UPDATED

California 'gig worker' ballot ruled unconstitutional

Issued on: 21/08/2021 - 04:44

Labor legislation known as Proposition 22 effectively overturned a California law requiring app-based businesses to reclassify their drivers and provide employee benefits JOSH EDELSON AFP/File

San Francisco (AFP)

A California judge has ruled unconstitutional a 2020 referendum passed by the state's voters that lets "gig workers" be treated as contractors, in a decision revealed Friday.

Labor legislation known as Proposition 22 -- heavily backed by Uber, Lyft and other app-based, on-demand services -- effectively overturned a California law requiring them to reclassify their drivers and provide employee benefits.

Uber attacked the decision and pledged to challenge it.

"This ruling ignores the will of the overwhelming majority of California voters and defies both logic and the law," the ride-hailing service said in a statement.

"Meanwhile, Prop. 22 remains in effect, including all of the protections and benefits it provides independent workers across the state," it added.

The November vote came after a contentious campaign with labor groups claiming the initiative would erode worker rights and benefits, and with backers arguing for a new, flexible economic model.

The victory for the "gig economy" in California was expected to echo across the US, in a boon for app-based services while igniting fears that big business is rewriting labor laws.

Under the proposition, drivers remained independent contractors but Uber and Lyft were to pay them a number of benefits including a minimum wage, a contribution to health care and other forms of insurance.

Critics of the measure said it failed to take into account the full costs borne by drivers.

Uber and Lyft claimed most drivers support the contractor model.

But the firms had been sued by the state, which argued keeping that model violated California labor law. A Proposition 22 victory rendered the court case effectively moot.

© 2021 AFP

California judge finds Prop 22 gig worker measure unconstitutional

The measure exempts companies like Uber and Lyft from having to treat drivers as employees.


M. Moon
@mariella_moon
August 21st, 2021

A California judge has ruled that Proposition 22, the measure that allows companies like Uber and Lyft to keep classifying app-based drivers in the state as independent contractors, is unenforceable and unconstitutional. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Alameda County Superior Court judge Frank Roesch found that Prop 22 illegally "limits the power of a future legislature to define app-based drivers as workers subject to workers' compensation law."

Proposition 22 passed by a wide margin in the state when most people voted in favor of it in last year's November elections. Companies were legally obligated to classify gig workers as full-time employees under Assembly Bill 5 A (AB5), which was passed in 2019, but some (like the aforementioned ride-sharing firms) continued to treat them as contractors. Uber, Lyft, Instacart and DoorDash poured over $220 million into campaigning for Prop 22 in order to overturn AB5, and the move clearly worked.

The measure requires gig companies to provide their contractors with healthcare subsidies and a wage floor, but it also exempts them from having to classify their workers as employees with appropriate benefits and protections. While those in favor of the proposition argue that it would allow workers to keep their independence while enjoying benefits they didn't have before, not everyone's happy with the development. A group that includes the Service Employees International Union and the SEIU California State Council sued California earlier this year to overturn the proposition.

In his ruling, Roesch specifically singled out Section 7451 of the measure, which states that any future law related to collective bargaining for app drivers must comply with the rest of the proposition. "It appears only to protect the economic interest of the network companies in having a divided, ununionized workforce, which is not a stated goal of the legislation," he wrote in his decision. He also found it unconstitutional that any amendment to the measure requires a seven-eighths vote of approval to pass in the state Legislature.

If the ruling stands, gig companies like Uber and Lyft may have to spend hundreds of millions paying for healthcare and other additional benefits for their drivers. At the moment, though, Prop 22 is still in effect, and gig companies are already planning to appeal. An Uber spokesperson told The Chronicle:

"This ruling ignores the will of the overwhelming majority of California voters and defies both logic and the law. We will appeal and we expect to win. Meanwhile, Prop. 22 remains in effect, including all of the protections and benefits it provides independent workers across the state."

Judge shoots down law that kept Uber and Lyft drivers from being employees

Last Updated: Aug. 20, 2021
By Jeremy C. Owens

Appeals court rules that law backed by record-breaking millions from Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and other gig companies is unconstitutional for barring future legislative moves on workers’ compensation, collective bargaining

Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc. could have to treat drivers as employees after a judge tossed out a proposition passed by California voters. AFP/GETTY IMAGES

A judge late Friday shot down a law that would have allowed app-based companies to continue treating drivers as contractors instead of employees in California, ruling unconstitutional a proposition passed by voters in 2020 after a record-breaking campaign.

Uber Technologies Inc. UBER, +0.23%, Lyft Inc. LYFT, -1.92%, DoorDash Inc. DASH, +1.11%, Instacart and other app-based companies funneled more than $200 million into support for Proposition 22, which recused their businesses from treating drivers as employees under state law. While more than 58% of the state’s voters approved the proposition, California Superior Court Judge Frank Roesch ruled that it broke the state constitution by unfairly hampering the power of the Legislature in regards to workers’ compensation and collective bargaining.

“The court finds that the entirety of Proposition 22 is unenforceable,” the judge concluded.

For more: Uber and Lyft win fight to keep drivers as contractors instead of employees in California

A spokesman for a group that represents gig company interests, the Protect App-Based Drivers & Services Coalition, said that they will appeal and the the ruling will be stayed when they file, which would maintain Prop. 22 rules that are in effect while the appeal moves through the system.

“We believe the judge made a serious error by ignoring a century’s worth of case law requiring the courts to guard the voters’ right of initiative,” spokesman Geoff Vetter said in an email. “This outrageous decision is an affront to the overwhelming majority of California voters who passed Prop. 22.”

Uber, Lyft and other gig companies have attempted to use Prop. 22 as a model for new regulation across the U.S., including a recent effort to establish similar rules in Massachusetts. The companies are trying to establish a “third way” for employment, in which drivers are treated as contractors but are offered the potential for some benefits under certain conditions.

Those rules in the California law continued to keep app-based workers out of systems such as workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance. Gig companies do not pay into such systems for drivers, some of whom received unemployment assistance instead from the federal government relief packages during the COVID-19 pandemic.

For more: What Prop. 22 would actually do in California

Roesch concluded that California’s Legislature holds the ultimate right to determine the course of workers’ compensation in the state, despite extensive power for propositions passed by voters. He also said that an amendment would prohibit the Legislature from approving collective bargaining for app-based workers in the future.

“A prohibition on legislation authorizing collective bargaining by app-based drivers does not promote the right to work as an independent contractor, nor does it protect work flexibility, nor does it provide minimum workplace safety and pay standards for those workers,” Roesch wrote. “It appears only to protect the economic interests of the network companies in having a divided, ununionized workforce, which is not a stated goal of the legislation.”

Catherine Fisk, a professor at UC Berkeley who teaches labor law, told MarketWatch when the lawsuit was originally filed that the prohibition of future unionization could prove a successful appeal.

“None of the materials describing what the proposition would do informed voters that by voting yes on 22 they were voting to prevent drivers from unionizing and to prevent the legislature from allowing them to unionize,” she said in January. “It is a huge change in the law and is buried at the end of the fine print.”

Gig workers and labor unions filed the lawsuit in January, but the state Supreme Court rejected a request for an expedited review of the case. The plaintiffs include the SEIU California and the national SEIU, individual drivers and a ride-hailing customer.

 

Turks hit the Sinjar’s hospital in Iraq, eight killed – AFP [video]

By TOC On Aug 18, 2021

BAGHDAD, ($1= 1,459.12 Iraqi Dinars) – Despite protests from Baghdad, Turkish forces are continuing their operations in northern Iraq, where they are hunting down members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party [PKK], an organization considered terrorist in Ankara [but also in the United States and the European Union, editor’s note]. Regularly, they carry out airstrikes against positions held by this group in the Sinjar region, where the Yazidi community is established [which was oppressed by the Islamic State, note], as well as in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan generally brushes aside criticism of operations in Iraqi territory. “Turkey intends to deal with the PKK if Iraq is not in a position to do so,” he pleaded.

However, the PKK is not the only organization targeted by Turkish forces. His allies are too, as was the case on August 16.

That day, a senior official of the Sinjar Resistance Units, predominantly Yazidi and close to the PKK, Saeed Hassan Saeed was killed by a raid by Turkish forces in the Sinjar region. He was not the only objective … because a cadre of the Kurdish independence organization was also injured in the strike. And then he has admitted to a former school turned into a clinic, located precisely in the village of Sekine.

The clinic which was, in turn, targeted the next day, presumably by Turkish drones, said AFP, relying on the testimony of Jalal Khalef Bisso, a local elected official, and the statements of a “senior Iraqi officer”. An initial report showed at least three people killed. In the end, the raid left eight people dead, including, according to the Sinjar administration, four employees and four fighters from the 80th Brigade. As for the PKK official who had been wounded the day before, he was not among the victims.

As of August 18, the Iraqi government has still not reacted to the Turkish raid on a health facility. Besides the violation of Iraqi sovereignty, it could be considered a war crime.

Indeed, the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War specifies, in its article 18, that “civilian hospitals organized to provide care to the wounded, sick, infirm and women in childbirth cannot, under no circumstances, be the object of attack”.

And its article 19 stipulates that “the protection due to civilian hospitals can only cease if it is used to commit, outside of humanitarian duties, acts harmful to the enemy” and that this “protection will only cease. after a summons fixing, in all appropriate cases, a reasonable period which has remained without effect”. Finally, the text specifies that “will not be considered as a harmful act the fact that wounded or sick soldiers are treated in these hospitals or that there are portable weapons and ammunition withdrawn from these soldiers and not having still paid to the competent service”.

UK

Using air purifiers to reduce spread of Covid-19 to be trialled in 30 West Yorkshire schools

The Government has launched a trial of air purifiers in 30 schools in Bradford, aimed at assessing the technology in education settings and whether it reduces the risk of transmission of coronavirus.

By Grace Hammond
Saturday, 21st August 2021

Bradford will be at the centre of a trial using air purifiers

Carbon dioxide monitors will also be provided to schools in England to help staff tackle poor ventilation and reduce the spread of Covid-19, the Government has said.

The Department for Education (DfE) said a £25 million investment will go towards rolling out around 300,000 monitors across all state-funded education settings from September.

The portable monitors will allow school and colleges to assess where ventilation needs improvement and take steps to remove air that may contain virus particles from indoors spaces.

Education unions, backed by the Liberal Democrats, had urged Education Secretary Gavin Williamson to take action on ventilation in schools amid concerns about the Covid-19 risks posed to staff and pupils in the autumn term.

Special schools and alternative provision will be prioritised under the scheme due to their numbers of vulnerable pupils.

Mr Williamson said: “Providing all schools with CO2 monitors will help them make sure they have the right balance of measures in place, minimising any potential disruption to education and allowing them to focus on world-class lessons and catch up for the children who need it.

“By keeping up simple measures such as ventilation and testing, young people can now enjoy more freedom at school and college.”

The National Education Union welcomed the plans, adding that it was vital the Government supported schools to address any ventilation problems identified.

Joint general secretary Kevin Courtney said: “The educational benefits of good ventilation are very clear.

“Not only will this make it more likely that young people can continue with on-site learning, but good ventilation will also aid their concentration.

He added: “Ventilation is essential, but it cannot be the only measure in place, especially if children are not vaccinated.

“Government should support leaders in secondary schools and colleges in weighing up the case for continuing to require staff and students to wear face coverings around the premises – including potentially in classrooms – and on dedicated school transport, particularly in areas with high case rates.”

The Association of School and College Leaders said the plans were a “reassuring step in the right direction” and reiterated its call that “high-quality ventilation equipment is made available to schools and colleges where it is needed as soon as possible”.

General secretary Geoff Barton said: “Government guidance to schools and colleges on reducing the risk of coronavirus transmission highlights the importance of keeping spaces well ventilated, but doesn’t go much further than recommending that windows should be opened to improve natural ventilation.

“This is challenging in the depths of a British winter and does not make for an environment which is conducive to learning.

“Our understanding is that carbon dioxide monitors will indicate when spaces need ventilating thereby reducing the need to keep windows open all the time.”

Paul Whiteman, general secretary of school leaders’ union NAHT, added: “We need these monitors to get into schools without delay so that classrooms can be made as safe as possible for everyone.”

A procurement exercise for the CO2 monitors is due to launch on Monday, with numbers available to mainstream schools expected to be in the region of one device per two classrooms and staff rooms.

When schools return from next week, students and staff will also be asked to continue twice-weekly Covid-19 testing, with two on-site tests provided for secondary and college students, the DfE said.

Secondary schools and colleges can stagger the return of pupils over the first week of term to support testing delivery and pupils should then continue to test twice weekly at home until the end of September, when the measure will be reviewed.

Getting vaccinated is an act of revolution for Black Americans | Opinion

Dr. Karen Kelly-Blake

There are more than 620,000 dead in the U.S due to COVID-19.More than 72% of adults ages 18 years and older have received at least one vaccine dose, but only 50% of the total population is fully vaccinated. The delta variant now accounts for an estimated 83% of cases in the U.S. SARS-CoV-2 continues to wreak havoc in Asia, Africa and Latin America with a global death toll of more than 4 million people.

In the U.S., the unvaccinated rate is especially troubling in the west and south. From the start, COVID-19 has decimated Black, Latino and Indigenous communities with high rates of severity of disease, hospitalization and death. The pandemic has not disappeared with the vaccines, but indisputably, the vaccines provide a way forward.

Vaccines offer an incredible opportunity to quell the assault. This commentary is not about vaccine hesitancy.

It is not about dispelling conspiracy theories, nor pleading for folks to “trust science.”

This commentary is instead a plea to Black people to live — so that justice can roll down. And the only incentive I offer here is that Black Lives Matter.

But do they? Black lives only matter if Black folks are alive. We live in a society that devalues Black life on every level: we are not human; we are inherently criminal super predators; we are hypersexualized and exotic; we are stupid; we are aggressive and loud; and, in short, we are unworthy to be taking up space on the planet. Unless of course, we stay in our place.

What is our place? Our place is right here right now. Living and breathing. If we want to change such white supremacist narratives and shatter those racist structures that perpetuate and sustain egregious harms, then we must be alive — alive to dismantle the systems that want us to die. We are U.S. history. We are the living monuments that illustrate this country’s lies.

I argue that not getting vaccinated is akin to saying, “I give up,” and thus, America with all its racial lies, hatred, inhumanity and immorality has won. We tell a nation with no moral authority that indeed it has achieved its goal — the continued eradication and erasure of Black lives. As we watched the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, hoping against hope that justice would be achieved, but with that inner voice telling us that it probably would not happen, we simultaneously were watching increasing case counts and hospitalizations. We see that again with the delta variant of COVID-19.

Getting the vaccine is about justice. We must live to fight for what is right, good, humane and moral. Succumbing to a disease that causes an agonizing death denies us the ability to engage and demand justice, redress and repair (dare I say reparation?). We save America every time — remember the 2020 election? We must love ourselves and make America what it needs to be for us to thrive and to prosper because in doing so we all will greatly benefit and reap the rewards. Getting the vaccine and not dying from COVID or its complications is revolutionary because we want to live. We want to be everything America says we are not and cannot be — but we are America.

What would happen if every Black person who can get vaccinated does so? Our living, our vital revolution, is anathema to the power structure. Our living is the bane of existence to those who would kneel on our necks and shoot us in the back while running in our neighborhoods. We must live to make America answer for its wrongs. We must live to ensure that our future generations will look back and see not only slavery, Jim Crow, mass incarceration, state sanctioned police violence and white Christian domestic terrorism, but also the revolutionary act of living, resisting and protesting through a pandemic by getting a vaccine to ensure the uplift of all of us.

If now is indeed the time to engage in direct action, in protest, in resistance, in dismantling systems that ascribe Black people to inferior status, then vaccination is our work. How many times have we heard that we need to take small steps and that change gets done quietly and incrementally? This is not quiet work. Getting vaccinated during a pandemic is an act of resistance — it is revolutionary. It screams that we have been here, we are here, and we going to be here. Let us do this work and let justice roll down.


Dr. Karen Kelly-Blake is assistant director and associate professor in the Center for Bioethics and Social Justice and Department of Medicine at Michigan State University's College of Human Medicine. The opinions expressed in this commentary are the author’s own. Kelly-Blake notes that she and her husband are fully vaccinated, and that, unfortunately, and frustratingly only nine in their combined families have been vaccinated.

UK
Stephen Fry backs Extinction Rebellion protests



STEPHEN FRY voiced support today for the Extinction Rebellion (XR) protests that are set to occupy parts of central London from next week in the name of tackling the climate crisis.

In a video shared on Twitter, the actor and comedian praised the group for attempting to force politicians into action through “disruptive” demonstrations.

Plans for the protests involve occupations, targeted action and marching in London. The demonstrations will be centred around the financial district, with activists demanding that the government stops all new investment in fossil fuels.

In the video shared by XR, Mr Fry said: “I know Extinction Rebellion, XR, are mucky and they make a fuss — they’re loud, they’re disruptive, they sometimes throw paint and other such things, and they block traffic.

“But what else is going to make politicians really recalibrate, realign, revolutionise politics so that it faces the horrors of climate change and all the damage we’re doing to our planet?

“It’s much better if we think about it together and without enmity, but understanding a common purpose for the common good – is that so much to ask?”

He continued: “It’s going to be a heck of a fight, but unless we get together, it’s a fight we’ll lose.”

XR has seen an upsurge in public interest following extreme weather around the world and the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which was presented as “a code red for humanity.”

Thousands are expected to gather in Trafalgar Square on Monday morning, with new members reportedly making up 40 per cent of those already committed to joining the actions in the capital.

MORNINGSTAR

 

Human rights office to probe ‘disturbing surge of hate’ in B.C. during pandemic

By Staff  The Canadian Press

Posted August 18, 2021 6:20 pm

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The first public inquiry from British Columbia’s Office of the Human Rights Commissioner will examine white supremacy and the “disturbing surge of hate” during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The commissioner’s office said in a news release there has been a significant rise in reported hate-related incidents in B.C. since 2020, which highlights an urgent need for a “trauma-informed” investigation.

READ MORE: B.C. Human Rights Commissioner issues guidelines on proof-of-vaccination requirements

“It is critical for all of us to be better prepared to prevent and respond to hate during global health, economic and social crises to protect our human rights during turbulent times,” Human Rights Commissioner Kasari Govender says.

“Many of us are uncomfortable acknowledging hate because we want to think of our country as a peaceful, respectful place. The truth is that hate is here, and it is growing.”

Some changes were made last year to B.C.’s Human Rights Code, giving the commission new power to publicly inquire into matters that would promote and protect human rights in B.C.

2:16Anti-Asian hate event disrupted by a racist incident

Anti-Asian hate event disrupted by a racist incident – Jul 28, 2021

This makes the “Inquiry into Hate in the Pandemic” the commission’s first public investigation since Govender was appointed in September 2019.

Govender’s office says they have been prioritizing the tracking hate incidents that are not only racially motivated, but also occur based on “religion, gender identity, disability, Indigeneity, sexual orientation, poverty or homelessness.”

It is an “opportunity to delve deeply into the human rights implications of a particular incident or issue” and “to make recommendations to address the human rights issues raised,” the office adds in a news release.

It says after the yearlong examination, a report will be published on its findings, which will also address how to prevent hate, particularly during social upheavals like the COVID-19 pandemic.

READ MORE: Report makes 25 recommendations for new B.C. Human Rights Commission

“Fear and ignorance underlie much of the rise of hate and white supremacy in B.C.,” added Govender.

“Combating hate in all its forms requires addressing fear, systemic inequality and ignorance through an evidence-based approach to change,”

To prepare for the inquiry, the commission says it has already consulted with 23 community groups close to the issue.

Later this fall, the commission says it will announce how members of the public can provide insight on their experiences for the inquiry.

 

Bayer Asks Supreme Court to Reverse Roundup Cancer Claim Verdict

By Ludwig Burger | August 17, 2021

Bayer, trying to contain billions of dollars in legal costs, filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse an appeals court verdict that upheld damages to a customer blaming his cancer on the German group’s glyphosate-based weedkillers.

Bayer last week lost a third appeal against verdicts that sided with users of glyphosate-based Roundup, awarding them tens of millions of dollars each, leaving the drugs and pesticides group to pin hopes for relief on the United States’ top court.

Bayer on Monday asked the Supreme Court to review one such verdict by the federal 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that found in favor of California resident and Roundup user Edwin Hardeman, it said in a statement.

The maker of aspirin, Yasmin birth-control pills and stroke prevention drug Xarelto has repeatedly argued that the cancer claims over Roundup go against sound science and product clearance from the federal environmental regulator.

“The Ninth Circuit’s errors mean that a company can be severely punished for marketing a product without a cancer warning when the near-universal scientific and regulatory consensus is that the product does not cause cancer, and the responsible federal agency has forbidden such a warning,” the company said.

Roundup-related lawsuits have dogged the company since it acquired the brand as part of its $63 billion purchase of agricultural seeds and pesticides maker Monsanto in 2018.

Bayer struck a settlement deal in principle with plaintiffs last year but failed to win court approval for a separate agreement on how to handle future cases, as it intended to keep the product on the market.

Last month, it took an additional litigation provision of $4.5 billion to cover any unfavorable ruling by the Supreme Court. That came on top of $11.6 billion it previously set aside for settlements and litigation over the matter.

Among other measures to contain the legal onslaught, Bayer plans to replace glyphosate in weedkillers for the U.S. residential market with other active ingredients.

It will, however, continue to sell the herbicide to farmers, who rely on it heavily, and whose role in the litigation has been described as negligible by Bayer.

(Reporting by Ludwig Burger; editing by Douglas Busvine and Jonathan Oatis)

WHO Cares

The US Is Getting Covid Booster Shots. The World Is Furious

The White House’s plan to roll out third shots for any American adult is raising profound questions about global equity.

PHOTOGRAPH: BRIANNA SOUKUP/PORTLAND PRESS HERALD/GETTY IMAGES

WIRED

THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION’S decision to offer Covid boosters to healthy fully vaccinated Americans has provoked an unusually broad and sharp reaction among researchers and policymakers. They view it as subverting regular decisionmaking, relying on data that seems more dramatic than it may be, and undermining commitments the US made to other countries to prop up vaccine delivery so that more of the world can be inoculated faster.

The World Health Organization’s director for Africa called it “a mockery of vaccine equity.” To ethicists and scientists in the US, it looks like abandoning the moral leadership on public health that was a national trademark throughout the 20th century. They are hoping to see the decision adjusted, though it probably can’t be reversed.

“Americans led the fight against AIDS; we led the fight to eradicate smallpox,” says Lawrence Gostin, faculty director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University. “I find it really shocking that, in a global crisis that is truly unprecedented, we have not chosen to lead in the same way.”

To recap: The White House announced Wednesday that anyone 18 or older who has received two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna mRNA vaccines will be eligible to receive a third, a booster, eight months after their last shot. The shots will go first to health care workers, the elderly, and nursing home and long-term care residents, but they are intended to boost the immunity of anyone who chooses to take them. The campaign is scheduled to begin—at 80,000 vaccination sites, according to the White House—on September 20.

The trigger for the decision, according to members of the White House Covid-19 Task Force who spoke at the briefing, was several pieces of research released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that morning. That research showed that in several groups—hospitalized patients, nursing home residents, and adults whose vaccinations were recorded in several New York State registries—the mRNA vaccines were becoming less able to prevent Covid-19 infection. (The research was conducted by CDC scientists and academic medical groups and published in the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, which is vetted by researchers and editors but not formally peer-reviewed.)

Infection is the key word here. The three studies found that vaccine effectiveness against infection dropped from the 95 percent levels observed in the clinical trials to 84 percent among the already hospitalized patients, 79.8 percent among the New Yorkers, and 53 percent in nursing home residents. But researchers point out that the original intent of the vaccine campaign, as captured in the clinical trials that allowed the formulas to be authorized, was to prevent serious illness, hospitalization, and death—and this new research does not establish whether those have diminished. The New Yorkers in the vaccine registries, for instance, were 91.9 to 95.3 percent protected from developing illness serious enough to require hospitalization.

The case for the boosters, in other words, might be based on preventing the kind of illness that health authorities classify as “mild”—which is to say, not serious enough to require hospital admission. But the federal representatives who presented the booster decision predicted that vaccine protection might decay further: “Even though this new data affirms that vaccine protection remains high against the worst outcomes of COVID, we are concerned that this pattern of decline we are seeing will continue in the months ahead, which could lead to reduced protection against severe disease, hospitalization, and death,” Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said at the briefing.

The decision was a slap in the face to the WHO, whose director-general has pleaded for rich countries to postpone booster shots until late September so that poor countries can first get their most vulnerable residents protected. Knowing the decision was coming, Mike Ryan, executive director of the World Health Organization’s Health Emergencies Programme, described it in a press conference a few hours in advance like this: “We're planning to hand out extra life jackets to people who already have life jackets, while we're leaving other people to drown.” Globally, more than 5 billion people remain unvaccinated.


The move is also perplexing. The normal decisionmaking process for the Covid vaccination campaign—and for all vaccines, for that matter—is for two outside advisory committees to the Food and Drug Administration and the CDC to weigh evidence and make recommendations, which the federal agencies then adopt. (This happened after the vaccines’ clinical trial results were published, when the CDC’s committee considered “pausing” distribution of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, and as recently as last week when the same committee approved third doses for immunocompromised people.) But, in this case, the White House task force, which includes the heads of those agencies, announced a decision without consulting their advisers—and also announced a start date that leaves little time to evaluate it.

That left public health researchers concerned the administration was undermining the credibility of the federal approval process, at a time when it’s already hard to convince skeptical people to take the vaccine.

“It does raise a question, when it's the administration reporting a very significant scientific decision that will affect literally tens of millions of Americans,” says Jason L. Schwartz, a vaccination policy expert and associate professor at the Yale School of Public Health, who started a Twitter thread discussing the decision. “It's understandable to want to know what's informing that decision, what's the evidence, and who's at the table helping translate that evidence into policy?”

In what might be a sign that the committees still take their roles seriously, the CDC’s group, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, on Friday moved its next meeting back a week to August 30, stretching it over two days “to ensure we can have a robust deliberation,” Grace Lee, ACIP’s chair, told Bloomberg News.

Distorting the federal decisionmaking process isn’t the only problem. Researchers who have analyzed the CDC data published Wednesday, alongside the changing math of the pandemic caused by the more transmissible Delta variant, say that giving boosters misses the point. The 150 million or so doses that campaign will use will increase protection in people who are already vaccinated. But, they say, we’d all be safer if we could use those doses to protect more people, the ones who haven’t had any shots yet—reducing the number of people whom the virus can sicken, thus depriving it of chances to mutate.

“An alternate path is to really put in the effort to get those doses into people who have not had any vaccination yet,” says Ellie Murray, an epidemiologist and assistant professor at Boston University School of Public Health. “We have good evidence that not all those people are anti-vaccine—after all, they include all the kids under 12. On a population level, you can get just as big a bang for your buck.”

It’s a decision that is both tactical and philosophical; it illuminates a tension between the desire to protect yourself and your loved ones, and the reality that the shortest path to shielding yourself is shielding your community. For an individual, wanting to level back up from 84 percent protection to 95 makes sense. But for a community, lifting the maximum number of people from 0 percent to 84 is the more judicious move.

Wanting that third shot may also be a product of nostalgia for that brief moment this year when the fully vaccinated felt they could fling off their masks and live life as they did before. That may have been an illusion. The vaccines’ protection was never 100 percent; there was always some risk. But the loss of that freedom hits hard. “I think a lot of people now are thinking, If I get a booster, I'll be back to March, when they told me I could do whatever I want,” Murray says. “But that’s not true. The best the boosters are going to do is get us back to where we were; they're not going to make us invincible.”

For researchers conscious of global responsibilities, the hardest thing may be the feeling that the US has turned inward, abandoning other nations. That’s self-evidently a humanitarian transgression. It’s also a poor calculation of risk. “Relentlessly putting America's interests first is a failed strategy; in the long run, it fails to protect even Americans,” Nancy S. Jecker, a professor of bioethics and humanities at the University of Washington School of Medicine and Fulbright US Scholar for South Africa, told WIRED by email. “If we allow the virus free rein in low- and middle-income countries, it can mutate in ways that allow it to bypass the protections afforded by vaccines and prior infections. Boosters will potentially fail when the next round of mutations occurs.”

In the briefing announcing the plan, White House task force members rejected the notion that keeping 150 million more doses at home—possibly along with subsequent third doses for adults who are just now starting their vaccination series, ones that will eventually be authorized for kids, and maybe even future boosters down the line—deprives other nations. “I do not accept the idea that we have to choose between America and the world,“ Murthy said, mentioning the 115 million doses that the US has shipped abroad and another 500 million doses that it has committed to sending.

There’s still a way for the administration to steer away from what looks like First World selfishness. That would be to rethink the bounds of the boosters, by first giving them only to the most at-risk groups—the elderly, long-term care residents, health care workers—and then pausing while the rest of the world catches up. Which it should: Back in April, the CEO of Moderna predicted that the world might have a vaccine surplus by next year as more manufacturing comes online. Until then, though, there’s a gap.

“Global inequities in vaccine access have been a crisis for all of 2021, but we are seeing a sightline to a time in early 2022 to where that vaccine global shortage will evaporate. So it's a matter of getting through the next few months,” says Ruth R. Faden, a Johns Hopkins University professor and founder of its Berman Institute for Bioethics, who serves on a WHO working group on Covid-19 vaccines. “We should be thinking about our highest-risk groups in the US and asking, is the evidence sufficient right now to offer a booster? And if the answer is yes, then bind that initial commitment to boosting them as narrowly as we can, while simultaneously contributing as much as we can to global vaccine supply. And then revisit.”

Jecker points out that 90 percent of all vaccine sales last year accrued to just four manufacturers, none of which are based in low-income countries. The US could right that imbalance by helping those countries make vaccines themselves—by loosening patents so that existing plants could make doses affordably, and by supporting the construction of new plants to increase capacity. Gostin adds that technical assistance and training in existing and new plants are just as crucial, so that manufacturing can ramp up as fast as possible.

To the people objecting to the White House decision—a chorus that has seemed to grow in volume every day since the announcement—this isn’t just another step in an evolving Covid policy. It is a defining moment, one that could recast the way the US is viewed by the rest of the world. “I think there's a great deal of disappointment and anger against the United States,” Gostin says, for “boosting its whole population and letting the rest of the world die of a fully preventable disease.”