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      How the US vaccine effort derailed | First Thing

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      First ThingUS newsFirst Thing: How the US vaccine effort derailedWe shouldn’t be surprised by low vaccine rates, health researchers say. Plus the 21 biggest style tribes of 2021 Nicola SlawsonMon 27 Sep 2021 06.45 EDTLast modified on Mon 27 Sep 2021 07.37 EDTSince the first coronavirus vaccines were approved, the US bought enough to inoculate the entire population, and even potentially embark on a round of booster shots, but health professionals have found an essential element to a successful vaccination campaign has been lacking: trust.That low confidence has garnered the US an unenviable distinction – in mid-September it became the least vaccinated member of the world’s seven most populous and wealthy democracies, or G7, which includes Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan.Now, a surge of the Delta Covid-19 variant has killed more than 2,000 Americans a day on average and has taken the US death toll past the symbolic milestone of 675,000 deaths: the estimated number of Americans who died in the 1918 influenza pandemic.The US’s flagging vaccine uptake has flummoxed national health authorities, but researchers say we shouldn’t be surprised.
      How many people are not getting vaccinated? Strategies to promote the vaccine have failed to encourage more than 900,000 Americans a day to get vaccinated in recent weeks.
      What is behind the low uptake? Researchers say it is the predictable outcome of a campaign subject to entrenched social forces that have diminished American health and life expectancy since the 1980s.
      Haiti deportations justified because of Covid, Biden’s homeland secretary saysThe US homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, on Sunday defended the Biden administration’s decision to send thousands of Haitians to a home country they fled because of natural disasters and political turmoil.Mayorkas told NBC’s Meet the Press the removals were justified because of the coronavirus pandemic, a point disputed by advocates and public health experts.“The Centers for Disease Control [and Prevention, or CDC] has a Title 42 authority that we exercise to protect the migrants themselves, to protect the local communities, our personnel and the American public,” Mayorkas said. “The pandemic is not behind us. Title 42 is a public health policy, not an immigration policy.”
      Since Donald Trump’s administration implemented Title 42 in March 2020, advocates and dozens of public health experts have called for its end.
      Under Title 42, people who attempt to cross the border are returned to Mexico or deported to their home countries without an opportunity to test asylum claims.
      In January, Joe Biden stopped the rule from applying to children. Despite that, at least 22 babies and children were deported to Haiti in February.
      Liz Cheney mocks Trump over bizarre insultThe Wyoming Republican Liz Cheney has responded to a bizarre insult from Donald Trump by tweeting a picture of George W Bush with the caption: “I like Republican presidents who win re-election.”Bush beat John Kerry for re-election in 2004. Cheney’s father, Dick Cheney, was vice-president to Bush.Liz Cheney’s tweet was a response to an image released by Trump on Thursday. Under the heading “ICYMI: Must-See Photo”, a Trump-affiliated political action committee sent out a Photoshopped image that spliced Cheney Sr and George W Bush.Trump displayed the image at a rally in Georgia on Saturday but he could not tweet it himself because he remains barred from the platform for inciting the deadly assault on the US Capitol on 6 January.
      Why did Trump use the image? Cheney voted to impeach Trump over his role in the 6 January riot at the US Capitol. She was one of only 10 House Republicans to do so.
      Why is he attacking her now? Cheney is up for re-election and the former president wants to unseat her with a candidate who supports him.
      Five Palestinians shot dead in gun battles with Israeli troops in West BankFive Palestinians have been killed after gun battles erupted when Israeli troops conducted a series of raids against suspected Hamas militants across the occupied West Bank.The fighting on Sunday was the deadliest violence between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants in the West Bank in several weeks. Two Israeli soldiers were seriously wounded.There has been increased fighting in the region in recent months, with tensions fueled by Israeli settlement construction, heightened militant activity in the northern West Bank and the aftermath of a war between Israel and Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip in May.The Israeli military said it had been tracking the Hamas militants for several weeks and the raids were launched in response to immediate threats.
      Why were there raids? Israel’s prime minister, Naftali Bennett, said the militants were preparing to carry out attacks “in real time”.
      What has the the Palestinian Authority said? It condemned the killings and said the Israeli government was “fully and directly responsible for this bloody morning”.
      Were those killed militants? Hamas confirmed four of the dead, including three killed in Biddu, were members of the Islamic militant group.
      In other news …
      The Alaska department of fish and game has alerted residents to a pack of otters that have attacked dogs, children and adults near creeks, rivers and lakes in Anchorage. Authorities said the otters would be tested for rabies, which could explain their aggression.
      China will reduce the number of abortions performed for “non-medical purposes”, the country’s cabinet has said, in the latest apparent attempt to reverse its declining birthrate, which fell from 1.6 live births per woman in 2016 to 1.3 in 2020.
      Vital UN climate talks, billed as one of the last chances to stave off climate breakdown, will not produce the breakthrough needed to fulfill the aspiration of the Paris agreement, key players in the talks have conceded.
      Staff attrition, high demand for appointments and enraged human clients are straining vet practices across the US. The array of overlapping circumstances has created a cascade of problems powerful enough to threaten the entire delicate ecosystem of veterinary care.
      Stat of the day: Male life expectancy declines in US by 2.2 years because of CovidData from most of 29 countries analysed by scientists – spanning most of Europe, the US and Chile – recorded reductions in life expectancy last year and at a scale that wiped out years of progress. The biggest declines in life expectancy were among males in the US, with a decline of 2.2 years relative to 2019 levels, followed by Lithuanian males (1.7 years). Dr José Manuel Aburto, a co-lead author of the study, said the scale of the life expectancy losses was stark across most of those countries studied, with 22 of them experiencing larger losses than half a year in 2020.Don’t miss this: My father was brutally killed by the Taliban. The US ignored his pleas for helpIn 1992, Muska Najibullah’s father, a former Afghan president, appealed to the US to help Afghanistan become a bulwark against the spread of Islamic fundamentalism. He said: “If fundamentalism comes to Afghanistan, war will continue for many more years. Afghanistan will turn into a centre of world smuggling for narcotic drugs. Afghanistan will be turned into a centre for terrorism.” His warnings were ignored. This is the first time Muska has shared her personal story and she says she is doing so because what is happening to her country now is distressingly similar to what happened then.Children likely to experience more climate disasters than their grandparents, research showsPeople born today will experience many times more extreme heatwaves and other climate disasters over their lifetimes than their grandparents, research has shown. The study is the first to assess the contrasting experience of climate extremes by different age groups and starkly highlights the intergenerational injustice posed by the climate crisis. The analysis shows a child born in 2020 will endure an average of 30 extreme heatwaves in their lifetime, even if countries fulfill their current pledges to cut future carbon emissions. That is seven times more heatwaves than someone born in 1960.Want more environmental stories delivered to your inbox? Sign up to our Green Light newsletter to get the good, bad and essential news on the climate every weekLast thing: the 21 biggest style tribes of 2021 and what they say about the worldOnce upon a time, fashion subcultures were simple: you could see skaters, ravers and goths all milling around shopping malls. But now the style tribes have moved online, and are more likely to be dressing up for TikTok and Instagram than the shops. There has also been a bigger change: a splintering and multiplying, with fantasy and dress-up coming to the fore. It used to be easy to recognise a punk, for example, but now there are forestpunks, icepunks and even lunarpunks. If all this has your head spinning, let us cut through the confusion.Sign upSign up for the US morning briefingFirst Thing is delivered to thousands of inboxes every weekday. If you’re not already signed up, subscribe now.Get in touchIf you have any questions or comments about any of our newsletters please email newsletters@theguardian.comTopicsUS newsFirst ThingUS healthcareUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      'Get it today': Biden urges Americans to get Pfizer vaccine after FDA approval – video

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      President Biden urged Americans to come forward to receive the Pfizer vaccine after it received FDA approval. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is trying to finish its licensing process for the drug as soon as Monday.
      The president spoke directly to Americans who have said they would wait to get vaccinated until one of the vaccines received full FDA approval. ‘It has now happened,’ Biden said. ‘The moment you’ve been waiting for is here. It’s time for you to go get your vaccination – and get it today’

      Full FDA approval of Pfizer Covid shot will enable vaccine requirements More

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      Like millions of Americans, I can never leave my spouse. I’ll lose my healthcare | Jessa Crispin

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      OpinionUS healthcareLike millions of Americans, I can never leave my spouse. I’ll lose my healthcareJessa CrispinMy access to doctors is tied to my husband – and his access is tied to his employer. Land of the free indeed Fri 23 Jul 2021 06.17 EDTLast modified on Fri 23 Jul 2021 07.03 EDTIt was around the second dose of fentanyl going into my IV bag that I stopped trying to control how much all of this was going to cost. I had been arguing with every decision the caregivers at the emergency room were making – “Is this Cat scan actually necessary or is there another diagnostic tool?” “Is there a cheaper version of this drug you’re giving me?” – and reminding them repeatedly that I was uninsured, but either the opioids in my bloodstream, or the exhaustion of trying to rest in a room next to a woman who, given the sounds she was making, was clearly transforming into a werewolf, forced me to surrender.Why is a 108-year-old resorting to GoFundMe to pay for home care? | Ross BarkanRead moreI walked out of there four years ago alive, yes. And, as the doctors and nurses kept reminding me, if I had waited another 48 hours to discover I didn’t actually have the magical ability to self-diagnose and self-treat serious problems with Google and herbs, I might have gone septic. But all said and done, I was also walking home to a $12,000 bill, which was approximately half of my annual income as a single woman.It took me several years of hardship, contributions from my friends and the assistance of the hospital’s charity program to pay off the $12,000.Then, last month, it started again. I was at home. I turned my head a little, the whole world started sliding away from me, and I crashed to the floor. I tried to crawl back into bed, insisting, “It’ll pass, it’ll pass.” My husband, on the other hand, was raised in a country with compulsory public health coverage, so his first instinct upon something weird happening isn’t to lie down for 48 hours and see if it goes away. He immediately started plotting the route to a hospital on his phone.I was back, but this time I was married. The whole hospital visit cost us $30, including the prescription. Everything was covered by his insurance. That’s when I realized I can never divorce my husband.The first emergency room visit might have been an anomaly – a freak health problem that the nurse explained as “sometimes these things happen”. The intense vertigo was the result of the deterioration of the condition of my ears. It has been a problem since childhood, one left in “let’s wait and see what happens” condition until a weird virus last year – yes, I was the big idiot who caught a debilitating non-coronavirus virus during a coronavirus pandemic – forced me to a doctor, who discovered significant hearing loss and structural damage that will require lifelong treatment and intervention.As a freelance writer who has tried and failed for years now to get a real job with real benefits, the costs of the surgeries and hearing aids and other treatments the doctor sketched out as part of my future would be suffocating. But almost all of it is covered by my husband’s insurance, making my health and ability to access healthcare dependent on his presence in my life.While I convalesced from the virus last year, I watched the discussion about health insurance take over the Democratic primary debates. I had little hope that the bright, sparkly Medicare for All plan championed by candidates like Bernie Sanders would be made reality. But still I despaired of the excuses other candidates made for why they did not support guaranteed coverage for all. It angered me to see Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg and the eventual winner, Joe Biden, defend their plans to largely maintain the status quo – a system in which employment and marriage determine access to healthcare – as though they were protecting our “freedom” to “choose” coverage that was right for us.The coercions built into American social welfare programs limit freedom, not preserve it. People who are not financially independent are forced to maintain ties with family members who might be abusive or violent unless they want to relinquish their housing, healthcare or other forms of support. And as outlined by Melinda Cooper’s Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism, the dismantling of protections like food and financial aid in the 80s and 90s had the express purpose of increasing familial obligations in the name of “duty” and “responsibility”. Single parents seeking public support for their children’s wellbeing now had to first seek assistance through their partners, no matter how fraught or harmful those relationships might be. While politicians spoke of “strengthening families” and repairing the social fabric, one of the consequences of these policy changes was to limit the ability for people to make the basic decisions required to live the lives of their choosing, unless they had the money that in this country is our substitute for freedom.It’s not just unhealthy families we are stuck in: a Gallup poll revealed that one in six Americans stay in jobs they want to leave because they can’t afford to lose their health benefits. Politicians on both sides claim to support innovation and entrepreneurship, but the cost of healthcare is a huge barrier for many, and something that could be easily resolved with a public option. It’s almost as if we believe people who are sick, unlucky or not blessed by inherited resources deserve to have their choices constrained and stay trapped in perilous circumstances. (That last part is a joke. We Americans definitely believe this.)We have a Democrat-led Congress and a Democratic president, yet there is no public option or significant overhaul of our broken health insurance system on the horizon. As a result, when my husband got offered his dream job at an emerging non-profit startup, one so new that when the offer was made they could not yet offer health benefits, he hesitated. There would be a gap in coverage, of indeterminate length, and there was still that $12,000 emergency room visit in recent memory.In the end, simply by luck, the startup found a way to enroll employees in a health program that left us with only a one-month gap in coverage. I am lucky to be married to someone I like, who I am not afraid of, who I do not want to leave. This hasn’t always been the case for women in my family, or even myself in my 20s. For now, and for the foreseeable future, my access to doctors is tied to my partner, and his to his employer. Land of the free indeed.
      Jessa Crispin is a Guardian US columnist
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