” For the remainder of the event, Biles was team’s lead cheerleader, clapping and jumping up and down with every successful routine. She knew it was the right decision for her, but she also knew it came at a price—her teammates had to navigate the last-second lineup changes. “It was definitely something unexpected,” said Chiles, who trains with Biles in Spring, Texas, and is close friends with her. “We were emotional when we found out that she wasn’t going to continue. We went out there and did what we had to do, and I’m very proud we were able to do that. At the end of the day, this medal is definitely for her. Because if it wasn’t for her, we wouldn’t be where we are right now. We wouldn’t be Olympic silver medalists.” Recognizing when you’re mentally not in the right state to compete is a key part of athletes being more aware of not just their body but their mind as well. And having a support team of coaches and teammates who recognize the importance of that is critical to ensuring that small mental struggles don’t balloon into larger ones that can be more debilitating. Biles has said Landi and her husband Laurent Landi have been supportive of understanding when she needs mental breaks and how to manage her stress; Cecile spoke to officials to let them know of Biles’ decision to withdraw. While many organizations like the USOPC have provided mental health resources for athletes in the past, the vast majority of that has been in the form of help with improving their performance on the field. This year, the USOPC hired a director of mental health, Jessica Bartley, to more specifically address mental well being, and she and her team plan to assess all athletes on mental health issues on a regular basis so they can see red flags when they arise and manage them quickly and appropriately. The International Olympic Committee also created a mental health playbook that it made available to athletes and their support staff for the first time during these Games, and also plans to create a global registry of culturally relevant mental health professionals that any athlete can turn to. Many athletes at this elite level like Biles already work with mental health professionals, but the USOPC is also building a registry of psychologists and psychiatrists to which they can refer athletes if they do need help in connecting with the right professionals. For Biles, the journey doesn’t end here. Critics used to athletes sacrificing their well-being for a medal may say she put the team in jeopardy by deciding to withdraw at the last minute. Or that she was only protecting herself from embarrassment or ridicule if she didn’t perform to the high standards that she, and everyone else, expect of her. Or that she is “saving” herself for the all-around competition and the glory that comes with that title. And she did put herself first, but for all the right reasons. That’s the lesson that not just elite athletes, but everyone, should learn from Biles’ choice, as shocking as it was. But that’s something that Biles, who has punched through all kinds of barriers with the physical feats she’s achieved, is now likely to do for biases and stigma against mental health issues as well. Read more about the Tokyo Olympics:
from https://ift.tt/3BYeyaK Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ The nation’s top health agency is expected to backpedal Tuesday on its masking guidelines and recommend that even vaccinated people wear masks indoors in parts of the U.S. where the coronavirus is surging, according to a federal official. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to release the data. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was expected to make an announcement later Tuesday. For much of the pandemic, the CDC advised Americans to wear masks outdoors if they were within 6 feet of one another. Then in April, as vaccination rates rose sharply, the agency eased its guidelines on the wearing of masks outdoors, saying that fully vaccinated Americans no longer needed to cover their faces unless they were in a big crowd of strangers. In May, the CDC further eased its guidance for fully vaccinated people, allowing them to stop wearing masks outdoors in crowds and in most indoor settings. The guidance still called for wearing masks in crowded indoor settings, like buses, planes, hospitals, prisons and homeless shelters, but it cleared the way for reopening workplaces and other venues. Subsequent CDC guidance said fully vaccinated people no longer needed to wear masks at summer camps or at schools, either. For months COVID cases, deaths and hospitalizations were falling steadily, but those trends began to change at the beginning of the summer as a mutated and more transmissible version of the coronavirus, the delta variant, began to spread widely, especially in areas with lower vaccination rates. In recent weeks, a growing number of cities and towns have restored indoor masking rules. St. Louis, Savannah, Georgia, and Provincetown, Massachusetts, are among the places that reimposed mask mandates this month. from https://ift.tt/3j9JgVR Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ There was probably little doubt that when the U.S. women’s gymnastics team walked into the arena at the Tokyo Olympics for the team event, their leotards would embody some red, white and blue theme. And the women did not disappoint. Striding on to the mats, the four-woman team event squad resembled patriotic superheroes in their red-sleeved leotards with a white band across the chest and blue bottom. And that was the idea. Jeanne Diaz, senior designer and director of custom at GK Elite, the leotard manufacturer that for the first time made the women’s Olympic uniforms, says the theme for the leotards was Modern Warrior. “These strong…women come onto the mat like it’s their battlefield,” says Diaz. “They are ready to go, ready to fight for these gold medals and I wanted the apparel to highlight the strength of these athletes.” Altogether, GK Elite designed eight leotards for the six-member women’s team to wear during the five days of competition. As part of the Modern Warrior theme, the designs also reflected three additional concepts—patriotism, dynasty and fearlessness. The team leotard was meant to evoke the feeling of patriotism that comes from wrapping the American flag around the athletes, and is adorned with more than 7,600 Swarovski crystals scattered across the front, back and along the sleeves. “Under the arena lights these leotards are going to really light up,” says Diaz. “To the point where it will look like there’s a battery pack hidden somewhere.” The team chose to wear another patriotism-inspired leotard during the qualification round, a navy leotard with laser-cut red stars splashed over the entire body and sleeves. This design “is supposed to represent fireworks, the Fourth of July and a whole smorgasbord of Americana.” Read More: The U.S. Women’s Gymnastics Team Is Still the Favorite in Tokyo. But There’s Little Room for Error Over the remainder of the competition, the U.S. women’s team will reveal the other designs that they each received in six garment bags the weekend after Olympic Trials when they learned they had earned a place on the team. Each received 20 leotards, including the eight competition ones and 12 additional ones for training. Among the uniforms you’ll see—the dynasty-inspired leotards that pay homage to the long history of U.S. Olympic champion gymnasts, from the 1996 Magnificent Seven team that won the U.S.’ first team gold, to Aly Raisman who earned two back-to-back team golds and a silver in the all-around. The uniform inspired by the 1996 team replicates the iconic red and white stripes that were prominent in that leotard, but this time on shoulders, while the deep v-shape of the front symbolizes a medal hung around the neck. The designs representing fearlessness evoke armor, with strong lines and intricate patterns. After trying on one of these designs for the first time, Jordan Chiles admitting to feeling like a superhero. The uniforms are much more than just apparel. While Biles did not have direct input into the Olympic leotards, she is sponsored by GK Elite and has used her leotards as a way of expressing herself over the past few years. After revealing that she is a survivor of sexual abuse by USA Gymnastics’ team doctor Larry Nassar, Biles asked GK to design a teal-colored leotard, to express her solidarity with fellow survivors s the only remaining survivor still competing. Biles wanted to remind USA Gymnastics that the survivors are still demanding accountability and transparency when it comes to the organization’s role in not protecting its athletes while Nassar was allowed to continue working with gymnasts years after the first complaint of abuse was filed. In 2019, Biles also approached the company to recognize her dominance in the sport—with 30 Olympic and world championship medals, she’s the most decorated American gymnast of all time, and, many gymnastics analysts agree, the greatest of all time. Biles thought adding a goat icon to her training leotards would be a nice touch, and worked with Diaz’s team to come up with just the right goat symbol to represent her GOAT status. At the U.S. National Championships and Olympic Trials in 2021, Biles’ leotards included a small icon of a goat’s head outlined in rhinestones. Read more about the Tokyo Olympics:
from https://ift.tt/2WpAo6G Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Can Employer Mandates Get More Americans Vaccinated? New York and California Are Finding Out7/26/2021 What to do about the U.S. vaccine uptake rate? Even with what appears to be a slight increase as people try to protect themselves against the more transmissible Delta variant now spreading through many parts of the country, only a pitiful 0.1% or so of Americans are currently getting their first dose every day. That’s a far cry from the urgent scramble that Delta demands, especially given that only about half the country is fully vaccinated—and some places, like Louisiana (36.6%) and Arkansas (36%), are lagging woefully behind. So far, the U.S. vaccination drive has largely relied on carrots—the idea has been to sell people on the notion that, when you’re vaccinated, you can more safely see loved ones, go out to eat, and so on. But it’s become clear that about half of Americans don’t feel they need to be vaccinated to enjoy those things. When the nationwide COVID-19 case numbers were ultra-low earlier this summer, that might have been a relatively low-risk choice, since when there’s little virus circulating in a given area, unvaccinated people can essentially operate like free riders, benefitting from the community protection conferred by those who got their shots. But now, as the Delta variant fuels what could become a fourth wave, that free-riding behavior becomes a lot more dangerous, to the vaccinated and unvaccinated alike. It’s time, then, to switch to the sticks—namely, vaccine mandates. Mandates are working wonders in France, where vaccination appointments skyrocketed after President Emmanuel Macron announced earlier this month that only vaccinated people (or those with proof of a recent negative test) would be allowed to visit restaurants, cafes and more. At least some of those recently getting their shots probably did so only begrudgingly, and France has been rocked by protests since the mandate was announced—but all that really matters is that the country’s uptake rate is increasing at a critical moment. It’s hard to imagine a nationwide vaccine mandate flying in the States, where we’ve never even come to a national consensus on things as simple as wearing a mask. But private and public employers largely can require workers to be vaccinated to come back into the office—and some already are. Just today, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that all city workers must either get their shots by mid-September, or be tested for the virus weekly. That news comes a few days after Hizzoner urged private employers in the city to mandate the shots as well, framing them up as a pathway to freedom rather than an intrusive government requirement. “If people want freedom, if people want jobs, if people want to live again, we have got to get more people vaccinated and obviously, it’s time for whatever mandates we can achieve,” de Blasio told WNYC’s Brian Lehrer last Friday. (California announced similar rules for state employees and some health care workers today, while the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs will likewise require many of its doctors, nurses and more to be inoculated.) Employer-enforced vaccine mandates will no doubt prove controversial, but they are generally legal—last month, a federal judge threw out a workers’ lawsuit over a Houston hospital’s mandate, finding that such a requirement is allowed under Texas law. If employer vaccine mandates become the norm, there will no doubt be some who protest—but if such requirements can do anything to boost our tepid uptake rates and create safer workplaces, they will be worthwhile. from https://ift.tt/3kUSJCR Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ The 6 Factors That Will Determine the Severity of the COVID-19 Surge in the U.S. This Fall7/26/2021 Here we go again. The United States is now experiencing a fourth wave of COVID-19, with very rapidly rising infections. The surge in new daily cases is driven by the Delta variant, which makes up 83% of sequenced samples in the U.S. and which is estimated to be twice as transmissible as the original strain. One of the reasons that Delta spreads more easily is that a person infected with this variant has a viral load 1,000 times higher than someone infected with the original version of SARS-CoV-2. Hospitalizations and deaths are also rising, though more slowly than cases, reflecting the fact that 49% of all Americans are fully vaccinated. Even with Delta, COVID-19 vaccines are extremely effective at preventing severe illness and death. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical advisor on COVID-19, estimates that over 99% of people dying in the U.S. from the illness are unvaccinated. But the levels of vaccination are not high enough in some areas to prevent new surges among those who are not inoculated. And with growing infections among the unvaccinated, some vaccinated people are not surprisingly getting breakthrough infections because no vaccines are 100% effective. So, what happens next? How is the pandemic likely to play out into the fall and winter? Here are six factors that are likely to drive the shape of the pandemic in the coming months. First, local vaccination rates will continue to be the most important factor in determining what will happenThe U.S. now has a patchwork pandemic, in which communities with low vaccination rates are likeliest to see surges in infection. One recent analysis found that 463 U.S. counties now have high rates of new infection—at least 100 new cases per 100,000 residents in the past week, which is over five times the overall U.S. rate. In 80% of these counties, less than 40% of residents are fully vaccinated. The five states with the lowest rates of full vaccination—Alabama (34%), Arkansas (35%), Louisiana (36%), Mississippi (34%), and Wyoming (36%)—are all experiencing major surges. In these five states, while 4 out of 5 people aged over 65 have had at least one shot, the vaccination rate is much lower in the 18-65 age group, and lower still in adolescents (those aged 12-17). Few adolescents in these states have had at least one dose: just 24% in Arkansas, 16% in Alabama, 17% in Louisiana, 15% in Mississippi, and 19% in Wyoming. This leaves young people highly vulnerable to the fast-spreading Delta variant. Compare these numbers with a highly vaccinated state like Vermont, where almost 100% of those aged over 65 and 68% of those aged 12-17 have had at least one dose—and cases and hospitalizations are less than 3 and 1 per 100, 000, respectively. It is also clear that the uptake of vaccines has slowed down and in some places almost stagnated, particularly in the southern states. The U.S. went from administering more than 3 million doses a day in mid-April to only around 500,000 doses a day right now. If you live in a poorly vaccinated community—and especially if vaccination rates are stagnant or barely rising—your community is at an elevated risk of a surge. Data from this week suggest that in some states affected by surges the rate of vaccinations is increasing, but it is unclear if this trend will continue. In highly vaccinated states, an influx of unvaccinated visitors can also create a potential set up for local outbreaks. We saw this in Provincetown, Mass., where a super-spreader event presumed to be from a large influx of unvaccinated visitors led to a major cluster (430 confirmed cases as of July 23, 2021). Of the Massachusetts residents affected in this outbreak, 69% reported that they were fully vaccinated. And it would have been much worse had the vaccination levels of the Provincetown community not been so high. But the secondary impact of these types of clusters on pockets of unvaccinated children and on high risk or immunocompromised adults will in part depend on the amount of transmission from vaccinated people who have breakthrough infections. Moving forward, we think a few policy and social aspects will have a huge impact on whether vaccination rates increase in this country—in particular, whether there is a concerted effort to depoliticize vaccines (political affiliation appears to be driving differences in vaccination uptake) and whether more businesses and schools start to require vaccinations for participation and employment. Second, whether public health measures are reinstated will affect how long those surges continueIn communities facing a surge related to the Delta variant, the right public health response is to restore control measures such as community-wide indoor mask mandates, social distancing rules, scaling up test and trace, and intensifying workplace and school mitigations (including improved ventilation) until vaccination rates increase. Los Angeles county, for example, recently reinstated an indoor mask mandate for everyone, regardless of vaccination status, to help curb its rapid spread of the Delta variant. Similarly, last week San Francisco Bay Area health officials urged residents of seven counties and the city of Berkeley to resume wearing masks indoors. Sound pandemic management requires tailoring measures to the local situation on the ground. he U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) placed a significant roadblock to such tailored management when it changed its mask guidance in May, saying vaccinated people no longer need to wear masks indoors—this guidance had no nuance to account for community transmission levels or outbreak status. The guidance basically gave local governments and businesses the cover to drop mask mandates and indoor limits for both vaccinated and unvaccinated, leading both to change their behavior and putting other unvaccinated people, including children under 12, at risk. We agree with former Surgeon General Jerome Adams when he says, “the CDC urgently needs to revise its guidance to vaccinate and mask in places where cases are rising yet vaccination rates remain low.” CDC should consider releasing specific metrics for on-ramping and off-ramping public health measures that local and state public health bodies can take into consideration. Such guidance would lead to less confusion and build more public trust. Many schools are reopening in five weeks, and we think there is an urgency for the CDC to provide more specific guidance on masks, testing, and other mitigations against COVID-19 in schools. The American Academy of Pediatrics now recommends that all students over 2 years old, and all teachers and staff, wear masks, regardless of whether they have been vaccinated against COVID-19—that could help, though the need for masking should be tailored to local community transmission levels. University and college campuses will also need to grapple with the challenges that Delta brings. A new study by Yale University researchers David Paltiel and Jason Schwartz found that colleges where over 90% of all students, faculty and staff are fully vaccinated can safely return to normalcy, but campuses below this vaccine coverage may need measures such as distancing and frequent testing of the unvaccinated. Third, the local pattern of COVID-19 could be influenced by how much protection is provided by past infection.Research suggests that if you have had COVID-19, you acquire some degree of immunity. In theory this might mean that if your community has low vaccination rates but a high proportion of people were previously infected, the chances of a surge from the Delta variant are lower. But we need to be careful about jumping to any conclusions. The science suggests that the immunity from past infection may be partial and short term, which is why the World Health Organization, CDC, and other public health agencies recommend that people who have been infected by SARS-CoV-2 still get vaccinated. Additionally, a new analysis from Public Health England found that reinfection is more likely with the Delta variant compared to the Alpha variant—further argument for even those who have had and recovered from COVID-19 to get vaccinated. A fourth factor is whether vulnerable Americans will need booster shots and if some decrease in immunity will lead to seasonal increases in cases, similar to the way influenza rates rise every winterLast week, Israel’s health ministry released data raising the possibility that the protection that the Pfizer vaccine provides against infection may wane over time. We need to be very cautious about the data: they are preliminary and based on small numbers, and other nations have not seen a similar waning. There are also supportive data based on lab studies that say that for most people, vaccine-induced immunity may last years (at least against the current variants), although such immunity may wane for those who are more advanced in age or have weakened immune systems. After previously ruling out the need for boosters, the Biden Administration has now signaled that it is looking into recommending a booster (a third shot of either the Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna vaccine) for people 65 and older or those with weakened immune systems. Experts are also considering whether those who received the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine should get a booster shot of Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna. At a recent senate hearing, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said that her agency is following large cohorts of vaccinated residents in nursing homes as well as cohorts of vaccinated frontline health workers with weekly testing to understand how efficacy against vaccines may be changing over time. Such data will likely help determine whether and when boosters are needed. Some infectious disease experts, such as the German virologist Christian Drosten, believe that COVID-19 could become a “seasonal epidemic,” with an annual rise in cases in the winter. If it turns out that immunity from the vaccine does decline over time among the elderly and immune compromised and that COVID-19 is seasonal, this combination would provide a strong case for giving these vulnerable people boosters ahead of winter. Fifth, we don’t know exactly how common it is for vaccinated people to become infected and transmit SARS-CoV-2 to others, though so far it appears to be relatively uncommonThe good news is that all the authorized vaccines greatly reduce your chances of becoming infected (e.g. the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines reduce this risk by 91%)—and reduce the risk of becoming severely ill, hospitalized, or dying from COVID-19 at an even higher rate. But no vaccine is 100% effective. So we would still expect a small proportion of fully vaccinated people to get infected and sometimes transmit the virus to others. Research is underway to try and determine just how common it is for vaccinated people to transmit SARS-CoV-2 to others and how the Delta variant impacts this risk, and the results will have a bearing on the next phase of the pandemic. Sixth, another new variant of concern could ariseAll viruses change (mutate) over time, and such mutations are more likely when a virus is circulating widely. Most mutations don’t change the ability of the virus to cause infections and disease, but some canThat means that, as long as SARS-CoV-2 is spreading, there’s a possibility that new variants of concern could arise, which could again change the trajectory of the pandemic. The good news is that COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective against all known variants. Scientists are also confident that if a new variant arises that evades the protection of current vaccines, vaccine manufacturers will be able to quickly reformulate and test vaccines against these new variants. But currently, half of America and most parts of the rest of the world are not vaccinated; in Africa, for example, just 2% of people have received at least one dose of the vaccine. Globally, cases and deaths have gone up by 25% over the last two weeks and these continued surges are giving the virus ample opportunity to evolve. As new variants evolve, it won’t be our ability to create reformulated vaccines that will limit us. Instead, the main hurdle will be to turn those new vaccines into vaccinations here in the U.S. and worldwide. During the 1918 influenza pandemic, one third of the world’s population was infected and society was vulnerable to consecutive waves with minimal number of tools to combat them. In 2021, we have extremely powerful vaccines in addition to tried and true non-pharmaceutical measures such as masks that can help us shape our destinies to a greater measure than was possible a century ago. But the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed that even with these tools, there are significant social and political challenges that are delaying our recovery.
from https://ift.tt/2WeeVxi Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Clear Creek Community Church took COVID-19 seriously from the beginning. The interdenominational church, which has five locations in and around Texas’ Galveston County, suspended in-person services through most of spring 2020, and required attendees to wear masks until this past May. When the church announced a five-day summer ministry camp for kids in grades 6 to 12 for this June, it also shared a set of protocols the camp would enforce to curb the spread of the virus: More hand-washing stations were to be installed. Spray hand sanitizers would be given to every group. Attendees would be encouraged to keep six feet apart from each other, and mask up when that wouldn’t be possible. But those steps didn’t stop COVID-19. As of July 21, 157 cases in Galveston County have been tied to an outbreak at the camp, including, as of July 16, about 30 among campers’ family members who were infected after the kids returned home. The majority of these cases are linked to the more transmissible Delta variant, according to Dr. Philip Keiser, the Galveston County local health authority. Similar outbreaks among this summer’s campers have been reported in Missouri, Ohio and New York. Keiser says that previous outbreaks among kids haven’t seemed to directly fuel surges among other groups, but they can be a sign of what’s happening in the broader community—before summer recess began, he came to view schoolkids as “canaries in the coal mine.” “If I saw schoolkid numbers going up, I knew a few days later that there would be a lot higher rates among the general population,” he says. It’s no coincidence, he adds, that the number of Galveston County’s new daily infections has risen in recent days; as of July 22, Galveston’s 7-day rolling average of daily new cases was 53.6, a 28% increase over two weeks. These and similar camp-driven outbreaks across the country has some public health experts, including Keiser, worrying that it’s a sign of things to come when the school year starts this fall. The pandemic is picking up steam in the U.S again, fueled by the spread of the Delta variant and the relaxation of masking and social distancing ordinances. Children can transmit the virus to older, more vulnerable people, which may be more dangerous given the spread of Delta. Additionally, while children remain far less likely to get severely ill from COVID-19 or to show symptoms at all, those under 12 are still ineligible for vaccination, leaving them vulnerable—and kids do get sick and sometimes die from the disease, if rarely so. Even kids who are eligible for the shots are mostly unvaccinated; just 35.6% of those 12-15 and 47.1% of those 16-17 across the U.S. have received at least one dose as of July 14, compared to 68.6% of those over 18, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data. Yet for now, schools across the country are largely set to reopen as normal this August and September. In guidance issued July 9, the CDC, citing the imperative for getting kids back in the classroom, said schools should reopen even if they can’t follow all of the agency’s risk-mitigation advice, though it urged unvaccinated students and teachers to mask up. Disruptions to in-person schooling during the pandemic have had dire consequences for many students, and have fueled a drive to get them back in classrooms; studies have documented learning loss, especially among students of color, and a loss of access to social services like hot meals that keep many kids from going hungry. U.S. Public Health Service Captain Erin Sauber-Schatz, who led the task force that wrote the CDC’s camp and school guidance, says the key to containing the spread of COVID-19 in school settings is layering on different prevention strategies like masking, distancing and testing, actually enforcing them, and not removing every safety strategy at once. “We really are at a point where we’re confident that we know that prevention strategies—when layered and used with fidelity—that they work,” Sauber-Schatz says. However, many schools may find it difficult or impossible to implement any or all of that advice. Moreover, some states, including Texas, are actively ignoring that advice—last month, Texas governor Greg Abbott barred public schools from requiring students to wear masks. With the more transmissible Delta variant on the rise and leaders like Abbott rejecting CDC guidance, some public health experts believe school-related spikes are inevitable come fall. “I think we’re gonna see a wave of outbreaks within schools,” says Dr. Michael Chang, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the McGovern Medical School at the University of Texas. “And then we’re going to have to have a discussion about what to do next.” Although the Galveston County camp outbreak is still under investigation, Keiser says that interviews with people who were present at the camp, as well as material on the camp’s website, revealed that campers were not required to be tested, social distancing was not strictly enforced and few kids wore masks (“Some of the mothers were rather perturbed about that once they found out,” Keiser said). Clear Creek Community Church did not respond to a request for comment. Tejas Camp and Retreat, the organization that runs the camp facility, wrote to TIME, “Like many camps in Texas, we are adhering to the state guidelines and working alongside our church partners to minimize the risk of any illness in the camp environment. Tejas has also been in contact with local officials and the local emergency management office, but no action has been required. Tejas continues to monitor its staff’s health and will continue to employ testing and safety procedures consistent with those set forth by the state and CDC recommendations.” Another likely problem, says Keiser, was the low vaccination rate among Galveston County children. While more than half of all Galveston County residents over 12 are fully vaccinated, Keiser says that only about a quarter of children 12 to 18 are vaccinated. Although Keiser says it’s unclear how many kids at the camp were vaccinated, the outbreak was probably a result of “a partially vaccinated group of people all getting together and everyone acting … like they were all vaccinated,” he says. ” “And with that, it’s not surprising that we see a lot of spread.” The Texas camp outbreak could have been much worse. Galveston County Health District has yet to report anyone being hospitalized in connection to the camp outbreak, which may be further evidence that the coronavirus is not as dangerous for the young, and that the vaccine may be protecting some people from severe illness. However, Yvonne Maldonado, a professor of epidemiology, population health and pediatrics at Stanford University, warns that COVID-19 can still have terrible consequences for children, especially as a growing number are infected. “Right now, COVID is the tenth most common cause of death in children under 18,” Maldonado says. “The reason I bring it up is, people think the number of deaths is small, relative to [adults]. But children generally aren’t supposed to be dying. They’re healthier.” This means that parents may need to do a different kind of back-to-school preparation this year. Sauber-Schatz says that if COVID-19 is spreading rapidly in a given community, parents there should be more vigilant during the final weeks of summer to prevent their kids from bringing the virus into schools. “They really need to be careful in what they’re doing, where they’re going, in the few weeks before school starts, just to make sure that they’re preventing any COVID-19 cases from coming into the school environment right off the bat,” she says. “We really want children to get back into the classroom.” from https://ift.tt/3zD4hhY Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ |
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