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      Calls mount for Biden to track US healthcare worker deaths

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      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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      in US Politics

      Fauci hits back at rightwing criticism and says attacks on him 'bizarre'

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      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

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      ‘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

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      in US Politics

      'Opportunity is coming': Joe Biden celebrates latest jobs report – video

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      Joe Biden has encouraged Americans to ‘buckle down’ as coronavirus cases rise but he was optimistic on the state of the economy and celebrated the latest jobs report.
      The US economy added 916,000 jobs last month according to the report which Biden credited to the resiliency of the American people and his administration’s new economic vision

      US politics – live updates More

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      in World Politics

      Is India’s Vaccine Diplomacy a Good Idea?

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      In terms of numbers, India ranks the third worst after the US and Brazil when it comes to COVID-19 infections. At the time of publishing, the country has recorded over 12.3 million confirmed cases and more than 163,000 deaths. The BBC reports that India is facing a “severe, intensive” second wave of the pandemic. The situation in states like Maharashtra, Gujarat and Punjab has reached alarming proportions.

      How Did India Combat COVID-19 in 2020?

      Last year, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi imposed a stringent lockdown that brought economic activity to a shuddering halt. This lockdown led to a dramatic contraction of India’s GDP by 23.9% in the April-June 2020 quarter. The economy recovered somewhat in later quarters, but it experienced a recession in the 2020-21 financial year for the first time in 25 years.

      Arguably, the lockdown was a success in preventing a rapid spread of COVID-19 last year. In percentage terms, India did not do too badly. After all, it has nearly 1.4 billion people in contrast to the US population of 330 million. The daily new cases in India dramatically declined until recently when the second wave hit the country. Thanks to a young population and public health measures, India experienced a remarkably low mortality rate.

      What’s Behind Chile’s Vaccination Success?

      READ MORE

      India has low per capita income and poor health care facilities. So, its achievement in controlling the COVID-19 outbreak has been hailed by many public health experts, including the World Health Organization (WHO). In January, India launched a massive vaccination program to fight the pandemic. This was possible because the country has a track record of mass vaccination and massive vaccine production.

      Indian manufacturers supply more than 60% of the world’s vaccines against diseases like polio and measles. Early on, the country began mass production of two COVID-19 vaccines: Covishield and Covaxin. The Serum Institute of India (SII), which partnered with the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, had already produced and stocked approximately 70 million Covishield doses even before India granted emergency approval to their vaccine. 

      On January 16, India launched an ambitious plan to vaccinate around 300 million people by June. The world’s largest vaccination program focused first on those with high vulnerability to the coronavirus. First on the list were health care workers. They were followed by those who were 65 years or older. This ensured that the vaccine was not monopolized by the richest sections of Indian society. 

      As vaccinations have increased, the Modi government has eased restrictions in the country. Crowds have gathered at large weddings, sporting events and festival celebrations. The government lifted restrictions to stimulate economic activity. A poor country like India with a large population could not afford a lockdown for too long. However, the easing of restrictions has not only led to increased economic growth, but also rising cases of COVID-19 infections. India faces a tough balancing act between stimulating economic activity and curtailing a pandemic.

      India’s Vaccine Diplomacy

      During the pandemic, India has embarked on an ambitious foreign policy initiative. Modi announced the Vaccine Maitri initiative to supply COVID-19 vaccines to other nations only four days after India began domestic vaccinations. With the world’s largest manufacturer of vaccines, India has shipped approximately 61 million doses to 84 countries, which have included free batches. It has pledged 200 million doses for the WHO’s COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) initiative to ensure vaccines for 92 low and middle-income countries.

      Embed from Getty Images

      India began its vaccine diplomacy by distributing doses to its immediate neighbors: Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. The country has also exported vaccines to faraway places such as the Caribbean, where the likes of Barbados, Dominica and Jamaica have benefited from Indian aid. Leaders of countries such as Brazil and Antigua and Barbuda have publicly thanked Modi for his country’s generosity.

      As per some foreign policy experts, India’s vaccine distribution is a diplomatic masterstroke. It helps the country gain goodwill and increase its soft power. It could lead to a more peaceful neighborhood. In the future, India might win much support, strengthen its claim to a permanent seat at the UN Security Council and emerge as a great world power.

      Vaccine diplomacy might be giving a rare chance to counter China, which has launched the Belt and Road Initiative to increase its global footprint. For decades, China has backed Pakistan and, for the last few years, has increased its presence in Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal. With Chinese influence growing in India’s closest neighbors, the country has understandably become anxious.

      In June 2020, Chinese and Indian troops engaged in a bloody hand-to-hand combat with many dying in the process. Since that clash, relations between India and China have been fraught. India has banned over 200 Chinese apps and restricted Chinese investment into the country. COVID-19 has given a unique opportunity to India — the “pharmacy of the world” — to compete with China. By shipping vaccines to low and middle-income countries, India is gaining influence at the Chinese expense whose vaccines have been questioned by Western media.

      Rich countries have failed poorer ones because they have focused on domestic programs. Unlike India, the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom are focused completely on vaccinating their domestic populations. India’s generosity is unique and might lead to long-term gains.

      Masterstroke or Distraction?

      However, there is a counterargument that India has been premature in kicking off vaccine diplomacy. It did so before setting its own house in order. According to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, as of April 2, India has administered nearly 69 million doses, fully inoculating only 9.6 million people. That is just 0.71% of its population. India’s focus should have been getting every one of its citizens vaccinated instead of basking in complimentary tweets from foreign leaders. Such goodwill might turn out to be very transient. 

      Recently, India has slowed down its vaccine exports and speeded up its vaccination program. The government has now enrolled private hospitals in its vaccination drive, and everyone above the age of 45 is now eligible for the vaccine. Modi himself got vaccinated on March 1, boosting public faith in COVID-19 vaccines and increasing their uptake nearly four-fold. It seems that the government is paying attention to its critics.

      Time will tell whether India’s vaccine diplomacy was a bold masterstroke or an unwise distraction. It reveals that there are no easy choices for any nation during a raging pandemic.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More