A teenagers boyfriend was fatally shot in April. Hours after her graduation, she was, too.
As she prepared to accept her high school diploma Tuesday, Kennedy Hobbs removed her dark-colored face mask – a reminder of her pandemic-era senior year without a homecoming dance or pep rallies. She pulled her dark hair into place as she crossed the stage in sparkly silver stilettos and grinned for a photo.
After posing for more pictures in the parking lot of her Jackson, Miss., high school, Hobbs made stops at a graduation party and the cemetery where her boyfriend was buried after being fatally shot in April. She lay down her blue honors tassel at his grave, snapped a shot for Instagram and tapped out a caption: “For u baby.”
Hobbs, 18, would be killed hours later – shot several times around 10:45 p.m. at a Texaco gas station on her way to another party. No arrests have been made in the case, and a motive has not been determined, Jackson police spokesman Sam Brown said.
Her killing devastated and outraged Hobbs’s family, who said her slaying was indicative of a culture of gun violence that steals too many Black young people. Crime has recently surged in Jackson, a city of about 161,000, with the roughly 128 homicides recorded in 2020 setting a record. The city has logged 57 homicides so far this year, according to Brown.
Hobbs’s uncle, William Edwards, said a makeshift memorial for his niece had gone up near the gas pump where she was killed. But he said he hated that the tokens of affection had to be there.
“I see teddy bears and balloons all throughout the city, and that’s the problem,” he said in an interview. “There’s too many memorials throughout this small city.”
Hobbs, a vibrant teenager, earned a certificate in waxing at 17 and started doing body waxes for her friends in a shed in their backyard built by her mom. She loved R&B and rap music, and getting dressed up.
Hobbs was considering her college options, and Edwards said she sometimes talked about becoming a teacher like her grandmother and her mother, who teaches math and science in Hobbs’s school district.
“Some people,” Edward said of Hobbs, “you can see the greatness rising on.”
The night that Hobbs was killed, Edwards said she pulled up to the gas station with four friends. Two went inside the convenience store, while another two stayed outside.
A little more than 45 minutes later, Hobbs’s mother and uncle arrived at the gas station to find her body splayed between the pumps, Edwards said. Her father had not even arrived back at his home in Southaven, nearly 200 miles north of Jackson, when he got the call that his daughter had been killed.
Surveillance cameras at the gas station were not operating the night of the shooting, police said, and officers are seeking witnesses. Edwards said the family has no answers about what happened – only theories – and believes that the outcry about Hobbs’s killing and other street crime should be as fervent as anger over the killings of Black Americans by police officers.
“We will not sit silent and make this normal,” Edwards said. “This is not a normal situation.”
On Thursday, Jackson police planned to host its first conflict resolution class since the coronavirus outbreak began. The idea, Brown said, was to educate residents on how to solve problems before resorting to gun violence. Staff set up tables in an auditorium, cued up a slide show on a television and waited.
Asean reports over 25,000 new Covid-19 cases, over 500 deaths
For the third successive day total deaths in Asean countries exceeded 500 on Friday, and new Covid-19 cases were more than 25,000.
Southeast Asia reported 25,659 new cases on Friday, slightly lower than Thursday’s 25,820, while 506 people died, an improvement over the previous day’s 537.
Total Covid-19 cases since the outbreak crossed 4.12 million, while the death toll rose to 80,744.
Malaysia’s Ministry of Public Health urged people to follow strict disease control measures during the two-week countrywide lockdown from June 1-14. The death of three patients aged under 5 years on one day has raised concerns, as in 2020 the number was reported for the entire year. In 2021, 27 children have died so far due to Covid-19, 19 of them under 5 years old.
Laos reported nine new cases on Thursday, bringing cumulative cases in the country to 1,952. The government has extended lockdown measures in the country until June 19 but has allowed people to travel between areas that have no or low infection rate. People who have taken two doses of a Covid-19 vaccine for at least a month will be able to travel by land and air between Vientiane and other provinces without having to undergo a 14-day quarantine.
Southeast Asia saw the highest number of Covid-19-related deaths in over three weeks, as well as a rise in new cases on Thursday, according to collated data.
The region reported 25,820 new cases on Thursday, higher than Wednesday’s 22,747, while deaths rose to 537, up from the previous day’s 507.
The number of Covid-19 cases in Asean since the outbreak crossed 4.09 million, while total deaths climbed to 80,239.
Cambodia reported 729 new cases and six deaths on Thursday, bringing cumulative cases in the country to 32,189 and total fatalities to 236. Disease control measures have been announced in Phnom Penh to tackle increasing infections. Entertainment venues, fitness centres, museums and other places have been ordered to close, while public assembly of more than 15 people is prohibited.
Laos reported nine new cases on Thursday, taking cumulative cases in the country to 1,943 patients. So far, 1,654 people have been cured and discharged.
The Laotian Department of Health has ordered a halt on importing Covid-19 vaccine for sale in the country by private companies to avoid disparity in distribution. The department assured that the government was capable of procuring enough vaccine for the population.
U.S. details global coronavirus vaccine plan, with first 25 million doses headed to Asia, Latin America, Caribbean, Africa
Responding to criticism that the United States has hoarded lifesaving coronavirus vaccines, the Biden administration on Thursday announced a plan to share 25 million doses globally in what officials described as a down payment on tens of millions more doses to come.
Officials said they would share at least 80 million doses globally by month’s end – sending about three-quarters of the total through international public health organizations, while reserving the remaining quarter for direct donations to handpicked nations.
“We are sharing these doses not to secure favors or extract concessions. We are sharing these vaccines to save lives and to lead the world in bringing an end to the pandemic, with the power of our example and with our values,” President Joe Biden said in a statement.
The Biden administration has been under pressure to share doses from the nation’s vaccine stockpile, particularly as the pandemic recedes in the United States while continuing to surge abroad. More than half of Americans have received at least one shot of a coronavirus vaccine, according to The Washington Post’s tracker, compared with about 1 in 10 people globally. Scientists also warn that the virus’s global spread remains a threat, as mutations that emerge abroad can return to threaten Americans.
The announcement also comes a week ahead of Biden’s plan to attend a Group of Seven meeting in Britain, where leaders are expected to focus on steps to close the widening gap between countries with access to coronavirus vaccines and those without. For months, public health officials, the leaders of developing nations and foreign experts have warned of what they call “vaccine apartheid,” urging rich countries, particularly the United States, to do more to share surplus doses and boost total supply.
Under the White House approach, about 19 million of those initial 25 million doses would be shared with Covax, the World Health Organization-backed initiative to distribute vaccine doses around the globe. White House officials said they intend about 7 million doses of the Covax share to go to Asia, 6 million to Latin America and the Caribbean, and 5 million to Africa, working with global partners such as the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Meanwhile, the United States would directly share about 6 million doses with nations experiencing severe coronavirus outbreaks, including India, which has been hit hard by the virus in recent weeks.
A White House fact sheet lists more than 40 individual nations where Biden intends to share vaccines, a diverse group that includes allies such as Brazil and Taiwan, and also international aid priorities such as the West Bank and Gaza. While other nations have been less prescriptive when donating vaccines to global aid organizations – attaching no strings about where the doses go – public health leaders sidestepped questions about the United States’ earmarks, instead heralding the size of its contribution.
“This announcement allows us to quickly get more doses to countries in a strained global supply climate – meaning front line workers and at-risk populations will receive potentially lifesaving vaccinations and bringing us a step closer to ending the acute phase of the pandemic,” Seth Berkley, CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, said in a statement.
The initial tranche of 25 million doses will include shots already authorized for the United States, produced by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson. The donations will not include tens of millions of doses developed by AstraZeneca, which are still undergoing a U.S. safety review.
“Importantly, we have secured enough vaccine supply for all Americans,” said Jeff Zients, the White House coronavirus coordinator, noting the Biden administration would ramp up efforts this month to get more Americans immunized. “We will continue to donate additional doses across the summer months as supply becomes available.”
Humanitarian groups such as Doctors Without Borders said the White House plan was insufficient given the urgent global need, although policy experts credited the White House for trying to navigate competing priorities.
“It’s an announcement that checks a lot of boxes for the United States: It demonstrates support for Covax, the multilateral approach to solving this crisis, and it responds to pleas from countries in regions who have not received many vaccines,” said Thomas Bollyky, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and director of its Global Health Program.
“The issue is that it is a relatively small amount of vaccines spread over a lot of countries,” Bollyky added.
The inequities revealed by the pandemic have been felt on a global scale, with a small number of relatively rich nations securing a disproportionate share of near-term supply and leaving much of the world to fend for itself.
Since Biden’s announcement last month that he planned to distribute a share of the nation’s considerable vaccine surplus, global leaders have waited to see how that would be doled out. The framework announced Thursday shows the administration trying to signal support for multilateral efforts by sending 75 percent of doses through Covax, with Biden officials crediting global health organizations for their existing expertise in licensing and distributing vaccines.
White House officials also tried to distinguish the U.S. strategy from the vaccine diplomacy practiced by China and Russia, two countries that have sought to use their coronavirus vaccine stockpiles to bolster alliances and influence.
But the same officials acknowledged the value of hand-selecting some nations to receive shots, including neighbors such as Canada and Mexico.
Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, singled out the decision to share 1 million Johnson & Johnson doses with South Korea, for instance, saying the goal was to protect American forces stationed there, as well as “the Korean troops . . . standing shoulder-to-shoulder with us in that country.”
“It is a unique case – and the kind of unique case for which we want to retain some flexibility,” Sullivan said.
Among the vaccine doses expected to be available soon are millions of Johnson & Johnson shots produced at Emergent BioSolutions in Baltimore. Federal officials shut down the plant in April and subjected its products to extra scrutiny after it was discovered that Johnson & Johnson vaccines had been contaminated with AstraZeneca vaccines being made in the same facility. Food and Drug Administration officials are nearing the conclusion of their review.
Looking ahead to the Group of Seven meetings, public health officials and advocates are set to press the Biden administration and the leaders of other wealthy nations for details on whether G-7 countries will follow the United States and support patent waivers for coronavirus vaccines, or take other steps to boost manufacturing around the world.
About two-thirds of Americans say the United States should take a major role in sharing vaccines abroad, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll released Thursday. The Biden administration has also faced bipartisan scrutiny on Capitol Hill for its lack of detailed plans to share vaccines, particularly as rivals such as China and Russia have provided them to dozens of countries.
Tom Hart, the acting CEO of the One Campaign, a global anti-poverty organization, said he was disappointed the United States had not yet donated tens of millions of doses developed by AstraZeneca since it is not using them. The company’s shots, which have received emergency authorization abroad, remain under review by U.S. officials.
“The administration will soon have hundreds of millions of surplus doses to donate,” Hart said in a statement. “Now is the time to make that clear and push other countries with surpluses to do the same.”
U.S. officials said they would make further donations to Covax, which is co-led by the World Health Organization, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and Gavi. The organization aims to vaccinate 20% of participating countries by the end of the year – a relatively modest target that may not be met thanks to a supply crunch compounded by the crisis in India. To date, it has delivered just under 80 million doses to 129 countries.
Covax’s model of distributing doses based on population also has been criticized by some experts, including bioethicist Zeke Emanuel, who advised Biden’s coronavirus response during the presidential transition and has called for doses to be sent immediately to countries at greatest risk.
Published : June 04, 2021
By : The Washington Post · Dan Diamond, Emily Rauhala, Laurie McGinley
Russia-linked group behind JBS attack revels in audaciousness
They patronize hacking forums to recruit affiliates, advertise profit-sharing schemes and provide interviews on their techniques.
REvil, the Russian-linked hacker group the FBI said is responsible for the cyberattack on JBS SA, the largest meat producer in the world, has emerged as one of the most prolific — and public — ransomware groups in recent years.
The hackers, also known as Sodinokibi, have been at the forefront of the ransomware-as-a-service model of cyberattacks since the group first came to prominence as a security threat in 2019. In this model, hacker groups provide malware for others to use in an attack in exchange for a cut of the ransom payments. In order to recruit talent, REvil deposited $1 million in Bitcoin as a way to give potential affiliates peace of mind that they would get paid.
“Audaciousness is part of their persona,” said Allan Liska, a senior threat analyst at the cybersecurity firm Recorded Future Inc.
Ransomware has become a thorny problem for the Biden administration, particularly after an attack last month on Colonial Pipeline Co. squeezed fuel supplies along the East Coast. Other recent attacks have targeted the police department in Washington, D.C., a hospital network in California and now a major meat supplier.
Ransomware is a type of hack in which a victim’s computer files are encrypted, rendering them unusable until a ransom is paid. Some ransomware groups steal files too, providing another avenue for extortion. REvil maintains a page on the dark webpage, called the “Happy Blog,” where it leaks or auctions sensitive documents from victims as an extra incentive to pressure them to pay.
Since 2017, ransomware has come to dominate other financially motivated cyberattacks in volume and profitability, said Kelli Vanderlee, senior manager of analysis at Mandiant Threat Intelligence, part of FireEye Inc. While the attacks aren’t limited to a particular type of victim, available data suggests it disproportionately affects the manufacturing sector, Vanderlee said. “There are likely several contributing factors, including the perception that manufacturers may be more likely to pay to prevent monetary losses from production downtime,” she said.
REvil emerged from the former GandCrab group, a ransomware-as-a-service outfit that announced they were closing up shop in 2019, according to CrowdStrike Holdings Inc., which confirmed that REvil was behind the JBS attack. “We are getting a well-deserved retirement,” GandCrab wrote, according to the cybersecurity blog KrebsonSecurity. “We are living proof that you can do evil and get off scot-free.”
It’s not clear if the operators of GandCrab simply rebranded themselves with a new name, or if REvil’s operators bought — or stole — GandCrab’s code. Either way, by the time GandCrab signed off, REvil was already underway as a more exclusive ransomware program that was also known as “Sodin” or “Sodinokibi.”
In May 2019, a representative of the group, going by the nickname “Unknown,” sought out a small number of partners on hacking forums for a new ransomware-as-a-service program. “Five affiliates more can join the program and then we’ll go under the radar,” according to KrebsonSecurity. “Each affiliate is guaranteed USD 10,000. Your cut is 60% at the beginning and 70% after the first three payments are made. Five affiliates are guaranteed [USD] 50,000 in total. We have been working for several years, specifically five years in this field. We are interested in professionals.”
“They advertise sharing profits and provide infrastructure and ransomware, ransom negotiations and the distribution of funds,” said Jon DiMaggio, chief security strategist at Virginia-based Analyst1. “They handle all the Bitcoin transactions and things of that nature.”
Like many of the more established ransomware groups, REvil researches potential targets to ensure they have the means to pay, including determining if victims carry insurance against cyberattacks, he said. A REvil associate said in an interview that targeting firms with cyber-insurance was “one of the tastiest morsels.”
Recorded Future said it’s aware of at least 237 REvil victims since 2019.
REvil took credit for hacking the hardware supplier Quanta Computer Inc. earlier this year, and in the process published secret blueprints for new Apple Inc. devices. In 2020, REvil executed a ransomware attack against a law firm they claimed once represented some of Donald Trump’s television enterprises. In 2019, the group also attacked a group of Louisiana election clerks a week before Election Day.
REvil is so immersed in the ransomware domain that its members weigh in regularly on discussions about malware on hacker forums, according to DiMaggio. They also maintain direct relationships with other ransomware groups including DarkSide, the hackers accused of being behind the May attack on Colonial Pipeline, he said.
When DarkSide’s site went down after the Colonial attack, REvil alerted the hacking community about it, said DiMaggio, who has long studied Russian cybercriminal gangs. “They’re extremely involved. They’re the kid in class who always has to raise his hand. They’re very vocal in the community.”
DiMaggio and other analysts have said that Revil hackers communicate largely in Russian and steer clear of targets that use Cyrillic script — the system for languages of Eastern Europe and Slavic states. In the interview, REvil’s Unknown said the group avoided those countries because of geopolitics, laws and patriotism.
The arrangement also gives Russian President Vladimir Putin “plausible deniability” against accusations by the White House and others that Russia is involved in the attacks.
“The whole ransomware model fits into the tactics we’ve seen from Russia over the years,” DiMaggio said.
The appeal for hackers is potentially big profits with minimal risks. “As a child I scrounged through the trash heaps and smoked cigarette butts,” a person claiming to be REvil’s “Unknown” said in a March interview with Recorded Future. “I wore the same clothes for six months. In my young, in a communal apartment, I didn’t eat for two or even three days. Now I am a millionaire.”
Published : June 04, 2021
By : Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Jamie Tarabay
Family members, U.S. officials press Myanmar for release of detained journalist Danny Fenster
Early on the morning of May 24, Bryan Fenster woke up to a string of alarming text messages: His brother, Danny, had been detained at Myanmars Yangon International Airport while trying to fly home to Michigan, to surprise their parents with his first visit in three years.
“Iknew right away that this was going to be really bad,” Bryan recalled. His brother had been working as the managing editor for the news outlet Frontier Myanmar, and journalists were increasingly being targeted in the Southeast Asian nation, where the military junta seized power in a February coup. He steeled himself to call up their parents and deliver the news, and then sprung into action.
Eleven days later, the Fenster family still doesn’t know why Danny was arrested or what kind of condition he’s in. All they know is that he’s being held in Myanmar’s notorious Insein prison, which houses political prisoners and has a reputation for inhumane conditions. U.S. government officials have been pushing for the 37-year-old journalist’s release but say that the junta has denied all access to him.
“We’re not privy to everything that’s going on behind the scenes, but we are assured that people at the highest levels of the U.S. Embassy are working on this and it’s a priority for them,” Bryan Fenster said.
Danny Fenster is the fourth foreign journalist detained since the February coup, and the second American. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said Wednesday that the junta’s actions constituted an “unacceptable attack on the freedom of expression.”
“We have pressed the military regime to release them both immediately and will continue to do so until they are allowed to return home safely to their families,” Sherman told reporters.
Last week, officials from the U.S. Embassy in Myanmar were able to conduct a virtual visit with Nathan Maung, a U.S. citizen and journalist who was detained earlier this year, Sherman added. “We have sought to visit Daniel but have thus far not been afforded access to him by regime officials,” she said.
Human rights groups estimate that Myanmar’s military government has arrested roughly 4,000 people since the February coup in an attempt to crack down on opposition. The junta publishes lists of “wanted” journalists who it claims are threatening “state stability,” and has detained dozens of native-born reporters.
Danny Fenster moved to Myanmar several years before the coup, during a period when the country was changing rapidly, in what many experts saw as a move toward a more open, democratic society. “He was excited to be there to see the momentum of it opening up, so we were excited for him,” his brother, Bryan, said.
As the military crackdown progressed, the Fensters became increasingly concerned about Danny’s safety. But they also knew that he had lived in the country long enough to know where he could and couldn’t safely go, Bryan said. And since he worked as an editor rather than a reporter, he wasn’t attending protests that could have put him at risk.
A native of the Detroit suburbs, Danny Fenster worked as a reporter for a daily newspaper in New Iberia, La., before moving to Myanmar. Both moves were motivated by a deep curiosity about the world and a desire to tell stories that often go unheard, his brother said.
“He cares tremendously about journalism as an art form, but also the responsibility that comes with it to make the world a better place,” Bryan Fenster said.
While Myanmar’s military government has offered no official explanation for Danny’s detention, his family assumes that he was targeted as part of a larger campaign to silence journalists. Frontier Myanmar, where he began working in August 2020, routinely publishes stories that cast a critical light on the junta and highlight potential human rights abuses that have taken place since the coup.
The Fenster family has been in frequent communication with elected officials, including Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Congressman Andy Levin, D-Mich., and Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., who have been making calls to the State Department and U.S. Embassy on their behalf, Bryan Fenster said. Fearful that Danny’s plight may be forgotten if his name is no longer in the news, they’ve launched a petition and a website and are encouraging supporters to keep up the public pressure by contacting their representatives.
“We’re most concerned about his well being,” Bryan Fenster said. “We just want confirmation that he’s OK.”
Chinas great vaccine hope, Sinopharm, sees reputation darkened amid covid spikes in countries using it
Last year, Bahrain became one of the first countries to throw support behind Chinas Sinopharm vaccine, granting it emergency use approval in December – a substantial boost for Beijings global ambitions for the vaccine, despite doubts on the part of some scientists over lack of public safety and efficacy data.
Now, the Persian Gulf country is the latest to raise doubts about the vaccine’s effectiveness.
Bahraini officials told news outlets this week that it would be offering Pfizer-BioNTech doses to certain high-risk individuals who have already received two Sinopharm jabs, suggesting that they no longer saw two doses of the Sinopharm vaccine as enough, in the face of a new wave of coronavirus infections.
The policy comes just weeks after the World Health Organization granted Sinopharm emergency use listing, making it the first Chinese-developed vaccine to receive the global health body’s stamp of approval.
The vaccine, developed by Sinopharm with the Beijing Institute of Biological Products, makes up a significant chunk of China’s own supply of vaccines for domestic use. Though slow to start, China’s vaccination drive is ramping up, with officials suggesting 80% of the country could be immunized by the end of the year.
In Bahrain, however, a vaccination drive that relied heavily on Sinopharm has so far produced at best mixed results and failed to curb new cases.
Almost 50% of the country has been fully vaccinated, according to The Washington Post’s tracking, but the country has seen its worst wave of cases yet in the past few weeks, and the government has implemented a two-week lockdown in a bid to tame the outbreak.
Some 1,936 new cases were reported on Thursday, according to the Bahrain News Agency, bringing the total cases in the country of 1.6 million to over 240,000, with over a thousand deaths.
Waleed Khalifa al-Manea, Bahrain’s undersecretary of health, told the Wall Street Journal in an article published Thursday that people fully vaccinated with Sinopharm who are over 50, with chronic illnesses or obese are being urged to get a booster of Pfizer-BioNTech six months after their last Sinopharm shot.
Bahrain and neighboring United Arab Emirates – which also relied heavily on Sinopharm for their rapid vaccine rollouts – had previously announced they would offer third-dose Sinopharm booster shots starting in mid-May, after studies showed that some of those vaccinated had not developed sufficient antibodies.
In Bahrain, residents can use an app to book their booster shots. Though they can choose either Sinopharm or Pfizer-BioNTech doses, those who meet certain risk groups would be advised to get the latter.
Sinopharm representatives did not respond to a request for comment.
The Gulf nation is not the only place where the rollout of Sinopharm doses has coincided with large waves of cases. In the Seychelles, Chile and Uruguay, all of whom have used Sinopharm in their mass vaccination efforts, cases have surged even as doses were given out.
A surge in cases in the Seychelles provided a “critical case to consider the effectiveness of some vaccines and what range we have to reach to meet herd immunity,” Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relation, told The Washington Post at the time.
A WHO panel report last month found that the vaccine had a 79% efficacy rate in stopping symptomatic covid-19 in adults between 18 and 59, citing evidence from clinical trials in China, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.
While that efficacy was in the same range as that of a vaccine produced by AstraZeneca, it was considerably lower than that of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, which have reported efficacy of more than 90%.
Unlike those vaccines, which use new mRNA technology to train the bodies immune system using a snippet of virus code, Sinopharm’s uses an inactivated version of the virus to do the same – an older, though well-established, technology.
The WHO panel also cautioned that they had a “low level of confidence” in the vaccine’s efficacy in people 60 and older, and a “very low confidence” about potential side effects in that age group, due to a lack of data.
Despite the concern about Sinopharm’s effectiveness, experts say that the vaccine still works as intended in most cases and that it could play a significant role in shortages of vaccine doses around the world.
This week, millions of Sinopharm doses rolled off the production line in Beijing, intended to play a major role in the United Nations-backed vaccine sharing program Covax, amid persistent shortages. Sinopharm officials said Wednesday that they hope to distribute more than 1 billion doses outside of China in the second half of 2020.
Separately, the WHO granted emergency use listing to another Chinese vaccine, developed by Sinovac, this week, reporting that the vaccine prevented symptomatic disease in 51% of those vaccinated and prevented severe cases in 100% of the population.
However, officials said there was not enough data to estimate the Sinovac vaccine’s efficacy in those over 60.
Published : June 04, 2021
By : The Washington Post · Adam Taylor, Paul Schemm
Covid zero risks being Covid limbo amid slow vaccine uptake
“Covid zero” countries that used strict border controls to keep the coronavirus largely at bay for more than a year risk being stuck in limbo and increasingly isolated unless vaccination rates pick up, public health experts said.
Aprotective bubble that’s kept Australia’s Covid-19 fatalities to less than 1,000 is unsustainable, Greg Dore, an infectious disease physician and epidemiologist with the University of New South Wales’ Kirby Institute in Sydney, told a Bloomberg panel. The country needs to overcome complacency and ramp up immunizations to reach “disease immunity,” where SARS-CoV-2 no longer poses a major threat, he said during a discussion broadcast live on Twitter Thursday.
“Once we get a higher proportion of the adult population vaccinated, we will provide that disease immunity and then we’ll be able to open up,” Dore said. “The virus will come in. There’ll be some cases. There may be some people who get reasonably sort of sick, but the numbers of cases with severe illness and the numbers of deaths will be very small.”
Such tolerance is in stark contrast with the situation now, where the Australian state of Victoria is in the middle of two-week lockdown to eliminate transmission of the virus in Melbourne for a fourth time. There were 69 active Covid-19 cases as of Wednesday, according to the state’s health department.
The nation of 26 million people has recorded just over 30,000 cases since January 2020, but administered only 4.5 million Covid shots, according to the Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker.
“The elimination success has come with some complacency,” Dore said, adding that he’s hopeful the current Melbourne outbreak will act as a wake-up call and spur higher immunization rates in the coming months.
Hong Kong, Singapore and other cities that have used social and public health measures effectively to curb Covid’s spread must also improve vaccine uptake as a buffer against localized epidemics, said Jody Lanard, a risk communications consultant in New York.
“I’m worried that the ‘Covid zero’ countries are kind of like sitting ducks for Covid to come in,” she said during the discussion. “I’m very worried that ‘Covid zero’ is really ‘Covid limbo.’ You’re just waiting for something terrible to happen.”
Governments need to prepare their societies for some level of transmission, she said. “They have to help the people have their ‘oh my God’ moments ahead of time if possible.”
When speaking to his citizens, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong frequently slips in reminders of the threat of super-spreading events, Lanard said.
“And then he makes that a little bit vivid so people aren’t totally surprised when things go wrong,” she said. “Helping people have an adjustment reaction to what is likely to happen is going to help things move along faster.”
People living in Singapore should expect routine, large-scale, fast and simple testing to be part of a “new normal” in which residents “learn to carry on with our lives even with the virus in our midst,” Lee told the nation in an address on Monday. “In the new normal, Covid-19 will not dominate our lives. Our people will be mostly vaccinated, and possibly taking booster shots every year.”
Betting on “Covid zero” was a gamble that paid off for many countries whose policies were based on an intolerance of the coronavirus, said Peter Sandman, a risk communications adviser who works with Lanard.
“Having won the gamble, you have to convince people to collect their winnings,” he said during the discussion. “The only way they get to collect the winnings is to be willing to get vaccinated and open up.”
How tolerant of Covid cases societies are willing to be in exchange for greater freedoms, including the ability to travel abroad, should be debated and not decided exclusively by government officials and scientists, Sandman said.
“No country wants to be the hermit kingdom of the 21st century,” he said.
Published : June 04, 2021
By : Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Jason Gale, Kurumi Mori
Afghan war enters more brutal phase as U.S. troops begin pullout
NAWA, Afghanistan – The fight between Afghan government troops and the Taliban is entering a more brutal phase as a reduction in airstrikes against the militants by withdrawing U.S. forces has largely shifted combat to ground engagements, many on the edges of densely populated urban areas after some recent Taliban advances.
To clear pockets of this district, just a few hundred yards from the edge of Helmand’s provincial capital, Afghan government forces under Gen. Sami Sadat moved house to house last month through tightly packed neighborhoods, often on foot, as Afghan aircraft carried out waves of heavy strikes.
The area had been densely mined by the Taliban, and weeks of clashes left the streets shredded: dirt roads littered with craters and mud-straw walls pockmarked with bullets and shrapnel.
For months, the Taliban slowly expanded its influence across Afghanistan after signing the withdrawal deal with the United States. The halt in offensive U.S. operations, especially airstrikes and raids, allowed the group to mass fighters, gather supplies and chip away at government-held territory.
The country’s south, specifically Helmand, witnessed some of the militants’ most striking advances. By May 1, the date marking the start of the complete withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan, the Taliban had massed hundreds of fighters in Helmand. And as the U.S. military handed over its last base here to the Afghan government, Taliban fighters launched a massive assault the same day on the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, overrunning territory in three districts including Nawa.
While Nawa had fallen to the Taliban several times over the past two decades, residents say the current battle to retake the area is unlike the others before: It has dragged on for weeks rather than days, and both sides are using heavier weaponry.
Sadat described one of the most successful raids, which surrounded and killed a unit of about 50 Taliban fighters. “They were eager to collect the dead, so we kept watch on the area,” he said, recounting that his forces shot several more of the militants as they tried to retrieve bodies.
He said he didn’t know if any of the Taliban fighters had tried to surrender. “The boys were angry,” he replied, referring to his men. The junior officer who led the operation was promoted to major.
The battle in Helmand could indicate how the war in Afghanistan will evolve once the United States and other NATO forces completely withdraw from the country. Over the past month, violence has escalated significantly. The Taliban carried out a wave of attacks on provincial capitals, initially triggering a collapse of government forces at several bases and outposts. Now, where the Afghan military is pushing back, both sides are increasingly turning to harsher tactics.
Taliban fighters are blanketing territory with roadside bombs and booby-trapped explosives. And Afghan government forces on the offensive are waging exhausting ground operations covered by intense Afghan air support. Of the eight provinces where the Taliban gained territory last month, the Afghan military has advanced in three: Baghlan in the north, Laghman to the east and in Helmand, around its capital Lashkar Gah.
Where combat has flared, the war’s new phase has proved deadlier for government forces, Taliban fighters and civilians alike.
Last month, the airstrikes in Nawa drew so close to the home of a woman named Tajbib that explosions littered her garden with two-foot-long pieces of burning shrapnel, she said. Then, Taliban fighters appeared at her gate and ordered the entire family to leave. But the street outside her home was in the middle of a battle.
“We were caught,” recounted Tajbib, who has a single name and estimates she is in her 30s, as she huddled with the women and children of her extended family. After navigating around the fighting, however, the entire family managed to reach the government-held provincial capital on foot.
Families in her neighborhood say they have fled flighting several times over the years, but for many, this was the first time the Taliban forced them from their homes.
When Tajbib returned, she discovered that her neighborhood had been turned into a Taliban garrison. Passageways were knocked between rooms and houses, smaller holes were punched through walls looking out on the street, and tunnels were dug connecting adjacent homes.
“I begged them, ‘Don’t do this,’ but they said, ‘You are the friend of Americans. Get out of here,’ ” said Tajbib’s neighbor, in a similar account of being forced from her home by the Taliban. Fearing retribution, she spoke on the condition of anonymity.
As the neighbor, a slight elderly woman, fled, her son stepped on a roadside bomb. The blast killed him almost immediately, she said, recounting the story in wails of mourning and anger to a group of Afghan soldiers. Her son was one of the family’s main breadwinners, and she pleaded for help from the troops to feed her grandchildren.
Civilian casualties were nearly three times higher in May than the month prior. More than 300 civilians were killed and over 690 injured in May, according to preliminary findings from the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission. Children accounted for 378 of the civilian casualties in May.
In a series of tweets warning of heavy civilian casualties in recent days, the United Nations said indirect fire, Afghan airstrikes and Taliban explosives are killing many civilians.
The Afghan government does not disclose casualty figures for its forces, but local officials said casualties among Afghan troops in Helmand are about twice as high now as when the military had close U.S. air support. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release such information.
The Taliban is also suffering more losses. Sadat said his men killed or wounded about 700 Taliban fighters in Helmand over the past month. Local officials estimated the number to be closer to 300 but said this was still more than triple the Taliban casualties in previous operations.
“As we have said before, the best way to reduce civilian casualties is for all sides to reduce the violence,” said Col. Sonny Leggett, a U.S. military spokesman based in Kabul, when asked about the spike in civilians killed or wounded.
When asked about any U.S. role in supporting Afghan forces in Helmand last month, Leggett said, “We have no operational announcements at this time.” He continued, “Our mission is a safe and orderly withdrawal and to leave the [Afghan military] in the best possible position as we depart.”
But the caliber of the forces that make up the Afghan military is wildly uneven. The vast majority of desertions and casualties suffered by government forces are within units that lack supplies and training. But the country’s elite units – which make up just a fraction of the national security forces – have trained and worked alongside U.S. and NATO special operators for nearly two decades, and they display a deep commitment to fighting for their country.
Sadat is the product of some of that elite training. He attended military academies in Germany and Britain, has fought alongside U.S. Special Operations forces and says he will always have deep gratitude for the U.S.-led mission in Afghanistan. “None of this would even exist without the United States,” he said, gesturing to his team of officers, their base and equipment.
But he sees the withdrawal of foreign forces as an “opportunity” for the Afghan government to fight the Taliban more freely. U.S. support in combat operations had many advantages, he said, but it also added bureaucracy, extensive coordination and many meetings. “We don’t have to do that anymore,” he said. “It’s easier now.”
Operating with more independence, Sadat said he is able to empower ground commanders to fight with less U.S. oversight. And with the Afghan air force now conducting the majority of strikes, there are fewer steps to approve and less need to deconflict air support.
Sadat said he now plans to accelerate military operations after months of stalled negotiations in Qatar with the Taliban – a period that he argued was used by the militants to strengthen their fighters on the ground. “Let me be clear, we gave a chance to peace, and it didn’t work,” he said.
Ultimately, he said he thinks the Afghan military can be more effective without the presence of U.S. troops and can defeat the Taliban in a matter of years.
U.S. intelligence assessments disagree, instead predicting widespread Taliban territorial gains after the complete withdrawal of foreign forces.
Hasham Fedayee, a tribal elder from Helmand province, also disagrees with Sadat and expects that the rising wave of violence will continue for decades.
“The war is taking a new turn,” he said, predicting the next stage of the conflict to be “internal” and similar to the years leading up to the outbreak of civil war in the 1970s. “And Afghans will continue to fight [for many years],” he said. “We have already been at war for four decades.”
In Nawa, low-level fighting is continuing near Tajbib’s home, although government forces have deemed the area “cleared.” As she spoke, gunfire sputtered a few hundred yards away, and blasts from controlled detonations of roadside bombs sent shock waves through her modest front room, thrashing the pastel curtains hanging in the window.
“We don’t feel safe, but we couldn’t afford the rent in the city,” she said, surrounded by about half a dozen children who appeared unfazed by the noise. They are fine during the day, Tajbib said. But at night when the airstrikes and artillery begin, she added, they often wake up screaming in terror.
She said she doesn’t understand why the violence is becoming worse now that the United States is withdrawing. Without foreign forces in Afghanistan, Muslims should live together in peace, she said.
“Those who are fighting out there,” Tajbib said of the government troops and the Taliban, “they are brothers.”
Ecological disaster looms as ship with dangerous goods aboard sinks off Sri Lankan coast
A fire-ravaged container ship began to sink off the western coast of Sri Lanka on Wednesday, increasing the likelihood that oil and dangerous goods will leak into the ocean and exacerbate what is already one of the worst environmental crises in the countrys history.
“The ship is going down,” said navy spokesperson Indika de Silva, Agence France-Presse reported. “The stern of the ship is underwater, the water level is above the deck.”
“As parts of the vessel are underwater, there is greater risk of pollution,” wrote Andrew Leahy, a spokesperson for X-Press Feeders, which operates the ship, in a message to The Washington Post. “The aft of the vessel is sitting on the bottom.”
A tugboat tried to tow the Singapore-flagged MV X-Press Pearl to deeper water Wednesday without success, he added.
The Sri Lankan navy had warned of severe pollution if the ship were to go down at its current location just outside the port of Colombo, the South Asian country’s largest city.
Billions of tiny plastic pellets, or “nurdles,” that the ship was carrying floated into the sea after the fire started and began to blanket Sri Lanka’s yellow-sand beaches, reaching as far as 75 miles to the south. Dead fish, birds and sea turtles began to wash up on shore. Scientists have warned that ocean currents could eventually carry the pellets to beaches on the other side of the island nation, killing more wildlife and damaging sensitive ecosystems.
The X-Press Pearl is also carrying around 350 metric tons of fuel oil and the sinking further alarmed environmentalists, who were struggling to understand the amount and impact of debris already shed by the ship.
“This is the worst possible scenario,” said Muditha Katuwawala of Pearl Protectors, a Sri Lankan marine conservation organization. “With [the ship] sinking, what happens is that all that oil might come out … that is going to be so much more pollution.”
The cargo ship was loaded in Dubai and bound for Malaysia, according to an X-Press Feeders account of the incident. The crew noticed a leak in a container of nitric acid and asked to offload it at both the western Indian port of Hazira and the Qatari port of Hamad, but those requests were denied, the company said.
The origins of the fire go back to May 20, when the crew noticed smoke rising from the cargo hold, according to a company statement. The smoke quickly gave way to flames that enveloped part of the X-Press Pearl. Powerful explosions rocked the ship, forcing the evacuation of its crew.
Of the 1,486 containers aboard the ship before the blaze, 81 contained dangerous goods, including 25 metric tons of nitric acid, according to X-Press Feeders.
Authorities suspect the nitric acid was the source of the fire. The Sri Lankan navy has said the ship was also carrying caustic soda, sodium methoxide and methane.
Katuwawala said precise contents of the ship were not completely known – there is an ongoing police investigation into the incident – adding to uncertainty over the ecological impact of the disaster.
“We don’t know if there are additional containers [of plastic pellets] inside that could spill out,” he said, estimating that 3 billion to 4 billion tiny granules had already leaked. “If it sinks, all those containers, whatever the cargo is inside, will spill out.”
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