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Blow to US vaccination campaign as J&J ‘one-shot’ vaccine deliveries plummet
US deliveries of the “one-shot” Johnson and Johnson vaccine are set to drop by 85% next week, in a setback to the government’s vaccination campaign.The Biden administration has allocated just 700,000 J&J doses to states for the week beginning 12 April, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a huge drop from the nearly 5m shots allocated the week before.The decline comes after J&J reported a batch of its Covid-19 vaccines developed in Baltimore had failed quality standards and cannot be used – as Anthony Fauci warned the US is at risk from a new coronavirus surge.Distribution of the J&J vaccine – which requires just one dose, as opposed to the two-shot Moderna and Pfizer vaccines also authorized for use in the US – has been uneven since it was introduced.The government allocated 2.8m doses to states at the beginning of March, only for that to drop to 493,000 the next week, but the drop to 12 April is the steepest yet.The slowdown comes after workers at the plant manufacturing coronavirus shots for J&J and AstraZeneca accidentally conflated the vaccines’ ingredients several weeks ago, the New York Times reported.It is unclear if the mix-up is the reason for the drop in J&J doses, and a J&J spokesman told the Wall Street Journal that the company still aimed to deliver 100m doses to the US by the middle of year, most of those by the end of May. The federal government has a deal with J&J for 200m doses.On Thursday Fauci, the top infectious diseases expert in the US, told CNN coronavirus cases had plateaued at a “disturbingly high level”. More than 61,000 new cases were reported on Wednesday, according to Johns Hopkins University.“It’s almost a race between getting people vaccinated and this surge that seems to want to increase,” Fauci said.Health experts have warned the rising number of coronavirus cases in dozens of US states is probably attributable to the spread of virus variants. Michigan has recorded the worst increase in infections over the past two weeks, at a rate not seen since early December.On Tuesday, the Associated Press reported that nearly half of new US virus infections are in just five states, with New York, Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania and New Jersey responsible for nearly 197,500 new cases in the latest available seven-day period.Despite Michigan’s rate of new infections in the past two weeks, Gretchen Whitmer, the states Democratic governor, has stopped short of ordering restrictions, instead asking for voluntary compliance. She has blamed the virus surge on pandemic fatigue, which has people moving about more, as well as more contagious variants.This week, Joe Biden said half of all American adults are on track to have received at least one Covid-19 vaccination by this weekend. The president has set a goal of delivering 200m vaccinations by 30 April – which marks his first 100 days in office.One in four American adults have now been fully vaccinated against the virus, according to the CDC. More
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Calls mount for Biden to track US healthcare worker deaths
Calls are mounting for the Biden administration to set up a national tracking system of Covid-19 deaths among frontline healthcare workers to honor the thousands of nurses, doctors and support staff who have died and ensure that future generations are not forced to make the same ultimate – and in many cases needless – sacrifice.Health policy experts and union leaders are pressing the White House to move quickly to fill the gaping hole left by the Trump administration through its failure to create an accurate count of Covid deaths among frontline staff. The absence of reliable federal data exacerbated critical problems such as shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) that left many workers exposed, with fatal results.In the absence of federal action, Lost on the Frontline, a joint project between the Guardian and Kaiser Health News (KHN), has compiled the most comprehensive account of healthcare worker deaths in the nation. It has recorded 3,607 lost lives in the first year of the pandemic, with nurses, healthcare support staff and doctors, as well as workers under 60 and people of color affected in tragically high numbers.The Guardian/KHN investigation, which involved more than 100 reporters, is drawing to a close this week. Pressure is now growing for the federal government to step into the breach.Harvey Fineberg, a leading health policy expert who approved a recent National Academy of Sciences report that recommended the formation of a new national tracking system run by the federal government, backed the calls for change. He said his ideal solution would be a nationwide record that both looked back on the heavy human price paid in the pandemic so far and looked ahead to coming challenges.“There would be a combination of a selective look backward to gain more accurate tabulations of the past burden, and a system of data gathering looking forward to ensure more complete counts in future,” he said.Zenei Triunfo-Cortez, a president of National Nurses United, the largest body of registered nurses in the US, said it was unconscionable how many healthcare workers have died from Covid. The KHN/Guardian interactive found that almost third of those who died were nurses – the largest single occupation followed by support staff (20%) and physicians (17%).Triunfo-Cortez said the death toll was an unacceptable tragedy aggravated by the lack of federal data which made identifying problem areas more difficult. “We as nurses do not deserve this – we signed up to take care of patients, we did not sign up to die,” she said.Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, also sees a role for federal agencies in tracking mortality among frontline healthcare workers. In an interview with the Guardian, he expressed a desire for a definitive picture of the human toll.“We certainly want to find an accurate count of the people who died. That’s something that I think would fall under the auspices of the federal government, likely Health and Human Services (HHS).”The lack of federal intelligence on deaths among frontline healthcare workers was one of the running failures of the Trump administration’s botched response to the crisis. The main health protection agency, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, does curate some information but has itself acknowledged that its own record of 1,527 health worker fatalities – more than 2,000 fewer than the joint Guardian / KHN tally – is an undercount based on limitations in its data collection.Overall, healthcare workers were revealed to be singularly at risk from the pandemic. Some studies have shown that they were more than three times as likely to contract Covid as the general population.To date there is no sign of the Biden administration taking active steps to set up a comprehensive data system. An HHS spokesperson said they currently have no plans to launch a comprehensive count. However, Triunfo-Cortez said there is a new willingness on the part of the White House and key federal agencies to listen and engage.“We have been working with the Biden administration and they have been receptive to the changes we are proposing. We are hopeful that they will start to mandate the reporting of deaths because if we don’t have that data how can we know how effective we are being in stopping the pandemic?”The responsiveness of the new administration is likely to be heightened by the fact that Biden’s chief of staff, Ron Klain, has a track record in fighting infectious disease outbreaks. In 2014 Barack Obama appointed him “Ebola tsar”.In an article in the Guardian last August, Klain drew on the findings of Lost on the Frontline to decry the ultimate price paid by healthcare workers. “Although America has applauded health workers, banged pots in their honor and offered grateful video tributes, we have consistently failed them where it mattered most.”David Blumenthal, the national coordinator for health information technology under Obama, said a national tracking system is an important step in healing the wounds of the pandemic inflicted on frontline staff. “So many healthcare workers feel as though their devotion and sacrifice weren’t valued. We must combat the widespread fatigue and disappointment.”Christina Jewett of KHN contributed reporting to this article More
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Fauci hits back at rightwing criticism and says attacks on him 'bizarre'
Anthony Fauci has described attacks on him from Republicans as “bizarre”, after a barrage of criticism from senior GOP figures.The infectious disease expert, who has led the US effort against Covid-19, was forced to defend himself after a former Trump official called him “the father of the actual virus” and the senator Lindsey Graham followed other Republicans in urging Fauci – Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser and the head of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, to travel to the US-Mexico border.Speaking to Fox News, Fauci said he had become a scapegoat for rightwing figures.“I’ve been a symbol to them of what they don’t like about anything that has to do with things that are contrary to them, anything outside of their own realm,” he said.In a flurry of tweets on Friday, Graham, from South Carolina, told Fauci: “You need to go to the southern border and witness in person the biggest super-spreader event in the nation.”Graham was referring to thousands of migrants being held in overcrowded conditions. The administration has said asylum seekers are tested for coronavirus on arrival in the US. It was unclear what Graham thought a Fauci visit would achieve.“It’s a little bit bizarre, I would say,” Fauci said. “I mean … Lindsey Graham, who I like, he’s … you know, he’s a good person, I’ve dealt with him very, very well over the years, you know, equating me with things that have to do at the border? I mean, I have nothing to do with the border.“Having me down at the border, that’s really not what I do.”Fauci, 80, has served seven presidents since 1984, leading the fight against Aids and HIV before emerging as the trusted public face of attempts to contain the coronavirus pandemic.On Wednesday Peter Navarro, who served in various roles under Donald Trump, launched a bizarre rant during an interview with Fox News.Asked about Fauci’s comment that his pursuit of a vaccine was “the best decision [I] ever made”, Navarro said: “Fauci is a sociopath and a liar. He had nothing to do with the vaccine. The father of the vaccine is Donald J Trump.“What is Fauci the father of? Fauci is the father of the actual virus.”Fauci responded, asking: “How bizarre is that? Think about it for a second. Isn’t that a little weird? I mean, come on.”Last week Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff, accused Fauci of remaining silent over conditions at the border. An Alabama congressman also urged Fauci to get involved. In February Marco Rubio, a senator from Florida, criticized Fauci, saying his job “is not to mislead or scare” the American public.Fauci demurred when asked to respond.“I am so busy trying to do some important things to preserve the health and the safety of the American people that I can’t be bothered with getting distracted with these people that are doing these ad hominems,” he said. More
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With Joe Biden’s own audacious New Deal, the democratic left rediscovers its soul
‘It’s bold, yes, and we can get it done.” So declared President Joe Biden launching his $2tn plan last week to overhaul US infrastructure – ranging from fixing 20,000 miles of roads to remaking bridges, ports, water systems and “the care economy”, care now defined as part of the country’s infrastructure. Also included is a vast uplift in research spending on eliminating carbon emissions and on artificial intelligence. And up to another $2tn is to follow on childcare, education and healthcare, all hot on the heels of the $1.9tn “American Rescue Plan”, passed just three weeks ago.Cumulatively, the scale is head-spinning. Historians and politicians are already comparing the ambition with Roosevelt’s New Deal or Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programme. In British terms, it’s as though an incoming Labour government pledged to spend £500bn over the next decade with a focus on left-behind Britain in all its manifestations – real commitments to levelling up, racial equity, net zero and becoming a scientific superpower.Mainstream and left-of-centre Democrats are as incredulous as they are joyful. Bernie Sanders, congratulating Biden, declared that the American Rescue Plan “is the most significant legislation for working people that has been passed in decades”. It was “the moment when Democrats recovered their soul”, writes Robert Kuttner, co-editor of the progressive magazine the American Prospect, ending a 45-year embrace of “Wall Street neoliberalism”. He concludes: “I am not especially religious, but I am reminded of my favourite Jewish prayer, the Shehecheyanu, which gives thanks to the Almighty for allowing us to reach this day.”What amazes the party and commentators alike is why a 78-year-old moderate stalwart such as Biden has suddenly become so audacious. After all, he backed Bill Clinton’s Third Way and was a cheerleader for fiscal responsibility under both him and Barack Obama, when the stock of federal debt was two-thirds of what it is today.Covid-19 has exposed the precariousness of most Americans’ lives. It has re-legitimised the very idea of governmentNow, the debt is no longer to be a veto to delivering crucial economic and social aims. If Trump and the Republicans can disregard it in their quest to cut taxes for the super-rich, Democrats can disregard it to give every American child $3,000 a year.It is not, in truth, a complete disregard. Under pressure from centrist Democrats, the infrastructure proposals over the next 15 years are to be paid for by tax rises, even if in the first stages they are financed by borrowing. Corporation tax will be raised progressively to 28%, a minimum tax is to be levied on all worldwide company profits, along with assaults on tax loopholes and tax havens.If others have better ideas, says Biden, come forward, but there must be no additional taxing of individual Americans whose income is below $400,000 a year. It’s an expansive definition of the middle class, witness to the breadth of the coalition he is building. But even these are tax hikes that Democrats would have shunned a decade ago.It is high risk, especially given the wafer-thin majorities in both the House of Representatives and Senate. With implacable Republican opposition, it requires a united Democratic party, which Biden is orchestrating with some brilliance, his long years in Washington having taught him how to cut deals, when and with whom. He judiciously pays tribute to Sanders, on the left, for “laying the foundations” of the programme and flatters a conservative Democrat centrist such as West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, who insists on tax rises to pay for the infrastructure bill. What will be truly radical is getting the programme into law.Yet, still: why, and why now? The answer is the man, the people round him, the gift of Donald Trump and, above all, the moment – the challenge of recovering from Covid. Biden’s roots are working class; beset by personal tragedies, charged by his Catholicism, his politics are driven by a profound empathy for the lot of ordinary people. He may have surrounded himself with superb economists – the treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, Cecilia Rouse and Jared Bernstein at the Council of Economic Advisers, Brian Deese at the National Economic Council, Lina Khan at the Federal Trade Commission – who are the intellectual driving forces, but he himself will have been influenced as much by the Catholic church’s increasingly radical social policy, represented by Pope Benedict XVI’s revision of the famous encyclical Rerum Novarum. What makes the politics work so well is Trump’s legacy in uniting Democrats as never before while dividing Republicans. Biden knows the danger of the midterm elections in 2022, having seen his Democrat predecessors lose control of the Senate, House or both, so introducing gridlock. His bet is that his popular programme, proving that big government works for the mass of Americans, rather than wayward government by tweet, will keep divided Republicans at bay. Better that than betting, like Clinton and Obama, on the merits of fiscal responsibility, which Republicans, if they win power, will torch to serve their own constituency.But the overriding driver is the pandemic and the way it has exposed the precariousness of many Americans’ lives. It has re-legitimised the very idea of government: it is government that has procured and delivered mass vaccination and government that is supporting the incomes of ordinary Americans. Unconstrained US capitalism has become too monopolistic; too keen on promoting fortunes for insiders; too neglectful of the interests, incomes and hopes of most of the people. An astute politician, Biden has read the runes – and acted to launch a monumental reset. Expect more to come on trade, company and finance reform and the promotion of trade unions.The chances are he will get his programmes through and they will substantially work. The lessons for the British left are clear. Left firebrands, however good their programmes, may appeal to the party faithful. But it takes a Biden to win elections and then deliver. With that lesson learned, we, too, may one day be able to invoke the Shehecheyanu. More
