ARREST AND QUARNTINE MAKES GR8 TV

Why Saskatoon police steered clear of mostly-maskless People's Party of Canada event



Josh Lynn

Digital News Editor CTV News Saskatoon

Published Thursday, September 23, 2021

SASKATOON -- While they were aware that many attending the People's Party of Canada's national election night event in Saskatoon were ignoring the province's masking order, police chose a more hands-off approach.

The event attracted well over 200 supporters, the bulk of whom flouted the province's public health order requiring masks indoors to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Party Leader Maxime Bernier could be seen working his way through the crowd and posing for pictures at the event, held in a city that is currently the province's COVID-19 hotspot.

During the evening, Saskatoon Police Service (SPS) took to social media to say it was aware of the event and would be working with health inspectors to follow up.

However, no there were no obvious signs of police intervention the night of the gathering.

That's something SPS Deputy Chief of Police Randy Huisman said was deliberate due to the high-profile nature of the event.

"We just didn't want to make the event about what the Saskatoon police did, we didn't want to be the big story," Huisman told CTV News.

Huisman said there were concerns that the arrival of police and health inspectors at the event may have escalated the situation.

"Public health inspectors have been tasked with the enforcement of the order, but they would not be able to manage that themselves, there was just too many people and it's a public safety and officer safety consideration," Huisman said.

"I know some people felt like more enforcement action could have taken place, right then and there that evening, but those are some of the considerations we have to look at."

It's an approach SPS has consistently taken throughout the pandemic in how it's handled a series of "freedom" rallies held in the city by individuals critical of public health measures often flouting the rules they are protesting against.
Saskatoon police issue 11 tickets after children's 'freedom rally'

"As we have done in over the summer with (the) demonstrations, we do post-rally or post-gathering investigation and we work collaboratively with public health inspectors and provide them with intelligence and help them identify individuals (who will be charged)," Huisman said.

According to Huisman, the investigation into the PCC election night celebration could take several weeks, requiring police to sift through "intelligence" and video.

"We've had a number of people contact us in providing us with names so once we verify and do positive identifications and consult further with the public health inspectors, then those tickets would be drafted and issued."

An individual found to be breaking a public health order can be fined up to $10,500 in Saskatchewan.

A penalty increased by the Saskatchewan government earlier this year, largely in response to events that openly violated COVID-19-related measures.




Maxime Bernier poses for a photo in Saskatoon on election night. 

(Josh Lynn/CTV News)

Related Stories

'People aren't scared of COVID here': Few masks in sight at PPC headquarters on election night in Saskatoon

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Sask. premier says mostly maskless PPC rally in Saskatoon 'unfortunate'

 

Telescope in Chile captures a doomed galaxy falling into the heart of the Fornax Cluster

by NOIRLab

Members of the Fornax galaxy cluster fill this image from the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter

 Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), a Program of NSF’s

 NOIRLab. Appearing in the constellation Fornax (the Furnace), the Fornax Cluster is 

a relatively nearby galaxy cluster, only about 60 million light-years from Earth. 

Some foreground stars, which belong to our own Milky Way Galaxy, appear

 in the image as well. Credit: CTIO NOIRLab / DOE / NSF / AURA

The Fornax Cluster—which, as the name suggests, lies primarily in the constellation Fornax (the Furnace)—is a relatively nearby galaxy cluster, only about 60 million light-years from Earth. This means that it looms large in the night sky, stretching across an area more than 100 times larger than the full moon. With over 600 member galaxies, the Fornax Cluster is the second "richest" (most populous) galaxy cluster within 100 million light-years of our galaxy (after the much larger Virgo Cluster).

Two elliptical galaxies dominate the center of this image—visible as the two large patches of diffuse light with bright cores. Such galaxies usually contain much older stars than the more picturesque spiral galaxies, and they tend to be found in galaxy clusters such as the Fornax Cluster. These elliptical galaxies—which are named NGC 1399 and NGC 1404—are among the brightest members of the Fornax Cluster and are inexorably being drawn together by the force of gravity. This interaction is stripping gas from NGC 1404, the lower elliptical galaxy in this image.

In the bottom left corner of the image appears the irregular galaxy NGC 1427A. This ragged patch of light is a small, irregular collection of stars similar to the Large Magellanic Cloud. Similarly to NGC 1404, NGC 1427A is plunging toward the heart of the cluster at roughly 2.2 million kilometers (or 1.3 million miles) per hour. This headlong rush to destruction will eventually result in the galaxy being disrupted—pulled apart by gravitational interactions with other galaxies.

As with most astronomical observations, this image shows not only the intended target but also a menagerie of objects both close to home and at tremendous distances. The image is dotted with interloping objects from within our own Milky Way—bright stars with diffraction spikes. At the other extreme, distant galaxies provide a colorful backdrop to this image: some are recognizable as spiral galaxies, while others are mere smudges. Despite appearing tiny in this image, each of the distant galaxies contains billions of stars.

This image was captured by the 570-megapixel Dark Energy Camera (DECam), one of the highest-performance, wide-field imagers in the world, as part of the Dark Energy Survey. Funded by the US Department of Energy (DOE) and built and tested at DOE's Fermilab, DECam was operated by DOE and the National Science Foundation (NSF) between 2013 and 2019. Among its many accomplishments, DECam observations have helped astronomers discover nearly 300 previously unknown dwarf galaxies in the Fornax Cluster.

At present DECam is used for programs covering a huge range of science. Like other survey instruments, DECam captures images of large swaths of the night sky, allowing astronomers to understand structures in the universe at large scales. Telescope surveys also help identify intriguing astronomical objects worthy of follow-up observation; the most powerful telescopes can only study a minute portion of the night sky at any given time, so astronomers often use surveys to find objects that are interesting enough to observe in detail.

Dark Energy Camera captures detailed view of striking peculiar galaxy

Provided by NOIRLab

 

   

Chile 'therapy' dogs offer tummy rubs to soothe patients, medics

Issued on: 24/09/2021 - 

Video by:

FRANCE 24

Pepe, a Chilean "therapist" with long blonde fur, and Chimu, his feisty black-and-white female canine companion, stroll the hallways of a pediatric hospital in the capital Santiago, licking hands and offering their ears and bellies for caressing. The partners are part of a team of gregarious canines helping to relieve stress at the Exequiel Gonzalez Cortes hospital in San Miguel, an urban facility that had been for months overwhelmed by cases of coronavirus and other emergency surgeries.

'Hand Solo': the one-armed boy who built a Lego prosthesis

Issued on: 24/09/2021

Aguilar was born without a right forearm as a result of Poland syndrome, a rare disorder which can cause severe abnormalities in the shoulder, arm or hand

 Pau BARRENA AFP

Barcelona (AFP)

David Aguilar was five when he first discovered Lego, entering a world where it didn't matter he was missing his forearm, and four years later, he built his first prosthesis with it.

Now on the verge of finishing a degree in bioengineering, he dreams of working to help other children who, like him, were born different.

Aguilar was born without a right forearm as a result of Poland syndrome, a rare disorder which can cause severe abnormalities in the shoulder, arm or hand, but it has not stopped him from living his life.

Now 22, this Andorran student -- who has been obsessed with robots since he was a child -- has little free time: aside from finishing his degree, he gives motivational speeches, has written a book and taken part in an innovation conference run by NASA.

But getting here hasn't been easy and his face hardens as he recalls the years when building things with Lego was his only refuge from bullying.

"When I was a teenager, I carried on playing with Lego because it was a way of escaping the bullying, it really helped me ignore all the jibes I had to put up with every day," he told AFP at his university residence near Barcelona.

During his teens, he set up a YouTube channel calling himself "Hand Solo", a play on the name of smuggler-pilot hero Han Solo from the early "Star Wars" films.

Over the years, he fine-tuned his construction skills and by the age of 17, he had managed to create a fully-functioning Lego prosthetic that allowed him to do his first-ever pushups with two arms.

Since then, he has further refined his technique, proudly showing off his latest version, the MK5, which has a much more sleek robotic look and long pale-blue "fingers" which are activated by muscles operating a motorised pulley.

Long accustomed to life without his forearm, Aguilar doesn't use a prosthesis every day but he knows that many people do, and that it can cost many thousands of euros for the newest models.

"Since I made that first prosthesis, I realised that I had the power to help other people. And when I looked in the mirror and saw myself with two arms, I thought that other people really might need that too," he said.

- Arming an 8-year-old -

After he was awarded the Guinness World Record for creating the first functional Lego prosthetic arm in 2017, news about Hand Solo's wizardry quickly spread.

Finding his story online earlier this year, Zaure Bektemissova decided to write him an email from her home in northeastern France.

Her son Beknur, she wrote, was eight-years-old and had no arms. The doctors couldn't make him a normal prosthesis and she was looking for help.

"Prosthetics are mostly standard, they are big and heavy, so for his spine it was not a good idea," she told AFP at her home in Strasbourg where the family has lived for two years since her husband took up a diplomatic post at the Kazakhstan consulate.

Aguilar promised to try and at the end of August, Bektemissova and her son drove 1,300 kilometres (800 miles) to Andorra, a tiny principality in the Pyrenees mountains, sandwiched between Spain and France, to meet him and try out the new prosthesis he'd made.

Made entirely of Lego, the lightweight device has a pincer-like grabble at the end which Beknur can control with a cord manipulated by his left foot.

"Now I can grab things with my hand, before I couldn't," beams Beknur, throwing a ball to his brother.

Having that extra bit of independence has really helped, his mum says.

And the experience has inspired Aguilar.

"If I did it for Beknur, why not for any other boy or girl who's missing an arm or a leg or a foot?" he says, his eyes alight with ideas.

© 2021 AFP

Britain offers Canada military help to defend the Arctic

Experts say that concerns about sovereignty have made Ottawa reluctant to let allies operate in the region

PM JEAN CHRETIEN (LIBERAL)  BOUGHT USED SUBS FROM UK STILL REPAIRING THEM TO MAKE THEM WORKABLE

Murray Brewster · CBC News · Posted: Sep 24, 2021

Royal Navy submarine HMS Trenchant breaking through metre-thick ice on the Arctic Ocean on Ice Exercise 18. (Cdr Charles Ball/Royal Navy/Public Affairs)


Britain is signalling its interest in working with the Canadian military in the Arctic by offering to take part in cold-weather exercises and bring in some of its more advanced capabilities — such as nuclear-powered submarines — to help with surveillance and defence in the Far North.

In a recent exclusive interview with CBC News, the United Kingdom's top military commander said his country is "keen to cooperate" and learn more about how to survive and fight in a cold, remote setting.

Gen. Sir Nick Carter said Britain would also like to "cooperate in terms of helping Canada do what Canada needs to do as an Arctic country."

The offer was quietly floated months ago in government circles. Experts say, however, that successive Canadian governments have been reluctant to allow anyone — even close allies — to become too deeply embedded in the region.

WATCH: Gen. Sir Nick Carter discusses the prospect of military cooperation with Canada in the Arctic

Gen. Sir Nick Carter, Britain’s chief of the defence staff, says the U.K. is keen for closer cooperation with Canada in the Arctic. He said the British military wants to learn from Canada’s experience and can bring capabilities to help better defend the region. 0:28

Much of that reluctance has to do with contested claims to Canada's sovereignty in the Arctic. Concern over Canada's exclusion from the recent security pact between the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia may lend fresh urgency to the U.K.'s proposal, however.

CBC's interview with Gen. Carter was conducted before the AUKUS pact was announced.

As members of NATO, both Britain and Canada have taken part in winter warfare exercises in Norway. Gen. Carter said he believes that cooperation could be expanded to the benefit of both countries. The British Army has for many years conducted armoured and combined warfare training at Wainwright, Alberta.

Keeping a closer eye on the Arctic

The Arctic is becoming more of a focus for NATO and Canada's closest allies. The potential threat posed by the reactivation of Russia's northern Cold War-era bases, as well as the interest of possible adversaries such as China, figured promptly in speeches and panel discussions at the recent NATO leaders summit last June.

Canada's former Conservative government placed a premium on increasing Canada's military presence in the Far North; it built a naval refuelling station and set in motion the construction of Arctic Offshore Patrol Ships, which are just being delivered.

Then-prime minister Stephen Harper looks down the shoreline in the Arctic port of Nanisivik, Nunavut on August 10, 2007. (Fred Chartrand/The Canadian Press)

Those measures offer Canada's military limited capabilities, however. Underwater and satellite surveillance of the region is still in the planning and early implementation phases.

Carter said the U.K. has capabilities that could help keep closer tabs on the Arctic's rapidly melting seas and inlets, but it would be up to the Canadian government to decide.

"We would absolutely defer to Canada's expertise in this," Carter told CBC News.

"I think we have military capabilities, certainly in the maritime domain and in terms of our science that would be useful to Canada and I think operating alongside Canada in that regard is going to be clearly good for both countries."
Going nuclear

What Britain has — and Canada lacks — is a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines, which can operate under ice for extended periods of time.

When Canada bought its current diesel-electric submarines from Britain in the late 1990s it embarked on a project to retrofit them with fuel cells that would have delivered better, longer under-ice performance. The plan fell through and was quietly shelved.

In the late 1980s, the Conservative government of former prime minister Brian Mulroney proposed buying 12 nuclear-powered submarines with the goal of using them for Arctic defence. The end of the Cold War and subsequent defence cuts caused the plan to be shelved.

The University of Calgary's Rob Huebert, one of the country's leading experts on Arctic defence, said that after a hiatus of almost a dozen years, the British rejoined the biennial American high Arctic military exercise in 2018 with their nuclear-powered submarines.

Back in March, the Russians deployed three ultra-quiet nuclear subs to simultaneously punch through the Arctic ice in the same location — a demonstration that set the defence community buzzing.

Three nuclear submarines owned by Russia maneuvered to break through several feet of Arctic ice at the same time in March 2021. (Russian Defence Ministry)

"We do not have the capability of engaging Russian submarines or Chinese submarines, if and when that ever becomes a reality," said Huebert, speaking about the Canadian navy's Arctic inventory. "That's the No. 1 capability that the British bring to the Arctic."

CBC News asked Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan's office to comment on the notion of closer cooperation with the British in Canada's Far North. The query went unanswered.

Huebert said successive Canadian governments have been reluctant to let the allies become more deeply involved in the region, beyond the Operation Nanook exercise held each summer.

"We're fearful any type of involvement with NATO would undermine our sovereignty," said Huebert, noting that both the United States and Britain do not recognize Canada's claim to the Northwest Passage.

Canada needs to show the flag: defence expert

The British offer of cooperation and assistance is a wake-up call for the Liberal government on several different fronts, said Dave Perry, a vice-president of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.

It is, he said, a reminder that Canada needs to be more present in the region.

"There have been [Canadian] commitments to increase the situational awareness there, but that has a long way to go and the thing for Canadians to remember is that it is our actual territory and our backyard," he said.

"I think it is great to work with other people, but we should be doing what we can to make sure we have a home field advantage."

With Australia planning to acquire nuclear submarines — which conceivably could operate in the Arctic as well — Perry was asked if Canada will have to rely more on its allies to monitor and defend its territory.

"I think the AUKUS deal is an indicator that there are some countries with whom we have been intimately familiar and intimately allied with. Some of our best friends on the planet are firming even tighter, smaller clubs," he said.

"The United States under successive administrations is being far less benign about allies that they look at as pulling — or not pulling — their weight ... The United States is looking for people who will pull their weight."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Murray Brewster

Defence and security

Murray Brewster is senior defence writer for CBC News, based in Ottawa. He has covered the Canadian military and foreign policy from Parliament Hill for over a decade. Among other assignments, he spent a total of 15 months on the ground covering the Afghan war for The Canadian Press. Prior to that, he covered defence issues and politics for CP in Nova Scotia for 11 years and was bureau chief for Standard Broadcast News in Ottawa.

Why I resigned from my tenured position teaching climate science in college

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I've taught students about the climate crisis for years. But they aren't the ones who need to act 

Heather Short · for CBC First Person · Posted: Sep 24, 2021 

Heather Short stands beside her garden. After years of teaching students about climate change, she says students need to see more commitment — and emotional support — from the education system to ethically continue. (Ainslie MacLellan/CBC)

This First Person article is the experience of Heather Short, a scientist and educator who lives in the greater Montreal region. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ.

I have enjoyed my nearly 15 years of teaching students about geology, earth systems science, climate literacy and the present human-caused climate and ecological crises in my time at John Abbott College on the island of Montreal. My interactions with them have by far been the most rewarding part of my job.

I will miss them, and miss seeing that spark of excitement when they've learned something new. However, it is clear to me now that teaching young people about these crises without a cohesive, science-informed institutional and cultural framework of climate-literate support does them more harm than good. Let me explain.

I arrived at this conclusion after many months of reflection, informed by teaching thousands of students about what the best available science predicts for their futures. Climate science consensus tells us that the world must reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 45 per cent of 2010 levels by the year 2030 in order to have a 66 per cent chance of avoiding a cascade of extreme climate events that will be unstoppable within their lifetimes.

At present, countries have pledged to reduce emissions by a global total of 0.5 per cent by 2030.

We (privileged people in wealthy countries) have a very short window of opportunity to take decisive, systemic action to avert the worst consequences of climate breakdown. Not only do our current emissions targets put us far behind where we need to be, our province's 50-year-old education system lacks the support our students need to face this reality.

Teaching this to an 18 year old is like telling them that they have cancer, then ushering them out the door, saying "sorry, good luck with that."

It is also fundamentally unfair and unjust for us — part of the generations that have benefitted from unmitigated resource extraction and emissions — to drop the responsibility to fix (or adapt to) the climate crisis in their young laps.

They deserve a livable future, and they deserve our apology, immediate action and emotional support to navigate an uncertain future. Honesty, transparency and open dialogue about these climate and ecological crises must form the core of our education.

Heather Short has been teaching university and college students for 25 years, including neraly 15 years at John Abbott College. (Submitted by Heather Short)

I know this will not be easy. Denial is a human and understandable response to extremely upsetting information. But as the adults with agency in our students' lives, we need to understand — at the bare minimum — the climate science that they learn in school so that we can lend a sympathetic ear to their concerns about their futures, and offer practical, well-informed advice about what to do.

The younger generations need to hear from us that they are not alone, that we'll work for them to mitigate emissions as quickly as possible. They need us to demonstrate that we will give up some of our own security and privilege in a system that is not adapting to the demands of the scientific consensus on the climate emergency, in order to change that system.

To address this need, I proposed a job-restructuring as a climate literacy specialist that admittedly was not one that fit readily into the current hiring/employment structure (or the collective agreement) at the college. That was rather the point. It was conceived in the context of repeated calls — from thousands of scientists — for immediate transformative, systemic change.

• What the new UN report warning of climate impacts means for Canadians

• Meet the millennials grieving for the future of planet Earth

This kind of change must happen in all aspects of society, including educational institutions. Clearly this can only come to pass under leadership prepared to be bold and brave in response — to think and act outside of the norms that have led to tenured, comfortable jobs and a state of the world in which this past year of pandemic, fire, floods and heat waves will be the best scenario we can hope for from now on.

My resignation is my act of conscientious objection to educational business-as-usual with a "green" twist, couched in the assumption of a forever-growing economy on a physically finite planet. The science clearly shows us that the future our students are headed for will be radically different from one that can be met by the incremental changes and technological solutions we are currently engaged in.

As education stands now, we are not preparing our students to be successful in their futures, and by not admitting to that, we are failing them.

As a scientist and educator, I must speak the scientific truth no matter the personal, social or economic consequences. I will now endeavour to educate decision-makers, politicians, voters and in general those who have the economic and political agency to contribute to the transformative systemic changes that need to be made.

There is still time to lock in a future climate similar to what the world experienced this past year. The longer we delay, the more unrecognizable our children's and grandchildren's futures become. The climate of our youth may be gone, and that is reason to grieve — but not to give up.

Editor's note: John Abbott College declined to comment on Heather Short's criticisms of the education system and told CBC it has many initiatives relating to climate change and reducing its carbon footprint.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Heather Short

Dr. Heather Short holds a PhD in earth sciences and has been teaching college and university students for 25 years. She trusts scientific consensus and would like to encourage everyone to think about how they can contribute to transformative systemic change in all aspects of society.

  

For this strike, Fridays for Future Canada is using the hashtag

#UpRootTheSystem,

 which is meant to highlight how climate change unfairly affects people 

who are already struggling, like minority communities.

 (Image credit: @fridays_for_future_canada/Instagram)

USA

Veterans at Revolutionary battlefield dig find camaraderie

By MICHAEL HILL

1 of 4

Veteran Tim Madere sifts through dirt as part of an archeological dig at the site of the Second Battle of Saratoga, Thursday, Sept. 9, 2021, in Stillwater, N.Y. Veterans with American Veterans Archaeological Recovery are searching for Revolutionary War artifacts at the Saratoga National Historical Park this month. (AP Photo/Michael Hill)


STILLWATER, N.Y. (AP) — Military veterans who carefully dug and sifted through clumps of dirt this month at a Revolutionary War battlefield in New York did more than uncover artifacts fired from muskets and cannons.

The meticulous field work gave the veterans — some dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder and physical injuries — a familiar sense of camaraderie and mission.

So while the archaeological dig at the Saratoga National Historical Park produced evidence from the tide-turning Second Battle of Saratoga, the teamwork behind the finds also benefited the veterans.

“We can all come together, share your battle stories, your deployment stories, and share your love for the history of what you’re digging,” said Bjorn Bruckshaw, of Laconia, New Hampshire, during a break on a recent hazy morning.

Bruckshaw, 38, was part of a three-person crew that spent the morning digging small holes at spots that set off metal detectors, then searching though the damp clumps to uncover ... old nails, mostly.

But the self-described Revolutionary War buff was loving it.

Bruckshaw, an Army veteran injured in a roadside bombing in Iraq, is among 15 veterans taking part in the dig through American Veterans Archaeological Recovery, an organization that helps service members transition into the civilian world. While the group deals mostly with vets with disabilities, their focus is on what participants can do in the field instead of any injuries, said AVAR’s Stephen Humphreys.

“In the military you’re trained to be on time for everything,” Bruckshaw said. “So transitioning into the civilian world is a little bit harder for a lot of people. For me, it was a little bit difficult suffering from TBI (traumatic brain injury) and PTSD from my combat injuries. But you have support groups like these.”

National Park Service archaeologist William Griswold said the team is looking for artifacts that shed more light on the Battle of Bemis Heights, or the Second Battle of Saratoga, on Oct. 7, 1777. The American victory over British and German soldiers is credited with persuading France to lend crucial support the fight for independence.

The battle also burnished the heroic resume of future traitor Benedict Arnold, who was wounded in the leg and is memorialized here with a monument to his boot.

While maps and journal accounts from the time describe troop movements during that fateful battle, artifacts can pinpoint movements and provide a reality check.

For instance, historians know the British at Saratoga loaded their cannons with tin canisters packed with iron balls, or “case shot,” that spread out like shotgun blasts. Locations of the buried iron balls found here are being used to deduce more precisely where the cannons fired from.

“It’s a good way to check a lot of these textual sources because in the fog of battle, people often make mistakes or embellish things,” Griswold said.

Field work was first conducted here in 2019, with supervision from the National Park Service’s regional archaeology program. The American Battlefield Trust is a sponsor. Work was interrupted by the pandemic last year, but crews with shovels and metal detectors were back this month and wrapping up this week.

“It’s partially about the chase,” said veteran Megan Lukaszeski. “You never know what you’re going to find. You could dig and you could find nothing, or you could dig and find the most amazing things.”

After retiring from the Air Force, Lukaszeski went to school to study archaeology. The 36-year-old from New York has already taken part in AVAR excavations to recover remains at WWII crash sites in England and Sicily through the group’s partnership with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. She plans to get her master’s degree and pursue archaeology professionally.

For others, the work is more a chance to learn about archaeology while having some fun.

Former Army Col. Tim Madere once hunted for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. This month, the 68-year-old sifted dirt through a screen in a hunt for artifacts and shared laughs with other workers. The Savannah, Georgia-area resident said he has gotten over most of his PTSD, but believes you can never totally get rid of it.

He sees this sort of field work as a good way for people to manage it.

“You hear their stories and then you tell yours so that we kind of get a better appreciation of what all these Americans did to protect the United States,” he said. ”So it’s good to see other people, and they’re doing well.”

CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA

Most states have cut back public health powers amid pandemic

By LAUREN WEBER and ANNA MARIA BARRY-JESTER

September 15, 2021

1 of 4

FILE - This July 2020 file photo shows the Montana State Capitol in Helena, Mont. Amid the coronavirus pandemic, Montana's legislature passed restrictive laws severely curbing quarantine and isolation powers, increasing local officials' power over local health boards, preventing limits on religious gatherings, and banning employers — including in health care settings — from requiring vaccinations for COVID, the flu or anything else. (Thom Bridge/Independent Record via AP, File)


Republican legislators in more than half of U.S. states, spurred on by voters angry about lockdowns and mask mandates, are taking away the powers that state and local officials use to protect the public against infectious diseases.

A Kaiser Health News review found that, in all 50 states, legislators have proposed bills to curb such public health powers since the COVID-19 pandemic began. At least 26 states passed laws that permanently weaken government authority to protect public health. In three additional states, an executive order, ballot initiative or state Supreme Court ruling limited long-held public health powers.

In Arkansas, legislators banned mask mandates except in private businesses or state-run health care settings, calling them “a burden on the public peace, health, and safety of the citizens of this state.” In Idaho, county commissioners, who typically have no public health expertise, can veto countywide public health orders. And in Kansas and Tennessee, school boards, rather than health officials, have the power to close schools.

In this Tuesday, Aug. 24, 2021 file photo, supporters of a bill that would prohibit public and private employers from requiring vaccinations or punishing workers who don't receive them rally in favor of the legislation demonstrate outside the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus, Ohio. Republican legislators in more than half of U.S. states, spurred on by voters angry over lockdowns and mask mandates, have passed laws to take away powers state and local officials use to protect the public against infectious diseases. (AP Photo/Andrew Welsh-Huggins)

 - In this Thursday, Aug. 12, 2021 file photo, people celebrate after the Salt Lake County Council voted to overturn a school mask order for kids under the age of 12 issued earlier in the week by the county's top health official. Republican legislators in more than half of U.S. states, spurred on by voters angry over lockdowns and mask mandates, have passed laws to take away powers state and local officials use to protect the public against infectious diseases. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

President Joe Biden last week announced sweeping vaccination mandates and other COVID-19 measures, saying he was forced to act partly because of such legislation. All told:

—In at least 16 states, legislators have limited the power of public health officials to order — mask mandates, or quarantines or isolation. In some cases, they gave themselves or local elected politicians the authority to prevent the spread of infectious disease.

—At least 17 states passed laws banning COVID-19 vaccine mandates or passports, or made it easier to get around vaccine requirements.

—At least nine states have new laws banning or limiting mask mandates. Executive orders or a court ruling limit mask requirements in five more.

Much of this legislation takes effect as COVID-19 hospitalizations in some areas are climbing to the highest numbers at any point in the pandemic.

“We really could see more people sick, hurt, hospitalized or even die, depending on the extremity of the legislation and curtailing of the authority,” said Lori Tremmel Freeman, head of the National Association of County and City Health Officials.

Public health academics and officials are frustrated that they, instead of the virus, have become the enemy. They argue this will have consequences that last long beyond this pandemic, diminishing their ability to fight the latest COVID-19 surge and future disease outbreaks.

“It’s kind of like having your hands tied in the middle of a boxing match,” said Kelley Vollmar, executive director of the Jefferson County Health Department in Missouri.

But proponents of the new limits say they are a necessary check on executive powers and give lawmakers a voice in prolonged emergencies. Arkansas state Sen. Trent Garner, a Republican who co-sponsored his state’s successful bill to ban mask mandates, said he was trying to reflect the will of the people.

“What the people of Arkansas want is the decision to be left in their hands, to them and their family,” Garner said. “It’s time to take the power away from the so-called experts, whose ideas have been woefully inadequate.”

After initially signing the bill, Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson expressed regret, calling a special legislative session in early August to ask lawmakers to carve out an exception for schools. Lawmakers declined. The law is currently blocked by an Arkansas judge who deemed it unconstitutional. Legal battles are ongoing in other states as well.

The Montana Legislature passed some of the most restrictive laws of all, severely curbing public health’s quarantine and isolation powers, increasing local elected officials’ power over local health boards, preventing limits on religious gatherings and banning employers — including in health care settings — from requiring vaccinations for COVID-19, the flu or anything else.

Losing the ability to order quarantines has left Karen Sullivan, health officer for Montana’s Butte-Silver Bow Health Department, terrified about what’s to come — not only during this pandemic but for future measles outbreaks.

“Relying on morality and goodwill is not a good public health practice,” she said.

Freeman said her city and county health officials’ group has meager influence and resources, especially in comparison with the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-backed conservative group that promoted a model bill to restrict the emergency powers of governors and other officials. The draft legislation appears to have inspired dozens of state-level bills, according to the KHN review. At least 15 states passed laws limiting emergency powers. In some states, governors can no longer institute mask mandates, and their executive orders can be overturned by legislators.

The new laws are meant to reduce the power of governors and restore the balance of power between states’ executive branches and legislatures, said Jonathon Hauenschild, director of the ALEC task force on communications and technology. “Governors are elected, but they were delegating a lot of authority to the public health official, often that they had appointed,” Hauenschild said.

When the Indiana Legislature overrode the governor’s veto to pass a bill that gave county commissioners the power to review public health orders, Dr. David Welsh, the public health officer in rural Ripley County, was devastated.

People immediately stopped calling him to report COVID-19 violations. It was “like turning off a light switch,” Welsh said.

He’s considering stepping down. If he does, he’ll join at least 303 public health leaders who have retired, resigned or been fired since the pandemic began, according to an ongoing analysis by KHN and The Associated Press. That means 1 in 5 Americans have lost a local health leader during the pandemic.

“This is a deathblow,” for the public health field, said Brian Castrucci, CEO of the de Beaumont Foundation, which advocates for public health.

Public health groups expect further combative legislation.

Former Oregon Democratic state Sen. Wayne Fawbush said some of today’s politicians may come to regret these laws.

Fawbush was a sponsor of 1989 legislation that 32 years later means Oregon cannot require health care workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Calling lawmaking a “messy business,” Fawbush said he wouldn’t have pushed the bill through if he had known then what he does now.

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KHN data reporter Hannah Recht, Montana correspondent Katheryn Houghton and Associated Press writer Michelle R. Smith in Providence, Rhode Island, contributed to this report.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

Polish protesters warn that health care crisis is looming

By VANESSA GERA

Health care workers staff a protest camp in Warsaw, Poland, on Tuesday Sept. 21, 2021. Doctors, nurses and other health care workers have been camping out in front of the Polish prime minister's offices for nearly two weeks to protest their working conditions and demand higher wages. Poland has the lowest number of working doctors to its population in the 27-nation European Union, and its nurses are also stretched thin. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)


X-rays hang in a tent that is part of a protest camp in Warsaw, Poland, on Tuesday Sept. 21, 2021. Doctors, nurses and other health care workers have been camping out in front of the Polish prime minister's offices for nearly two weeks to protest their working conditions and demand higher wages. Poland has the lowest number of working doctors to its population in the 27-nation European Union, and its nurses are also stretched thin. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — When a priest arrives at a hospital in Chorzow to perform the last rites, nurse Mariusz Strug can see the fear in dying patients’ eyes. “After the sacrament, they knew what was happening,” he said.

But there have been no psychologists available to offer any consolation to the patients. Strug and another nurse would try to offer some kind words, but they were strained to the limit caring for 60 patients in their COVID-19 ward.

“People come to us and they want us nurses to perform a miracle,” said Strug.

Exhausted from working in such an understaffed system, he is among a group of health care workers who have come to Warsaw from across Poland for an around-the-clock protest outside the prime minister’s office that has gone on for nearly two weeks.

After a year and a half of the pandemic, and with Poland on the cusp of a fourth surge of COVID-19 infections, nurses, doctors, ambulance drivers and other health care workers have come to urge Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and other authorities to make deep reforms to the health care system, arguing that it is in danger of collapse.

“The pandemic showed us how bad the health care system is,” said Gilbert Kolbe, a nurse and spokesman for the protest movement. “This is the last chance to do something before it will be too late. We won’t be able to avert a crisis coming in five, ten years.”

While health care workers across the 27-nation European Union have been tested by the pandemic, Poland faced that test with fewer doctors and nurses than most. According to OECD statistics, Poland has the lowest number of working doctors in proportion to its population — just 2.4 to 1,000 inhabitants compared with 4.5 in Germany. Poland also has only 5 nurses to 1,000 inhabitants, below the EU average of 8 and far below richer countries like Germany, which has 14.

Poland’s health care sector has been strapped for resources for decades, a situation not rectified by a series of governments on the left, the center or now the right.

The problems have been exacerbated by the thousands of doctors, nurses and others who left Poland for higher paid work in Western Europe after the country joined the EU in 2004.

Of the medical professionals who have stayed in Poland, many have also left the public sector for better-paying jobs in the private sector, leaving fewer to care for the poorest people, said Kolbe, a 25-year-old who left a public hospital to work for a private medical company but hopes to return to the public system one day.

Kolbe said 5,500 people complete their nursing studies on average each year in Poland, but only about 2,500 go to work in the public system.

Some of those protesting say they are simply exhausted. With wages low, some work more than one medical job to support themselves.

Alicja Krakowiecka, a 56-year-old nurse from the southern city of Czestochowa, said her hospital is so short-staffed that during the height of the pandemic she would sometimes begin her day at 6 a.m. only to be asked to stay on because the night nurse was sick. She was then left alone with 30 patients for a 24-hour shift. Instead of getting two days off she would be asked to return the next evening.

“Do you refuse?” she asked, explaining that she agreed to the exhausting shifts out of a sense of obligation.

The protest began Sept. 11, when tens of thousands from across Poland marched through Warsaw. Some stayed on in tents and held daily press conferences and lectures.

Last weekend the protesters were deeply shaken when a 94-year-old man who come been stopping by and giving them candies killed himself a few feet away. A shot rang out during a news conference and the medics ran to the man, but couldn’t help him.

Since then they have protested silently, forgoing news conferences.

Amid the pressure of the protests, and with talks between health care unions and the government going on for weeks, Morawiecki announced Tuesday that an additional 1 billion zlotys ($254 million) would be allocated this year to salaries and education in the health care sector.

In addition, Health Minister Adam Niedzielski said Wednesday that he had agreed to pay paramedics more.

Still, the group organizing the protests said the rest of the health care community was not satisfied, meaning more talks between the government and the protesters are planned.

Kamila Maslowska, a medical student, stopped by the protest tents with some friends Tuesday to show her solidarity.

“I know two additional languages fluently, apart from Polish, so I think I could find a job abroad,” she said ”(But) I would not like to leave. I would like something to change for the better.”

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Follow all AP stories on the coronavirus pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic.

‘Vaccine apartheid’: Africans tell UN they need vaccines

By PIA SARKAR

yesterday

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President of South Africa Cyril Ramaphosa speaks via video link during the 76th Session of the U.N. General Assembly at United Nations headquarters in New York, on Thursday, Sept. 23, 2021. (Spencer Platt/Pool Photo via AP)


As wealthy countries begin to consider whether to offer their populations a third COVID-19 shot, African nations still waiting for their first gave this stark reminder to world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday: “No one is safe unless we are all safe.”

That message was repeated throughout the day as the inequity of vaccine distribution came into sharp focus. As of mid-September, fewer than 4% of Africans have been fully immunized and most of the 5.7 billion vaccine doses administered around the world have been given in just 10 rich countries.

Chad’s president Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno warned of the dangers of leaving countries behind.

“The virus doesn’t know continents, borders, even less nationalities or social statuses,” Itno told the General Assembly. “The countries and regions that aren’t vaccinated will be a source of propagating and developing new variants of the virus. In this regard, we welcome the repeated appeals of the United Nations secretary general and the director general of the (World Health Organization) in favor of access to the vaccine for all. The salvation of humanity depends on it.”

The struggle to contain the coronavirus pandemic has featured prominently in leaders’ speeches over the past few days — many of them delivered remotely exactly because of the virus. Country after country acknowledged the wide disparity in accessing the vaccine, painting a picture so bleak that a solution has at times seemed impossibly out of reach.

South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa pointed to vaccines as “the greatest defense that humanity has against the ravages of this pandemic.”

“It is therefore a great concern that the global community has not sustained the principles of solidarity and cooperation in securing equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines,” he said. “It is an indictment on humanity that more than 82% of the world’s vaccine doses have been acquired by wealthy countries, while less than 1% has gone to low-income countries.”

He and others urged U.N. member states to support a proposal to temporarily waive certain intellectual property rights established by the World Trade Organization to allow more countries, particularly low- and middle-income countries, to produce COVID-19 vaccines.

Earlier this year, U.S. President Joe Biden broke with European allies to embrace the waivers, but there has been no movement toward the necessary global consensus on the issue required under WTO rules.

While some nongovernmental organizations have called the waivers vital to boosting global production of the shots, U.S. officials concede it is not the most constricting factor in the inequitable vaccine distribution — and some privately doubt the waivers for the highly complex shots would lead to enhanced production.

Angola President João Lourenço said it was “shocking to see the disparity between some nations and others with respect to availability of vaccines.”

“These disparities allow for third doses to be given, in some cases, while, in other cases, as in Africa, the vast majority of the population has not even received the first dose,” Lourenço said.

The U.S., Britain, France, Germany and Israel are among the countries that have begun administering boosters or announced plans to do so.

Namibia President Hage Geingob called it “vaccine apartheid,” a notable reference given the country’s own experience with apartheid when neighboring South Africa’s white minority government controlled South West Africa, the name for Namibia before its independence in 1990.

“There is a virus far more terrible, far more harrowing than COVID19. It is the virus of inequality,” said the president of the Indian Ocean island nation of the Seychelles, Wavel Ramkalawan.

The grim consequences of COVID-19 hit Tanzania especially hard when the East African country’s then-president John Magufuli, who had insisted the coronavirus could be defeated with prayer, died in March. The presidency went to his deputy, Samia Suluhu Hassan, who has since changed Tanzania’s course on the pandemic but still sees great challenges ahead.

“We tend to forget that no one is safe until everyone is safe,” she said during her speech Thursday, stressing the importance of countries with surplus COVID-19 vaccine doses sharing them with other countries.

Benido Impouma, a program director with the WHO’s Africa program, noted during a weekly video news conference that the surge in new COVID-19 cases is starting to ease in Africa “but with 108,000 new cases, more than 3,000 lives lost in the past week and 16 countries still in resurgence, this fight is far from over.”

“Fresh increases in cases should be expected in the coming months,” Impouma said. “Without widespread vaccination and other public and social measures, the continent’s fourth wave is likely to be the worst, the most brutal yet.”

On Wednesday, during a global vaccination summit convened virtually on the sidelines of the General Assembly, Biden announced that the United States would double its purchase of Pfizer’s COVID-19 shots to share with the world to 1 billion doses, with the goal of vaccinating 70% of the global population within the next year.

Lack of access to vaccines is not just Africa’s concern. Leaders of developing nations in different regions echoed the frustration. President Luis Arce of Bolivia, one of Latin America’s poorest nations, told assembled diplomats that biopharmaceutical companies should make their patents available and share knowledge and technology for vaccine production.

“Access to the vaccine should be considered a human right. We cannot be indifferent, much less profit from health in pandemic times,” Arce said.

Earlier on Thursday, Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz-Canel stressed that “hundreds of millions of people in low-income nations still await their first dose, and can’t even guess whether they will ever receive it.”

The WHO says only 15% of promised donations of vaccines — from rich countries that have access to large quantities of them — have been delivered. The U.N. health agency has said it wants countries to fulfill their dose-sharing pledges “immediately” and make shots available for programs that benefit poor countries and Africa in particular.

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Associated Press writers Carley Petesch in Dakar, Senegal, Zeke Miller in Washington, David Biller in Rio de Janeiro and Mallika Sen in New York contributed to this report. Follow Pia Sarkar on Twitter at http://twitter.com/PiaSarkar_TK