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

    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’

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    Are you in denial? Because it’s not just anti-vaxxers and climate sceptics | Jonathan Freedland

    OpinionCoronavirusAre you in denial? Because it’s not just anti-vaxxers and climate scepticsJonathan FreedlandTo accept the facts about climate science without changing the way we live is also to deny reality Fri 13 Aug 2021 11.55 EDTLast modified on Fri 13 Aug 2021 15.04 EDTIt’s easy to laugh at the anti-vaccine movement, and this week they made it easier still. Hundreds of protesters tried to storm Television Centre in west London, apparently unaware that they were not at the headquarters of the BBC or its news operation – which they blame for brainwashing the British public – but at a building vacated by the corporation eight years ago and which now consists of luxury flats and daytime TV studios. If only they’d done their own research.Anti-vax firebreather Piers Corbyn was there, of course, unabashed by the recent undercover sting that showed him happy to take £10,000 in cash from what he thought was an AstraZeneca shareholder, while agreeing that he would exempt their product from his rhetorical fire. (Corbyn has since said that the published video is misleading.) “We’ve got to take over these bastards,” he said during this week’s protest, while inside Loose Women were discussing the menopause.In Britain, the temptation is to snigger at the anti-vaxxers, but in the US it’s becoming ever clearer that the outright Covid deniers, vaccine opponents and anti-maskers – and the hold they have over the Republican party – are no joke. The Covid culture wars have escalated to such an extent that the Republican governors of two states, Florida and Texas, are now actively barring schools, colleges and local authorities from taking basic, common-sense measures against the disease.They are no longer allowed to require vaccines, proof of vaccination, a Covid test or masks. Any Florida school administrator who demands the wearing of masks could lose their pay. Texas is dropping the requirement that schools even notify parents when there’s a coronavirus case in class. Naturally, the Covid numbers in both states are through the roof. For all Joe Biden’s early success with vaccination, this level of resistance is posing a grave threat to the US’s ability to manage, let alone defeat, the pandemic.What explains this level of Covid denialism? In the US, the roots of a “don’t tread on me” libertarianism that regards any instruction from government as a step towards tyranny run deep. In the Trump era, it has become a matter of political identity: a refusal to believe Covid is real or that the measures against it are legitimate are increasingly conditions of membership of the right and of good standing as a true devotee of the former president. They are conditions of membership. Besides, Covid denialism offers the lure of all conspiracy theories: the promise of secret knowledge, the chance to see what the sheeple cannot see.For everyone else, it’s tempting to take pride in being untainted by such thinking. To dismiss the Covid deniers, whether in Florida or west London, as a group apart, irrational, if not downright stupid – refusing to take the steps that will provably protect them, their families and those around them. And yet, the distance between them and everyone else might not be as great as you think.Contempt for the unvaccinated is a temptation to be resisted | Dan BrooksRead moreOn the same day that Piers and the placard wavers were out in force in White City, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change delivered its report on the state of our planet. It was its starkest warning yet. The UN secretary general, António Guterres, called it a “code red for humanity”, adding that the “alarm bells are deafening”. The IPCC found that sea level is rising, the polar ice is melting, there are floods, droughts and heatwaves and that human activity is “unequivocally” the cause.Now, there are some who still deny this plain truth, the same way that some insist coronavirus is a “plandemic” hatched by Bill Gates or caused by 5G phone masts or aliens. Both those groups are guilty of cognitive denial, failing to update their beliefs in the light of the evidence.But there is another form of denial, what the philosopher Quassim Cassam calls “behavioural or practical denialism”. This is the mindset that accepts the science marshalled by the IPCC – it hears the alarm bell ringing – but still does not change its behaviour. It can operate at the level of governments: note the White House official who on Wednesday urged global oil producers to open up the taps and increase production, so that hard-pressed US motorists can buy gasoline more cheaply. And it lives in individuals, too, in the fatalism that says one person can do nothing to halt a planetary emergency, so you might as well shrug and move on. Which is “to act in the same way as if you were a climate change denier,” says Cassam. “The practical upshot is the same.”Whether it’s Covid or climate, there is a common defect at work here. It is wilful blindness, a deliberate closing of the eyes to a reality that is too hard to bear – and it afflicts far more than a hardcore of noisy sceptics and protesters. A US poll this week found that a summer of heatwaves, flooding and wildfires – evidence that the planet is both burning and drowning – has barely shifted attitudes to the climate issue. Many, even most, are looking the other way.Perhaps all this is worth bearing in mind as policymakers grappling with the twin crises try to cajole the wary towards action for both their own and the collective good. In both cases, it pays to peel the committed deniers away from those who are merely hesitant or apathetic, and therefore more persuadable. And, again in both cases, it’s wise to remember that the recalcitrant are driven by an impulse that is all too human: namely, fear.TopicsCoronavirusOpinionVaccines and immunisationHealthClimate changeUS politicsRepublicanscommentReuse this content More

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    Fears as more children falling ill in latest US Covid surge and school approaches

    CoronavirusFears as more children falling ill in latest US Covid surge and school approachesNational Institutes of Health director says 1,450 kids in hospital Teachers union shifts, calls for vaccine mandates for teachers Edward HelmoreSun 8 Aug 2021 13.54 EDTLast modified on Sun 8 Aug 2021 13.56 EDTAmid increased fears that children are now both victims and vectors of the latest Covid-19 variant surge, National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins signaled on Sunday that increasing numbers of children are falling ill in the US.His comments also came as one of America’s largest teachers unions appeared to shift its position on mandatory vaccinations for teachers.With around 90 million adult Americans remaining unvaccinated, and vaccines remaining unauthorized for 12 years and under, Collins told ABC News This Week with George Stephanopoulos that “the largest number of children so far in the whole pandemic right now are in the hospital, 1,450 kids in the hospital from Covid-19.”Collins acknowledged that data on pediatric infections was incomplete but he said that he was “hearing from pediatricians that they’re concerned that, this time, the kids who are in the hospital are both more numerous and more seriously ill”.Collins’s comments came as new Covid-19 cases in the US have rebounded to more than 100,000 a day on average, returning to the levels of the winter surge six months ago. But health officials focus on children adds urgency to the situation as the US education system approaches the start of the school year.Collins said his advice to parents of school-age children is to “think about masks in the way that they ought to be thought about”.He added: “This is not a political statement or an invasion of your liberties. This is a life-saving medical device. And asking kids to wear a mask is uncomfortable, but, you know, kids are pretty resilient. We know that kids under 12 are likely to get infected and if we don’t have masks in schools, this virus will spread more widely.”The alternative, he said, “will probably result in outbreaks in schools and kids will have to go back to remote learning which is the one thing we really want to prevent”.Warning that virtual learning that kids have experienced for more than a year is “really bad for their development”, Collins urged that “we ought to be making every effort to make sure they can be back in the classroom. And the best way to do that is to be sure that masks are worn by the students, by the staff, by everybody.”The president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, went further, calling for vaccine mandates for teachers. “As a matter of personal conscience, I think that we need to be working with our employers, not opposing them, on vaccine mandates,” she told NBC’s Meet The Press.Weingarten’s comments are an advance on the union’s earlier position in which it maintained teachers should be prioritized for the vaccines but stopped short of supporting a mandate. That shift was previewed last week when Weingarten said she would consider supporting vaccine mandates to keep students and staff safe and schools open.Dr Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to Joe Biden, also echoed Weingarten’s comments Sunday, saying the best way to protect children from the virus is to “surround them with those who can be vaccinated, whoever they are. Teachers, personnel in the school, anyone, get them vaccinated.”Dr Scott Gottlieb, former FDA commissioner, also weighed in on the concerns, saying that schools are not “inherently safe” from the Delta variant and that society “can’t expect the same outcome that we saw earlier with respect to the schools where we were largely able to control large outbreaks in the schools with a different set of behaviors.”“The challenge right now is that the infection is going to start to collide with the opening of school. And we have seen that the schools can become sources of community transmission when you’re dealing with more transmissible strains,” Gottleib told CBS’s Face the Nation.TopicsCoronavirusUS politicsSchoolsInfectious diseasesVaccines and immunisationnewsReuse this content More

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    Rightwing radio host and anti-vaxxer dies of Covid

    US newsRightwing radio host and anti-vaxxer dies of CovidDick Farrel was a vociferous critic of Dr Anthony Fauci and urged people not to get vaccinated Edward HelmoreSun 8 Aug 2021 11.09 EDTLast modified on Sun 8 Aug 2021 14.35 EDTA rightwing TV and radio host who was a vociferous critic of Dr Anthony Fauci and who urged his listeners not to get vaccinated against Covid-19 has died after contracting the virus.Dick Farrel, who had described Fauci as a “power-tripping lying freak” who conspired with “power trip libb loons”, had urged people not to get vaccinated as recently as June.He reportedly changed his opinion about vaccines after falling ill and later being admitted to hospital before passing away on 4 August aged 65. “He texted me and told me to ‘Get it!’ He told me this virus is no joke and he said, “I wish I had gotten [the vaccine]!” close friend Amy Leigh Hair wrote on Facebook.Farrel, a native of Queens, New York, anchored radio shows in Florida and also acted as a stand-in anchor for the rightwing news outlet Newsmax, was described as a pioneer “shock talk” host.His partner, Kit Farley, said: “He was known as the other Rush Limbaugh. With a heavy heart, I can only say this was so unexpected. He will be missed.”Described as an ardent supporter of Donald Trump, Farrel went all-in on unsubstantiated 2020 election fraud conspiracy theories about election fraud and questioned the efficacy of coronavirus vaccines.Hair told WPTV: “I was one of one the people like him who didn’t trust the vaccine. I trusted my immune system. I just became more afraid of getting Covid-19 than I was of any possible side effects of the vaccine. I’m glad I got vaccinated.”TopicsUS newsUS politicsThe far rightCoronavirusVaccines and immunisationnewsReuse this content More

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    The Republicans confusing the vaccine effort: Politics Weekly Extra

    Jessica Glenza and Jonathan Freedland discuss how party politics is playing a role in helping – and hindering – public health messaging

    How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know

    This week the US reached the milestone of having at least 70% of adults receive at least one Covid-19 vaccination shot. Joe Biden had hoped to achieve this by 4 July, but the vaccine programme has stalled over the summer. The resurgence of the pandemic, owing to the much more transmissible Delta variant, has convinced many people who were once hesitant to get the jab. However, some are blaming mixed messages from Republican lawmakers for causing confusion and apathy. So what should local and state politicians be doing? Jessica Glenza talks to Jonathan Freedland. For the other big news of the week, make sure to listen back to our episode about the Andrew Cuomo scandal and why the New York State governor is facing calls to resign. Archive: ABC News, CNN, LiveNOW Watch This Body – a Guardian documentary Send us your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com Help support the Guardian by going to gu.com/supportpodcasts More