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    Florida governor seeks grand jury investigation into Covid vaccines

    Florida governor seeks grand jury investigation into Covid vaccinesRon DeSantis asks state supreme court to investigate undefined ‘wrongdoing’ related to vaccinations The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, said on Tuesday he will petition the state supreme court to convene a grand jury to investigate “any and all wrongdoing” with respect to Covid-19 vaccines.The Republican governor, often mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 2024, did not say what wrongdoing the panel would investigate, but he suggested it would be in part aimed at jogging loose more information from pharmaceutical companies about the vaccines and potential side effects.A mutated virus, anti-vaxxers and a vulnerable population: how polio returned to the USRead moreHe made the announcement following a roundtable with the Florida surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, and a panel of scientists and physicians.“We’ll be able to get the data whether they want to give it or not,” DeSantis said. “In Florida, it is illegal to mislead and misrepresent, especially when you are talking about the efficacy of a drug.”Vaccine studies funded by pharmaceutical companies that developed Covid vaccines have been published in peer-reviewed journals like the New England Journal of Medicine, and government panels reviewed data on the safety and effectiveness of the shots before approving them for use.Statewide grand juries, usually comprising 18 people, can investigate criminal activity and issue indictments but also examine systemic problems in Florida and make recommendations. Recent such panels have tackled immigration issues and school safety.DeSantis noted that Florida recently “got $3.2bn through legal action against those responsible for the opioid crisis. So, it’s not like this is something that’s unprecedented.”That money came largely through lawsuits and settlements with drug makers, retailers and distributors.DeSantis said he expected to get approval from the supreme court for the statewide grand jury to be empaneled, probably in the Tampa Bay area.“That will come with legal processes that will be able to get more information and to bring legal accountability to those who committed misconduct,” DeSantis said.DeSantis also announced that he was creating an entity called the public health integrity committee, which will include many of the physicians and scientists who participated in the roundtable on Tuesday. The group includes prominent opponents of lockdowns, federal vaccine mandates and child vaccinations.He said that over the course of the pandemic some people had lost faith in public health institutions, including the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The governor has frequently spoken out against CDC directives, including mask and vaccine mandates, and filed lawsuits to stop many from taking effect in Florida.Additionally, the governor announced that Ladapo would conduct research through the University of Florida to “assess sudden deaths of individuals in good health who received a Covid-19 vaccine”.DeSantis also said the Florida department of health would utilize disease surveillance and vital statistics to assess such deaths.TopicsRon DeSantisFloridaVaccines and immunisationCoronavirusHealthUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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    After the long wait, US parents seeking under-5s’ vaccine face yet more hurdles

    After the long wait, US parents seeking under-5s’ vaccine face yet more hurdlesSome local officials are unsure of how to order Covid vaccines or when they will arrive, while others are aiming to ignore federal guidelines completely Ashley Comegys, a parent of two young children in Florida, was ecstatic when the Covid vaccines were authorized for children above the age of six months in the US. “We’ve been waiting for this for so long,” she said. “We can finally start to spread our wings again.”But then she learned that Florida had missed two deadlines to preorder vaccines and would not make them available through state and local health departments, delaying the rollout by several weeks and significantly limiting access.“Rage does not adequately describe how I felt that they were basically inhibiting me from being able to make a choice to protect my children,” Comegys said.Families with young kids encountered months of delays after the pediatric trials were expanded and regulators pushed back meetings in order to evaluate the data closely. Vaccines for adults were rolled out a year and a half ago.Now new challenges to vaccinating some of America’s youngest are cropping up.“I called probably 20 pharmacies and pediatricians in our area” – including across the state line, said Sheryl Peters, a parent of an 18-month-old and a four-year-old in Tennessee.Even after the vaccines were authorized for this age group, her local health officials didn’t know when they would arrive, and they directed her to the state health department, who told her it would be a few weeks, she said. She was crying on the phone, begging for help, but “nobody knew anything,” she said. “It was so, so disorganized.”-While Tennessee did pre-order vaccines, the rollout has been slow and complicated. And the confusion could deepen.Four Republican lawmakers in Tennessee are petitioning the governor, Bill Lee, to ignore the federal recommendations on vaccinating children under five and to ban state health departments from “distributing, promoting or recommending” the vaccines, creating uncertainty in the state’s approach to vaccinating some of its youngest residents.Tennessee stopped all vaccination outreach to teens – not just around the Covid vaccines – in 2021.The actions by leaders in states like Florida and Tennessee may contribute to existing hesitancy some families feel toward the vaccines, as well as hampering efforts to vaccinate children across the states – particularly those who have been marginalized in the health system, who are also at higher risk of getting sick.“Departments of health, by and large, assist people who don’t have insurance or are on Medicaid or don’t have access to healthcare or live in rural areas where there are no providers,” said Michelle Fiscus, a pediatrician and Tennessee’s former top vaccines official who was fired in July 2021 after promoting vaccines. She was “absolutely furious” to read the lawmakers’ request for a ban.“For an elected body and a governor in a state who has continued to beat the drum of everybody can make their own choice, whether it’s about wearing a mask or gathering in a church or getting a vaccine, to decide for these parents that they are no longer going to have access to these vaccines is really antithetical to everything that they have been preaching,” Fiscus said.“Everything has always been, ‘It’s your choice. You don’t have to quarantine or isolate – it’s your choice. You don’t have to wear a mask – it’s your choice. You don’t have to stay away – it’s your choice.’ But when it comes to getting a vaccine that can actually save lives and prevent hospitalization, then they’re going to make the decision to take that choice away from you.”That’s been one of the hardest parts about this process for Comegys.“If you don’t want to get vaccinated, if you don’t want to mask, OK,” she said. “You can choose that. But why do you then get to make that choice for my family and the way that we want to protect our kids? It doesn’t feel fair.”Some officials continue to spread the narrative that kids aren’t affected by Covid, Fiscus said, even after more than 440 deaths and thousands of hospitalizations among children under five.In March, Florida’s department of health recommended against Covid vaccines for all healthy children. Florida is “affirmatively against the Covid vaccine for young kids”, DeSantis said at a press conference on 16 June, despite ample evidence of the vaccines’ safety and efficacy.The Biden administration soon announced that Florida “reversed course” and would allow doctors to order vaccines directly. State officials disputed the idea of a pivot, saying doctors were already allowed to order the vaccines on their own, but doctors pointed out that the portal to do so was not in place until after the initial shipments had already gone out to every other state.“The state of Florida intentionally missed multiple deadlines to order vaccines to protect its youngest kids,” said Dr Ashish K Jha, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator.With the delays and the confusion, many doctors and health systems haven’t received doses yet.Only federally qualified health centers and pharmacies participating in the national pharmacy program could order vaccines directly in Florida. But most pharmacies can only vaccinate kids three and older, leaving significant access gaps for younger children. (CVS can administer the vaccine to kids as young as 18 months through its Minute Clinic.) And some opted out entirely, with the grocery chain Publix announcing it will not offer the vaccine to children under five through its pharmacies.In Tennessee, Lee has not yet signaled whether he is considering limiting the vaccines. And even if vaccinations and information isn’t limited in Tennessee, the lawmakers’ request could add to hesitancy around the vaccines.“That seems to be their goal, to continue to spread vaccine misinformation and disinformation and to continue to erode confidence around these vaccines,” Fiscus said.In Florida, vaccinations will probably stall amid the message that Covid vaccines for kids aren’t recommended and the confusion around how to find them, especially because Florida isn’t offering the pediatric vaccines at state and local health departments and because pharmacies usually only vaccinate kids above the age of three.“I genuinely don’t know, if you have a child under three, where you will go for that here if your pediatrician’s not getting it,” Comegys said. “Unless you’re on top of it, it’s going to be really hard to find.”Many pediatricians in her area are short-staffed and aren’t able to reach out to families to let them know the vaccines have been authorized and how to get them.Her pediatrician was able to place an order for the under-five vaccines a week ago, but it’s going to take several weeks before they arrive. Her two children were placed on the waitlist.It’s been difficult to know the vaccines are rolling out in other states while her family still can’t access them, Comegys said. “The fact that it is available, and I can’t access it – that’s where I get really angry and really upset.”Families that want to vaccinate their kids are eager to get the shots as soon as possible, as the US faces another potential wave from the Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5, and with the return to school rapidly approaching.But many families feel like they put their lives on hold while much of the rest of the world moved on. Peters had a family cruise planned for May that they canceled because the shots weren’t available yet, while Comegys is canceling a vacation planned for July.“The finish line has been so close,” Comegys said. “And then to hear, ‘Oh no, it’s going to be another couple of weeks or a couple of months.’ I’m so angry. We’re so close, and now you’re not going to let me get there.”TopicsCoronavirusVaccines and immunisationFloridaParents and parentingUS politicsHealthFamilynewsReuse this content More

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    CDC announces revamp plans, hires outside official for review

    CDC announces revamp plans, hires outside official for reviewThe one-month review follows criticism for its pandemic response including initial delays in developing a coronavirus test The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Monday announced plans to revamp itself, with director Rochelle Walensky hiring an outside senior federal health official to conduct a one-month review.James Macrae, an associate administrator in the Department of Health and Human Services, will join CDC on a one-month assignment from 11 April to listen to and engage with the agency’s Covid-19 response activities, Walensky said in an email to her colleagues.Biden names Ashish Jha as new White House Covid-19 response coordinatorRead moreMacrae will provide Walensky insight into how CDC’s programs can be strengthened.She has also asked three senior officials at CDC to gather feedback on the agency’s current structure and solicit suggestions for strategic change.The review follows criticism for its response during the pandemic, from delays in developing a coronavirus test initially to its guidance over masking, isolation and quarantine being called confusing.“As we’ve challenged our state and local partners, we know that now is the time for CDC to integrate the lessons learned into a strategy for the future,” Walensky said in a separate statement.Walensky said the review will allow CDC to develop new systems and processes, with a keen focus on the agency’s core capabilities like public health workforce, laboratory capacity and rapid response to disease outbreaks. TopicsCoronavirusInfectious diseasesBiden administrationVaccines and immunisationUS 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

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    CDC contemplating change to mask guidance in coming weeks

    CDC contemplating change to mask guidance in coming weeksDirector Rochelle Walensky notes recent declines in Covid cases, hospital admissions and deaths The leading US health officials said on Wednesday that the nation is moving closer to the point that Covid-19 is no longer a “constant crisis” as more cities, businesses and sports venues began lifting pandemic restrictions around the country.Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Rochelle Walensky said during a White House briefing that the government is contemplating a change to its mask guidance in the coming weeks.Noting recent declines in Covid-19 cases, hospital admissions and deaths, she acknowledged “people are so eager” for health officials to ease masking rules and other measures designed to stop the spread of the coronavirus.“We all share the same goal – to get to a point where Covid-19 is no longer disrupting our daily lives, a time when it won’t be a constant crisis – rather something we can prevent, protect against, and treat,” Walensky said.With the Omicron variant waning and Americans eager to move beyond the virus, government and business leaders have been out ahead of the CDC in ending virus measures in the last week, including ordering workers back to offices, eliminating mask mandates and no longer requiring proof of vaccine to get into restaurants, bars and sports and entertainment arenas.The efforts have been gaining more steam each day.Philadelphia officials on Wednesday said the city’s vaccine mandate for restaurants was immediately lifted, though indoor mask mandates remain in place for now.At Disney World, vaccinated guests will no longer have to wear masks at the Florida theme park starting Thursday.Professional sports teams including the Utah Jazz and Washington Wizards and Capitols have stopped requiring proof of vaccine for fans.Health commissioner Cheryl Bettigole said Philadelphia’s average daily case count had dropped to 189 cases a day in the city of more than 1.5 million people.Bettigole said the plunge in infections has been steeper in Philadelphia than elsewhere in the state or the country, making it easier to lift the vaccine mandate for restaurants and other businesses announced in mid-December and that fully went into effect just this month.“Our goal has always been to be the least restrictive as possible while ensuring safety,” she said.She added that the vaccine mandate helped spur “a very large” increase in pediatric vaccinations, pushing the city way ahead of the national average for first doses among kids ages five to 11. More than 53% of Philadelphia residents in that age group have received a first dose, compared with closer to 30% nationally, she said.In Provincetown, Massachusetts, a seaside town that became a coronavirus hot spot with an early outbreak of the Delta variant last summer, officials on Tuesday lifted a mask mandate and vaccine requirement for indoor spaces like restaurants and bars.Town manager Alex Morse said the community of about 3,000 recorded zero active cases last week among Provincetown residents – something that hasn’t happened since the surge following last year’s July 4 celebrations.“We are learning to live with, and mitigate, the impact of the virus on our community,” Morse said.Covid-19 infections and hospitalizations have fallen sharply in the US, with the seven-day rolling average for daily new cases dropping from about 453,000 two weeks ago to about 136,000 as of Tuesday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.Hospitalizations are at levels similar to September, when the US was emerging from the Delta variant surge. Almost 65% of Americans are fully vaccinated.“As a result of all this progress and the tools we now have, we are moving to a time where Covid isn’t a crisis but is something we can protect against and treat,” said Jeff Zients, the White House coronavirus response coordinator.Walensky said the CDC “will soon put guidance in place that is relevant and encourages prevention measures when they are most needed to protect public health and our hospitals”.She suggested any changes will take into account measures of community transmission, as well as hospitalization rates or other gauges of whether infected people are becoming severely ill. They also would consider available bed space in hospitals.Several states with indoor mask mandates announced last week they would be lifted in coming weeks, also citing promising numbers.Two music festivals that draw thousands of people to the California desert town of Indio in April and May, Coachella and Stagecoach, also said this week there will be no vaccination, masking or testing mandates, in accordance with local guidelines.Walensky said the CDC wants to give most people “a break from things like mask-wearing” when circumstances improve, though be able to mask up again if things worsen.TopicsCoronavirusTrump administrationUS politicsInfectious diseasesVaccines and immunisationnewsReuse this content More

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    Look around you. The way we live explains why we are increasingly polarized

    Look around you. The way we live explains why we are increasingly polarizedIn 2016, I set out to understand why a border wall appealed to so many. I realized Americans are increasingly boxing themselves in – with vast impacts on the way we see the world “The border’s like our back door,” a concrete salesman named Chris told me in January 2017. “You leave it open, and anyone can walk right in.” It was the day of Trump’s presidential inauguration, and we were chatting on the exhibition floor of a trade show in Las Vegas, called World of Concrete. Circular saws, cement mixers, gleaming new trucks – it was an unusual place to talk about the politics of immigration.But the simple promise of a concrete wall between the US and Mexico had flung a business tycoon into the White House, and I wanted to understand what this was about.Chris was a millennial from a small town in western Ohio. With a trim beard and short, sandy hair, he projected an air of casual self-sufficiency. “I don’t really like neighbors,” he quipped, speaking with a dose of wry humor about how far he chose to live from other people.I was struck by the mismatch between the salesman’s genial manner and his suspiciousness, his sense of anyone beyond his home or country as a potential threat. I wondered, as we talked amid a sea of construction equipment, what it would take to build genuine warmth and concern for outsiders, rather than such walls.For the last five years, I’ve crisscrossed the United States as an anthropologist, pursuing conversation and debate between the coasts and heartland. I set out in 2016 to grasp the appeal of the border wall, the fantasy of sealing off the country with a stark, symbolic barrier. What I learned is that such barricades appeal to many Americans because they resonate with familiar boundaries in their daily lives.What I learned from an unlikely friendship with an anti-maskerRead moreWhile Trump’s presidency has passed, the defensive thinking that drove his ascent remains a pervasive and powerful force. I think of the Gen Xer with a bushy beard and colorful tattoos down the length of his arms, whom I saw hawking a motion sensor lighting system with these words of advice: “I know it sounds cold, but you want to keep people away as best you can.” Or this motto and promise from the home security company ADT: “a line in the sand between your family and an uncertain world.” Time and again, I’ve heard such ideas expressed by Americans I’ve met and spoken with around the country in my job as an anthropologist: businessmen and truck drivers, police officers and media personalities.The give and take of neighbors has long been a foundation for our democracy, philosopher Nancy Rosenblum writes. But cultural and economic forces have worked stark distinctions – insider v outsider, familiar v stranger, safety v threat – deep into the texture of our daily lives. These hard lines and everyday divides fuel our political troubles in ways we don’t always realize.To get to this gated community on Florida’s Treasure Coast, you have to drive through a continuous stretch of walled compounds, everything inside hidden from view by towering hedges and palms. I show my credentials at the guardhouse, and the railway gate swings open. As I drive with the security director past sprawling homes and unnervingly empty streets, Timothy tells me about a residential population – wealthy, mostly white – primed for disaster and desperate for repose.One out of every six American houses in a residential community is secured now by such community walls or fences, and I met Timothy to try to understand why.Residents who live here are mostly seeking psychological assurance, he admitted: “They like us smiling and waving at them.”Contemporary gated communities build on a century of intentional segregation and suburban white flight. Suburban interiors were designed as “escape capsules to enable their independence from the outside world”, architectural historian Andrea Vesentini has shown, built as shelters from the unpredictability of urban life. The pandemic has magnified the appeal of such distance and defense, with more features like security cameras, video doorbells and HEPA air filters built into new houses than ever before.These histories have profoundly reshaped how Americans live in relation to each other, as much as where. So much of everyday life and leisure now takes place in secluded spaces. The front porch sessions with neighbors and passersby that once epitomized American social life have given way to more private gatherings on the backyard deck, or time with the television and other screens indoors. These changes lessen the chance for happenstance conversation with neighbors and strangers.A realtor in Fargo, North Dakota, helped me understand the significance of these shifts. A fit man in his early 60s, Paul had worked in the Fargo-Moorhead metropolitan real estate market for more than 20 years. He took me one morning to a compact new house in a middle-class subdivision, the smell of fresh paint lingering in the cool air inside.Standing in the living room and looking to the front, I felt enclosed in the space, almost hemmed in: the house was fronted by a three-stall garage and one narrow window on to the street and sidewalk. Turn to the back though, and you were flooded with light from every direction, the rear of the house framed with big panes of glass instead of walls.“Doesn’t it bother people that there aren’t many windows in the front?” I asked Paul. “You can hardly see what’s happening on the street.”“The inside is what they care about,” he replied. “And,” he added, pointing out the sunroom at the rear of the house and the back patio beyond, “living on the back. This is where we engage socially with our neighbors.”The small patio was lodged between other private decks and yards, a place to socialize with others by choice rather than necessity. “This is my space, I’ll engage with who I want, when I want,” the realtor explained. “It’s a bit selfish,” he acknowledged.Whether it comes to the climate emergency or systemic racism, the migrant crisis or the ongoing pandemic, so much turns on whether we can acknowledge and accept the intertwining of our separate lives. But it’s not just our homes that are styled now like defensive fortresses.Over the last decade, imposing vehicles like SUVs and trucks have come to dominate the American car market, far outpacing smaller sedans in sales. These are automobiles designed with aggressive profiles and built as defensive steel cocoons, often marketed as ways to survive an uncertain and even hostile world. As an automotive designer in Los Angeles told me, such vehicles appeal in a society that is “suffering a case of insecurity”.There is a political side to such choices: researchers have found that cities with more sedans than pickup trucks will probably vote Democratic in a presidential election, while those with more pickup trucks will probably vote Republican. But it isn’t simply a matter of signaling partisan affiliation through automotive choice. Vehicles say a lot about what people care most about.Consider an exchange I had one morning in Los Angeles with the driver of a Cadillac Escalade, a few years ago. He was an Asian American dad, like me, and we’d run into each other on the driveway of a cheery and progressive nursery school on the Westside. I’d walked my daughter there that morning; his daughter was buckled into one of the Escalade’s seats. I was struck by how tiny the child looked inside the three-ton vehicle, how challenging it would be for her to clamber down to the ground outside.The hulking white automobile was brand new, still without license plates. Why an Escalade? I asked. “It’s perceived to be safe,” he replied. “You know, more mass.”More mass. The phrase kept playing on my mind as I walked back home. Whose safety was secured by all the vehicular mass hurtling down American roads, and at whose expense?The rise of the SUV in global automotive markets is the second largest cause of increasing carbon emissions over the last decade, more significant than shipping, aviation and heavy industry. And at an everyday scale, there are serious consequences for those who encounter them in collisions.Because of their rigid and heavy frames, SUVs and trucks are far more dangerous than conventional sedans for the pedestrians, cyclists and children at play who share American streets with automobiles. Pedestrian deaths on roadways in the United States have soared by more than 50% over the last decade.Someone in an armored cockpit, someone else on their own two feet: this too is a polarized encounter. Low-income Americans and people of color are much more likely to be struck and killed while walking, which brings home another difficult truth in these developments.Indifference is a privilege. Some can afford to seal themselves off from the world beyond, while those left outside must fend for themselves as best they can.The fortress mindset thrives on suspicion, and the urge to protect oneself can make shared spaces and resources seem more dangerous than they are. Take that necessity for life itself, the water we drink. American consumers now buy an astounding 75 billion disposable bottles of water each year, each a tiny enclosure of an essential resource, a shelter made for one. The bottled water industry has capitalized on widespread unease about the quality of public water supplies in the United States. Meanwhile, as interest and investment in shared public infrastructure lags, people are left with polluted and contaminated water, forced to rely on bottled alternatives.Two years before the pandemic began, I attended a bottled water trade show in Texas. Most everyone walked around with a small disposable bottle in hand, always closed, the little caps screwed back on after every sip. “I don’t drink public water,” people would avow, wrinkling their noses in distaste at the very idea of a drinking fountain. “Someone else’s mouth is on it and over it.”Water fountains were switched off across the country in 2020 when the pandemic struck. But they’d already been disappearing for years, and how many will return remains uncertain. Bottled water is regulated so loosely that its quality is difficult to judge. Yet many Americans have come to believe again in the purity of a resource untouched by the wrong people, a dark contemporary echo of the segregated fountains of the Jim Crow era.At the bottled water trade show, I spoke with a middle-aged white man in a brown suit who worked for a water conditioning company in west Texas. I noticed his habit of crumpling up each disposable bottle into a little ball when it was empty, and I asked him about this gesture.“I like to put things away,” he told me, describing how he’d throw these crinkled balls of plastic into the back of his SUV while he was driving. I imagined them piling up in heaps, a travelling signpost for the mountain of waste that all of us are building together.There’s a curious resonance between this faith in a sealed bottle, and a culture that celebrates the invulnerable body. Americans are often encouraged to imagine their own bodies as armored enclosures, to seal off against the outside world. Think of bottled sports drinks like BodyArmor or BioSteel. “Your body, your fortress,” their taglines read.The coronavirus pandemic has supercharged such ideas, setting off a boom in personal disinfectant products and touchless technology, making it easier to deny the truth that we depend on each other for our wellbeing. The deep resistance to face masks and vaccination in the United States also relies, quite often, on a highly individualized sense of bodily autonomy.I think of a middle-aged white businessman from Michigan with whom I’ve debated the pandemic for many months. A staunch libertarian, he considers compulsory public health precautions as tantamount to slavery. They deny, he says, “my feelings, my rights, my personal body”.Regular exposure to different points of view could complicate such diehard convictions. But our fractured media have deepened the existing fissures of American society.Walls at home and on the road, shielding the body from exposure and the mind from uncomfortable ideas: these interlocking divides make it more difficult to take unfamiliar people and perspectives seriously; harder to acknowledge the needs of strangers, to trust their motives and empathize with their struggles. In an atomized society, others become phantoms all too easily, grist for the mill of resentment and mistrust.There’s a deep and pernicious history at work here. Longstanding patterns of neighborhood racial segregation have inflamed the prejudice against outgroups, bolstering stereotypes, as the political scientist Ryan Enos and others have shown. When such divisions are reproduced at an everyday scale, the gulf between self and other widens even further, and everyone becomes a potential outsider.But this isn’t all that is happening, or could yet happen.Around the country in 2020, the pandemic spurred a return to socializing with neighbors on front yards and porches. Cities and towns have carved out new places for walking, biking and outdoor life, new ways of sharing public space with people, known and unknown. It remains to be seen whether these are temporary adjustments or more enduring experiments.Movements for mutual aid, racial justice and cultural solidarity have also brought Americans together, spurring more radical commitments to collective care-taking, redrawing the line between stranger and kin. The vitality of such movements depends on adequate space and support. Calls abound to redesign our personal and public spaces for conviviality rather than isolation. Commons, parks and open streetscapes; living quarters and resources arranged to encourage social awareness, not solipsism; communication platforms that nurture contrary lines of thought: these spaces can nurture the capacity to live and thrive alongside others unlike oneself, working against the tendency to reject and retreat.Our feelings for others are structural realities as much as personal qualities. In a society built on walls of indifference, empathy will remain an elusive hope. For “the death of the heart” is one of the most tragic consequences of segregation, as James Baldwin observed: “You don’t know what’s happening on the other side of the wall.”TopicsLife and styleTrump administrationVaccines and immunisationUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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    Biden health chief endures Fox News grilling over mixed Covid messaging

    Biden health chief endures Fox News grilling over mixed Covid messagingAs supreme court ponders workplace vaccine mandate, CDC director Rochelle Walensky seeks to set record straight Facing accusations of confusing messaging about the Omicron Covid surge, a senior Biden administration official was forced on to the back foot on Sunday by a supreme court justice’s mistaken remark about hospitalisations among children.Omicron could be ‘first ray of light’ towards living with CovidRead moreDuring oral arguments over a vaccinations mandate for private employers, the liberal justice Sonya Sotomayor said on Friday the US had “over 100,000 children, which we’ve never had before, in serious condition and many on ventilators”.Reporters were swift to point out she was wrong. Though concern about children and Omicron is widespread, the Washington Post cited official data in saying there were “about 5,000 children hospitalised … either with suspected Covid or a confirmed laboratory test”.According to Johns Hopkins University, more than 836,000 people have died of Covid in the US. More than 206 million Americans, or 62.5% of the eligible population, are considered fully vaccinated.The Covid response has been dogged by resistance to vaccines and other public health measures stoked by politicians and rightwing media prominently including Fox News.Nonetheless, critics charge that official messaging has become muddled, not least over the recent decision to cut recommended quarantine from 10 days to five, and confusion about when or if the infected should test again.Earlier this week, it was reported that Dr Rochelle Walensky, director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was undergoing media training. She also told told reporters she was “committed to improve” communications.Walensky was interviewed on Fox News Sunday. In Bret Baier, she faced perhaps Fox’s toughest interviewer, after the departure of Chris Wallace. It was not an easy experience.Baier asked: “The supreme court is in the process of dealing with this big issue about mandates. Do you feel it is the responsibility of the CDC director to correct a very big mischaracterisation by one of the supreme court justices?”“Yeah,” said Walensky. “Here’s what I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you that right now, if you’re unvaccinated, you’re 17 times more likely to be in the hospital and 20 times more likely to die than if you’re boosted.“And so my responsibility is to provide guidance and recommendations to protect the American people. Those recommendations strongly recommend vaccination for our children above the age of five and boosting for everyone above the age of 18 if they’re eligible.”Baier asked if the administration knew how many children were on ventilators.“I do not have that off the top of my head,” Walensky said. “But what I can say is I don’t believe there are any in many of these hospitals who are vaccinated.“So really, the highest risk of being on a ventilator for a child is if you’re unvaccinated. We also have recent data out just this week that’s demonstrated that dangerous MIS-C syndrome that we’re seeing in children, 91% protection if you’ve been vaccinated.”Baier said: “The risk of death or serious illness in children is still very small, right?”Walensky said: “Comparatively, the risk of death is small. But of course, you know, children are not supposed to die. So you know, if we have a child who is sick with Covid-19, we want to protect them.”Baier said: “Officially, you emphasise that one of your primary goals was to restore public trust, but do you think it’s fair to say that the trust and confidence of the public has gone down with the CDC?”“You know,” Walensky said, “this is hard. We have ever-evolving science with an ever-evolving variant and my job is to provide updated advice in the context of rapidly rising cases. And that is what we’ve done and I’m here to explain it to the American people and I am committed to continuing to do so and to continuing to improve.”Baier said: “We appreciate you coming on, we really do. Just getting facts out there.”Most observers think the supreme court, tilted 6-3 in favour of conservatives after three appointments under Donald Trump, seems likely to strike down the workplace mandate. The rule is due to come into effect on Monday.Baier said: “The questioning in the supreme court also said that Omicron was as deadly as Delta. That is not true, right?”Omicron drives Covid surge but New York a long way from pandemic’s early daysRead moreWalensky said: “We are starting to see data from other countries that indicate on a person-by-person basis it may not be. However, given the volume of cases that we’re seeing with Omicron we very well may see death rates rise dramatically.”Asked if mandates for private employers or government employees including members of the armed forces were necessary if prior infection conferred protection, Walensky said: “I think the thing that’s most disruptive to any business or industry has to have half their workforce out because they’re sick with Covid.”Such is the case in New York City, where essential services are struggling for staff.“We have seen with the Omicron variant,” Walensky added, “that prior infection protects you less well than it had … with prior variants.“Right now, I think the most important thing to do is to protect Americans. We do that by getting them vaccinated and getting them boosted.”TopicsBiden administrationUS politicsUS supreme courtLaw (US)Vaccines and immunisationOmicron variantnewsReuse this content More