Happy Holiday! Tomorrow is a brand spankin' new federal holiday, Juneteenth. Congress passed it and POTUS signed it, announcing it starts right away. Have a good day!
While we're on sound bites, if the current tropical system in the Gulf of Mexico strengthens, it will be named Claudette and could drop almost a foot of rain on parts of the South. Fortunately, it won't do all this tomorrow and ruin the holiday.
Some Black church leaders are preaching vaccines from the pulpit, phoning parishioners to encourage vaccination, and hosting testing and/or vaccination clinics in church buildings. Choose Healthy Life is a national initiative involving Black clergy, United Way of New York City, and others and just got a $9.9 million grant to expand the range of vaccinations and make "health navigators" currently doing testing and vaccinations permanent positions. Eventually, they hope to address other ailments common in Black communities including heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, AIDS, and asthma. So far they have done over 30,000 vaccinations in three months in 50 churches in New York; New Jersey; Washington, DC; and Atlanta. The grant will expand the efforts to 100 churches in 13 states and Washington, DC, and install the infrastructure for screenings to begin. Quest Diagnostics and foundation are offering funding and testing help.
South Asian countries are looking for vaccines due to India's, the world's largest vaccine manufacturer, deciding to keep covid vaccines at home for now. Sri Lanka has asked Japan for help, while Nepal has asked for help form Britain, Denmark, South Korea, and the US. The G7 vaccine pledge is too vague to help real planning; it promises future help when the need is now. In Nepal, 1.4 million people aged 65 and older have been waiting for their second shot of AstraZeneca after getting their first one in March. The US has promised 25 million doses, with seven million going to Nepal, but it's not yet clear exactly how many there will be, what type of vaccine they will be, and when they might arrive. Nepal has observed a weeks-long lock-down and one in three tests is still coming back positive. Bangladesh also needs AstraZeneca for second doses. Only 4.2 million of the 168 million population there is fully vaccinated.
Operation Warp Speed invested money in developing covid vaccines, but did not work on covid treatments. The government is now investing $3.2 billion in the Antiviral Program for Pandemics to develop antiviral pills for covid-19. Why couldn't they have given it a catchier name? Suggestions?
A couple of quickie international notes: Travel into and out of Lisbon has been banned over coming weekends as Portugal sees a spike in cases. I know someone who is supposed to move to Portugal in the next couple of weeks. She has a visa to work toward permanent residency there. I hope she can get in. The US embassy in Kabul has gone into a near-complete lock-down because of a covid spike among the staff. It's killed at least one person and put 114 more in quarantine. Almost all of the cases, 95 percent, are in people who are not fully vaccinated.
AstraZeneca can apparently increase the price of vaccine even in poor countries once they decide the pandemic has ended. The source I read said what it sounds like--when AstraZeneca decides the pandemic has ended. Forget that WHO originally declared that the coronavirus had become a pandemic. When AstraZeneca wants or needs more money, bam!, the pandemic will be over.
The New York Times asked more than a dozen public health experts, economists, and bioethicists what the US might have done differently in terms of vaccination. Here are five points they came up with.
(1) We could have delayed second doses to partially protect more people sooner.
(2) We could have included slightly younger people in the early vaccine rollout.
(3) We could have prioritized by ZIP code for vaccine equity.
(4) Congress would have allocated money for vaccine distribution earlier.
(5) The government needed to pitch vaccines to the public more effectively.
What do you think? I know that Britain delayed second doses and allocated first doses largely by age, starting with the elderly and working younger. Should we have delayed second doses here? Not for first responders, I would say. Medical personnel and those responding to emergencies needed full protection earlier than people like me did. But given the vaccine hesitancy here, would we start second doses as soon as people stopped coming in for first doses? And would priority by ZIP code on its own have done anything? Only if the health people took the vaccinations to those areas and made it easy for people to get vaccinated around work, child care, and other life issues that might get in the way. As for pitching the vaccines more effectively, I don't recall there being any kind of concerted, noticeable program related to vaccination. Was there one that I just missed?
I can't wait to see what kind of holiday happens with only hours of notice. See you tomorrow!
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