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      Why are so many NYPD officers fighting vaccination? | Akin Olla

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      OpinionCoronavirusWhy are so many NYPD officers fighting vaccination?Cops have been on the wrong side of public health for the entire pandemic – and yet they act like they are victims Thu 4 Nov 2021 14.24 EDTLast modified on Thu 4 Nov 2021 14.26 EDTIn New York City, the Police Benevolent Association of the City of New York (PBA) tried and failed to block the city’s vaccine mandate for all city workers. New York City police officers have been on the wrong side of public health for most of the pandemic. Like other American police unions, the PBA uses its political clout and large coffers to push regressive policies and fight any move towards an even slightly more humane justice system.In an effort to prevent another rise in Covid-19 cases, New York’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, introduced a mandate requiring all city employees to have received at least one dose of a vaccine by 29 October. Seventy-one per cent of all city officials are already vaccinated but, according to the PBA, roughly a third of uniformed police officers are not. Even optimistic assessments of the department’s vaccination rates as a whole lag behind the rates of city residents. Despite the fact that Covid-19 is the leading cause of death among US police officers, the PBA launched a lawsuit against the city to halt the mandate. A judge struck down the suit, but the PBA plans to appeal the decision.The police union loves to play the victim card and paint even its worst officers as heroes – like when it called for a slowdown strike after an officer was fired for his role in the 2014 death of Eric Garner. Yet when faced with a real threat to the lives of their members, and to the public those officers ostensibly serve, the unions’ leaders have chosen to oppose public health recommendations. While the police commissioner has at least urged officers to get vaccinated, the department and its individual officers haven’t exactly had a stellar record of behavior from earlier phases of the pandemic.In October, unmasked police officers forced a subway rider out of a station after he asked them to put on their masks as mandated by both the city’s transportation authority and the NYPD itself. This was not an isolated incident, according to the New York Times: “[t]he flouting of mask mandates by some police officers in New York City has been the subject of criticism throughout the pandemic. Face coverings have remained required on the city’s public transit and at indoor subway stations since April 2020. But many reports on social media and in local news outlets have drawn attention to instances of officers ignoring those rules.”This behavior is especially dangerous considering that officers interact face-to-face with the public on a daily basis. According to the Legal Aid Society, the NYPD illegally detained hundreds of people during the George Floyd uprising and the second surge of the pandemic. Protesters were allegedly held for longer periods of time than legally allowed, increasing their risk of contracting Covid-19 and potentially spreading it once released. One protester complained of police stuffing protesters in vans while the officers themselves were not wearing masks. The NYPD insists that these delays were not retaliatory and just another symptom of the pandemic, but the Legal Aid Society noted the similarity to a previous lawsuit over similar alleged events at the 2004 Republican national convention.In fact, the mere existence of such a large police department is a hindrance to public health. If current trends continue, the city will probably spend more than $10bn on the police department this year, including hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to settle lawsuits for police brutality and misconduct. In comparison, the city’s department of health and mental hygiene has a budget of $1.6bn.While city residents could have benefited from an increase in healthcare access, the city was busy maintaining the largest police department in the country, spending over $100,000 a year on average for every uniformed officer, according to Business Insider. Insider also notes that a single set of riot gear could provide personal protective equipment for 33 nurses. These numbers recall the dueling images of New York healthcare workers wearing trash bags during the earlier days of the pandemic, in contrast to the heavily armored officers sweeping through neighborhoods arresting people en masse.The NYPD spent $115m in overtime in the first two weeks of the George Floyd protests alone. And large sums of that money, in the form of membership dues and donations, find their way to police unions. Those unions shell out tens of millions of dollars on campaign contributions and lobbying, much of it to elect candidates seen as pro-police and “tough on crime”. According to Dan Quart, a New York State assembly member, the PBA has “had very significant and I would say disruptive influence in blocking so much important criminal legal reform of our criminal justice system”. Between 2015 and 2018, the union gave $78,500 to the state senate Republican campaign committee. In 2020 the union endorsed Donald Trump for re-election, its first endorsement of a presidential candidate in decades. This last fact alone speaks to the depravity of the union’s perspective and priorities.The PBA insists that the vaccine mandate will cause “chaos” – that 10,000 officers will be gone from the street, that dozens of patrol precincts will go unstaffed. This outcome seems unlikely. If it does happen, however, it may be a great experiment for the city. During their 2014 slowdown strike in response to anti-police brutality protests, officers decreased their “proactive” crime duties, cutting down patrols and only responding to active calls. The department expected the city to come crawling back in fear. But the opposite happened; a peer-reviewed study in the journal Nature Human Behavior found that residents actually reported a decline in major crime.The PBA may be setting itself up for another disappointment – and offering yet more evidence that we must defund police for the sake of public health and the public good.
      Akin Olla is a contributing opinion writer at the Guardian
      TopicsCoronavirusOpinionInfectious diseasesVaccines and immunisationNew YorkUS politicscommentReuse this content More

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      Surge in Colorado Covid cases could force hospitals to ration services

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      ColoradoSurge in Colorado Covid cases could force hospitals to ration servicesIncrease can be attributed in part to the almost 40% of the state population that has not been vaccinated Eric BergerThu 4 Nov 2021 06.00 EDTLast modified on Thu 4 Nov 2021 09.00 EDTEvan Faber’s 78-year-old father, Michael, has for the last three years had difficulty walking around his home in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The Fabers hope that a spinal surgery scheduled for late December at a local hospital will help restore his balance and motor function.But now they are worried that the hospital will have to postpone the operation.That’s because a recent surge in Covid-19 cases around the state has increased the number of unvaccinated patients needing care and prompted concerns that hospitals may have to ration services for other issues.“If you have been waiting for an elective procedure for the last 18 months and are finally scheduled – you’re vaccinated, you don’t have Covid – your procedure might still get canceled if a hospital is totally full,” said Dr Anuj Mehta, a pulmonologist with Denver Health who serves on the governor’s expert emergency epidemic response committee. “While this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated at this point – and the surges in the hospital are entirely being driven by unvaccinated folks – it is having a massive bleed-over effect on to the entire population.”There are about 1,300 patients hospitalized with Covid-19 in Colorado, according to the New York Times data; that’s the highest number since December 2020, when more than 1,900 patients were hospitalized.That number has increased by 15% over the last two weeks, the third largest increase in the country, and at a time when the national picture for the US is of a Delta variant surge that is firmly on the way down.The trend in Colorado can be attributed in part to the almost 40% of the state population that has not been vaccinated and people again gathering indoors without masks. It also shows that, despite the national downward trends of infections, regional spikes can still happen that can cause havoc in state healthcare systems.“We clearly have events taking place in Colorado, as elsewhere, that are spreading infection,” said Dr Jon Samet, an epidemiologist who directs Covid-19 modeling for the state. “I know everyone would like for it to be 2019 all over again, but that’s not the case.”The state had also not had surges on the scale of other states, said Dr Michelle Barron, senior medical director of infection prevention and control for UCHealth.Other states “had flames from the get-go, whereas we have been smoldering along this whole time, and we are finally hitting that peak of saturation and seeing flames finally,” said Barron.Thirty per cent of Colorado hospitals are anticipating a shortage in the number of intensive care unit beds and 37% are anticipating staffing shortages within the next week, according to data from the Colorado department of public health and environment.“Staffing is becoming increasingly a problem, which is true everywhere throughout the country. We are seeing healthcare workers really burned out from everything the last two years,” said Mehta. “It just raises concerns that we are pushing the limits of how many patients we can take care of. We are still taking great care of everybody” at Denver Health, “but we are filling up fast.”In response to the surge, Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat, on Sunday issued a pair of executive orders that allow the state to direct healthcare facilities to redirect patients to other centers and for the implementation of a protocol for healthcare workers to decide in an emergency who should be treated first.Mehta would also like to see the governor issue a statewide indoor mask mandate, something Polis has declined to do.“If we were to continue masking indoors, I think we would see a significant drop in transmission and hospitalization, and that would free us up to do the routine medical stuff that we do all the time,” Mehta said.Even though people who have been vaccinated against Covid face a very low risk of hospitalization, they still, of course, face other risks. The UCHealth system is seeing record number of patients with non-Covid issues, according to a spokesperson.“A year ago, most schools and businesses were virtual, and there were capacity limits on restaurants and other businesses,” Dan Weaver vice-president of communications for UCHealth stated in an email. “Now, with few people staying at home, we are seeing large numbers of traumas, other injuries, and non-Covid healthcare needs.”Even among healthy Colorado residents, the pandemic continues to affect their lives. Stephanie Danielson, a Boulder resident, had 60 children in her son and daughter’s Cub Scouts pack a year ago; there are now 10, in part because of ongoing concerns about the virus.The pack gathered for a hike in September for the first time in more than a year – and afterwards learned that a parent had tested positive for Covid.“As a leader, it felt defeating because we are trying so hard to bring back some normalcy to each other’s lives, and our very first time, we had this happen,” said Danielson, who works at Moxie Sozo, a branding agency in Boulder.Faber, the 40-year-old CEO of the company, just got a vaccine booster and said his life has not changed much because of the surge. But he continues to worry about his father, a retired restaurant owner.“Everything is so volatile, it’s a waiting game to see if [the surgery] will still happen,” said Faber. “It’s the circle of people just outside of the direct impact from Covid that are dealing” with the surge, “and I know there are more severe examples than this”.TopicsColoradoCoronavirusInfectious diseasesUS politicsVaccines and immunisationnewsReuse this content More

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      Jen Psaki, White House press secretary to Joe Biden, tests positive for Covid

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      Biden administrationJen Psaki, White House press secretary to Joe Biden, tests positive for CovidPsaki, who did not travel with the president to Europe, says her last contact with Biden was on Tuesday Martin Pengelly in New York and agencies@MartinPengellySun 31 Oct 2021 17.56 EDTLast modified on Sun 31 Oct 2021 20.08 EDTJen Psaki, Joe Biden’s White House press secretary, said on Sunday she had tested positive for Covid-19.Joe Biden dismisses bad polling and says domestic agenda set to pass Read morePsaki, 42, did not travel with Biden to Rome for this week’s G20 summit. The president is also due to travel to Glasgow for the Cop26 climate talks. Biden has been accompanied in Europe by his principal deputy press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre.News of a positive test for such a close aide to the president came a little over a year after an outbreak at the White House reached the then president, Donald Trump, who fell seriously ill and was forced to spend time in hospital.In a statement, Psaki said she last saw the 78-year-old Biden on Tuesday, “when we sat outside more than 6ft apart and wore masks”.Biden tested negative for Covid-19 on Saturday, Reuters quoted “a person familiar with the matter” as saying.Psaki said she stayed in the US “due to a family emergency, which was members of my household testing positive for Covid-19”. She has two children.“Since then,” Psaki continued, “I have quarantined and tested negative via PCR for Covid on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. However, today I tested positive for Covid.“While I have not had close contact in person with the president or senior members of the White House staff since Wednesday and tested negative for four days after that last contact, I am disclosing today’s positive test out of an abundance of transparency.”Psaki also said that “thanks to the vaccine I have only experienced mild symptoms, which has enabled me to continue working from home.“I will plan to return to work in person at the conclusion of the 10-day quarantine following a negative rapid test, which is an additional White House requirement beyond [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] guidance, taken out an abundance of caution.”White House staff and others traveling with the president began undergoing daily tests for Covid-19 before departing Washington and are all fully vaccinated. Many officials have also received booster shots, due to the close-quarters environment and frequent travel associated with their work.Biden got his Covid-19 booster on 27 September, shortly after federal regulators approved the third dose for many Americans.On Sunday Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist and senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists, responded to the news that Psaki had worn a mask around Biden by tweeting: “Good to still mask up, even if vaxxed.”Pro-vaccine Fox News host receives support from CNN anchor over death threatsRead moreAccording to Johns Hopkins University, the US has recorded nearly 46m cases of Covid-19 and more than 745,000 deaths. Resistance to vaccination mandates remains a concern, particularly among Republican voters, though case numbers are slowing.On Sunday, the CDC said the US had administered 422,070,099 doses of Covid-19 vaccines, up from 420,657,683 doses on Saturday. The agency said 221,520,153 people had received at least one dose, while 192,453,500 people were fully vaccinated.The CDC tally includes two-dose vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech and Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot vaccine. About 18.6 million people have received a booster dose.Full approval for children aged five to 12 to receive the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is expected as soon as this week.TopicsBiden administrationJoe BidenUS politicsCoronavirusInfectious diseasesnewsReuse this content More

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      Nine percent of New York City workers still unvaccinated after Friday deadline

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      New YorkNine percent of New York City workers still unvaccinated after Friday deadline
      Last-minute rush of jabs boost vaccination rate to 91%
      Fox News host gets death threats for vaccinations plea
      Victoria Bekiempis in New YorkSun 31 Oct 2021 13.02 EDTFirst published on Sun 31 Oct 2021 08.30 EDTNine percent of New York City’s municipal workforce remains unvaccinated following a Friday deadline to demonstrate proof of receiving at least Covid shot, officials said.‘They broke my heart’: sculptor laments Central Park Covid monument removalRead moreHowever, the percentage of city workers with at least one dose rose considerably as the deadline loomed.Opposition to vaccine mandates fueled by rightwing politicians and media figures led to protests in New York this week. But on Saturday night, authorities said 91% of city workers had received at least one dose, up from 83% on Friday and 76% on Thursday.Workers who did not abide by the requirement were still due to be placed on unpaid leave from Monday, potentially spurring staffing shortages in the police, fire, emergency medical services and sanitation departments.The New York police department vaccination rate stood at 84%, officials said. Asked about the plan for dealing with a potential staff shortfall, an NYPD spokesman said in an email: “We will be prepared for any changes in personnel due to the mandate.”City data indicated that 78% of fire department workers, and 79% of sanitation department workers, had received at least one dose as of Saturday.Those agencies also said they were preparing for staffing shortfalls.Fire officials said they were prepared to close up to 20% of fire companies and see 20% fewer ambulances in operation.The department planned to change schedules, cancel vacations and seek out non-fire department EMS providers.The fire commissioner, Daniel Nigro, slammed some firefighters who took paid sick leave in advance of the vaccine deadline.“The department has not closed any firehouses,” Nigro said. “Irresponsible bogus sick leave by some of our members is creating a danger for New Yorkers and their fellow firefighters. They need to return to work or risk the consequences of their actions.”The New York City mayor, Bill de Blasio, recently said the sanitation department would implement 12-hour shifts rather than the normal eight-hour shifts, and start working on Sundays so garbage did not accumulate amid staffing shortages.The Associated Press contributed to this report.TopicsNew YorkCoronavirusVaccines and immunisationInfectious diseasesUS healthcareUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Fauci predicts Covid shots for kids five to 11 will be available by early November

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      Anthony FauciFauci predicts Covid shots for kids five to 11 will be available by early November Government’s chief medical adviser makes prediction after FDA review panel finds that benefits for group outweighs risks Richard Luscombe@richluscSun 24 Oct 2021 16.16 EDTLast modified on Sun 24 Oct 2021 16.17 EDTVaccines to protect children ages five to 11 from Covid-19 will be available in the US in early to mid-November, Dr Anthony Fauci, the government’s chief medical adviser, predicted on Sunday.A review panel of the US food and drug administration (FDA) found last week that the benefits of Pfizer-BioNTech shots for the younger age group outweighed the risks, setting up an advisory meeting on Tuesday of outside FDA experts who are expected to recommend emergency use authorization.With final approval from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) likely to come the following week, Fauci said he believed pediatric vaccines would start going into arms in short order.“If all goes well, and we get the regulatory approval and the recommendation from the CDC, it’s entirely possible if not very likely that vaccines will be available for children from five to 11 within the first week or two of November,” Fauci told ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos.“You never want to get ahead of the FDA in their regulatory decisions, nor the CDC and their advisers on what the recommendation would be, but if you look at the data that’s been made public, the data look good.”Pfizer has claimed its coronavirus vaccine is 91% effective in the five-11 age group. The extension of vaccine availability to those younger than 12 is seen as a key step in getting a pandemic that has killed more than 735,000 in the US under control.Despite polls showing that more parents than previously are willing to allow their children to be vaccinated, there remains significant hesitance. Only one third of parents with children ages five to 11 say they will vaccinate their child right away, according to Kaiser, while one in four say they will not allow it under any circumstances.“We know we have a lot of work to do,” Dr Rochelle Walensky, the CDC director, told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday.“Those survey data look very much consistent with where we were with adults last December, when we rolled out vaccines for adults. We have done a huge amount of hard work over the last 10 months, education, communication, providing information, getting vaccines to really convenient places.”Walensky said vaccines for children would be available nationwide in tens of thousands of venues from pediatrician and primary care offices, children’s hospitals, pharmacies, school clinics and community health centers.“We’re doing absolutely all of that hard work now,” she said. “As soon as we have both the FDA authorization and the CDC recommendations there will be vaccine out there so children can start rolling up their sleeves.”TopicsAnthony FauciUS politicsCoronavirusInfectious diseasesVaccines and immunisationChildrennewsReuse this content More

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      Covid kills a 9/11’s worth of Americans every three days. The vaccine mandate shouldn’t be controversial | Jill Filipovic

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      OpinionCoronavirusCovid kills a 9/11’s worth of Americans every three days. The vaccine mandate shouldn’t be controversialJill FilipovicTrue leadership means making the right decision even when it’s unpopular. Biden’s vaccine rule will save lives and get the economy on track Wed 15 Sep 2021 06.15 EDTLast modified on Wed 15 Sep 2021 11.15 EDTThe Biden administration’s decision to require vaccinations for large segments of the workforce has been predictably controversial among Trump loyalists, vaccine deniers and rightwing media.It’s also the strongest moment of Joe Biden’s presidency.Leadership and strength are defined by moments like this one: a leader doing the right and necessary thing even when they know they will face criticism and possibly political consequences. Too many politicians follow rather than lead; they listen to the loudest voices and cow to the most aggressive bullies. This is today’s Republican party, with its many officeholders who have spent the years since November 2016 demonstrating that there is no bottom to the humiliations they are willing to endure and the compromises they are willing to make if it means they will keep their seats, prostrating themselves before the altar of Trumpism.Biden, like every politician, no doubt fears losing power. But he’s shown here that he has the integrity to put American lives and the stability of the nation ahead of his own professional ambitions. By one estimate, the Biden vaccine mandate will mean 12 million more Americans get the jab. That’s 12 million more people who will then be extremely unlikely to be hospitalized or die of Covid-19. It’s 12 million more people who can help keep the US economy afloat, and who are helping to keep their communities safe.The new Biden vaccine rules also reflect this administration’s insistence on responding effectively to a complicated reality instead of reacting to those who yell the loudest. It is true that there is a subset of the US population – disproportionately white, Trump-voting evangelicals – who strongly object to the Covid vaccine and say they will refuse to get it, requirements be damned. But there’s also a group of people who simply haven’t gotten their act together, or haven’t felt incentivized to get inoculated. There’s a lot to say about these folks – that they’re selfishly putting their communities at risk, that they aren’t being good citizens – and each of us is certainly entitled to our own moral judgments.But the Biden administration isn’t in the business of finger-wagging; it’s in charge of making effective policy. And the vaccine rule is exactly that: it gives people an excellent reason to choose vaccination, and gives many (although not all) categories of workers the alternative of a weekly Covid test – an inconvenience, to be sure, but hardly an unfair imposition in the face of a pandemic that is killing a 9/11’s worth of Americans every three days. Significantly, the vaccine rule also mandates time off work for vaccination and recovery from any side-effects.Resurgent Covid numbers are dragging the US economy down, and Biden is looking at a dark winter if more Americans don’t vax up. March 2020 kicked off an unprecedented financial disaster, with scores of people (a huge number of them mothers) losing their jobs as bars and restaurants shuttered, travel ground to a halt, schools closed and sent young children home, and we collectively understood that there was a “before time” and we were now living in the after. We know now that lockdowns didn’t primarily cause this massive economic contraction; fear of Covid did. And we know that the economic growth we’ve seen since Biden took office is partly credited to his administration’s massive vaccine rollout coupled with much-needed financial assistance to most Americans, which got inoculations into arms and people back into the streets, on to airplanes, and into restaurants with money to spend.The vaccine rollout gave Americans the choice to get the jab and protect their communities and their country, or forego it out of political obstinacy. (Some people, of course, cannot get the vaccine for health reasons, but those people are a small minority and not the ones dragging down the US’s stagnated vaccination numbers.) Shamefully, a huge number of Americans have refused to do the right thing. Some rely on arguments about individual freedom, and don’t seem to connect their individual decision to a collective problem – viruses, after all, don’t respect declarations of bodily autonomy and “my body, my choice”.And those refusing vaccination are also putting our collective livelihoods and our country’s economic wellbeing at risk: as the Delta variant continues to rage, more Americans are staying home. That means they are no longer supporting local businesses as often. Some are making the difficult decision to quit or scale back their own work so they can keep their unvaccinated kids at home instead of risking sending them to schools unmasked and with unvaccinated adults. All of those seemingly individual decisions add up to a bigger and much more troubling whole.So the Biden administration decided to take bold and decisive action, even though officials surely knew there would be outcry. One has to imagine they’re gambling on a payoff – an economy that doesn’t crash, for example, or the quieter majority of Americans who support vaccination and really want to see the pandemic get under control – but they are taking a risk nonetheless. Doing the right thing isn’t exactly an act of valor, but in today’s political universe of reactionary rightwing cowards, it is laudable.Yet many mainstream media sources have focused on the objections and the potential political blowback instead of the necessity of this rule, and the leadership that implementing it exemplifies.That’s a choice, too. Cynical conservatives have realized they can turn even the most commonsense measures into convenient political footballs, sending political reporters and talking heads scrambling to analyze the political fallout of rational rules and good policy. That in turn only reinforces the power of these bad actors.We don’t have to fall for it. Many Americans would surely agree that we want leaders who follow the scientific consensus and make decisions based on what is best for public health and the country’s economic wellbeing, even when those decisions are hard. Most of us would surely agree that we want leaders who lead instead of spinelessly acquiescing to the whims of those who throw the biggest tantrums.Joe Biden is leading despite the very predictable conservative outbursts. He’s refusing to keep the nation held hostage to the least informed but most self-righteous among us.That’s leadership, even if the Fox News crowd doesn’t like it.
      Jill Filipovic is the author of OK Boomer, Let’s Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind
      TopicsCoronavirusOpinionUS politicsInfectious diseasesJoe BidencommentReuse this content More