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Test to Treat: pharmacists say Biden’s major new Covid initiative won’t work
Test to Treat: pharmacists say Biden’s major new Covid initiative won’t workProgram to facilitate access to antivirals will have a limited impact because pharmacists are restricted from prescribing the pills A major new Biden administration initiative to facilitate access to Covid-19 antivirals will have a limited impact and fail to mitigate certain health inequities, major pharmacist groups argue, because pharmacists are restricted from prescribing the pills.Announced in Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, the “Test to Treat” program is meant to address the maddening difficulty Americans have had in accessing Covid-19 treatments. The administration will channel newly increasing stocks of antiviral pills to major retail pharmacies that have in-house clinics, providing one-stop testing and antivirals access.The program, which the administration aims to provide for free (in the face of fierce Republican opposition to new Covid-19 spending), is also slated to roll out in Veterans Affairs clinics, community health centers and long-term care facilities.Major participants include some 250 Walgreens stores, 225 Kroger Little Clinics and 1,200 CVS MinuteClinics. CVS clinics in particular are staffed by nurse practitioners and physician assistants, authorized by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to prescribe the two currently available Covid antivirals, Pfizer’s Paxlovid and Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics’ molnupiravir.In a 9 March letter to Biden calling for pharmacists to be granted authority to prescribe these pills, 14 organizations representing pharmacies and pharmacists insisted Test to Treat’s impact will be compromised by the fact that such in-house clinics are relatively limited in number and largely in urban areas.“Unfortunately, rural and underserved communities are less likely to benefit from your test to treat approach because of this limitation,” the letter states.According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 90% of Americans live within five miles of one of approximately 60,000 pharmacies.“The FDA is still blocking us from leveraging the most accessible healthcare provider out there to make sure that these patients can get these drugs easily,” said Michael Ganio, a Columbus, Ohio pharmacist, senior director of pharmacy practice and quality at the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, which is a signatory of the letter to Biden.“As far as expanding access,” said Ganio, Test to Treat is “not doing a lot”.The need for Covid-19 antivirals is likely to be greater in rural areas, at least on a per-capita basis. A recent CDC study found that through January, 58.5% of people aged five and older in rural counties had received at least one coronavirus vaccination shot, compared with 75.4% in urban counties.Paxlovid and molnupiravir are authorized for individuals at high risk of severe Covid-19, in particular unvaccinated people with certain medical conditions. Paxlovid was 88% effective at preventing hospitalization and death in its clinical trial. Molnupiravir proved just 30% effective. The FDA only authorizes its use when other treatments are unavailable or aren’t advised for an individual.Sufficient supply of Paxlovid will be key to Test to Treat. Since late December, the federal government has delivered a woefully inadequate 700,000 Paxlovid courses to states, the biweekly allotment increasing from 100,000 in January to 175,000 in March.The administration has claimed it will distribute 1m courses in March and 2.5m in April. A Pfizer representative would only state that the company plans to deliver a cumulative 10m courses by the end of June. The administration has agreed to purchase 20m courses, slated to be delivered by the end of September.In September 2021, the US Department of Health and Human Services amended a federal public health emergency law, the Prep Act, to grant licensed pharmacists the authority “to order and administer select Covid-19 therapeutics” – which at the time meant monoclonal antibodies and vaccines.But when the FDA authorized Paxlovid and molnupiravir in December, it explicitly restricted pharmacists from prescribing them.Authors of the letter to Biden say they submitted data to the FDA at the end of January, hoping to persuade it to grant pharmacists prescribing authority.These groups have also lobbied the federal government to ensure Medicare Part B would reimburse pharmacists for such prescribing – a move that would probably lead health insurers to follow.Prescribing Paxlovid safely can be challenging, because it may interact harmfully with other medications. Additionally, the FDA advises against providing the treatment to those with severe kidney or liver impairment. Experts have also raised concerns about molnupiravir’s potential toxicities. It cannot be prescribed to minors and is not advised for pregnant women.Chanapa Tantibanchachai, an FDA press officer, said the agency’s decision to forbid pharmacists from prescribing Paxlovid and molnupiravir “was based on several factors, including the drugs’ side-effect profiles, the need to assess potential for drug interactions, the need to assess potential kidney function problems (including the severity of potential problems), and the need to evaluate patients for pre-existing conditions” linked to severe Covid-19.Tantibanchachai said the FDA could revise the policy “as new data and information become available”.On 4 March, the American Medical Association said the “pharmacy based clinic component of the Test to Treat plan flaunts patient safety and risks significant negative health outcomes”. The AMA argued that by prescribing Covid antivirals at such clinics, providers may endanger patients for whom they lack a comprehensive medical history.The pharmacy groups insisted in their letter to Biden they have the expertise to prescribe these medications.In an email to the Guardian, Al Carter, executive director of the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, stated: “Pharmacists have more complete access to the patients’ medication in comparison to physicians, especially since most patients have more than one prescriber, who don’t necessarily talk with each other.“Pharmacists spend their whole education focused on medications and their impacts on the body; whereas physicians take the minimal number of classes on pharmacology.”Katherine Yang, a clinical pharmacist at the University of California, San Francisco, said: “There are a lot of studies that show that when you increase services in community pharmacies, you improve care. In a lot of neighborhoods and rural areas, people may not have access to primary care, and pharmacists are the most accessible public health provider the patients can see.”TopicsCoronavirusBiden administrationUS domestic policyUS politicsPfizerPharmaceuticals industrynewsReuse this content More
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Barack Obama announces positive test for Covid-19
Barack Obama announces positive test for Covid-19Former president ‘had a scratchy throat but fine otherwise’ Michelle Obama negative and both are boosted, tweet says Barack Obama has tested positive for Covid-19.How Covid shook the US: eight charts that capture the last two yearsRead more“I just tested positive for Covid,” the former president, 60, said in a tweet on Sunday.“I’ve had a scratchy throat for a couple days, but am feeling fine otherwise. Michelle and I are grateful to be vaccinated and boosted, and she has tested negative. It’s a reminder to get vaccinated if you haven’t already, even as cases go down.”Falling case rates in the US have triggered the relaxation of most public health measures imposed by cities, states and the federal government.There were roughly 35,000 infections on average over the past week, down sharply from mid-January when the average was closer to 800,000.According to Johns Hopkins University, the US death toll from the two-year coronavirus pandemic stood on Sunday at a little over 967,000, from nearly 79.5m cases.According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 75.2% of US adults are fully vaccinated and 47.7% of the fully vaccinated have received a booster. The CDC relaxed its guidelines for indoor masking in late February, taking a more holistic approach that meant the vast majority of Americans live in areas without the recommendation for indoor masking in public.Resistance to vaccination and other public health measures against Covid is higher in Republican-run states.The Obamas have homes in Washington DC, Massachusetts and Hawaii, all with more than 70% of the eligible population considered fully protected.Last August, however, Obama was forced to drastically scale back a 60th birthday party he planned to host on Martha’s Vineyard, an exclusive Massachusetts island, amid criticism for planning a large social event at a time of surging cases.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
TopicsBarack ObamaCoronavirusUS politicsnewsReuse this content More COVID Failure: A Matter of Principle
This is Fair Observer’s new feature offering a review of the way language is used, sometimes for devious purposes, in the news. Click here to read the previous edition.
We invite readers to join us by submitting their suggestions of words and expressions that deserve exploring, with or without original commentary. To submit a citation from the news and/or provide your own short commentary, send us an email.
March 10: True Toll
In this month of March, the world is understandably somewhat reluctant to commemorate the second anniversary of the moment when the nations of the world unanimously declared COVID-19 a pandemic and began their largely concerted actions of lockdown. The story that unfolded afterward included a variety of traumatic episodes, including speculation about a diversity of possible preventive and curative treatments, sporadic outbreaks of revolt against enforced public policies and a scientifically successful campaign to produce effective vaccines. Despite their promise, the effectiveness of those vaccines nevertheless proved to be far from absolute.
Pfizer’s Noble Struggle Against the Diabolical Jared Kushner
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A group of over 100 public health, medical and epidemiology experts, after assessing the global results, has chosen this second anniversary to react and call into question the decisions taken by governments presumably capable of doing more. From the very early days, the scientific experts knew that, given the capacity of the coronavirus to mutate over time, any complication or holdup related to manufacturing and global distribution could undermine the entire logic of vaccines. They should have known that the biggest complication would come from a political and economic system that works according to principles that make it impervious to understanding the logic of a virus.
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On March 9, the group of experts addressed a letter to the Biden administration to express their frustration with a situation that has evolved very slowly and largely inadequately outside the wealthy nations. This is not the first time concerned experts have urged “the administration to share Covid-19 vaccine technology and increase manufacturing around the world,” Politico reports. For the past two years, they have regularly been rebuffed, as governments preferred to pat themselves on the back for the short-term efforts they were making to protect their own populations, while creating the conditions that would allow the virus to mutate and gain strength elsewhere before returning to provoke new research and the promise of further commercial exploitation with boosters and new treatments.
Principles vs. Ideals
The experts should have realized by now that there is a principle at work that overrides every other scientific or medical consideration. It was established early on by the coterie established around Bill Gates, big pharma executives and other important influencers sharing their industrial mindset. It can all be traced back to the wisdom of Milton Friedman, who loved to repeat the slogan, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” The principle is self-explanatory: In a competitive world, the idea of sharing simply cannot compete with the idea of competing. If you can’t afford lunch, you’ll just have to go without eating. That works when the only outcome is seeing people starve. It doesn’t work when the effects of their starvation are somehow transmitted back to those who have a permanent place at the banquet.
US culture has cultivated the idea that life itself is a competitive race for advantage and the promotion of self-interest stands as the highest of virtues. Health like wealth must play by the rules of the competitive game. That same culture insists heavily on a form of discipline based on the idea of respecting “principles,” which it sometimes perversely confounds with “laws of nature.” The divinely ordained requirement to solve all problems through competition is a prominent one, but not the only one.
The problem with such principles that are taken to be universal laws is that once you believe it is a law, you no longer need to reflect on its appropriateness or assess its very real effects. We are witnessing an example of it today in the Ukraine conflict. The United States has invoked the defense of the sacred principle of “sovereignty,” reformulated as the right of a nation to determine its own foreign policy, including the choice to join a distant empire. That may be a principle, but is it a law? Insisting on it instead of reflecting and debating the question has provoked a disastrous and increasingly out of control war that, like the COVID-19 pandemic, has already had severe unintended knock-on effects, wreaking havoc on the global economy as well as destruction in Ukraine itself.
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Every culture must realize that its own principles may not be universally applicable, that they may not be perceived as others to have the status of laws. Any attempt to apply them as universal truths may cause immense human suffering. And that reveals the very dimension of the problem the health experts are pointing to. A potentially criminal complacency exists when the suffering caused by the inflexible application of the principle is directed toward others, at the same time when the purveyors of the principle take measures to protect their society and their environment. The principle of Ukraine’s sovereignty is already damaging not just Ukraine itself and now Russia, thanks to the application of the principle, but also Europe, the Middle East and Africa, which will be cut off from vital supplies of energy, food and fertilizer.
For the past two years, the concerted defense of the ideal of competition by the pharmaceutical companies in their supposed combat to defeat COVID-19 has clearly aggravated the effects of a pandemic that might have been contained if the idea of sharing had been elevated to the status of principle. But sharing doesn’t deserve to be regarded as a principle. For Americans, it is based on soft ideas like empathy and compassion rather than hard reasoning about what might be financially profitable.
Reflecting on two years of struggle, the group of experts noted “that the development of U.S. vaccines was largely successful, bringing protection to the public in record time,” Politico reports. That’s the good news. And now for the bad news: “But getting shots in arms in low- and middle-income countries has been a ‘failure.’”
Out for the Count
No precise statistics can account for the difference between the damage actually done by COVID-19 and what might have happened had governments effectively managed the global response in the earlier phases of the pandemic. “The true toll of this failure will never be known,” the experts explain, “but at this point almost surely includes tens of millions of avoidable cases and hundreds of thousands of deaths from Covid.”
The “true toll” they cite reminds us of John Donne’s meditation on the bells rung for the dying in a time of plague. The poet and dean of St Paul’s affirmed that “any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” Might we hope that 400 years after Donne wrote these words, pharmaceutical companies and politicians could, for once, take them to heart?
But there is yet another much more concrete meaning of “toll,” as in “toll road.” It is the price humanity is expected to pay, in dollars and cents, to the pharmaceutical companies that have so diligently used their patents to protect their exclusive rights to exploit and enrich themselves thanks to the global potential for suffering of others.
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The final and fundamentally political irony of this sad tale relates to the fact that to do what the experts insist needs doing requires “more funding from Congress.” At a time when prominent members of Congress have become obsessed by the threat of inflation, while at the same time unabashedly inflating military budgets and responding urgently to the “sacred” needs of NATO in times of peril, the likelihood that Congress might suddenly address a global problem it has avoided addressing for two years seems remote.
One of the experts, Gavin Yamey, suggests that COVID-19 “could follow the path of diseases like HIV or tuberculosis: become well controlled in wealthier countries but continue to wreak havoc in poorer nations.” Geopolitics in this increasingly inegalitarian world appears to be following a trend of domestic demographics in the US, marked by the separating of society itself into two groups: the denizens of gated communities and the rabble, everyone else out there.
Why Monitoring Language Is Important
Language allows people to express thoughts, theories, ideas, experiences and opinions. But even while doing so, it also serves to obscure what is essential for understanding the complex nature of reality. When people use language to hide essential meaning, it is not only because they cynically seek to prevaricate or spread misinformation. It is because they strive to tell the part or the angle of the story that correlates with their needs and interests.
In the age of social media, many of our institutions and pundits proclaim their intent to root out “misinformation.” But often, in so doing, they are literally seeking to miss information.
Is there a solution? It will never be perfect, but critical thinking begins by being attentive to two things: the full context of any issue we are trying to understand and the operation of language itself. In our schools, we are taught to read and write, but, unless we bring rhetoric back into the standard curriculum, we are never taught how the power of language to both convey and distort the truth functions. There is a largely unconscious but observable historical reason for that negligence. Teaching establishments and cultural authorities fear the power of linguistic critique may be used against their authority.
Remember, Fair Observer’s Language and the News seeks to sensitize our readers to the importance of digging deeper when assimilating the wisdom of our authorities, pundits and the media that transmit their knowledge and wisdom.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
Pfizer’s Noble Struggle Against the Diabolical Jared Kushner
These days it’s rare to read in the media a story with a happy ending designed to comfort our belief that, at least occasionally, we live in the best of all possible worlds. Forbes has offered such an occasion to a self-proclaimed benefactor of humanity, Dr. Albert Bourla, the CEO of Pfizer. (Disclaimer: Pfizer is a company to whom I must express my personal gratitude for its generosity in supplying me with three doses of a vaccine that has enabled me to survive intact a prolonged pandemic and benefit from a government-approved pass on my cellphone permitting me to dine in restaurants and attend various public events.)
The Contradictory Musings of Biden’s Speculator of State
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The Forbes article, an excerpt from Bourla’s book, “Moonshot,” ends with a moving story about how Pfizer boldly resisted the pressure of the evil Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, who had no qualms about depriving the rest of the world — even civilized countries such as Canada and Japan — of access to the COVID-19 vaccine to serve the US in their stead.
“He insisted,” the good doctor explains, “that the U.S. should take its additional 100 doses before we sent doses to anyone else from our Kalamazoo plant. He reminded me that he represented the government, and they could ‘take measures’ to enforce their will.”
Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:
Take measures:
Go well beyond any measured response in an act of intimidation
Contextual Note
Bourla begins his narrative at the beginning, before the development of the vaccine, by asserting his company’s virtuous intentions and ethical credentials that would later be challenged by bureaucrats and venal politicians. “Vaccine equity was one of our principles from the start,” he writes. “Vaccine diplomacy, the idea of using vaccines as a bargaining chip, was not and never has been.”
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Some readers may note that vaccine equity was only “one” of the principles. There were, of course, other more dominant ones, such as maximizing profit. But Bourla never mentions these other principles, instead offering a step-by-step narrative meant to make the reader believe that his focus was on minimizing profit. That, after all, is what a world afflicted by a raging and deadly pandemic might expect. A closer examination of the process Bourla describes as well as the very real statistics about vaccine distribution reveals that, on the contrary, Pfizer would never even consider minimizing profits. It simply is not in their DNA.
Bourla proudly describes the phases of his virtuous thinking. The CEO even self-celebrates his out-of-the-ordinary sense of marketing, serving to burnish the image not only of his company but of the entire pharmaceutical industry. “We had a chance,” he boasts, “to gain back our industry’s reputation, which had been under fire for the last two decades. In the U.S., pharmaceuticals ranked near the bottom of all sectors, right next to the government, in terms of reputation.”
Thanks to his capacity to tone down his company’s instinctive corporate greed, Bourla now feels he has silenced his firm’s if not the entire industry’s critics when he makes this claim, “No one could say that we were using the pandemic as an opportunity to set prices at unusually high levels.” Some might, nevertheless, make the justifiable claim that what they did was set the prices at “usually” high levels. A close look at Bourla’s description of how the pricing decisions were made makes it clear that Pfizer never veered from seeking “high levels,” whether usual or unusual, during a pandemic that required as speedy and universal a response as possible.
Thanks to a subtle fudge on vocabulary, Bourla turns Pfizer’s vice into a virtue. He writes that when considering the calculation of the price Pfizer might charge per dose, he rejected the standard approach that was based on a savant calculation of the costs to patients theoretically saved by the drug. He explains the “different approach” he recommended. “I told the team to bring me the current cost of other cutting-edge vaccines like for measles, shingles, pneumonia, etc.” But it was the price and not the cost he was comparing. When his team reported prices of “between $150 and $200 per dose,” he agreed “to match the low end of the existing vaccine prices.”
If Pfizer was reasoning, as most industries do, in terms of cost and not price, he would be calculating all the costs related to producing the doses required by the marketplace — in this case billions — and would have worked out the price on the basis of fixed costs, production and marketing costs plus margin. That would be the reasonable thing to do in the case of a pandemic, where his business can be compared to a public service and for which there is both a captive marketplace (all of humanity shares the need) and in which sales are based entirely on advanced purchase orders. That theoretically reduces marketing costs to zero.
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But Bourla wrote the book to paint Pfizer as a public benefactor and himself as a modern Gaius Maecenas, the patron saint of patrons. Once his narrative establishes his commitment to the cause of human health and the renunciation of greed, he goes into detail about his encounter with Kushner. After wrangling with the bureaucrats at Operation Warp Speed created to meet the needs of the population during a pandemic, Bourla recounts the moment “when President Trump’s son-in-law and advisor, Jared Kushner, called me to resolve the issue.” That is when Kushner, like any good mafia boss, evokes his intent to “take measures,” a threat the brave Bourla resists in the name of the health of humanity and personal honor.
That leads to the heartwarming, honor-saving denouement, the happy ending that Bourla calls a miracle. “Thankfully, our manufacturing team continued to work miracles, and I received an improved manufacturing schedule that would allow us to provide the additional doses to the U.S. from April to July without cutting the supply to the other countries.”
Historical Note
Investopedia sums up the reasoning of pharmaceuticals when pricing their drugs: “Ultimately, the main objective of pharmaceutical companies when pricing drugs is to generate the most revenue.” In the history of Western pharmacy, that has not always been the case. Until the creation of the pharmaceutical industrial sector in the late 19th century, apothecaries, chemists and druggists worked in their communities to earn a living and like most artisans calculated their costs and their capacity for profit.
The Industrial Revolution changed all that, permitting large-scale investment in research and development that would have been impossible in an earlier age. But it also introduced the profit motive as the main driver of industrial strategy. What that meant is what we can see today. Pharmaceutical companies have become, as Albert Bourla himself notes, “ranked near the bottom of all sectors.” They exist for one reason: to make and accumulate profit. Industrial strategies often seek to prolong or extend a need for drugs rather than facilitate cures. Advising a biotech company, Goldman Sachs famously asked, “Is curing patients a sustainable business model?” The implied answer was “no.” The greatest fear of the commercial health industry is of a cure that “exhaust[s] the available pool of treatable patients.”
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In any case, COVID-19 has served Pfizer handsomely and is continuing to do so. In late 2021, the Peoples Vaccine Alliance reported “that the companies behind two of the most successful COVID-19 vaccines —Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna— are making combined profits of $65,000 every minute.” Furthermore, they “have sold the majority of doses to rich countries, leaving low-income countries out in the cold. Pfizer and BioNTech have delivered less than one percent of their total vaccine supplies to low-income countries.”
At the beginning of the COVID-19 “project,” Bourla boasts, “I had made clear that return on investment should not be of any consideration” while patting himself on the back for focusing on the needs of the world. “In my mind, fairness had to come first.” With the results now in, he got his massive return on investment, while the world got two years and counting of a prolonged pandemic that will continue making a profit for Pfizer. At least he had the satisfaction of putting the ignoble Jared Kushner in his place.
*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Fair Observer Devil’s Dictionary.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
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Truck convoy loops around Washington DC to protest Covid restrictions
Truck convoy loops around Washington DC to protest Covid restrictionsThe ‘people’s convoy’ of around 1,000 vehicles threaten a week of traffic disruptions around US capital A long line of huge semi-articulated trucks, recreational vehicles and cars was circling Washington DC, on Sunday, in preparation for what their protesting drivers have pledged will be a week of traffic disruption around the US capital aligned around a loose collection of demands, including the end to all coronavirus pandemic-related restrictions.From its temporary base at a speedway vehicle racing site in Hagerstown, 80 miles north-west in Maryland, organizers of what they term the “People’s Convoy” of around 1,000 vehicles have said they plan to welcome the new work week by driving slowly around Washington on the already notoriously-congested Beltway, or ring road, at the minimum legal speed in an attempt to get their message across to national politicians.The convoy, a spin-off of trucker protests further north that have snarled Ottawa and disrupted Canadian transport arteries to the US, began assembling in California last week.As it has made its way east, it has picked up similarly mobile, ideologically-aligned, fellow-travelers along the way.But America is already rapidly releasing its citizens from a patchwork of pandemic restrictions and Covid mandates as the most recent surge of infections subsides in many states and officials and the public begin talking of the waning pandemic.The changing circumstances is now prompting convoy organizers to adapt their demands to a more free-ranging basket of aspirations and motives.Some participants said the destination was reason enough to make the trek. At the speedway on Friday night, one participant who described himself as the lead trucker told a cheering crowd he would drive his truck into the heart of the American capital.But it remained unclear if the convoy plans to drive into the small area occupied by Washington DC, itself, or snarl masses of government workers and lawmakers on their morning and evening Beltway road commutes across the states immediately neighboring the District of Columbia as they head for their offices where they run the nation’s affairs of state.US law enforcement agencies are paying attention. A previous mobile protest called Stop the Tires [denoting the US spelling of tyres] morphed into a “Stop the Steal” demonstration supporting Donald Trump’s false claim that he had been fraudulently denied victory in the November 2020 election.And that in turn became part of the January 6 insurrection riot at the US Capitol by extremist supporters of Trump, the then Republican president, as they tried to overturn the official certification by the US Congress of Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential victory.“I decided to create a Facebook page where me and my buddies could gather to shoot the s**t about the policies that will be implemented if Trump is no longer the president,” StoptheTires2020 founder Jeremy Rewoldt told The Trucker publication in November 2020.At the speedway site, the drivers said their frustrations included workplace vaccine mandates and other pandemic measures. The crowds chanted anti-Biden slogans and displayed support for Trump.The gathering appeared much like a Trump rally, with a giant American flag slung between cranes attached to the beds of semi-articulated trucks.Many vehicles bore license plates from across the US; many drivers were honking their horns, a tactic that drove Ottawa residents to near distraction and caused an Ontario superior court to issue a 10-day ban on horn blowing.The US Department of Homeland Security has said it is coordinating with local authorities to prepare for the convoy’s arrival and warning that the truckers could hinder emergency services.At their Hagerstown meeting point, an estimated 1,000 protesters gathered Sunday to hear details of the plan. Kicking off with a prayer service during which a pastor told them they were “heroes”, the truckers heard from organizer Brian Brase who instructed them to drive between 45 and 55 miles per hour and stay in one line on the roads to and around Washington in order to best show the size of the convoy.They raised their morning coffees in salute before setting off for the capital, reported The Washington Post.Brase said the drivers planned to circle the capitol’s ring-road twice on Sunday and repeat that pattern on successive days. “We don’t want to shut DC down,” Brase told the newspaper.“We’re not anti-vaxxers. We’re not. We just want freedom, freedom. We want to choose. We just want the choice. So tomorrow is a basically a show of just how big we are and how serious we are.” Brase added that it was not clear how long the protest convoy would last.But he told the drivers, who are mostly white, middle-aged men, to celebrate the distance they had traveled, without instructions about what to do at their destination or what that destination might be.Without a destination or denouement in mind, the truckers on Sunday appeared destined to circle until further notice.Above the blare of horns, Brase described the situation as “very fluid”.TopicsWashington DCProtestCoronavirusUS politicsnewsReuse this content More
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Fox anchor survives second Covid case and tells detractors: ‘Sorry to disappoint’
Fox anchor survives second Covid case and tells detractors: ‘Sorry to disappoint’Neil Cavuto returns to Fox Business to say doctors told him only vaccination saved his life this time The Fox anchor Neil Cavuto returned to the air on Monday, to say he nearly died from a second bout with the coronavirus and to tell detractors including those who sent death threats over his support for vaccines: “So sorry to disappoint you.”Queen cancels virtual engagements due to CovidRead moreMore than 935,000 Americans have died of Covid-19 in the last two years. The seven-day average daily death rate is just under 2,000 – the vast majority unvaccinated.Fox has strict vaccination requirements for staff. But hosts, prominently including Tucker Carlson, have spread misinformation about vaccines and resistance to Covid-19 public health measures including vaccination mandates.Cavuto is immunocompromised, with multiple sclerosis and having survived heart surgery and cancer.After his first positive Covid test, in October, he implored viewers: “My God, stop the politics. Life is too short to be an ass. Life is way too short to be ignorant of the promise of something that is helping people worldwide. Stop the deaths, stop the suffering, please get vaccinated, please.”Some viewers did not stop the politics. Cavuto revealed that he received disturbing messages, including death threats.On Fox Business on Monday, Cavuto said he had been hospitalised for weeks but Fox had not publicised his condition out of respect for his privacy.His second Covid case, he said, was a “far, far more serious strand” because of his immunocompromised status. He had, he said, been in “intensive care for quite a while”.“It was really touch and go,” he said. “Some of you who’ve wanted to put me out of my misery darn near got what you wished for. So sorry to disappoint you.”Cavuto also said: “Let me be clear: doctors say had I not been vaccinated at all, I wouldn’t be here.“This was scary. How scary? I’m talking, ‘Ponderosa suddenly out of the prime rib in the middle of the buffet line scary.’ That’s how scary.”Fox News/Business host Neil Cavuto explains on air that he was out for a while because he was hospitalized with Covid, adds, “doctors say that had I not been vaccinated at all, I wouldn’t be here.””I’m not here to debate vaccinations for you. Just offer an explanation for me.” pic.twitter.com/DwI5dKZAL3— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 21, 2022
He also dismissed the idea the vaccine caused or contributed to his second Covid bout.“No, the vaccine didn’t cause that,” he said. “That ‘grassy knoll’ theory has come up a lot. Because I’ve had cancer, and right now I have multiple sclerosis, I am among the vulnerable 3% or so of the population that cannot sustain the full benefits of a vaccine.”In October, Cavuto described some of the threats he received for taking and advocating the shot.He also said: “I cannot stress this enough: it’s not about left or right. This is not about who’s conservative or liberal. Last time I checked, everyone regardless of their political persuasion is coming down with this …“Take the political speaking points and toss them for now, I’m begging you. Toss them and think of what’s good not only for yourself but for those around you.“I dare say people who experienced this and see loved ones who have been affected by this or have died from this are not judging the wisdom of mandates.“They’re wishing they got vaccinated, and they didn’t.”TopicsFox NewsCoronavirusVaccines and immunisationUS televisionUS politicsnewsReuse this content More - in US Politics
San Francisco mayor: recalled school board members were distracted by politics
San Francisco mayor: recalled school board members were distracted by politicsCovid closures and attempt to rename schools deemed named for figures linked to injustice, including Abraham Lincoln, fueled vote San Francisco school board members recalled from their posts this week allowed themselves to become distracted by politics, the city’s mayor said on Sunday.Florida governor: school districts that defied no-mask mandate to lose $200m Read moreVoters overwhelmingly approved the recall of board president Gabriela López, vice-president Faauuga Moliga and commissioner Alison Collins.The board was enveloped in controversy over Covid regulations and closures; an attempt to rename 44 schools deemed to be named for figures linked to racism, sexism and other injustices, among them Abraham Lincoln; and remarks by Collins about Asian Americans.The mayor of San Francisco, London Breed, spoke to NBC’s Meet the Press. Discussing her obligation to name replacements, she said: “I’m going to be looking for people that are going to focus on the priorities of the school district and not on politics, and not on what it means to run for office, and stepping stones, and so on and so forth. “We need people who want to be on the school board to make a difference, and who meet those qualifications to do the job.”Breed sidestepped suggestions the recall showed voters rejecting progressive policies.“My take is that it was really about the frustration of the board of education [not] doing their fundamental job,” she said. “And that is to make sure that our children are getting educated, that they get back into the classroom. And that did not occur. They were focusing on other things that were clearly a distraction.“Not to say that those other things around renaming schools and conversations around changes to our school district weren’t important, but what was most important is the fact that our kids were not in the classroom. “And San Francisco … we’ve been a leader during this Covid pandemic. In some cases, we have put forth the most conservative policies to ensure the safety of all San Franciscans. And our vaccination rates, and our death rates and other numbers demonstrate that we are a clear leader. “But we failed our children. Parents were upset. The city as a whole was upset, and the decision to recall school board members was a result of that.”School boards have become battlegrounds across the US, often as conservative parents and activists look to control what children are taught and how schools deal with Covid.Breed said: “This is not a Democratic/Republican issue. This is an issue about the education of our children.”She also said parents wanted “someone who is going to focus on … making sure that children get the education that they need in our schools, dealing with the challenges of learning loss, dealing with the mental health challenges that exist”.López, the board president, said her recall was the “consequence” of her “fight for racial justice”, and added: “White supremacists are enjoying this, and the support of the recall is aligned with this.”Breed said: “Well, of course [that’s] not the right kind of reaction. And the fact that we’re still even listening to any of the recalled school board members is definitely a problem. Bills to ban US schools’ discussion of LGBTQ+ issues are threat to free speech – reportRead more“… This person is making it about them when it really should be about our kids who have suffered, not just in San Francisco but all over this country as a result of this pandemic.”Her host, Chuck Todd, asked: “How much of this was about renaming the schools of George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln, and [Senator] Dianne Feinstein [and] how much of it was also parents upset that the rules were changed at how you got into some specific magnet schools?”Breed said it “was probably both. But at the end of the day, our kids were not in school. And they should’ve been.”“… And yes, of course there were people who were probably upset about some of the proposed changes. But those are discussions that are important to have, but not at the expense of making sure that the priority of what the school district is there to do is met.”TopicsSan FranciscoCaliforniaUS educationRaceCoronavirusUS politicsnewsReuse this content More
