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Call for Fairer Vaccine Program in Florida

Palm Beach County Vice Mayor Robert Weinroth has called on county and state health officials to fix the “glaring” inequities in the county’s COVID-19 vaccination program.

Since Dec. 29, just 7 percent of the county’s Black and Hispanic eligible population had been inoculated compared to 70 percent of whites, according to statistics presented to the Palm Beach County Commission on Tuesday. Consistent with Gov. Ron DeSantis’ order, Palm Beach County is only vaccinating long-term care facility staff, persons 65 years of age and older, and healthcare personnel with direct patient contact.

“Seventy percent versus 7 percent? I think we can do much better,’’ he said. “We can’t lose sight of the fact that we have a whole underserved population.’’

Palm Beach County has vaccinated 130,027 people. That’s 8.7 percent of the county’s population, a higher percentage than Miami-Dade (5.7 percent) and Broward (6.4 percent) counties.

Weinroth challenged county managers and state health officials to “re-double the efforts as far as these underserved communities are concerned because it really is a glaring disparity we cannot accept. Shame on us for allowing this to continue this way.’’

Efforts have been made by churches to offer vaccinations to underserved communities. While the vice mayor applauded those efforts, he said more needs to be done by local government to wipe out the virus.

“We also have to do something about people who don’t trust us. There is a tremendous lack of trust and we have to make people feel that this vaccine is not going to kill them. That’s what’s apparent in these numbers,’’ he said.

Weinroth joins Daniella Pierre, the President of NAACP Miami, as public figures who have recently been pushing for equitable vaccine access in South Florida. The region is home to the largest percentage of Caribbean-Americans and Black population in Florida. At a recent press conference, Pierre called for educational outreach in the Black community via avenues besides the typically used churches and supermarkets, which could include hair salons, laundromats, or public transit stations.

Additionally, Weinroth joined commissioners in calling for improvements to the appointment reservation system.

“I think we all agree it’s been a case of ‘whack a mole’ where people have been going in one direction and then rushing in another,’’ he said.

“We need to have one unified vaccination reservation system where people feel equity, feel fairness and feel that if they get on the list on a certain date, their place on the list will be preserved and someone is not going to jump ahead of them because a site opened up with a couple of hundred doses.”

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Anthony Albanese dismisses speculation his leadership is under threat

Federal opposition leader Anthony Albanese has strongly dismissed speculation his leadership is under threat amid rumours rumbling through the corridors of Parliament House.

"My leadership is secure," Mr Albanese said on the ABC's 7.30 program last night.

It comes amid rumoured concerns within the Labor caucus about the party's chances of winning an election under his leadership.

A federal election could be held as soon as late this year, although Prime Minister Scott Morrison said 2022 is more likely while touring outback Queensland earlier this month.

Mr Albanese dismissed comparisons drawn between "mistrust" in his party and the worst of the Rudd-Gillard days.

"Well, I just don't think that's right. I don't think that's the right characterisation," the opposition leader told the ABC.

"Anyone who thinks that the current circumstance is like it was in 2013, that you refer to, wasn't there in 2013."

Instead, he said his shadow cabinet would be reshuffled this weekend ahead of the first sitting of parliament next week — a move, he says, that will "show what Labor's priorities are".

Climate spokesperson Mark Butler will be dropped from the portfolio in the shake-up, expected to be replaced by health spokesperson Chris Bowen, according to the SMH.

Mr Butler, previously minister for aged care under Gillard, will instead take on the health portfolio at a key point during the coronavirus pandemic, as the Morrison Government begins the vaccine roll-out.

Labor insiders have said the shift aims to bridge a gap within the party on gas fields, coal mines and greenhouse emissions.

Mr Albanese also flagged a raft of new policies which he said will be announced at the ALP's national conference in March, revealing a focus on childcare reforms, climate change, industrial relations and inequality.

Despite trailing Prime Minister Scott Morrison in net approval ratings, the opposition leader described his position as "very competitive".

Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese looks at Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

"The next election will be about who has a better plan for the future to deliver a stronger economy, a fairer society and deal with challenges such as climate change," Mr Albanese said.

"People, during the pandemic, have wanted leaders to succeed. Of course that has led to an increase in their approval," he said.

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Mexican Criminal Gangs Exploiting Agony of Virus Patients

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico continued to post near-record rates of coronavirus deaths Tuesday, and the huge demand for oxygen canisters has led to frauds, robberies and other crimes against families trying to care for relatives at home.

Mexico posted a near-record 1,743 newly confirmed COVID-deaths, bringing the total to over 152,000, and 7,165 new infections.

Hospitals in some parts of Mexico are almost 90% full, forcing families to treat their relatives at home. But the oxygen tanks they rely on have been the object of thefts, hijackings and fraud.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador continued fighting the virus in isolation at his apartment, and Assistant Health Secretary Hugo López-Gatell said he was doing well and “has minimal symptoms.”

“On Sunday he had a headache, but apart from that he hasn’t had any other symptom” besides a low fever, López-Gatell said.

While the president was getting care from a team of top doctors, and the country’s richest man quickly was admitted to a top hospital, treatment for average Mexicans remained difficult and dangerous.

The head of the country’s consumer protection agency, Ricardo Sheffield, reported Tuesday that hundreds of ads have been found offering industrial oxygen cylinders — used by torch and welding operators — for medical use.

“These are stolen cylinders, for industrial use, you can’t use them to breathe,” Sheffield said. In other cases, fraudsters advertised tanks or oxygen concentrators at excessive prices, or accepted deposits and then disappeared.

“You are throwing away your money and they probably won’t deliver anything,” he said.

Sheffield said police have forced the removal of 700 Facebook pages and 100 internet offers that were found to involve fraudulent or abusive offers of oxygen equipment. There have been several armed robberies of oxygen cylinders in recent weeks in Mexico, and hijackings of trucks delivering the canisters.

And on Tuesday, Mexico City police arrested a couple who posed as sellers of disinfectant liquids and gels whose use has skyrocketed in the pandemic. Once a potential customer showed up to the apartment they were using, the man and woman would kidnap the person and demand a ransom. Police believe they were involved in at least three such crimes.

Sheffield said the government had reached an agreement with companies that produce oxygen to purify and certify their product so that as much as 70% of what normally goes for industrial use, could be used to treat patients instead.

He also said that northern states could start to import oxygen from the United States.

Most of all, he urged Mexicans who bought canisters as a precaution, or who had finished using them, to turn them in so others could use them, noting “Returning a tank saves lives.”

While there are long lines at oxygen-refill outlets, authorities have said the bigger problem is a lack of tanks to store the gas in.

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Int. Holocaust Memorial Day & Plans for a New Ukraine Memorial

Today marks Holocaust Memorial Day. But for many of the people and nations commemorating it this year, it will be an Internet event. In Ukraine, 2021 has a special significance.

A foundation established to commemorate one of the most horrific massacres of the Second World War at Babyn Yar in Ukraine has unveiled its construction plans for one of the world’s largest Holocaust memorial centres, which is to include a synagogue, church and mosque, a research centre and two museums to commemorate both the atrocities at the site and the wider genocide against Eastern European Jews.

In an announcement to coincide with International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center said it plans a dozen buildings at the site on the outskirts of Kiev to remember the 100,000 victims shot there by the Nazis, including Jews, Ukrainians, Roma and the mentally ill.

The new plan for a complex replaces an initial concept for one large museum at Babyn Yar, says Robert Jan Van Pelt, a professor at the University of Waterloo in Canada, who chaired the group behind the master plan for the museum at Auschwitz and is now a member of the architectural board for Babyn Yar.

The site on the outskirts of Kiev will commemorate the 100,000 victims shot there by the Nazis © Manuel Herz Architekten.

The initial concept entailed a museum on the scale of the Museum of the History of the Polish Jews in Warsaw in an imposing building designed by a star architect, Van Pelt says.

“For many reasons it appeared that in the end, it was the wrong program, and what the foundation has been doing in the past year is to rethink again from scratch,” he says. “This will be a number of smaller projects, that that will go over time—there will be a 10-, 15-, 20-year kind of horizon not necessarily to make a really big statement. This also allows us to work more experimentally.”

“One of the principles the architectural board has established now is that we’re not going to really penetrate the site, we do not want to excavate, we do not want to create a big building that sits heavily on it.” He says a synagogue that is scheduled to open later this year, designed by Manuel Herz, “touches very lightly” on the site of what the foundation describes as Europe’s largest mass grave.

Herz says he has obtained a construction permit for the synagogue and plans to start building soon, with completion due by late spring or early summer. The design resembles a flat vertical book that unfolds into a space of about 80 sq. m. Its inspiration, Herz says, is a pop-up book that reveals “a whole new world, a cabinet of wonder.”

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the murder of 33,771 Jews in just two days at Babyn Yar in September 1941, one of the earliest massacres of the Holocaust. But for Van Pelt, it is also important to commemorate Jewish life in Ukraine, given that the region was, he says, “the heartland of European Jewry for many, many centuries.” The site will also address the denial of Jewish history since 1945, he says.

“After 1945, the Soviet regime had a vested interest in suppressing the history of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union as a Jewish tragedy,” he says. “They always coded the murder of the Jewish simply as the murder of Soviet citizens. So the Soviet regime didn’t want to do anything with this site.”

It is the day we remember the millions of people who died during the Holocaust, under Nazi persecution, and in the genocides that followed in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.

Held every year, it falls on the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, where more than a million people died during the Second World War.

The theme for this year is ‘Be the Light in the Darkness’.

It encourages us all to reflect on the depths humanity can sink to, but also the ways individuals and communities resisted that darkness to ‘be the light’ before, during and after genocide.

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NIA advises on beautification of public spaces

CHARLESTOWN, Nevis — A notice from the Premier’s Ministry in the Nevis Island Administration (NIA) encourages the beautification of public spaces.

“The Nevis Island Administration commends acts of volunteerism by civic minded individuals or groups in our communities,” said the notice. “We are mindful that such participation should be encouraged.

“The Administration, however, reminds the public that all plans for beautification or modification to public spaces or infrastructure must be in keeping with the law and must first be approved by the relevant ministries.

“Everyone is asked to be guided accordingly.”

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Youth Empowerment Department calls for youth organizations to register before Jan. 31

BASSETERRE, St. Kitts — Youth-oriented and youth-led organizations in St. Kitts and Nevis are strongly encouraged to register or re-register in some cases, with the Department of Youth Empowerment on or before January 31.

Fifty-three organizations completed the hassle-free registration in 2020. They had access to numerous opportunities: access to technical expertise; networking opportunities with other organizations and agencies; and access to materials and resources. In the past, organizations received assistance with cots, stoves, easels, and projectors.

“We know that there are several groups that exist that did not register with the department and we would love to welcome them under our tent,” said Maluska Douglas, who is spearheading the registration effort.

She said each registered group is now provided with a certificate from the Department of Youth Empowerment that they can proudly display. The certificate proves registration, which is required by some regional and international agencies.

Another benefit of registration is access to grant funding opportunities from various institutions. Registrants can also apply for duty-free concessions from the Ministry of Finance through the Department of Youth Empowerment.

Registration can be completed at the Department of Youth Empowerment located on the top floor of the Cable Building on Cayon Street. Information can be obtained by calling 467-1393, or on Facebook @SKBYouthEmpowerment.

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Venezuela: Maduro Touts Secret Corona Miracle Cure

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro appears to be counting on yet another “miracle” to save his citizens from COVID-19, promoting a secretive solution with no published scientific evidence he claims will conquer the new coronavirus.

“Ten drops under the tongue every four hours and the miracle is done,” Maduro said in a televised appearance on Sunday. “It’s a powerful antiviral, very powerful, that neutralizes the coronavirus.”

But his government has released no evidence. He even kept secret the name of the “brilliant Venezuelan mind” behind it, saying he needed to protect them. Scientists at home and abroad remained skeptical. The local National Academy of Medicine said it appeared be derived from the common herb thyme.

It’s not the first time the Venezuelan leader has promoted a cure. In October, he notified the Pan American Health Organization that Venezuelan scientists discovered a molecule that nullifies the replication capacity of the new coronavirus. He hasn’t spoken of that development since. He’s also promoted a special herbal tea he claims can fend off the virus and other ailments.

Other leaders too have embraced solutions dismissed by scientific studies. Former U.S. President Donald Trump and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro both stubbornly touted an antimalarial drug despite repeated studies finding it ineffective and possibly dangerous.

The new coronavirus hasn’t hit Venezuela as hard as other South American countries such as Brazil, Ecuador and Peru, though many experts say that’s likely because sanctions against Maduro’s government have sharply limited travel there.

Maduro said the treatment, which he called carvativir, has been under testing for nine months among Venezuelans ill with the coronavirus. He said he plans to distribute it nationwide and to other nations as well.

Dr. David Boulware, professor of medicine and an infectious diseases physician at the University of Minnesota Medical School, noted the lack of scientific evidence.

“This is, just as with other things, people trying to sell, you know, some magic beans as the solution to a complex problem,” Boulware told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “This would be great if it worked, but I would like to see the data.”

Venezuela’s National Academy of Medicine said “it’s prudent … to wait for more data from the carvativir tests according to international protocols.”

Since October, Venezuela has been part of trials for the Sputnik V vaccine from Russia, a staunch ally of Maduro’s government. Venezuela signed a contract in December with Russia to buy the vaccine, but inoculations aren’t scheduled to start until April.

Rosa Colina, 58, said authorities should do more to get Venezuelans vaccinated sooner. She said colleagues at a local health center and some neighbors have died from COVID-19.

“I’m of the mind that we need the vaccine, not these droplets,” she said. “I think that won’t have any effect.”

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New Poll: Climate Change a Global Emergency

Despite the pandemic, almost two thirds of people around the world now view climate change as a global emergency.

That’s the key finding from the largest opinion poll yet conducted on tackling global warming.

More than a million people in 50 countries took part in the survey, with almost half the participants aged between 14 and 18.

Conserving forests and land emerged as the most popular solution for tackling the issue.

So who has taken part?

The poll, called the “People’s Climate Vote”, has been organised by the United Nations Development Programme in conjunction with Oxford University.

The organisers distributed poll questions through adverts in mobile gaming apps across 50 countries, between October and December last year.

strikeimage copyrightNurPhoto
image captionHuge numbers of 14-18 year olds took part in the poll

Around 1.22 million people of all genders, ages, and educational backgrounds took part, but with significant numbers of younger people.

Some 550,000 people aged 14-18 took part.

What were the key findings?

Across all countries, 64% of participants saw climate change as an emergency, requiring urgent responses from countries. The margin of error was +/- 2%.

This result varied somewhat by age and location.

In the UK and Italy, 81% agreed with the question, while this dropped to 50% among those responding from Moldova.

Newly installed US President Joe Biden can take some comfort that 65% of those in the US taking part now view climate change as an emergency.

firesimage copyrightGetty Images
image captionFires in California and Australia have influenced people’s views on climate change

Overall, younger people were more likely to agree with the view that rising temperatures were an emergency, with nearly 70% in favour.

For people over the age of 60, this dropped to 58%.

“People are scared, they are seeing the the wildfires in Australia and California, they’re seeing the category five storms and in the Caribbean, they are seeing flooding in in Southeast Asia,” said Cassie Flynn, strategic adviser to the UNDP.

“And they’re looking around them and they’re saying, this is a real problem. We have to do something about this.”

Most popular policies

The actions that people tend to favour when it comes to tackling climate change depend, to some extent, on where people live.

In eight of the 10 countries with the highest emissions from generating electricity, there were majorities in favour of using more green energy.

Kerryimage copyrightGetty Images
image captionFormer Secretary of State John Kerry is the new climate czar in the Biden administration

But in countries with bigger emissions from deforestation and land use changes, there was majority support for conserving forests and land.

This emerged from the overall survey as the most popular policy for dealing with climate change, by a narrow margin.

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Top four policies to tackle climate change:

  1. Conserve forests and land (54%)
  2. Use solar, wind and renewable power (53%)
  3. Climate friendly farming techniques(52%)
  4. Investing more money in green businesses and jobs (50%).

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COVID: US Disease Center Urges Schools to Reopen, Jan. Deadliest Month

In the US, where cases have fallen by about 30% over the past two weeks (see previous write-up), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called for schools to begin returning students to the classroom.

The decision cited accumulating evidence in districts where schools have opened that in-person learning has not contributed meaningfully to community spread of the virus, assuming mitigation measures were in place. See an overview of the data here.

However, January has already become the worst month for US Covid-19 deaths since the start of the pandemic.

As of Tuesday, there have been more than 79,000 coronavirus fatalities, topping the previous record set in December by more than a thousand, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
The grim milestone underpins the growing demand from state officials for more vaccines so that Americans can be inoculated more quickly.

The total number of COVID-19 cases reported worldwide has surpassed 100 million, with more than 2.1 million deaths (see dashboard). Five countries—the US (25 million), India (11 million), Brazil (8.8 million), Russia (3.7 million), and the UK (3.7 million)—make up more than half of all reported cases.

Separately, Johnson & Johnson said it was on track to produce 100 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine by June, and would present efficacy data early next week. Pending approval, it would become the third available vaccine in the US. Unlike the existing two vaccines, it requires only one shot and can be stored at standard refrigerator temperatures for up to three months (how it works).

As of this morning, the US had distributed more than 44 million vaccine doses, with about 23.5 million administered. Roughly 4,100 COVID-19 deaths were reported yesterday, bringing the total in the US to just over 425,200. See rolling averages for cases and deaths.

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Indonesian volcano unleashes river of lava in new eruption

Indonesia’s most active volcano erupted on Wednesday with a river of lava and searing gas clouds flowing 1500 metres down its slopes.

It was Mount Merapi’s biggest lava flow since authorities raised its danger level in November, Hanik Humaida, the head of Yogyakarta’s Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation Centre, said.

Authorities in November had evacuated nearly 2000 people living on the mountain in Magelang and Sleman districts on Java Island but most have since returned.

There has been no new evacuation.

The alert was being maintained at the second-highest level and authorities told people to stay out of the existing five kilometre danger zone around the crater as the local administrations in Central Java and Yogyakarta provinces closely monitor the situation.

The 2968-metre-high volcano is on the densely populated island of Java and near the ancient city of Yogyakarta.

READ MORE: Indonesia's confirmed coronavirus cases exceed 1 million

It is the most active of dozens of Indonesian volcanoes and has repeatedly erupted with lava and gas clouds recently.

Merapi's last major eruption in 2010 killed 347 people.

Indonesia, an archipelago of 270 million people, is prone to earthquakes and volcanic activity because it sits along the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a horseshoe-shaped series of seismic fault lines around the ocean.