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YouTube pulls video of DeSantis panel discussion urging no masks for children

InternationalApr 10. 2021Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis

By The Washington Post · Meryl Kornfield

YouTube has pulled a video featuring Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, over allegations it contains misinformation about the coronavirus and mask-wearing.

The video is of a March 18 roundtable discussion in Tallahassee the governor hosted with panelists – radiologist and former White House adviser Scott Atlas, Harvard University biostatistician Martin Kulldorff, Oxford University epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta, and Stanford Medical School economist Jay Bhattacharya – who have publicly spoken against lockdowns and other measures enacted to reduce the spread of the virus. The video shared by news station WSTB Tampa Bay was taken down Wednesday because it violated a policy related to “COVID-19 medical misinformation,” according to platform spokeswoman Elena Hernandez.

“We removed this video because it included content that contradicts the consensus of local and global health authorities regarding the efficacy of masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19,” Hernandez wrote in a statement shared with The Washington Post.

At one point during the hour-and-45-minute discussion, DeSantis asks panelists about enforcing mask-wearing for children, which the scientists dispute is effective to prevent the spread of the virus, despite recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization that children wear masks. The CDC advises mask-wearing for children 2 and up, and the WHO recommends masks for children 12 and above.

“Children should not wear face masks,” Kulldorff said in response to DeSantis’s question. “They don’t need it for their own protection, and they don’t need it for protecting other people either.”

“I think it’s developmentally inappropriate and it just doesn’t help on the disease spread,” Bhattacharya added about mask-wearing for children. “I think it’s absolutely not the right thing to do.”

In a statement shared with The Washington Post on Friday, DeSantis’s spokesman Cody McCloud called the video’s removal “another blatant example of Big Tech attempting to silence those who disagree with their woke corporate agenda,” arguing that the panelists’ academic affiliations qualify them to speak about the crisis.

“Good public health policy should include a variety of scientific and technical expertise, and YouTube’s decision to remove this video suppresses productive dialogue of these complex issues,” McCloud wrote.

After social media platforms were blamed for allowing misinformation to fester amid the 2016 election, the tech giants have cracked down on falsehoods about the coronavirus pandemic, fueling calls for stricter regulations of these companies from conservatives, including DeSantis, who view the scrutiny as overreaching. A video of Atlas was removed by the platform before while he was an adviser to former president Donald Trump, prompting him to compare his plight to those who live in “Third World countries.”

Reactions from Florida politicians largely split along party lines. The state’s top elected Democrat, Agriculture and Consumer Services Commissioner Nikki Fried, tweeted “we should find a governor who doesn’t get banned from @YouTube for endangering children with conspiracies.” Sen. Marco Rubio warned of “unelected gatekeepers of the public square.”

The removal of the video was first reported by the American Institute for Economic Research, the libertarian think tank behind the Great Barrington Declaration, a controversial letter co-signed by three of the panelists that endorses herd immunity. Although the online document claimed that thousands of doctors and scientists had signed it, Britain’s Sky News documented some transparently fake signatories, including “Dr. Person Fakename.”

Despite YouTube’s decision to yank the video, the discussion can still be viewed on Florida Channel, a state-funded live-streaming service.

One of the panelists, Bhattacharya, told The Post that he thought YouTube’s decision was “censorship” and “contrary to American democratic norms of free expression.”

In an email, Bhattacharya wrote that he viewed the discussion as a “policy forum” and raised objections to mask-wearing based on evidence that masks could hinder a child’s ability to learn and interact with others.

The other panelists did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday evening, but Kulldorff tweeted a link to a Wall Street Journal editorial, which decried the removal, saying it “should not matter” if the information panelists were presenting was false because the discussion “offers a window into the thinking of the Governor and people who influence him.”

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Britain’s Prince Philip, husband of Queen Elizabeth II, dies aged 99

InternationalApr 09. 2021Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip

By The Nation

Prince Philip, the husband of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, died aged 99 on Friday morning, according to a statement by the UK monarchy.

“It is with deep sorrow that Her Majesty The Queen announces the death of her beloved husband, His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh,” said the statement, published on the UK royals official website.

“His Royal Highness passed away peacefully this morning at Windsor Castle,” it added, referring to the castle located 37 kilometres east of London in the county of Berkshire.

“The Royal Family join with people around the world in mourning his loss,” continued the statement, adding that further announcements would be made in due course.

A Greek prince, the Duke of Edinburgh married Elizabeth in 1947 and remained by his wife’s side throughout her 69-year reign. He earned a reputation for speaking his mind, at the cost of occasional high-profile gaffes. He is also credited with helping modernise the British monarchy in the era after World War II.

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Five dead in S.C. shooting committed by ex-NFL player Phillip Adams, who then killed himself, authorities say

InternationalApr 09. 2021An intersection in Rock Hill, S.C., on Oct. 20, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Photo for The Washington Post by Allison Lee Isley

By The Washington Post · Timothy Bella

At least five people are dead, including two children, in what police in York County, S.C., called a “case of a mass shooting” that involved a former National Football League player as the suspected gunman.

Four of the victims of the Wednesday shooting came from what authorities described as a “very prominent and very well-known” family in the Rock Hill community: Robert Lesslie, a 70-year-old doctor; his wife, Barbara Lesslie, 69; and two grandchildren, Adah, 9, and Noah, 5. The fifth victim, James Lewis, 38, of Gastonia, N.C., was working at the home at the time of the shooting.

The York County Sheriff’s Office confirmed in a news release to The Washington Post on Thursday that the suspected gunman was Phillip Adams, a former NFL player who killed himself early Thursday after an hours-long search by police. York County Coroner Sabrina Gast said Adams, 32, died of a “self-inflicted gunshot wound.” Adams is from Rock Hill.

The coroner told WCNC, an NBC affiliate in Charlotte, that Adams was found dead inside his father’s home after a standoff with police.

Adams’s father, Alonzo, told WCNC that his son had been “a good kid. I think the football messed him up.”

Alonzo Adams, who was visibly shaken while speaking to reporters, said that Robert Lesslie had been his doctor a long time ago and that “they were good folks down there. We’re going to keep them in our prayers.”

In a statement released by the sheriff’s office, members of the Lesslie family said they were still sorting through the heartbreak, shock and grief of the tragedy.

“We are truly in the midst of the unimaginable,” the family said in a statement. “The losses we are suffering cannot be uttered at this time.”

A sixth person was wounded in the shooting and taken to a hospital for “serious gunshot wounds,” York County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Trent Faris said at a news conference.

“It doesn’t happen here,” Faris – who also had Lesslie as his doctor growing up – said of the shooting. “It’s one of those strange things that a lot of people are going to have a hard time understanding.”

The South Carolina attack comes on the heels of mass shootings in the Atlanta area and Boulder, Colo., and renewed calls from lawmakers and others to ban assault weapons. On Thursday, President Biden announced a half-dozen executive actions focused on curbing gun violence, his first initiatives on guns as president.

Police responded to the scene just before 5 p.m. Wednesday after a report of a multiple-victim shooting on Marshall Road. In a 911 call published by the sheriff’s office, a man who called authorities said he heard about 20 shots fired.

“I think we’ve had some trouble,” the caller said to 911. “I think there’s been a bad shooting.”

In a separate 911 call, another man reported to authorities that one of his workers from his heating and air-conditioning company had called him to tell him he had been shot and that the other was unresponsive.

When police arrived, they said, they found the four family members dead inside the home and Lewis just outside.

Just after 1:30 a.m. Thursday, police announced that they had identified the person they believed to be the gunman.

“There is no active threat to the community,” the sheriff’s office tweeted.

An hours-long search for the gunman stretched into Wednesday night and early Thursday, police said. Authorities described the gunman as a young Black man wearing a hooded sweatshirt and camouflage pants.

Phillip Adams, who was drafted by the San Francisco 49ers in 2010, played for six teams over six seasons, last playing for the Atlanta Falcons in 2015. He had no previous criminal record.

The Lesslie family has been a mainstay in the Rock Hill community for 40 years, and Robert Lesslie founded Riverview House Calls & Riverview Hospice and Palliative Care. According to the medical center’s website, the doctor and his wife have four children and eight grandchildren.

At the news conference, Faris acknowledged that the doctor had cared for him growing up.

“Dr. Lesslie has been one of those people that everybody knows,” he said.

In their statement to police, members of the Lesslie family honored their loved ones by finding forgiveness in the shooting that killed five. They also offered “prayers and compassion” to Adams’s family.

“While we know there are no answers that will satisfy the question ‘why,’ we are sure of one thing,” they said. “We do not grieve as those without hope.”

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Joye Hummel, first woman hired to write Wonder Woman comics, dies at 97

InternationalApr 09. 2021Wonder Woman writer Joye Hummel donated her archives to the Smithsonian Institution in 2014. In her hands is the psychology take-home exam that had drawn William Moulton Marston’s attention. MUST CREDIT: Elizabeth O’Brien/Smithsonian Institution

By The Washington Post · Harrison Smith

In March 1944, shortly before Joye Hummel graduated from the Katharine Gibbs secretarial school in Manhattan, she was invited to meet with one of her instructors, a charismatic psychologist who had been impressed by her essays on a take-home test.

Over tea at the Harvard Club, professor William Moulton Marston offered her a job – not in the classroom or psych lab, but in the office of his 43rd Street art studio. He wanted Hummel to help him write scripts for Wonder Woman, the Amazonian superhero he had created three years earlier and endowed with a magic lasso, indestructible bracelets, an eye-catching red bustier and a feminist sensibility.

Hummel, then 19, had never read Wonder Woman; she had never even read a comic book. But Marston needed an assistant. His character, brought to life on the page by artist H.G. Peter, was appearing in four comic books and was about to star in a syndicated newspaper strip. He was looking for someone young who could write slang and who, perhaps most importantly, shared his philosophy and vision for the character.

“You understand that I want women to feel they have the right to go out, to study, to find something they love to do and get out in the world and do it,” Hummel recalled his saying. She was “astonished and delighted” by the job offer, according to historian Jill Lepore’s book, “The Secret History of Wonder Woman,” and soon began writing for the comic. “I always did have a big imagination,” she said.

Hummel worked as a Wonder Woman ghostwriter for the next three years, long before any woman was publicly credited as a writer for the series. As invisible to readers as Wonder Woman’s transparent jet plane, she was increasingly recognized after Lepore interviewed her in 2014. Four years later, she received the Bill Finger Award, given to overlooked or underappreciated comic book writers at the Eisner Awards.

Hummel, who was known in recent years by her married name, Joye Murchison Kelly, died April 5 at her home in Winter Haven, Fla., a day after turning 97. Her son Robb Murchison confirmed the death but did not know the precise cause.

“Joye was absolutely a pioneer in bringing her own voice into these stories,” Lepore said in a phone interview. “She was then pretty much entirely forgotten. . . . I sort of think that people hadn’t bothered to find her. I called her up and said, ‘Are you the Joye Hummel who wrote Wonder Woman in the 1940s?’ She nearly dropped the receiver – she was delighted but surprised. It was a story she had told her grandchildren, but they didn’t believe her.”

A Wonder Woman comic and one of Ms. Hummel’s original scripts, from her archives before she donated them to the Smithsonian. MUST CREDIT: Robb Murchison

By the time Hummel started writing for Wonder Woman, the comics had an audience of 10 million readers. The character debuted in a 1941 issue of All-Star Comics, three years after Superman first lifted a car on the cover of Action Comics and two years after Batman leaped across the pages of Detective Comics.

Together, the three superheroes became linchpins of DC Comics, with Wonder Woman emerging as arguably the world’s most famous female superhero. She appeared on the cover of Ms. Magazine’s first issue (“Wonder Woman for President”), inspired a hit 1970s TV show starring Lynda Carter and was revitalized for the big screen beginning in 2016, played by Gal Gadot.

The character was “created by a whole series of women” who were never publicly credited, Lepore said. Marston – whose psychological research contributed to the development of the lie-detector test – received help from his wife, Elizabeth Holloway Marston, as well as their partner, Olive Byrne, the daughter of radical feminist Ethel Byrne and niece of birth-control activist Margaret Sanger. Both women worked behind the scenes, forming a fruitful creative triad and secret domestic arrangement: one husband, two wives.

After Hummel became the first woman hired to write for Wonder Woman, Byrne gave her a copy of Sanger’s book “Woman and the New Race,” which advocated for legalized birth control, and told her it contained everything she needed to know about the character.

Hummel at first typed Marston’s scripts before writing more than 70 scripts of her own, with detailed instructions for the artists. She developed stories that were often more innocent than her boss’s, which showed Wonder Woman fighting fascism while also being bound, tied, lassoed or gagged. Years later, she recalled that when she brought her scripts to editor Sheldon Mayer, “He always OK’d mine faster because I didn’t make mine as sexy.”

All of the early comics were published under a pseudonym, Charles Moulton, invented by Marston. Individual writers were credited in later anthologies by DC, which revealed that Hummel was behind some of the series’ more fantastical stories, involving beautiful mermaids and winged maidens. “They’re like fairy tales,” said cartoonist and historian Trina Robbins, who later worked on Wonder Woman.

Hummel stopped writing the comics in late 1947, shortly after she married, deciding to stay home and raise her stepdaughter. Marston had died earlier that year, and the series passed to writers who did away with much of the comic’s feminist messaging, including a regular centerfold feature chronicling the lives of influential women.

The changes infuriated Hummel, who remained loyal to Marston’s original vision of Wonder Woman as an emblem of free and courageous womanhood. Decades later, she wrote in an email to Lepore: “Even if I had not left because of my new daughter, I would have resigned if I was told I had to make [Wonder Woman] a masculine thinking and acting superwoman.”

Joye Evelyn Hummel was born April 4, 1924, and grew up on Long Island. Her son said that she rarely spoke of her upbringing; at various times, both of her parents apparently managed a grocery store chain.

After graduating from high school in Freeport, N.Y., she enrolled at Middlebury College in Vermont. She left after a year, later telling the comic magazine Alter Ego that her parents had divorced and she didn’t want to leave her mother alone.

Hummel joined the comics industry during a brief period in which female writers were not uncommon, according to Robbins, filling in for men who were fighting in World War II. When Marston was diagnosed with polio some five months after they started working together, she took on an increasingly significant share of the writing.

For the rest of their collaboration together, they met at his sprawling home in Rye, N.Y. His daughter Olive Ann served as a flower girl when Hummel married David Murchison, an Army veteran and home builder, in 1947.

After Murchison’s death in 2000, Hummel married Jack Kelly. In addition to her husband, of Winter Haven, and son, of Naples, Fla., survivors include a stepdaughter from her first marriage, Sally Boyd of Wellington, Fla.; two stepchildren from her second marriage, Kimberly Hallberg of Spring Hill, Fla., and Jeffrey Kelly of Oak Island, N.C.; five grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren. Her son David Murchison Jr. died in 2015.

Hummel donated her Wonder Woman archives to the Smithsonian Libraries in 2014. In interviews, she often downplayed her writing for the comics, describing it as a relatively small part of her life. Years after retiring from DC, for instance, she had gone back to work at age 40, taking a job as a secretary at a brokerage firm in Hollywood, Fla.

She later studied to become a stockbroker herself. “I believe Marston would feel proud of me,” she told the Florida magazine Haven in 2017, recalling the months of study it took to pass her certification exams and become registered on the New York Stock Exchange and Chicago Board of Trade. Doing so “enabled me to help finance the college education for my three children.”

As her son put it, “She was really a wonder woman.”

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Biden announces action on gun control

InternationalApr 09. 2021

By The Washington Post · Annie Linskey

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden announced an array of executive actions Thursday morning intended curb gun violence, following pressure from activists and fellow Democrats in the aftermath of two recent mass shootings.

In the White House Rose Garden, the president announced new rules on firearms that are assembled at home, which lack serial numbers and are harder to track, among other moves designed to make it harder for unqualified people to obtain dangerous weapons.

Biden also named David Chipman as his pick to run the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, although it is unclear how the nominee will fare in an evenly divided Senate. Chipman is a senior adviser to a gun control group founded by former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., who was severely injured in a mass shooting in 2011.

Biden was joined Thursday by Attorney General Merrick Garland and first lady Jill Biden.

Biden’s moves come amid growing impatience from gun control activists that the administration has not acted more quickly. Biden promised during his campaign that he would take action to limit gun violence on the first day of his administration, but that fell by the wayside.

In his presidency’s early days, Biden has prioritized other emergency issues, including coronavirus pandemic relief and the struggling economy. He suggested recently that he considers gun control a less urgent priority that can be tackled over the long term.

But the issue of gun violence moved vividly the forefront after the two mass shootings, one in the Atlanta area in which eight people were killed and another in Colorado, where 10 were killed.

Biden’s aides stressed that beyond mass shootings, the president wants to focus on curbing the more frequent and deadlier epidemic of day-to-day gun violence that disproportionately affects Blacks and Latinos.

A former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden has a long record of arms control initiatives, including the 10-year assault weapons ban that was part of a 1994 crime bill he sponsored.

But the politics of gun control are turbulent. Rural voters, who skew sharply Republican, strongly support gun rights, while the suburbanites coveted by both parties tend to be more open to gun control.

Among Biden’s highest-profile moves Thursday was directing his administration to take action on “ghost guns,” firearms without serial numbers that are sold in kits and assembled at home.

The president also directed the Justice Department to draft a new rule regulating a device that can be placed on a pistol to turn it into a short-barreled rifle.

And he ordered the department to create a template that states can use to enact “red flag” laws, which allow judges to seize firearms from people who are deemed a threat to themselves or others.

Other initiatives include asking the Justice Department to issue a report on gun trafficking and directing several agencies to allocate more money for violence intervention programs.

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We tested the first state ‘vaccine passport’ at Yankee Stadium. It’s not quite a home run.

InternationalApr 09. 2021

By The Washington Post · Geoffrey A. Fowler

Want to go to a Yankees game? Watch a Justin Bieber concert? Let’s see your app.

New York just became the first state to offer a digital “vaccine passport” – a free app and website you can use to prove you’ve been vaccinated against the coronavirus or gotten a recent negative coronavirus test result. With the new technology, called the Excelsior Pass, New Yorkers can show a screen or a printout with a special code that businesses scan with an app made by the state. A green check mark means you’re allowed inside.

Regardless of where you live, vaccine passports on the horizon promise to fast-track our safe return to public spaces. But only if people are able to access and trust them. And that’s a big if.

With the help of New Yorkers across a range of ages, I’ve been testing Excelsior Pass to see whether digital vaccine passports create more problems than they solve. Using Excelsior Pass is entirely voluntary, but it requires learning about the state’s system and mastering a few different websites and apps. It took me 20 minutes over Zoom to help an octogenarian set up his pass, though it was certainly simpler than mastering vaccine-appointment websites. Even when we thought we understood the system, Excelsior Pass didn’t always work: My tech-reporter colleague tried to use it to enter Yankee Stadium, but the system didn’t update with his clearance until after the game was over.

The good news: For the digitally savvy people who figure it out, using Excelsior Pass doesn’t appear to pose major privacy risks. The system, designed for the state by IBM, cannot be easily used by the state to track you. And it’s more discreet than the alternative of showing your medical records to a bouncer.

But I question how effective Excelsior Pass will be at keeping everyone safe. For one, it’s pretty easy to set up a fake pass. (Yikes, you might want to take down any vaccine selfies you posted to social media.) To stop potential fraud, you always have to show your ID along with Excelsior Pass – which is another kind of barrier that could make some people not want to use it.

As other states and even private companies work on their own vaccine passports, some of New York’s other choices also deserve scrutiny. The state hasn’t been very clear about where, and for how long, we might be required to show a vaccine passport – digital or physical. We all expect to need a passport at a border crossing, but will we eventually need a vaccine passport at Starbucks? The grocery store? Work? I found you could technically already use Excelsior Pass to scan your own dinner party guests . . . if they’d still call you a friend after.

At Madison Square Garden, which used Excelsior Pass for three games last week, most people still aren’t using the app – but it’s doing the job of being quick. “While the numbers are still small, they’ve nearly doubled at every game, which we expect will continue as more people become familiar with the app,” spokeswoman Kim Kearns says. “From a technology standpoint, everything has been straightforward, and worked well.”

As goes New York, so goes the nation? Here’s what we can all learn from the early days of Excelsior Pass.

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Nearly 20% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated. Many countries may not hit that target this year.

InternationalApr 09. 2021

By The Washington Post · Emily Rauhala

In the United States, the good vaccine news keeps coming. For much of the world, things look bleak.

As of Thursday, just short of 20% of the U.S. population was fully vaccinated, giving some 66 million people a strong measure of protection against a disease that has already killed more than 500,000 Americans.

By contrast, Covax – a World Health Organization-backed push for equitable distribution – aims to secure enough doses to cover up to 20% of the people in participating countries by the end of 2021, but it may not meet that relatively modest goal, experts warn.

The gap between the vaccine “haves” and “have-nots” is widening, fueling frustration and potentially extending the pandemic.

“It’s unconscionable,” said Zain Rizvi, an expert on access to medicine at Public Citizen, a watchdog group. “Many countries will be lucky if by the end of the year they are close to where the U.S. is now.”

So far, the vaccine race has been dominated by a handful of relatively wealthy nations: most notably Israel, where nearly 57% the population was fully vaccinated as of April 7; Chile, at about 22%; and the United States. Britain has been vaccinating rapidly, as well, but it has delayed second doses as it tries to get a first to as many people as possible.

Meanwhile, Our World in Data estimates based on publicly reported data that at least 5% of the global population has had a dose, with the real number (incorporating China’s nonpublic tally) perhaps between 6 and 7%.

Priority-supply deals, export restrictions and other means of hoarding by rich nations have contributed to a severe global supply crunch and left many countries scrambling.

Covax has delivered 38 million doses, providing potentially lifesaving shots to places and people that might otherwise go without. Yet divided between 100 economies, those doses amount to only a thin layer of protection.

“It’s been heartening to see a small number of doses reaching countries around the world,” said Suerie Moon, co-director of the Global Health Center at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. “But the big picture is more troubling than reassuring, because we have a lot of things are not going well.”

While the U.S. administers millions of inoculations a day, some countries are still waiting for their first shots to arrive, or have just started vaccinating. A recent WHO estimate suggested that just 2% of the 690 million doses administered to date globally went to Africa.

A chorus of experts and officials have argued – for months – that rich countries have not only a moral obligation to close the gap, but an interest in doing so. With a fraction of the world’s population vaccinated, they argue, the global economy won’t recover and the virus will mutate and spread.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Monday called for speeding up distribution to poorer nations, warning that the pandemic may force 150 million people into poverty, hurting growth.

“Our first task must clearly be stopping the virus by ensuring that vaccinations, testing and therapeutics are available as widely as possible,” she said in remarks delivered to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

The same day, while introducing a new coordinator for global covid response and health security, Secretary of State Antony Blinken addressed the danger of variants.

“Even if we vaccinate all 332 million people in the United States tomorrow, we would still not be fully safe from the virus, not while it’s still replicating around the world and turning into new variants that could easily come here and spread across our communities again,” he said.

Still, Blinken defended the effort to vaccinate Americans first and suggested that further action would have to wait until the United States was more confident of its vaccine supply.

“I know that many countries are asking for the United States to do more, some with growing desperation because of the scope and scale of their covid emergencies,” he said. “We hear you. And I promise, we’re moving as fast as possible.”

The woman he introduced as the new global covid response coordinator, Gayle Smith, served as the chief executive of the ONE Campaign, a nonprofit organization that has called on wealthy countries to donate 5% of their surplus doses once they’ve vaccinated 20% of their population.

For its part, the Biden administration announced the “loan” of a combined 4 million doses of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine – not yet authorized by U.S. regulators – to Mexico and Canada. It is not clear, however, if or when the administration will offer up a more substantial portion of the hundreds of millions of surplus doses the country has secured.

A recent survey of 788 Americans by researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University found strong support for the idea of donating 10% or more of the U.S. supply to less prosperous countries, but views were divided on the timing. While 41% of respondents said donations should happen immediately, 28% wanted to wait until at-risk Americans had been vaccinated and 31% said donations should happen only after everyone in the United States who wanted to be vaccinated had been.

In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered in February to donate doses to 20 foreign allies, but the plan was put on hold in the face of domestic pushback and lawsuits.

The Biden administration’s moves so far have focused on longer-term efforts to bolster the global rollout.

In February, the White House threw its support behind Covax, announcing up to $4 billion dollars, including an initial contribution of $2 billion that Congress appropriated in December.

And last month, the United States, India, Japan and Australia pledged to jointly manufacture and distribute up to 1 billion doses of coronavirus vaccine with a focus on Southeast Asia. But the timeline is long, with a goal of having things up and running before the end of next year.

The Biden administration has so far resisted pressure to waive patent protections in a way that would allow more countries to make coronavirus vaccines.

However, recent statements from Blinken suggest some new initiative could be on the way.

“The clock is ticking,” said Moon, “and the situation is not getting better.”

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https://www.nationthailand.com/news/30404685

Russia demands vaccine shots back after Slovakia doubts quality

InternationalApr 09. 2021

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Peter Laca, Jake Rudnitsky

Slovakia and Russia clashed over the Sputnik V covid-19 vaccine after the European Union member accused Moscow of delivering shots that were different from those used in a peer-reviewed study.

Russia rejected the allegations and demanded Bratislava return the 200,000 doses it sent. The dispute may set back efforts to use Sputnik widely in Europe. Slovakia was one of a few members of the bloc pushing to use the Russia-developed vaccine to help speed the roll-out of inoculations. But political tensions over the push to use what one critic called “a tool in hybrid war” caused a crisis that cost Prime Minister Igor Matovic his job.

EU regulators are still reviewing Sputnik’s application and the process could take several months, leading some nations to undertake their own checks to accelerate approval.

But a day after saying it hasn’t received sufficient documentation from the Sputnik’s developers to declare it safe and effective, the Slovak regulator went further, charging that the doses it received have different properties than the ones described in an article in The Lancet medical journal earlier this year. That widely cited report found Sputnik to be 91.6% effective and gave a major boost to Russia’s efforts to distribute it abroad, allaying some concerns about the Kremlin’s rush to approve the vaccine at home.

“According to published reports, Sputnik should be used in about 40 countries, although these vaccines are associated only by the name,” Zuzana Batova, the head of Slovak State Institute for Drug Control, said in a report. “The comparability and consistency of various batches produced in different places hasn’t been confirmed. In several cases, it appears that the vaccines have different properties.”

The Slovak regulator said Wednesday it was still conducting tests, but added that it hasn’t been able to come to a conclusion about the risks and benefits of Sputnik because of the “lack of a large amount of data from the producer, the inconsistency of the drug forms and the inability to compare batches used in various studies and countries.”

Sputnik’s developers dismissed the claims as “disinformation” and said all batches of the inoculation are of the same quality and undergo vigorous quality control.

“In violation of existing contract and in an act of sabotage the State Institute of Drug Control ensured that Sputnik V tested in a laboratory which is not part of the EU’s Official Medicines Control Laboratory network,” the developers wrote on Twitter.

Slovakia and Hungary are the only two EU members to agree to use the Russian-developed vaccine. On Thursday, Germany said it plans to hold bilateral discussions with Russia on buying doses amid criticism of a slow start to its inoculation campaign.

The nation of 5.5 million agreed to buy 2 million Sputnik V shots. But when junior coalition parties said the deal had been agreed behind their backs, Matovic was forced to swap jobs with the finance minister. Foreign Minister Ivan Korcok has called Sputnik “a tool in a hybrid war” as the country’s right-of-center parties expressed concerns its purchase may undermine the European Union and NATO member’s foreign-policy direction.

The Russian Direct Investment Fund, which backed the vaccine’s development and handles its international roll-out, has set a target of increasing overseas output sufficiently to inoculate nearly one in ten people globally this year.

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Hong Kong democracy activist Nathan Law given asylum in U.K.

InternationalApr 09. 2021Nathan Law, standing committee member of the Demosisto political party, at a news conference in Hong Kong on June 19, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Chan Long Hei.

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Kitty Donaldson

The U.K. granted asylum to Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Nathan Law, a move likely to fuel tensions with China after it imposed sweeping security powers over the former British colony last year.

“The U.K. has a proud history of providing protection to those who need it,” Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said on Twitter.

Law, a former elected politician in Hong Kong, fled to London last year after China introduced its National Security Law, which brought unprecedented restrictions to a city accustomed to regular protests and a free media. He faces arrest under the legislation if he returns.

“It means a lot to me because I can reside outside Hong Kong, free from direct political persecution and continue my advocacy work,” Law said in an interview. He urged the U.K. government to help more activists who have a lower profile and are in a “more difficult situation when applying for asylum.”

China on Thursday accused the U.K. of sheltering “wanted criminals” by giving asylum to Law. Beijing says its security law is designed to bring Hong Kong into line with mainland China and clamp down on sedition and terrorism.

“If the U.K. blatantly endorses Hong Kong separatists and provides wanted criminals so-called shelter, they are grossly interfering in Hong Kong’s judiciary, violating international law and basic norms of international relations as well as the rule of law principle,” foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said.

When the legislation was introduced, the U.K. responded by offering a path to British citizenship for eligible Hong Kongers — separate to the political asylum given to Law. That triggered a row with Beijing, which has repeatedly accused Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government of interfering in its affairs.

The U.K. expects hundreds of thousands to take up the new British National (Overseas) visa. In the three months to March, 27,000 people had applied.

On Thursday, the government said it will spend 43 million pounds ($59 million) to help the settlement and assimilation of Hong Kongers arriving under the new system. The money will fund 12 welcome hubs to help people access housing, education and employment. Schools will also receive resources to teach pupils about the U.K.’s historic connections to Hong Kong.

The U.K. government has faced criticism that it has been too slow to set out help for people arriving from Hong Kong.

“This program will ensure British National (Overseas) status holders and their families have the very best start as soon as they arrive, and support to help them find a home, schools for their children, opportunity and prosperity,” Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick said in an emailed statement.  

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EU fails to find united response to AstraZeneca vaccine risk

InternationalApr 09. 2021

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Joao Lima, Viktoria Dendrinou, Chiara Albanese

The European Union failed to form a united response to links between AstraZeneca Plc’s coronavirus vaccine and a rare type of blood clotting, missing an opportunity to inject momentum into the bloc’s sluggish inoculation program.

At a meeting that ran until late Wednesday, EU health ministers promised to continue discussions on vaccination planning and process. Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides had called on the bloc’s governments to forge a coordinated strategy, saying it “will be key for us to speak with one voice.” The EU needs “an approach which does not confuse citizens and that does not fuel vaccine hesitancy,” she said.

In a statement afterward, the EU said ministers had shared “different interpretations” of a safety report on the AstraZeneca shot by the bloc’s drugs regulator, indicating what may be deep divisions on the way forward. Despite the risks, the EU regulator — and its British counterpart — on Wednesday insisted the product’s benefits outweigh its risks, that the clot occurrences are rare and that the shot should remain a vital tool in the pandemic fight.

In response to the safety concerns, Italy followed Germany and France by recommending it only for people over 60. Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s government urged other EU members to implement the same policy, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified.

This week Spain will also recommend limiting the Astra vaccine to those over 60, Health Minister Carolina Darias said late Wednesday.

The moves to limit the vaccine’s use came just hours after the European Medicines Agency announced finding a “strong association” with blood clots. The regulator didn’t issue any guidelines about usage, leaving the implementation up to member states.

Thomas Mertens, the head of Germany’s vaccine commission, said that while the EMA bases its decisions on what it believes is best for the whole EU, Germany can afford to be more careful as it is not so dependent on the AstraZeneca shot for its inoculation drive.

“We can therefore greatly reduce or even eradicate the risk of these serious side-effects in certain age groups,” Mertens said Thursday in an interview with ZDF television. “I think you can justify both approaches very well.”

The EU has been hit by a fresh wave of the coronavirus, which has caused more than 600,000 deaths in the region. Italy and France have gone back into lockdown. Germany is debating stricter curbs, while Chancellor Angela Merkel considers taking control from state leaders.

The continent’s immunization program has been bogged down by poor planning, supply delays and increasingly a lack of solidarity. Greek Health Minister Vasilis Kikilias expressed concern about the pluralism that confuses citizens on such an important issue.

With aggressive variants spreading, the region can ill afford further problems. The EU has administered doses for just 9.5% of its population — about a third of Britain’s pace, according to Bloomberg’s Coronavirus Tracker.

The U.K. conducted a similar safety review of the AstraZeneca vaccine and is now advising that people under 30 be offered an alternative if one is available, the country’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency said Wednesday.

The warnings dealt another blow to the vaccine Astra developed with the University of Oxford and continued to cloud its global rollout. The drugmaker said it’s studying the individual cases to understand the “epidemiology and possible mechanisms that could explain these extremely rare events.” It’s also working with regulators on their request for new labels on its shots, AstraZeneca said in a statement.

Concerns about the vaccine center on an unusual type of blood clot in the brain called cerebral venous sinus thrombosis. There were also some cases of clots in the abdomen and in the arteries, which occurred together with low levels of blood platelets.

Italian officials said the change of policy wouldn’t hamper the country’s rollout as supplies increase and doses of other shots get redistributed.

AstraZeneca’s vaccine has been dogged by controversy. Before the health concerns, the drugmaker got embroiled in a battle with the EU after a production issue led to delivery delays.

Unity among member states has become a broader issue.

“We must not forget that individual decisions affect everybody,” Portuguese Health Minister Marta Temido said, appealing for a coordinated position. “This is a technical decision. It is not a political decision. We must continue to follow the best scientific information provided.”