Wednesday, August 25, 2021

Cuba’s health system buckles under strain of overwhelming Covid surge

A lack of medical supplies is crippling the Covid response, amid an economic crisis sparked by the pandemic and US sanctions

A woman has her temperature checked after receiving a dose of the Abdala vaccine at a vaccination center next to an image of Cuba’s former president Raúl Castro in Havana this month. Photograph: Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters


Ed Augustin and Daniel Montero in Havana
Sun 22 Aug 2021 

Julia, a community doctor in Havana, was drafted to the intensive care unit soon after Covid-19 first reached Cuba.

Last week, her cousin died from the virus. This week, she also tested positive amid a surge in cases which has pushed the island’s vaunted health service to its limits and prompted rare public criticism from Cuban doctors.


“It hurts to see people die from this terrible virus,” she said, recovering at home from nausea after being injected with an immune booster. “The mood among doctors gets worse by the day.”

After recording one of the world’s lowest Covid rates last year, Cuba now has one of the western hemisphere’s highest. The island, which reported 12,225 confirmed cases in all of 2020, has reported almost 50 times that so far this year. And as the Delta variant spreads, a lack of medical supplies is crippling the medical response.

“There are no antibiotics, no painkillers, the basic list of medicines is almost all out of stock,” said Daniela, a family doctor in Havana who has hardly had a day off since the pandemic began.

In the face of extreme scarcity, doctors are increasingly prescribing herbal remedies. Mortuaries are overwhelmed. The country’s main oxygen factory recently broke down, compounding the intensive care crisis.

Cuba last year hospitalised everybody who tested positive for Covid, including asymptomatic cases. But even for a country with the world’s highest doctor-to-patient ratio, average daily case loads of 9,000 have made that protocol unworkable. Now children, the elderly, pregnant women and severe cases are hospitalised, while others must isolate at home.

Hundreds of doctors have been brought back from international “missions” abroad – a major hard currency generator for the state – to support exhausted colleagues. But the move has not been enough to stop the system, which last year was a model of test, track and isolate, from fraying.

“I was at home for eight days and nobody came to see me,” said Oscar, a hotel worker from Cienfuegos who came down with Covid last month.

The pandemic, which eliminated tourism, and US sanctions have knocked billions of dollars from state coffers, creating a dire economic crisis and contributing to unprecedented political unrest on the island. Strapped for cash, Cuba’s public health system has been forced to perform triage: focusing on expensive vaccine production at the expense of other medical supplies.

The prime minister, Manuel Marrero, last week recognised the depth of the crisis in uncharacteristically forthright language.

Provinces “lack antigen tests [and] medicines”, he told party officials in Cienfuegos. “But there are more complaints about subjective problems than objective problems. When you add up the [complaints about] lack of medicines, they are less than the number of complaints about mistreatment, lack of care, and home visits.”

His comments provoked outcry on social media, and 23 doctors in the eastern province of Holguin posted a video rebuttal on Facebook.

“We want to keep saving lives,” said Dr Daily Almaguer, a heart specialist, in the video. “We are not the ones responsible for our country’s healthcare collapse.”

The doctors have since been summoned by authorities.

The spike, unimaginable last year, comes as Cuban scientists race to achieve immunity through vaccination. Cuba is the smallest country in the world to have developed its own Covid vaccines. Both Soberana 2 and Abdala have an efficacy rate of more than 90%, according to clinical trials.

But US sanctions – supercharged by Trump, left in place by Biden – have slowed rollout.

Children wearing masks as a precaution amid the spread of the new coronavirus run across a street in Havana. Photograph: Ramón Espinosa/AP

Since the outgoing Trump administration designated Cuba as a “state sponsor of terrorism”, firms have taken fright and just a handful of banks in the world will now transfer funds from Cuban entities, complicating imports.

Cuban scientists say industrial scale production of Soberana 2 was stalled for weeks as they could not source an essential component.

“The lack of one small ingredient or one small control item can really throw production off,” said Gail Reed, executive editor of Medicc Review, a peer-reviewed health journal.
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“US sanctions have had a nefarious, even lethal, effect on Cuba’s ability to face down the latest surge.”

Though slow out of the starting blocks, Cuba now has the third highest vaccination rate in Latin America (behind Chile and Uruguay). Twenty-seven per cent of the population have now been fully vaccinated, and 44% have received at least one dose.

Come September, scientists say, the island will have produced enough doses to vaccinate the whole population.

“We remain in combat against the pandemic,” said Dr Gerardo Guillén, Abdala’s lead developer. “The vaccines are working, as the data is now showing,” he added, referring to falling infection and mortality rates in Havana, where the mass vaccination campaign began.

Until millions more are fully vaccinated, the country’s exhausted army of underpaid doctors must trudge on.

“We are doing the impossible,” said Julia, the community doctor still mourning the death of her cousin. “Despite the lack of medicines, gloves and oxygen, doctors are fighting to save lives. They really are heroes.”


A Very Sad Night in Cienfuegos, Cuba

“Last night 36 patients died in a Cienfuegos Hospital” laments a Cuban Doctor

The number of staff in Cienfuegos hospitals have been reduced by almost half. (Perlavision)

By 14ymedio

HAVANA TIMES – “The Cienfuegos hospital continues to have an oxygen deficit. The helicopters of the Primetime News on Cuban Television are something symbolic for the need that exists,” a doctor from the province, which has replaced Ciego de Ávila as the province with the highest positive rate of covid on the island, tells this newspaper.

“In recent days 32, 34 patients have died. Last night (August 17th) 36 patients died, of which only 4 had a positive PCR at the time of death. They are the only ones registered as dead by coronavirus, but in reality, the other 32 were post-covid patients and they don’t count them,” says the source.

The doctor adds that in the province there are normally one or two deaths of pregnant women a year, but in the last four days there has been a daily death. “That gives an idea of the crisis we are experiencing,” he explains, while reproaching the government for trying to pretend to have everything under control, making it difficult for humanitarian aid to arrive.

However, the provincial press continues to move the pieces. A few days ago, the Ciego de Ávila newspaper confirmed the lack of oxygen and the precarious situation in the area, and now it is September 5, the official Cienfuegos newspaper, which speaks of an “unprecedented scenario” in an article titled Covid-19 in Cienfuegos: The truth on the Table.

The newspaper denounces the fact that diagnostic tests are lacking, PCRs pile up without results, there is poor management of cases in primary care according to their risk, and that people end up in serious condition in hospitals due to the lack of screening. Added to this is the lack of medicinal oxygen — despite the incorporation of the Armed Forces and Russia into production — and the shortage of medicines and medical supplies.

To all this is added, the newspaper continues, that what the Government promised does not always arrive. “I must tell you that there are problems with food, that in not a few cases breakfast has been eaten late and lunch appears in the afternoon. It also happens that after discharge people have to wait up to three and four hours for transportation,” denounces a citizen.

September 5 also addresses one of the most serious problems, the lack of healthcare personnel. According to the newspaper, of the 701 doctors in the province, 446 are working. Most of those absent are in the care of children and relatives, but many others have tested positive for covid-19.

“There are reports of low medical coverage in isolation centers, this affects the quality of care for patients and represents an overload for the healthcare personnel who work in these spaces (…) In a visit to the Carlos Roloff vocational pre-university, in Cumanayagua, there were 250 people admitted and there were only two doctors to attend that universe,” details Félix Duarte Ortega, of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC).

The newspaper reports that the “political authorities of Cienfuegos recognized the effort of those who work in hospitals and isolation centers, in clinics and polyclinics. Those who do not give up despite the thousand and one difficulties that are experienced today.” The strategy is part of the pro-government dynamic of recent days, which tries to soften the conflict created by Prime Minister Manuel Marrero when he blamed doctors, specifically from Cienfuegos, for the violations of protocols that promote the spread of covid-19.

The rebellion of the doctors has grown since that day, both among the usual critics of the regime and in those who believe in it but watched the spectacle of being blamed for managing the disease when they must fight in the front line against it devoid of resources, and in a framework of war medicine.

“The medical personnel exist and are sacrificing themselves, what does not exist are the means. Many of us believe that they are subjecting us to genocide. While the people die they are watching the doctors to see what they say, if they are in favor or not of the Revolution,” denounces the doctor from Cienfuegos.

President Miguel Diaz-Canel has been tweeting praises to healthcare personnel for three days in an attempt to redirect the situation. Last Sunday, when the clamor of the health workers spread through the networks calling for the resignation of Marrero, he said, with little luck: “Today the groups in which we go through life are more visible, according to José Martí: On the one hand those who love and create. And on the other, those who hate and destroy. The former do not lie or slander or defame, they do not hate. They are saving lives. The others cannot with that light.”

A day later, he rectified the divisive message with another that only had a positive tone: “What we have seen the most in this time is the patriotism of our people, the Healthcare personnel, the scientists, of all those involved in the millimeter-level oxygen operation, people who are working full time in complex situations. Thank you all! ” That same day, the official press vindicated the doctors with an article titled At the foot of the patient, the hero who does not serve enemy campaigns, which once again separated the like-minded from the critics.

Yesterday, Tuesday, the campaign continued, with an image on the cover with the faces of doctors and nurses in the article entitled Let’s think about them and take care of ourselves. “Gratitude for the titanic feat assumed by our Health workers in this battle against covid-19 also requires, now more than ever, our responsibility,” says the official newspaper, on this occasion, taking care to refer to the ’rebels.’

Ernesto Haber Santos, a doctor at the Saturnino Lora Hospital in Santiago de Cuba, has rejected, through Facebook, the government’s campaign called Put your heart in it, with a view to once again winning the favor of his star workers for decades.

“We work with the little we have and the hardest we can. Tired, leaving our family and putting it at risk. But one is not willing to publicly assume reality, it is better to look for a scapegoat, and from what I see, everyone is a candidate. We have plenty of heart, we are giving our all ,and at the rate we are going we will have to continue until who knows when,” he said.

The doctor asks the Government to accept that the situation has reached the limit and to accept help. “The covid-19 overcame us, overcame the United States, Spain and many others,” claims the doctor, who asks the authorities to rectify and recognize the excellence of the country’s health workers or, on the contrary, say they are graduating untrained people and that “the pride in being a medical power is a delusion.”

Read more from Cuba here on Havana Times.





ANTI VAXXER WILL USE HORSE LINAMENT BUT NOT VACCINE'S
Tennessee GOP lawmakers push 'horse paste' treatment despite FDA warning

John Wright
August 24, 2021

Photo by Stanisław Skotnicki on Unsplash

Despite a recent warning from the FDA about using livestock medication to treat COVID-19, Tennessee GOP lawmakers are calling for "normalization" of drugs like ivermectin.

The Tennessee Legislature's joint Government Operations committee discussed the issue Thursday — even though it wasn't on the agenda — after two speakers brought it up, according to a report from the Tennessean.

"While poison control officials in Mississippi are warning the public about adverse reactions among residents who ingest a horse deworming medicine to treat COVID-19, some Republican legislators in Tennessee are suggesting the treatment should be normalized," the newspaper reported Tuesday. "Multiple Republican members expressed support for the speakers' comments, even calling for a future hearing to further discuss the drugs and why doctors aren't widely recommending them, against guidance by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration."

The FDA sounded the alarm about ivermectin on Saturday — with a tweet declaring "You are not a horse" — after it was reported that a Mississippi resident was hospitalized after ingesting so-called "horse paste" last week. Poison control officials in Mississippi and other states, including Texas, have reported an uptick in calls related to ivermectin, which has been promoted by right-wing vaccine opponents as the latest version of the Trumpian drug hydroxychloroquine.

Pharmacists have been cracking down on prescriptions for ivermectin, which is normally used to treat parasitic infections.

"As human-approved ivermectin prescriptions have been harder to come by, enthusiasts have taken to raiding rural tractor supply stores in search of ivermectin horse paste (packed with 'apple flavor!') and weighed the benefits of taking ivermectin 'sheep drench' and a noromectin 'injection for swine and cattle,'" the Daily Beast reported recently.

In Tennessee, Republican Rep. John Ragan said during last week's hearing that it's an issue deserving of consideration.

"The generalities seem to indicate that therapeutics are something that need to be explored more in terms of availability to patients and information availability to patients," Ragan said.

Two other Republican representatives reportedly expressed support for Ragan's idea of scheduling a hearing on the matter.

A woman who identified herself as a "research assistant" told lawmakers they could advocate for the use of non-FDA approved drugs. "Federal guidance is just guidance," she said. "You as the legislators in this state have the power to say we're going to use ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine or budesonide as treatments or therapeutics in the treatment of COVID-19, which is obviously recognized as a pandemic." Dr. Ryan Cole, a noted anti-vaxxer in the state, also addressed lawmakers, suggesting they could possibly compel doctors and pharmacists to dispense non-FDA-approved drugs.

After Republican lawmakers including GOP Sen. Kerry Roberts indicated they were in discussions about setting up a hearing, and even mulling potential legislation in next year's session, the state's Republican lieutenant governor, a retired pharmacist, issued a statement smacking down the idea.

"Lt. Governor (Randy) McNally does not believe such a hearing would be appropriate for the Government Operations Committee, nor would it be particularly productive generally," the statement said. "Committee hearings should be fair, balanced and stay within their prescribed subject matter. Recent meetings of the Government Operations Committee have not met these standards. Lt. Governor McNally plans to share his disappointment with Senator Roberts the next time they speak."

Read more here.

Mississippi health officials say 70% of recent calls relate to people using livestock drug to treat COVID

Meaghan Ellis, AlterNet
August 24, 2021

As the Delta variant of COVID ravages the southeastern region of the United States, officials in a state with one of the lowest vaccination rates are pleading with residents to refrain from using a livestock drug to treat COVID-19.

Approximately 70% of recent calls to the Mississippi Poison Control Center are in reference to Ivermectin ingestion, according to notice released by the Mississippi Department of Health. Many individuals who called the center have mild COVID symptoms. The center is warning that the livestock drug, which is concentrated for larger animals, "can be highly toxic to humans."

According to NPR.org, Mississippi health officials are sounding the alarm about residents using a livestock drug called Ivermectin as an alternative method of treatment for those suffering from COVID-19.

On Monday, Saturday, August 21, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released brief statement via Twitter addressing the issue. The short tweet read, "You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y'all. Stop it."

In a detailed statement, the agency offered more comprehensive remarks explaining why the drug should be avoided for use in people.

"Many inactive ingredients found in animal products aren't evaluated for use in people," the statement from the agency said. "Or they are included in much greater quantity than those used in people. In some cases, we don't know how those inactive ingredients will affect how ivermectin is absorbed in the human body."

In another statement, acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock on Monday emphasized that the authorized COVID vaccines are the best way to mitigate the spread of the virus.

"While this and other vaccines have met the FDA's rigorous, scientific standards for emergency use authorization, as the first FDA-approved COVID-19 vaccine, the public can be very confident that this vaccine meets the high standards for safety, effectiveness, and manufacturing quality the FDA requires of an approved product," Woodcock said in a statement.

She also added, "While millions of people have already safely received COVID-19 vaccines, we recognize that for some, the FDA approval of a vaccine may now instill additional confidence to get vaccinated."

ANTI-VAXXERS 

YOU HAVE TO BREATHE TO LIVE

'I don't like being told what I have to do': Libertarian explains vaccine refusal as he struggles to breathe

Alex Henderson, AlterNet
August 24, 2021

Depiction of a COVID-19 patient in the hospital. (Shutterstock.com)

Although the COVID-19 Delta variant is potentially deadly all over the United States, the areas that are being hit especially hard tend to be Republican-leaning areas with low vaccination rates — areas like the one that New York Times reporter Alexander Stockton examines in a video that has been posted on YouTube.

The Ozarks, Stockton notes in the video, has some of the United States' lowest COVID-19 vaccination rates as well as what the reporter describes as "one of the worst COVID case rates in the country."

"I wanted to find out why residents here aren't getting vaccinated," Stockton explains.

The video shows Ozark residents expressing anti-vaxxer views as well as unvaccinated patients who have been hospitalized with COVID-19. One of them, 53-year-old Christopher Green, is "fighting for his life," Stockton notes. And Green is hardly unique in that regard.

"Like 90% of the patients in this packed hospital, he's unvaccinated," Stockton reports.

Asked why he refused to be vaccinated for COVID-19, Green — obviously struggling to breathe — told Stockton, "I'm more of a libertarian, and I don't like being told what I have to do." Green died 9 days after the interview, at age 53, the video explained.


The COVID-19 vaccinate rate is so low in Mountain Home, Arkansas, Stockton reports, that at a local hospital — Baxter Regional Medical Center — only half of the staff has been vaccinated.

A nurse working in that hospital, interviewed by Stockton, laments, "There are just a lot of people that you cannot convince to get vaccinated: patients, employees. It's very frustrating."

Watch the video below:

Dying in the Name of Vaccine Freedom | NYT Opinion


Individualistic COVID-19 vaccine messages

had best effect in US study


Peer-Reviewed Publication

WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY

PULLMAN, Wash. – Emphasizing individual rather than community health risks from COVID-19, appeared to create more vaccine acceptance among participants in a study led by Washington State University researcher Porismita Borah.

The study, published in the Journal of Health Communication, tested messages on nearly 400 participants from across the United States in July 2020 before COVID-19 vaccines were available—and before misinformation on them was widespread. The researchers also found that “loss” framing, highlighting the potential health problems from not getting a vaccine, was slightly more effective than the positive “gain” framing that stresses the benefits.

“It's really interesting to see that individual frames were more persuasive,” said Borah, an associate professor in WSU’s Murrow College of Communications. “It’s hard to say exactly why, but it's possible that it is because culturally the United States is more individualistic in nature. It's also possible that because this pandemic situation is unprecedented, people were more concerned about individual consequences.”

The study showed that the wording of the content matters, Borah said and advised that public officials should pay attention to the content and use many different messages.

“There should not be just one type of message for promoting COVID-19 vaccines because again and again, we see that different messages resonate with different people,” said Borah. “At this point in time, with the dire situation we are in, we really need people to be vaccinated, and a variety of messages to reach specific groups of people could be beneficial.”

For this study, Borah tested four messages on equal sized groups of about 100 participants each, who were recruited through Amazon’s crowdsourcing site Mechanical Turk. The average age of the participants was 37; 57% were male; and 66.7% were white with 47.5% identifying as politically conservative.

The participants were first asked questions about how they felt about the benefits of vaccines, and then exposed to one of four screenshots of messages made to look like real Facebook posts from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention.

The message that had an “individual loss framing,” wording that emphasized the potential personal health problems of not getting a COVID-19 vaccine, appeared to resonate the most. The findings were moderated by the participants’ perceptions of vaccine benefits. In other words, if their prior notions of vaccines were already positive, the more likely they were to be positively impacted by the messages.

This study was conducted before misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines had started circulating widely, and Borah is currently investigating how vaccine messaging might have an impact in this misinformation-filled environment.

“Now that there is so much misinformation particularly about the COVID-19 vaccines, it’s important to see how messaging interacts with people who hold those misperceptions – if they perceive these messages differently or if the messages resonate with them at all,” she said.

Droughts Push More People to Migrate Than Floods

World Bank report sheds light on the nuanced connections between “water shocks” and human migration.



Indications of migration due to water scarcity and groundwater depletion came as early as 2006 in Mexico’s Tehuacán Valley where a combination of declining rainfall and factory farms caused community wells to go dry. Francisca Rosas Valencia dabs away tears while praying for her son, Florentine, who left home to work in Los Angeles. “It is not easy to be outside of one’s homeland,” she told Circle of Blue in 2006. “That is what makes me sad. I fear that in the future my children and grandchildren and the families of my neighbors will be forced to leave.” Photo: Brent Stirton/Getty Images Reportage for Circle of Blue

People are five times as likely to move following drought conditions as they are after floods or periods of excess water.

Most people in a drought-stricken region do not migrate, either because they do not want to or they cannot afford to.

The greatest environmental pressures are exerted on people in rural areas who rely on farming for their livelihood.


By Brett Walton, Circle of Blue – August 24, 2021

After a year of extreme weather, people in the drylands of northern California and the hurricane-drenched bayous of southern Louisiana are brooding on the same question: should we leave?

New global research suggests that one of these “water shock” scenarios is more likely to result in migration. World Bank researchers found that people are five times as likely to move following drought conditions as they are after floods or periods of excess water.

The finding is part of a lengthy report on water and migration released on Monday during the opening day of World Water Week, an annual conference. The report details the nuanced relationship between changes in water availability and the movement of people.

“Water has the power to shape these migration patterns, perhaps more than you think,” said the World Bank’s Esha Zaveri, the lead author on the report. People have always settled near rivers, lakes, oases, and coasts. It makes sense, she said, that lack of water in a place would drive people away.

These stay-or-go decisions are troubling not just rich-world Californians and Louisianans. Climate change is making rainfall more variable across the planet. In the Mediterranean, southern Africa, the southwestern United States and Mexico, droughts are already more severe than they were six decades ago. If society continues to burn fossil fuels and clear forests, those dry cycles are expected to intensify and spread across wetter areas like the Caribbean and Amazon, potentially affecting hundreds of millions of people a year. Meanwhile, diversions for agriculture, industry, or fast-growing cities can end up being a hydrological own goal, contributing to local water deficits.

Tempting as it is to blame climate change alone for the mass movement of Central Americans northward into Mexico or the exodus of Yemenis, the report urges restraint when it comes to attributing causes. There is a lot of variation across countries and regions and migration has not only environmental roots, but political and social ones as well. The distinction between a climate migrant and a migrant is often quite blurry. “This really cautions against making any sweeping conclusions,” Zaveri said.

Even so, the researchers sought to answer three questions related to water shocks: Why do people migrate? Who migrates? Where do they migrate to?

To answer these questions, they assembled a database showing the in-country movements of hundreds of millions of people in 150 countries over three decades. To that trove they added data on precipitation patterns, urban drinking water sources, and demographics.

People move because they feel their lives will improve and they have the means to do so. Usually migration occurs within a country and not across international borders. The greatest environmental pressures are exerted on people in rural areas who rely on farming for their livelihood. After a few failed harvests, migration can be perceived an exit ramp to a better life.

But that exit ramp is not available to everyone. Rainfall affects income, but income also influences migration. Zaveri notes that, in low-income countries, most people in a drought-stricken region do not migrate, either because they do not want to or they cannot afford to. More often than not it is the poorest who remain, stuck in a place with diminished economic prospects.

“These populations who are left behind are often omitted from media headlines, yet they represent a policy concern that is just as serious,” Zaveri said.

Flooding was not as likely to induce migration as drought for several potential reasons. Communities may be more capable of adapting to periodic inundation. Or, flooding seeds fields with the prospect of better future harvests.

Richard Elelman, head of politics at Eurecat, the Technology Center of Catalonia, said that the report raises key questions about whether migration is a survival mechanism that is open only to a privileged few and what happens to those who can’t leave. “These are essential issues which need to be addressed, which, I think, this report brings to light really effectively,” he said.

Ana María Ibáñez, principal economic adviser for the Interamerican Development Bank, reacted similarly, if not more poetically, about the migration field’s blind spots: “The research concentrates on the movers and we need to know about the stayers.”
Big City Lights

The answer to the third question — where people migrate to — is more straightforward. Cities are often the destination. The life that awaits them, though, may not match the skills they have. Farmers generally are displaced in droughts and their field-honed labor and fewer educational credentials are a bad pairing for the urban jobs market. The study found that they face not only lower wages once they move to cities, but also less access to housing and basic social services.

To stem migration, rural areas could be fortified, the report argues. Building water storage to smooth peaks and troughs in rainfall is a form of insurance, as is irrigation. Restoring forests and preserving wetlands can buffer an ecosystem in dry times. Another option, Zaveri said, are safety net programs like crop insurance or food aid. To ease the transition for those who move to urban areas, there ought to be investments in education, infrastructure, and services.

The options have drawbacks, though. Water storage can lure people to ecologically risky areas and potentially stretch local supplies, upsetting an already tenuous resource balance and spurring conflict. For migrants fleeing rural drought, cities themselves are not immune to water shortages. They might trade one bad situation for another.

“What we find is that such water shortages can significantly slow urban growth, compounding the vulnerability of migrants,” Zaveri said. Sharp droughts in Cape Town and Chennai in recent years show that, just like their rural counterparts, urban areas are subjected to stressful water crises. “Paradoxically, migrants who travel to cities to avoid the impacts of rainfall variability may in fact find themselves in cities that offer fewer economic opportunities and critical services due to these deficits.”

The challenge ahead, Zaveri said, is to recognize the complexity of human migration and acknowledge that the ebb and flow of people, always in search of water, binds the future of rural and urban areas.




Brett Walton
Brett writes about agriculture, energy, infrastructure, and the politics and economics of water in the United States. He also writes the Federal Water Tap, Circle of Blue’s weekly digest of U.S. government water news. He is the winner of two Society of Environmental Journalists reporting awards, one of the top honors in American environmental journalism: first place for explanatory reporting for a series on septic system pollution in the United States(2016) and third place for beat reporting in a small market (2014). He received the Sierra Club’s Distinguished Service Award in 2018. Brett lives in Seattle, where he hikes the mountains and bakes pies. Contact Brett Walton

 

Finally, We Have Learned What Amazon’s HQ2 Is Supposed to Resemble

Is the Helix actually just a giant ice cream cone?

Amazon HQ2's Helix building and a delicious cone from Bon Matcha.

Today in news you probably didn’t need to know but that we’re going to tell you anyway: Jeff Bezos has installed an artisan soft-serve ice cream tap in one of his many homes, the New York Post reports.

The Los Angeles-based company behind the ice cream machine, CVT Soft Serve, boasted on Instagram about installing one of its specialty dispensers, which delivers chocolate, vanilla, and twist flavors. We don’t know for sure which of Bezos’s homes received the new toy, though presumably it was his Beverly Hills compound and not his DC mansion in Kalorama.

Still, all of this reminds us of something else belonging to Bezos… oh yeah, that glass and grass architectural swirl headed for National Landing. Locals have suggested that the “Helix” tower, which will be central to Amazon’s HQ2, resembles a seashell, a corkscrew, or—most popularly—a poop emoji. But the answer is clear now—it’s actually just a billionaire’s very elaborate ode to ice cream.

‘Nowhere is safe’ – lethal floods in Europe were at least 20pc more likely to happen due to global climate change, say scientists
Destroyed houses are seen close to the Ahr river in Schuld, Germany last month
Isla Binnie


August 25 2021

Climate change has made extreme rainfall events of the kind that sent lethal torrents of water hurtling through parts of Germany and Belgium last month at least 20pc more likely to happen in the region, scientists have said.

The downpour was likely made heavier by climate change as well.

A day of rainfall can now be up to 19pc more intense in the region than it would have been had global atmospheric temperatures not risen by 1.2C above pre-industrial temperatures, according to research by the World Weather Attribution (WWA) scientific consortium.

“We will definitely get more of this in a warming climate,” said the group’s co-leader Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at the University of Oxford.

Recalling that she urgently contacted relatives living in the affected areas to make sure they were safe when the floods hit, Dr Otto added: “Extreme weather is deadly. For me it was very close to home.”

With extreme weather events dominating headlines in recent years, scientists have been under pressure to determine how much climate change is to blame.

In the past year alone, scientists found that US drought, a deadly Canadian heatwave and wildfires across the Siberian Arctic have been worsened by a warming atmosphere.

The July 12 to 15 rainfall over Europe triggered flooding that swept away houses and left more than 200 people dead in Germany and Belgium.

Thousands were forced to flee their homes in the Netherlands.

o“The fact that people are losing their lives in one of the richest countries in the world – that is truly shocking,” said climate scientist Ralf Toumi at the Grantham Institute, Imperial College London, who was not involved in the study. “Nowhere is safe.”

Although the deluge was unprecedented, the 39 WWA scientists found local rainfall patterns are highly variable.

They conducted their analysis over a wider area spanning parts of France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Switzerland and used local records and computer simulations to compare the July flooding event with what might have been expected in a world unaffected by climate change.

Because warmer air holds more moisture, summer downpours in this region are now 3pv to 19pc heavier than they would be without global warming, the scientists found.

The event itself was anywhere from 1.2 to 9 times – or 20pc to 800pc – more likely to have occurred.

That broad range of uncertainty was partly explained by a lack of historical records and worsened by the floods destroying equipment that monitored river conditions.

 CLIMATE CHANGE MADE GERMAN EU FLOODING WORSE

  

Climate change has made extreme rainfall events of the kind that sent lethal torrents of water hurtling through parts of Germany and Belgium last month at least 20% more likely to happen in the region, according to an international study published Tuesday (August 24).

Germany floods were up to 9 times more likely because of climate change, study estimates

By Angela Dewan, CNN 

Record rainfall that triggered deadly floods in Western Europe in July was made between 1.2 and 9 times more likely by human-caused climate change, according to a new study.

© Michael Probst/AP The Ahr River in Insul, Germany, on July 15, 2021 after heavy rainfall.

At least 220 people were killed between July 12 and 15 -- mostly in Germany, though dozens also died in Belgium -- and homes and other buildings were destroyed in flash flooding that followed heavy rainfall. Some parts of the region experienced more rain in a single day than they would typically expect in a whole month.

The study, conducted by 39 scientists and researchers with the World Weather Attribution (WWA) project, also found that the most extreme rain was a once-in-400-year event, and that climate change increased the intensity of daily extreme rainfall by 3% to 19%.

"These floods have shown us that even developed countries are not safe from severe impacts of extreme weather that we have seen and known to get worse with climate change," Friederike Otto, the associate director of the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford, said in a statement. "This is an urgent global challenge and we need to step up to it. The science is clear and has been for years.

The one-in-400-year frequency only refers to the particular region studied and does not mean it will be another 400 years until other parts of Europe, or the world, will see a similar weather event, explained Maarten van Aalst, a professor of climate and disaster resilience from the University of Twente in the Netherlands.

"In this case, [the projection for next year is] possibly worse because, year by year, if the trend so far is that the climate is increasing, the risk will continue to grow. So, if anything, we're expecting a higher chance of this happening next year than this year. But it's basically a one-over-400 chance every single year," van Aalst said at a news conference.

The scientists focused on the areas around the Ahr and Erft rivers in Germany and the Meuse in Belgium, where rainfall records were broken. But they also took into account what was happening across a larger region, including parts of France, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Switzerland, to establish how the extreme weather event had been influenced by increasing global temperatures.

The scientists looked at weather records and used computer simulations to compare the picture today -- in a world that is 1.2 degrees Celsius warmer than it was in pre-industrial times -- to that of the late 1800s.

They warned that the warmer Earth gets, the more frequent and intense these rain events will be. Specifically, if global temperatures rose to 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels, the intensity of rain in a single day would increase by a further 0.8 to 6% and would be between 1.2 and 1.4 times more likely to happen, their models project.

River measurement stations destroyed

Van Aalst said that the findings should be a "wake-up call" for governments and local leaders to improve their preparedness for extreme weather events, including looking at how homes are constructed so that children, the elderly and people with disabilities can reach safety in events like floods or fires.

"I hope it's a wake-up call also to people that have not just been affected by this one, but also people elsewhere -- because it's been heatwaves elsewhere, where I could tell a similar story," he said. "We are just facing more extreme events of many kinds, and the only thing we can do is, on the one hand, closing the tap off the increase in greenhouse gases to avoid the risk of getting further out of hand, and on the other hand, preparing for that more extreme climate."

The scientists acknowledged their estimate -- 1.2 to 9 times more likely, due to climate change -- was a wide range, and explained that the models they used and the data available to them around such localized events prevented them from narrowing their findings down further.

They were also missing crucial data, as some measurement stations were destroyed by the floods.

The study acknowledged that a number of conditions had worsened the severity of the floods, including that the soil in the region was already saturated, and that the terrain in some locations, with narrow valleys and steep sloping mountains, led "to funnel-like effects in the event of extreme floods." Those factors were taken into account in their models.

This summer, the Northern Hemisphere has experienced wide range of extreme weather events beyond deadly flooding, including record-breaking temperatures that in some instances have triggered wildfires in the US, Canada, Siberia, Algeria and southern Europe.

On August 14, rain fell on the summit of Greenland for the first time on record, as temperatures there rose above freezing for the third time in less than a decade. The warm air fueled an extreme rain event that dumped 7 billion tons of water on the ice sheet.

The US state of Tennessee is now experiencing heavy rains and deadly floods, as the National Weather Service in Nashville reported more than 17 inches of rain in the city of McEwen, possibly setting a new state record for 24-hour rainfall. If verified, it would smash the previous state record set in September 1982 with 13.6 inches of rain the city of Milan.

© Thomas Frey/picture alliance/Getty Images Flooding in July damaged the main road leading through the Ahr river valley in Germany.





LITHIUM BATTERIES OVERHEAT
Smartphone fire on Alaska Airlines passenger jet prompts evacuation
August 24, 2021 


A smartphone caught fire on an Alaska Airline passenger plane at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on Monday night, prompting an emergency evacuation of the jet.

All 128 passengers and six crew members on Flight 751 were transported by bus to the airport terminal, with two passengers taken to hospital for treatment, a spokesperson for the carrier told the Seattle Times. The aircraft had just landed after flying from New Orleans.

The phone at the center of the incident is reported to be a Samsung Galaxy A21, according to Perry Cooper, a spokesman for the Port of Seattle.

“After much digging, I can tell you that the phone was burned beyond recognition,” Cooper told the Times. “However, during an interview with one of our Port of Seattle police officers, the passenger volunteered the phone was a Samsung Galaxy A21. Again, we could not confirm it by looking at the remains of the device.”


A message posted on Twitter by passenger Maddy Harrison said the person whose phone caught fire was sitting a couple of rows behind her. Harrison said the device “was like a smoke machine” when it combusted, adding that “flight attendants did an excellent job and all passengers were very calm.”

While the incident may surface memories of the battery issue that brought down the Galaxy Note 7 in 2016 following reports of overheating and fires, there’s absolutely no suggestion that Monday’s incident points to a widespread problem with the Galaxy A21, if indeed it’s confirmed that it was the particular model that caught fire.

The A21 launched in April 2020 and no widespread safety issue regarding its battery has been reported up till now. Still, the Korean tech company likely be gathering more information about the incident, which could determine whether it needs to launch an investigation.

Digital Trends has reached out to Samsung for comment on the incident and we will update this article if we hear back.
UNION NEWS
'No Dash, no deal': Striking De Havilland workers rally to get aircraft made in GTA

TORONTO — Union leader Jerry Dias returned to the north Toronto aircraft manufacturing plant where he worked almost 45 years ago to press owner de Havilland into ending an ongoing labour dispute on Tuesday.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

As striking workers rallied outside the Downsview plant, Unifor's national president called on de Havilland Canada and its parent company Longview Aviation Capital Corp. to return to the bargaining table with an agreement that is fair to staff and vowed that he will keep fighting for employee rights.

"This plant is a part of who we all are because I was hired here with 1,500 other people for the Dash 7 program," said Dias, who in 1987 was president of one of the local units representing the workers he spoke to and whose father held the position before him.


"This is personal because you trusted me ... and I'll be damned if I am going to let you down today."

Dias was pledging his support to 700 workers represented by Unifor Local 673 and 112, who have been on strike since July 27 over the future location of the Dash 8 turboprop program.

De Havilland told workers earlier this year that it would no longer produce new Q400 aircraft at the Downsview facility beyond currently confirmed orders, and said two years ago that work will end at the site once lease agreements for the land expire.

The union has since been pushing de Havilland to commit to making the Dash 8 somewhere in the Greater Toronto Area when production resumes.

The company has refused to negotiate any scope clauses that would limit production to somewhere in the GTA and Dias has said he expects it to be moved to Alberta.

De Havilland did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the rally, behind which Ontario Premier Doug Ford threw his support during a visit to an Alstom facility in Thunder Bay, Ont.

Ford said he is disappointed that the Dash 8 program may leave because the provincial government has spent hundreds of millions on de Havilland and aircraft production.

"All of a sudden this big billionaire comes along and says, 'I'm taking (Dash 8 production) out of Toronto, and taking it out of Ontario, and we're shipping it to another province just because the billionaire lives in that province," said Ford in a reference to de Havilland owner Sherry Brydson, a member of the Thomson family.

"They take the money and then they leave. I think it's disgusting. We have to fight."

Earlier in the bargaining process, de Havilland said it was "eager to collaborate" with the union "as we chart a sustainable long-term future for aircraft manufacturing and the skilled employment it supports. But the ability to work together toward a long-term future relies on a concerted effort to transform the business to the circumstances we are facing.”

The aviation industry has been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic.

As people try to avoid contracting the virus, many are forgoing travelling. Airlines were forced to ground planes for much of last year and early this year, when COVID-19 case counts were high.

It has had a trickle-down effect on sales for aircraft manufacturers like De Havilland.

"When it comes to pinching the nerve that connects their wallet to their brain, we are not in a good situation," Dias said.

The stakes are high for the company's workers, who want to hold onto their jobs and chanted "No Dash, no deal" during the rally.

"I am struggling to look after my family without a paycheque. I don't have the benefits of a second income," said Donna Day, a single mother, who has worked at the plant for 35 years.

"To have jobs ripped out form underneath you is devastating and many of us have had to visit food banks for the first time. Many of us are depressed and struggling not knowing if we will be back at our jobs one day."

Connie Wright, who has worked at the plant for more than 36 years, is equally impassioned.

She took the stage after Day, her voice wavering as she described the plant as her "home."

"Every time I fly up the 400 (highway) and see those Dash 8's, I know a little part of me is in that aircraft," she said, noting she even wrote her name between the skins of some planes on the last of the 300 series.

"Every single aircraft that I have worked on has my blood, sweat and tears from this job...but we need Longview to get back to the table."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 24, 2021.

Tara Deschamps, The Canadian Press

DUTY TO ACCOMODATE
Disney reaches vaccination agreement with unionized employees

2021/8/23 
©Orlando Sentinel
A Disney employee draws a cold beer at Disney Springs in Orlando, Fla., on May 20, 2020. - Stephen M. Dowell/TNS

Disney reached an agreement with unions representing its workers Monday requiring all on-site employees to be fully vaccinated by late October, excluding specific exemptions.

Under an agreement signed Monday, on-site employees will have to be fully vaccinated — at least two weeks out from completing the course of their COVID-19 shot — and provide proof of their vaccination by Oct. 22.

Employees can request exemptions from receiving the vaccine for medical or religious reasons, under the terms of the agreement.

In late July, The Walt Disney Company announced it would require all non-union hourly and salaried employees to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. The company gave on-site employees 60 days starting from July 30 to complete their round of vaccinations and asked employees working from home to provide proof of vaccination before they could return to work.

“This means to work at Walt Disney World, unless you have a medical or religious accommodation need, that you will be required to be vaccinated,” Unite Here Local 362 president Eric Clinton said. “Vaccines are the best way to protect all of us, and Disney will be requiring it of its cast members.”

Those seeking medical accommodations need to have a note from their doctor detailing the disability or medical condition, its duration and limitations and explaining how the disability or condition prevents the employee from receiving the vaccine.

Employees who ask for religious accommodations have to explain how their religious beliefs or practices specifically prevent them from getting vaccinated.

Under either situation, Disney can contact the employees’ physicians or spiritual leaders and discuss vaccination within the context of the employees’ limitations, according to the contract.

Disney will then meet with employees on a case-by-case basis to discuss their circumstances and determine if the company can accommodate their request through measures like face coverings, alternative roles or additional safety measures, it read.

If Disney and employees cannot reach accommodations in the employee’s current position, the employee will be eligible to transfer to another open qualified position. If an employee cannot be accommodated in their position, they could be terminated but would be eligible for rehire.

A spokesperson for Disney did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday afternoon.

Clinton, whose union represents workers in capacities like attractions and custodial across the resort, said the Local 362 union was satisfied with the terms of the contract, adding the majority of members are already vaccinated.

“Our major concern going into this was making sure that people who needed an accommodation would be able to get one, and get one in a timely fashion that would not have them lose employment for a long period of time, and I believe that we’ve successfully accomplished that in partnership with the company,” he said.


Met strikes union deal with musicians, set to reopen next month

Issued on: 25/08/2021 - 
Demonstrators at a May 2021 rally supporting workers in labor disputes with the Metropolitan Opera, which on August 24 announced it had reached a deal with orchestra members Angela Weiss AFP/File

New York (AFP)

After months of uncertainty members of the Metropolitan Opera orchestra on Tuesday announced they'd ratified their contract with management, setting the stage for the largest US performing arts organization to reopen next month.

"We are thrilled to be returning to regular performances very soon, and look forward to reconnecting with our audiences," said the local 802 branch president Adam Krauthamer and the Met Orchestra Committee in a joint statement.

The collective bargaining agreement follows months of often heated labor talks including pay cuts for musicians, who for nearly a year during the pandemic went unpaid.

"The members of the Met's great orchestra have been through Herculean challenges during the sixteen months of the shutdown, as we struggled to keep the company intact," said Met general manager Peter Gelb, the Met's General Manager.

"Now, we look forward to rebuilding and returning to action."

Terms of the agreement were not made public, but according to documents reported by The New York Times musicians and management struck a four-year deal including pay cuts of 3.7 percent, with vows to restore some of that pay once box office revenues hit 90 percent of pre-pandemic levels.

The lack of a deal had threatened the Met's 2021-22 season set to open in September, at which point its famed house will have been shuttered 18 months.

The orchestra shop is the last of three major Met unions to reach an deal, though several smaller unions have yet to find agreements.

The Times also said much of Met's savings will come from reducing the company's full-time orchestra to 83 from the previously required 90; a number of musicians retired during the pandemic, some of whom management is now allowed to not replace.

The Met aims to reopen on September 27 with "Fire Shut Up In My Bones" by Terence Blanchard, the first Black composer to stage a production at the esteemed venue.

In July Met management said all customers and staff along with orchestra and chorus members would need to show proof of vaccination against Covid-19 during the 2021-22 season.

Children under the age of 12, a group currently ineligible for vaccines, will not be allowed to enter the Met even if the adults accompanying them are vaccinated.

© 2021 AFP


Giant blue marlin nets fishermen $1.167M in MidAtlantic tournament

Dan Radel, Asbury Park Press 

The 2021 MidAtlantic tournament held in Cape May, New Jersey and Ocean City, Maryland was one for the ages. When the dust settled, a record 1,135-pound blue marlin caught Friday, the last day of the contest, on Jon Duffie's Billfisher took home the top purse of $1.167 million in winnings.

The marlin was so big its tail hung through Billfisher’s transom door as she sat at the scale. A skiff was needed to assist with pulling the fish from the boat through the door so it could be hoisted to the scale, which took eight men to do, according to the tournament's spokespeople.

The remarkable catch, which angler Billy Gurlach battled for 3½ hours on an 80-pound outfit, ousted from the lead a 985-pound blue marlin that was landed the day before on the boat Wolverine, from Beaufort, North Carolina. That marlin was, for a fleeting moment, the largest blue marlin ever landed in the tournament's 30-year history.

That prestigious distinction now belongs to the Billfisher out of Ocean City, Maryland. The blue marlin is also a pending new Maryland state record, eclipsing the 1,062 pounds set by Robert Farris in 2009. For the record, the Billfisher's marlin was over 11 feet long from bill to tail.

All that came after Larry Hesse’s Goin’ in Deep out of Manasquan got the tournament started last Monday, day one of the 5-day tournament, with a 681-pound blue marlin. That fish would have won 22 out of 30 years of the big game tournament that draws sport fishermen from all around the world to compete for millions of dollars in cash.


© MidAtlantic Tournament A 1,135-pound blue marlin landed on the boat Billfisher makes it way to scale at the 30th Annual MidAtlantic Tournament. The fish won first place and netted the fishermen over $1 million in tournament winnings.

Hesse and his team still took home $412,237 because of all the calcuttas, or side bets, they entered.

The blue marlin was not the only fish to net $1 million in prize money. Anthony Martina’s Sea Wolf from Middletown, Delaware, took the top prize of $1.017M for his 82-pound white marlin weighed on Wednesday, day three.

Chip Caruso of Colts Neck, New Jersey aboard his Pipe Dreamer, raked in just over $1 million with a pair of bigeye tuna at 235 and 227 pounds to take first and second place in the tuna category.

By the numbers, the 30th annual MidAtlantic set a new mark for the number of boats entered at 203, breaking its previous record of 183 set last year.

The total purse of $5,929,050 eclipsed the tournament's previous high mark of just over $4 million set last year as well.

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Giant blue marlin nets fishermen $1.167M in MidAtlantic tournament

Tuesday, August 24, 2021

 

THE GNOMES OF ZURICH CLONE THEMSELVES

Switzerland is a haven for the super rich and more are on their way

 

© picture alliance / Michael Kappeler/dpa

More millionaires live in Switzerland than in any other country, thanks to snow-capped mountains, turquoise lakes and low tax rates. The number of wealthy people seeking to live there continues to rise, partly due to the pandemic and a growing desire for security.

Switzerland has been attracting the world’s super rich for decades.

The country's famous banks, discretion, security - along with breath-taking scenery - are just some of the reasons why millionaires from around the world are drawn to the small Alpine nation.

The pandemic has further fuelled the run on luxury properties in Switzerland, according to UBS bank.

Property prices are soaring, with the highest recorded in the municipality of Cologny near Geneva, where real estate costs some 33,000 euros (39,000 dollars) per square metre.

That is partly because the outbreak of the coronavirus has increased people's longing for security, according to analysts at UBS.

They also note that in Switzerland, the risk of higher taxes for top earners is - unlike in some places abroad - manageable "thanks to a stable fiscal position.”

Switzerland's debt ratio is 40 per cent of gross domestic product. In comparison, this rises to around 70 per cent in Germany, and above 100 per cent in France.

In 2020, the list of Switzerland’s 300 richest people was topped by the heirs of late Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad, according to Bilanz magazine.

The list also includes many others from abroad, such as Belarusian billionaire Andrey Melnichenko, and French entrepreneur Gerard Wertheimer, who holds the majority of shares at Chanel, together with his brother. Then there's Dutch entrepreneur Charlene Carvalho-Heineken, whose father founded the Heineken brewery.

Credit Suisse estimates that 14.9 per cent of the population were millionaires in 2020, meaning every sixth inhabitant in the country of some 8.5 million. That gives the country the greatest concentration of millionaires worldwide, aside from small states such as Monaco.

Switzerland also has 135 billionaires, according to Bilanz.

Meanwhile, more wealthy people are heading to Switzerland, it seems. Lawyer Enzo Caputo, who focuses on foreign clients who are seeking to start a life in Switzerland, says the number of queries from clients has grown by 25 per cent. Other lawyers suggest the figure has risen by 40 per cent.

These numbers are impossible to verify, however, as discretion is key among such circles.

Caputo negotiates contracts with Switzerland’s cantons on taxation to enable clients to pay a lump sum, he tells dpa. That means new arrivals do not have to declare their assets at all.

That comes at a price: a residence permit and flat-rate tax package was available in the canton of Jura for an unmarried non-European for the equivalent of around 135,000 euros a year, according to broadcaster RTS.

But even without these kinds of deals, the conditions are more than favourable in Switzerland. Depending on the canton, the income tax rate of around 22 per cent is only half the level in many other countries.

People tend to plan a move to Switzerland a long time in advance, says Caputo, listing the steps. “First, the assets are placed in a Swiss bank with a good asset manager. Then the family arrives, followed by the head of the family.”

According to analyses by the Boston Consulting Group, no other country in the world has so much wealth held by foreigners who do not live in the country - some 2.4 billion dollars. This amounts to a quarter of all global foreign assets, and more than in Hong Kong and Singapore.

Real estate agents are also seeing a surge in interest. “Especially in the luxury segment, demand has increased enormously since the summer of 2020,” Franko Giovanoli, who is responsible for the exclusive St Moritz region at his firm Ginesta, tells dpa.

What people are looking for is a secure investment, he says.

That could be a 'modest' three-bedroom holiday apartment, for example. Prices start at 1 to 2 million Swiss francs (1.1 to 2.2 million dollars).