Thousands rally on Las Vegas Strip in support of food service workers demanding better pay, benefits


Thu, August 10, 2023 



LAS VEGAS (AP) — Thousands of hospitality workers rallied Thursday evening beneath the glittery lights of the Las Vegas Strip to call attention to ongoing union contract negotiations for higher pay and better benefits for food service workers at one of the largest arenas on the famed tourist corridor.

The Culinary Workers Union, a political powerhouse in Nevada, said in a statement ahead of the rally that servers, dishwashers, cooks and bartenders who work at T-Mobile Arena have been locked in contract negotiations for nearly a year with their employer, Levy Premium Food Service. The workers say they want a fair contract that will ensure “one job is enough to provide for their families.”

Union members packed the walkways near the arena on Thursday, with the crowd mostly dressed in red spilling onto Las Vegas Boulevard.

The union represents 60,000 hospitality workers in Las Vegas and Reno, including 200 Levy employees who work at the arena, the home stadium of the Vegas Golden Knights.

The action comes two weeks after members voted 97% in favor of authorizing a strike if a contract isn't reached soon. It is the union's second gathering on the Strip in recent months highlighting the ongoing negotiations with Levy, which provides food and drink services to arenas, convention centers and other venues nationwide.

In June, thousands also dressed in red assembled on the Strip for a march to bring attention to the contract negotiations, waving signs that read “ONE JOB SHOULD BE ENOUGH” at passing cars and tourists.

Levy said in a statement it was discouraged by the union's decision to rally after several months of negotiations.

“We remain committed to working diligently with the Union to reach a fair agreement that shows our team members how much we value them,” the statement said, “and we look forward to returning to the bargaining table soon.”

MGM Resorts International, which operates T-Mobile Arena, did not respond to a request for comment.

Lucia Orozco has worked as a cook at the arena since it opened in 2016. She described herself and her husband, a hospitality worker at a nearby Strip casino, as hard workers who don't spend outside of their means. Yet they live paycheck to paycheck and don't have money saved to retire anytime soon.

“I worry about it because I'm very close to retirement,” the 56-year-old said. “I don't have too much time left.”

Orozco, who was among the block of union members who voted to authorize a strike, said she wasn't surprised by the results of the vote.

“Everybody's tired of not making enough,” she said.

A date for a strike has not been set, but the union said its members have taken major steps toward walking off the job, including making picket signs and signing up for shifts on the picket line.

The possible strike looms ahead of the Golden Knights’ first preseason home hockey game Sept. 27 against the Los Angeles Kings and the team's season opener at home Oct. 10 against the Seattle Kraken. If the union strikes, it would happen against the backdrop of thousands of hospitality workers in Southern California, also demanding higher pay and improved benefits, walking off the job last month. The union there described it as the largest strike in its history.

___

Associated Press photographer John Locher in Las Vegas contributed.

Rio Yamat, The Associated Press

 

Bumi Armada Turns to Drone Tech to Reduce Methane Leaks Offshore

Courtesy Bumi Armada / IKM

PUBLISHED MAY 23, 2023 3:51 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

 

FPSO operator Bumi Armada is working to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions intensity of its oil and gas operations in the UK North Sea, and it is turning to a novel solution: drone technology. 

Methane leaks are a major source of emissions from upstream production, and are particularly pernicious because methane is about 25-80 times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas (depending on the method of calculation and timescale). Methane can come from natural gas flaring and from tiny leaks in pipe joints, valves and processing equipment; the effect is cumulative, and worldwide, the IEA estimates that the energy industry emits about 135 million tonnes per year (3.4 to 10.8 billion tonnes CO2 equivalent).

To detect and control methane emissions, Bumi Armada has hired drone surveillance company IKM Testing to scan the Kraken FPSO for the location and size of any "hot spots." By returning and performing multiple surveys, IKM also profiled the efficiency of the FPSO's flare, determining how much unburned methane escapes the flame. The results will inform an overall emissions reduction plan for the installation. 

Controlling methane leaks has a twofold benefit for the operator: it improves the platform's emissions intensity profile for compliance and ESG purposes; and it keeps valuable and hard-earned natural gas inside the piping, conserving product available for sale to customers. 

"The energy industry, as one of the largest emitters of methane gas, has made concerted efforts to monitor and reduce its output in line with net zero targets," said IKM methane technical director Sam Rowley. " 

The upstream sector isn't the only segment of the economy targeting fugitive natural gas emissions. While natural gas is an essential energy source for the global economy, a small number of municipalities and state governments have begun to ban its use in new structures because of the potential for leaks in production, transport and utilization. Utility gas piping, meters and gas-powered home appliances all emit small quantities of methane, and eliminating natural gas hookups in new construction is a rapid - if  politically controversial - new control measure. 

“Russia Is Giving Carte Blanche to the Far Right”

Ukrainian antifascist Sergiy Movchan on how the war has changed Ukrainian politics and society

AUTHORS
Sergiy Movchan, Alexander Tushkin

Sergiy Movchan is an anti-fascist activist and participant in the Marker Project, which tracks far-right violence in Ukraine.

NEWS | 02/27/2023

Politics of Memory / Antifascism - War / Peace - Eastern Europe - Ukraine Crisis

Relatives of Ukrainian prisoners of war rally to demand their speedy release in Kyiv, 

1 October 2022.

Photo: IMAGO / ZUMA Wire

A little over one year ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a war against Ukraine under the pretext of “denazification”, claiming that the Ukrainian state had been taken over by far-right forces since the Euromaidan movement in 2014 and posed an existential threat to Russia’s security. This claim was widely denounced as propaganda, but the trope of far-right forces in Ukrainian politics and the military continues to crop up in debates about the country.

One year later, Alexander Tushkin from the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s International Research Group on Authoritarianism and Counter-Strategies spoke to Sergiy Movchan, a left-wing activist and participant in the Marker Project tracking far-right violence in Ukraine, about Ukrainian nationalism, the far Right and antifascists in the Ukrainian army, and how the war has affected their position in society.

It has been a year since the war began. How has Ukrainian society changed over this time?

Ukrainian society is very united, at least on the surface. It’s very tired. It is very traumatized, but it is ready to go on fighting and not ready to make any concessions. The readiness to resist further, no matter what, is the public consensus, and the support for the actions of the authorities exceeds 90 percent. Society is very angry, first of all with the Russians.

What is your project doing now in the context of war?

Our focus was originally on monitoring far-right street violence in Ukraine. However, it has disappeared in Ukraine as everyone has gone to the front, so we are working on other things. Our group tracks the discursive element and monitors their narratives — roughly speaking, we look at what the far Right write about in their social media when they are not writing about war. It’s not just the total dehumanization of the enemy — everyone in Ukraine, including the Left, is doing it now. First and foremost, we are interested in what the far Right sees as a problem in Ukrainian society and how they write about it.

The vast majority of the far Right, when they speak out on public issues, still focus on criticism of the LGBTQ+ community. They say, “We are fighting here and yet there are some others just sitting there.” They have even coined the special term “Munich territorial defence battalion”, suggesting that all members of the LGBTQ+ community in Ukraine have fled.

That said, there are public LGBTQ+ members of the defence forces in Ukraine. The Ukrainian LGBTQ+ community invests a lot in the visibility of its representatives. One of the most famous is volunteer Viktor Pilipenko. Our collective also supports the non-binary person and anarcho-feminist Klema, who returned from Berlin to go to the front.

The far Right sees LGBTQ+ as part of the liberal agenda, who are also identified as mainstream opponents. By “liberals”, I mean a wide layer of civil society, NGOs, and various organizations which transformed themselves into volunteer activism during the war. The Ukrainian far Right hardly mention us, the radical Left.

How has the situation regarding far-right groups changed since the war began?

The far-right groups in Ukraine have been doing quite well over the last few years, although many of them have come under increasing criticism.

They have tried to integrate into various projects, such as the Miska Varta [municipal guard], or created their own paramilitary structures. They were elected to public councils at ministries, and took grants from the state or local authorities for their cultural and patriotic projects. In general, some far-right groups were normalized at the level of society, but did not enter the political mainstream. Their low electoral successes are well-known: in the parliamentary elections of 2020, the Right Sector coalition managed to get only 2.17 percent of the vote with a threshold of 5 percent. Right-wing party Svoboda only managed to get one deputy into parliament under the majoritarian system, as well as four mayors in Western Ukraine, where Svoboda traditionally has strong support.

At the same time, despite their electoral weakness, the far Right was actively present in the streets and engaged in street violence. Thus, in the year 2021 our monitoring recorded 177 cases of far-right violence or confrontation. However, it was not excessively violent — usually they were limited to disrupting events or damaging property. Only 58 of these were cases of violence against people. The main targets for attack by the far Right were representatives of the pro-Russian opposition. Feminists and LGBTQ+ persons were in second place, followed by leftists, liberals, and Roma.

The fight against the LGBTQ+ community and liberals gave the far Right a bad reputation. Liberals began to identify the far Right as Kremlin agents, saying that real nationalists are acceptable and do not do such things, and the people who attacked the clubs in Podol are provocateurs.

There was even an investigation that proved the Kremlin roots of the anti-gender far-right rhetoric in Ukraine and that it was an information special operation. Now, of course, there is almost nothing left of this narrative. With very few exceptions, like Sergei Korotkih, the far Right is now normalized again. Now the far Right is infiltrating the army, where their position has clearly been strengthened. They are fully normalized as well-motivated fighters.

How present is the far Right in the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU)?

When I talk about infiltration, it is difficult to speak with names, because there is no visible far Right in important state or military positions. On the other hand, when our leftist comrades tried to join various units of the AFU, they regularly bumped into far-right activists who were involved in selection. We can see that units with a far-right background are growing and integrating into the army.

Of course, the Ukrainian army today needs all kinds of fighters, be they nationalists or anarchists, and the question of political views has receded into the background. But the risks of such integration in the future are obvious. On the other hand, once in the army, far-right units lose their independence, as happened, for example, with the Right Sector Volunteer Corps. Whereas in 2014 these units fought as volunteers, they are now fully integrated into the AFU. They have strict command and army protocols, and it will be more difficult for them to speak with a political agenda in the media. The independence of such units is not even close to the same as Wagner PMC on the other side of the front line, which is essentially a private army.

If we are talking about that National Guard Azov Regiment in Mariupol, it never completely lost all contact with the Azov political party and its leader, the leader of the far-right National Corps party, Andriy Biletsky. At the same time, every year they drifted more and more from politics to being a more professional military unit. Therefore, many people joined Azov as a “bad-ass” battalion with a name, rather than as a far-right unit. This led to the far Right’s presence in Azov decreasing dramatically and its political profile almost disappearing. Therefore, I would not label it as “Nazi”, as Russian propaganda has repeatedly done, at present. It is not the same as it was in 2014.


I see serious differences between Putinism and fascism, which of course does not make Putin’s regime any better.

That said since the beginning of the war, a number of units have been created with a basis in the National Corps party which also carry the Azov brand, such as the separate special-purpose Azov, or Kraken, headed by the head of the party’s Kharkiv branch, Konstantin Nemichev. The Kraken is most likely subordinate to the Main Directorate of Intelligence (GUR). As our observations show, many far-right units are oriented precisely towards the GUR. Others have become part of the International Legion of the AFU. Among them are outspoken Nazis from the Russian Volunteer Corps of Russian Nazi Denis “WhiteRex” Kapustin and the Belarusian Volunteer Corps.

There is also the Revanche Battalion, founded by members of the far-right organization Tradition and Order. The classic street skinheads went there. Just before the war, they tried to organize a conservative party, but ended up going to the front as part of their own unit. As part of the Revanche, there is the Clear Sky unit of Alexei “Stalker” Svinarenko. These men were engaged in street terror and actively attacked leftists, feminists, LGBTQ+, and antifascists.

What is the position of Ukrainian antifascists now?

A huge number of antifascists have gone to war. On the front, they cross paths with Ukrainian fascists, but they have a truce. We really have a people’s war, when even sworn enemies can fight shoulder to shoulder in the same trench. Others have started doing volunteer work. This enabled us to establish a huge number of contacts with the Western antifascist movement, the Left, and anarchists.

But the war will one day be over, and the confrontation will begin again with renewed vigour. The main question in post-war Ukraine, it seems to me, will be, “Where were you during the war?” Of course, veterans will have the primary right to ask such questions — but every political force, including liberals, leftists, and the LGBTQ+ community has them now. I am therefore cautiously optimistic that the far Right will not be able to monopolize the topic of sacrifice and heroism in war as they did after 2014. Back then, the volunteer battalions were the main heroes, but now it’s the AFU as a whole.

Now, for the Ukrainian Left, apart from directly defending against invasion, participation in the war is part of the future political struggle for the post-war arrangement of the country. Without this, leftists and anarchists, like any political movement, simply have no chance.

Left-wing parties have been banned in Ukraine. What could be a new left-wing project in the country look like?

These parties were not leftist in their essence, no more than the Liberal Democratic Party in Russia is liberal. Politics in Ukraine is depoliticized as much as possible. We have parties not of ideologies, but of names and oligarchs — or both.

If a party with a left-wing ideology is created in Ukraine, it will not fall under any ban, unless it calls itself the Communist Party of Ukraine and takes one of the Soviet symbols as a logo. Such a new party is desired by comrades from the group Social Movement, which is now pushing for the abolition of Ukraine’s foreign debt.

Accusations of fascism are heard from both sides in the current conflict. Is an antifascist lens still appropriate to analyse this war?

First, we have to come to a consensus on what we understand by the word “fascism”. Is it a set of ideas, a form of political regime, a collective term for all right-wing conservatives? The term “authoritarian” seems to me much better suited to describe Putin’s regime, which has no clear ideology of its own. After all, in Russia, the so-called “special military operation” is supported by outright Nazis and conservatives as well as Communists who are nostalgic for the USSR. It is an ideological cocktail.


In Ukraine, we are dealing with a very strange and rather radical form of civic nationalism united around a common enemy.

I see serious differences between Putinism and fascism, which of course does not make Putin’s regime any better. In Russia, people don’t join United Russia en masse, and the ideology rather works to depoliticize and disengage society from active participation. But I won’t protest against using the word “fascism” in its broadest sense to describe where the Russian state is heading, either.

For me, antifascism is not just about being against the Nazis in the streets. It’s a broader ideology that involves resistance to various forms of oppression. So, if we look at antifascism in that vein, then yes, I believe that antifascism is an appropriate ideology on which to base my resistance to invasion and my radical rejection of Putin’s regime. In my view, anyone who associates themselves with antifascism should come to such conclusions.

The fact that “denazification” was the — purported — reason for the invasion and the justification for the war gives carte blanche to the far Right. It is clear that Ukrainian fascism and Nazis in power in Ukraine are the Kremlin’s fabrications. But now the real, not invented Nazis in Ukraine can say without hesitation that the swastika on their shoulder is their way of trolling Russians. No one takes the subject of the far-right threat in Ukraine seriously anymore. It is perceived as Russian propaganda. The very raising of the issue will immediately put you on par with Russian propagandists.

How do you then monitor the far Right during a war?

At the moment it is not a priority for me. My main activity is focused on something else entirely: volunteer work. At the start of the war, we decided that we would not publish an annual report. The subject of antifascism and the fight against the far Right was so hijacked by Putin and distorted by Russian propaganda that it was just impossible to talk about it.

Now it seems to me that our research helps to speak objectively about the problem of the presence of the far Right in Ukraine and assess its real scale, and the absolute fakeness of Russian propaganda, which describes Ukraine as a “Nazi country with a Nazi president”. My knowledge allows, without whitewashing Ukraine, which I consider to be a losing strategy, to also show the general insignificance of far-right violence in comparison to the war Putin has unleashed. That said, if the far Right is a problem in our country, we have to be honest about it.

Is what you are doing now in Ukraine dangerous?

Not in the sense that they will come and beat me up. I am not afraid of anything. There is a truce now [between the Ukrainian far right and far left]. Recently I even met in the street an old acquaintance of mine who is a far-right activist. We had a nice chat and he even offered to help me in some matters.

It’s more a question of reputational danger: it’s just that you will very quickly be labelled as a Kremlin agent and cancelled. Say the wrong thing, use the wrong wording in conversation with the wrong people — and it will be very difficult to clear your name. You won’t be able to engage in your other constructive activities anymore.

That’s why you have to be very careful when talking about this topic. Every time before I start to say something about the far Right, I make sure to add that this is really not the main problem in Ukraine right now. The threat from the far Right is not comparable to Russian aggression.

If the far Right do not pose a threat, then what is nationalism in Ukraine?

In Ukraine, we are dealing with a very strange and rather radical form of civic nationalism united around a common enemy. “Ukrainianness” is not perceived ethnically by many people now. The line of demarcation rather runs along the theme of supporting or not supporting Ukraine in the war. Although there is a problem with this, it is indeed something that unites the country.

It is primarily Russians who are dehumanized and excluded from the nation, those who somehow justify the war, dilute responsibility, or, at times, do not make their position clear enough. Aggressive nationalism primarily targets Russians in uniform: “There are no good Russians. Russian means guilty.” This hatred has taken hold of Ukrainian society in its entirety. The figures of Bandera, OUN-UPA, and other nationalist figures, whose images are associated with the fight against Russia, have become extremely popular. Other classic conservative ideas, such as antifeminism, antisemitism, authoritarian leadership and the like are not very popular.

What about demonstrative anti-communism?

Indeed, it’s the sort of thing that always sticks to nationalism, and many nationalists work to equate Russia with the Soviet Union, and Marx and Engels with “chief Bolshevik” Putin — sometimes quite successfully. Take, for example, the 2015 decommunization laws or the proposal to abolish 8 March and 1 May because they are “Soviet”.

But none of this would have been feasible if Russia itself had not used Soviet symbols in this war. The mythology of “grandfathers” who fought, the red flags on Russian tanks, the restoration of monuments to Soviet leaders, the St. George ribbons on uniforms — all this is more than enough to generate hatred for these already quite discredited symbols here. As I said before, Russia is giving carte blanche to the far right.

At the same time, there is a reverse trend. We often have people saying that Putin is Hitler. Some far-right activists have even taken offence and asked not to call Russians fascists, because fascists were “normal guys, and we are at war with Bolsheviks”. The Ukrainian state also sometimes tries to use World War II mythology in its propaganda. But Russia, which has fully appropriated this myth, plays an incomparably bigger role in this field.

What is the position of the far Right in the civic nationalist project in Ukraine?

This is a project of cultural nationalism, which is more actively promoted by the government and the liberal-minded public than the extreme Right. It is about the need for everyone to switch to the Ukrainian language, throw out Russian culture, and consume only Ukrainian or Western content. It is all very popular, and these ideas are even promoted by some leftists, only they conceptualize it in a different way: through anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism.

From my point of view, it was the nationalists who introduced those themes. Before 2004, issues of language, culture, or historical politics were marginal. It was the presidential campaign of 2003 and the ensuing Orange Revolution that instrumentalized these topics to mobilize their supporters. The victory of Viktor Yushchenko, who issued the maximum number of decrees on political history topics, cemented these issues in the political mainstream.


The idea that a Ukrainian victory will strengthen the far Right is deeply mistaken.

I partly attribute the low success of the far Right in the elections to the fact that their demands for culture and language were taken over and appropriated by the political mainstream. Remember, for example, Poroshenko’s pre-election slogan “Army! Language! Faith!” The question is, why would anyone want to vote for the far more marginal Right Sector after that?

That said, today the voices of the far Right are again being heard. Some of them have become prominent bloggers and have collected hundreds of thousands of subscribers and views on their videos since the war began. For example, the head of the far-right S14 (now Foundation of the Future) Yevhen Karas, the same odious neo-Nazi Sergei “Botsman” Korotkih, or the leader of the Belarusian Volunteer Corps, Igor “Yankee” Noman.

There are other voices with a slightly different agenda. For example, the Ukrainian writer, veteran, and AFU master sergeant Valerii Markus, who speaks from a liberal-patriotic position. Or former presidential advisor Oleksiy Arestovych, who advocated the idea of a multicultural Ukraine. True, he has already been banished.

Arestovych also criticized Ukraine’s nation-building project, called for the integration of the Russian-speaking population in Ukraine’s southeastern regions, and opposed the abolition of the Russian language. What will happen to this initiative now?

There is no long-term policy on this at the moment. When this same question was posed to the head of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine, Oleksiy Danilov, he replied, “And why should we think how we should live with them? They should be the ones thinking about how they should live with us!” Although of course we should not draw global conclusions from this statement, since Danilov is known for such attacks, it is a very characteristic sign that there are no special projects.

The hegemonic discourse works in Ukraine. A huge number of people have recently switched to Ukrainian on their own or have given up consuming Russian-language content. Many did it quite consciously, others did it because it is kind of habitual right now. At the same time, the Russian-speaking population in Ukraine itself is not ready to fight for their rights, there is no one to articulate this agenda and therefore they are not represented in the political sphere in any way. Perhaps soon the rejection of the Russian language will become the norm. Everyone will speak Ukrainian and that will be it. The question will disappear by itself.

Is Zelensky a nationalist?

No. Zelensky is rather a compromise figure. Those slogans with which he went to elections in 2019 were aimed at the whole country. It is precisely the multiculturalism of Ukraine and peace in Donbas. The phrases “who cares what the name of the street will be” or “near which monument will you wait for your girlfriend” are still associated with him. Of course, since then there has been a significant shift in his rhetoric to a much more patriotic direction. However, the mood of the president of a country at war could be far more hawkish than it actually is. That is, Zelensky periodically shows that he still wants to be president of the whole country, not just the ardent patriots.

I think a win for Ukraine would mean a triumph for Zelensky, and that’s a good thing. Because if Ukraine signs a peace treaty on disadvantageous conditions, the opportunities for far-right revenge will appear and groups like Azov can recall their political roots. For the first time, the far Right will be able to get real support from a population that does not accept concessions.

The idea that a Ukrainian victory will strengthen the far Right is deeply mistaken. It will temporarily strengthen Zelensky as a compromise figure, after which he, like all Ukrainian presidents of all times, will squander his popularity because of a pile of unresolved social and economic issues, and Ukrainians will choose someone else.

https://www.rosalux.de/en

Scientists Fear ‘Catastrophic’ COVID Combination With Another Virus

David Axe
Sun, April 2, 2023 

Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast

The SARS-CoV-2 virus is highly contagious but the current dominant strains are not very lethal. Its much rarer cousin in the betacoronavirus family of pathogens, MERS-CoV, is highly lethal but not very contagious. Now imagine a blend of the two—a respiratory virus with the most dangerous qualities of both. Contagious and lethal.

It’s a real risk, according to a new study from China. And it’s a strong argument for a new, more widely effective vaccine.

Different viruses from the closely related families can combine through a process called “recombination” and produce hybrids called “recombinants.” This recombination requires the viruses to share an infection mechanism. For the first time, a team of scientists in China has identified the mechanism by which SARS and MERS could combine—by entering human cells via colocated receptors. Basically, the cells’ entry points for external molecules.

If a single person ever catches SARS and MERS at the same time through neighboring receptors and the two viruses combine, we could have a whole new pandemic on our hands—one that could be far worse than the current COVID-19 pandemic.

The recombination risk is one driver of a global effort to develop new vaccines that could prevent, or reduce the severity of, infection by a variety of SARS viruses, MERS, and any hybrid of them. A universal vaccine for a whole family of viruses.

Good news: Universal vaccines are in development. Bad news: They’re still a long way from large-scale human trials—and an even longer way from regulatory approval and widespread availability. Years, perhaps.

A team led by Qiao Wang, a virologist at the Shanghai Institute of Infectious Disease and Biosecurity, part of Fudan University in Shanghai, highlighted the SARS-MERS recombination risk in a peer-reviewed study that first appeared in the journal Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy on March 15.

SARS-CoV-2 tends to favor a receptor called ACE2, while MERS-CoV tends to favor the DPP4 receptor, Wang and their coauthors explained. Our cells tend to have one or the other, not both. In the very unlikely chance someone catches both SARS and MERS at the same time, the viruses should stay safely in their separate cells.

But Wang and company identified a few cell types, in the lungs and intestines, that have both ACE2 and DPP4 receptors, thus “providing an opportunity for coinfection by both SARS-CoV-2 and MERS-CoV.” Wang and a teammate did not respond to a request for comment.

This hypothetical coinfection—SARS-CoV-2 and MERS-CoV mixing and mutating in the same cells—“may result in the emergence of recombined [betacoronavirus],” Wang and their coauthors wrote. Call it “SARS-CoV-3” or “MERS-CoV-2.”

Either way, this new virus “may bear high SARS-CoV-2-like transmissibility along with a high MERS-CoV-like case-fatality rate, which would have catastrophic repercussions,” Wang and their teammates wrote.

Did AI Just Help Us Discover a Universal COVID Vaccine?

How bad could it be? The most contagious forms of SARS-CoV-2, the XBB subvariants—a.k.a., “Kraken”—is by far the most transmissible respiratory virus anyone has ever observed. It’s not for no reason that XBB subvariants quickly outcompeted rival subvariants in order to become globally dominant in just a few weeks early this year.

But Kraken is less severe—that is, less likely to kill—than earlier forms of SARS-CoV-2. Vaccines and natural immunity help a lot, but there are also signs that the novel-coronavirus is slowly evolving toward higher transmissibility but lower severity. At its worst in 2021, COVID killed nearly 5 percent of infected persons in the worst-hit countries such as Peru and Mexico. Today, the global fatality rate is around 0.9 percent.

MERS, by contrast, spreads much more slowly. It mostly affects camels. When it infects people, it’s usually when those people are in close contact with the animals. Human-to-human transmission is extremely rare. “Only a few such transmissions have been found among family members living in the same household,” the World Health Organization noted.

In 27 small outbreaks since 2012, fewer than 900 people have died of MERS. Compare that to the 6.9 million people who have died of SARS-CoV-2 since late 2019. The problem, with MERS, is that those 900 or so deaths represent a third of infections. That is to say, MERS is at least six times more lethal, on a case-by-case basis, than SARS was at its worst.

So if a SARS-MERS recombinant inherited the former’s transmissibility and the latter’s lethality, it could quickly kill millions. That’s why Wang and their coauthors are, in their own words, “calling for the development of pan-CoV vaccine.”

Don’t panic. Epidemiologists who weren’t involved in Wang and company’s study didn’t necessarily agree with the Chinese authors’ sense of possible imminent doom. “The lifecycle of a virus is delicate and recombination between different viruses is typically uncommon,” Lihong Liu, a Columbia University COVID researcher, told The Daily Beast. “We have not seen any recombination between SARS-CoV-2 and MERS during the COVID-19 pandemic, despite the millions of SARS-CoV-2 infections worldwide. Therefore, it is expected that such an event is unlikely to occur in the future.”

Michael Letko, a Washington State University virologist, told The Daily Beast that Wang’s team is actually half-right. Yes, there’s huge risk from a possible recombinant. But not necessarily a SARS-MERS recombinant. It’s more likely the novel-coronavirus will recombine with a Russian bat virus called Khosta-2, Letko said.

Khosta-2 is even more closely related to SARS-CoV-2 than MERS is, Letko pointed out. Not only is Khosta-2 fond of the same ACE2 receptor that the novel coronavirus prefers, the two viruses also replicate roughly the same way. “The machinery the viruses use to copy their genetic material can get confused, leading to mixing and matching of the genomes,” Letko said of SARS-CoV-2 and Khosta-2. That raises the recombination risk.
Prevention plan

JANUARY 2020 CHINA RELEASED THIS GENETIC CODE FOR COVID

But exactly which cousin virus might combine with SARS-CoV-2 is beside the point. Barton Haynes, an immunologist with Duke’s Human Vaccine Institute, told The Daily Beast. There are dozens of betacoronaviruses. We should develop a vaccine that works against all of them. “If a vaccine could do all this, then one would also likely be able to protect against any … recombinant virus, as well,” Haynes said. SARS-MERS. SARS-Khosta-2. MERS-Khosta-2. Whatever.

There are around two dozen pan-coronavirus vaccine projects underway all over the world. Haynes and his colleagues at Duke have been working on one since 2020—and it could be among the first to produce a deployable vaccine. Animal testing and small-scale human trials are already underway. But if history is any guide, it could be years before the Duke vaccine or any other pan-CoV jab is ready for widespread deployment.

The wait is worth it, Haynes said. “The current goal of pan-coronavirus vaccines that are currently being tested in monkeys and humans is to make vaccines that both prevent infection by any new COVID variant that might arise, to make vaccines that will prevent any new CoV-2-like CoV outbreak that may arise from bats or other animals as well to protect against any MERS-like virus that may arise.”

That should cover all the bases, at least when it comes to betacoronaviruses including SARS-CoV-2, MERS-CoV and Khosta-2. If our luck holds and we dodge a dangerous SARS recombinant for a few more years, we just might have a universal vaccine—Duke’s or another—that could prevent mass death in the event that hybrid finally appears.

Of course, that “universal” vaccine wouldn’t be truly universal. It wouldn’t save us from RSV, monkeypox, polio or—perhaps most worryingly—bird flu. For those viruses, we need totally different jabs.

CRIMINAL CRYPTO CAPITALI$M

Coinbase tumbles after SEC warns of securities violations

The Coinbase app icon is seen on a smartphone, Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2023, in Marple Township, Pa. Coinbase’s stock is tumbling before the market open on Thursday, March 23, after the cryptocurrency trading platform received a warning from the Securities and Exchange Commission that it could possibly face securities charges. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)

Shares of Coinbase tumbled 15% Thursday after the cryptocurrency trading platform received a warning from the Securities and Exchange Commission that it could face securities charges.

The cryptocurrency trading platform said in an SEC filing late Wednesday that it had received a Wells Notice from the agency, which indicates that regulators believe laws protecting investors were violated.

Among the practices being targeted by the SEC is “staking,” which is “Coinbase Earn” by the company.

Users of trading platforms can stake their cryptocurrency, essentially locking up some of their assets, in exchange for payment later, much like earning interest rates in a savings account. Those assets are used by platforms like Coinbase Global Inc. to guarantee other transactions taking place on the blockchain.

The SEC says Coinbase and other platforms must register as a securities platform to offer such services, and only after it is approved by the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance.

A Wells Notice for Coinbase is another warning shot from SEC Chair Gary Gensler who is attempting to establish the agency’s oversight of crypto firms when they wander into areas typically associated with banking.



Kraken, a rival crypto exchange platform, agreed to settle in February for $30 million and to stop offering staking as a service.

Analysts that follow crypto and Coinbase said there is a significant threat for the company.

“We continue to see regulatory risk as meaningful for Coinbase given substantial (high quality) earnings growth potential from services like staking that are at risk of regulatory elimination,” wrote analysts with JP Morgan on Thursday.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong lashed out at the SEC late Wednesday and the company has been critical of regulations related to staking, calling them vague.

“Going forward the legal process will provide an open and public forum before an unbiased body where we will be able to make clear for all to see that the SEC simply has not been fair, reasonable, or even demonstrated a seriousness of purpose when it comes to its engagement on digital assets,” Armstrong tweeted.

In a blog post, Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal said that the SEC matter was a “disappointing development.”

“Rest assured, Coinbase products and services continue to operate as usual,” Grewal said.

In January New York announced a $100 million settlement with Coinbase over what state officials called significant failures in the cryptocurrency trading platform’s systems for spotting potential criminal activity.

Under the terms of the settlement, the San Francisco company agreed to pay a $50 million penalty to New York state and will invest another $50 million in its compliance program. An independent monitor installed by the state will work with Coinbase for a year to oversee compliance.

That same month, Coinbase announced that it was cutting approximately 20% of its workforce, or about 950 jobs, in a second round of layoffs in less than a year. Coinbase announced the elimination of 1,100 jobs in June, or approximately 18% of its global workforce, in a first round of cuts.

Coinbase was founded in 2012 and has no headquarters. It went public in April 2021 by listing its stock directly and skipping the traditional process of hiring underwriters.

Cryptocurrency has been on a tear this year after plunging severely in 2022. Bitcoin climbed another 3% Thursday to $27,700 and is now up 68% for the year in an era of mass layoffs in the tech sector and widespread anxiety about stability in the U.S. banking sector.

Mysterious new behavior seen in whales may be recorded in ancient manuscripts

Feeding strategy recently discovered in whales may explain strange creatures described in Classical and Norse eras.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FLINDERS UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: COD. 318FOL. 15V: HTTPS://WWW.E-CODICES.UNIFR.CH/EN/LIST/ONE/BBB/0318 CC BY 4.0, COLOR AND CONTRAST CORRECTED). view more 

CREDIT: COD. 318FOL. 15V: HTTPS://WWW.E-CODICES.UNIFR.CH/EN/LIST/ONE/BBB/0318 CC BY 4.0, COLOR AND CONTRAST CORRECTED).

In 2011, scientists recorded a previously unknown feeding strategy in whales around the world. Now, researchers in Australia think they may have found evidence of this behaviour being described in ancient accounts of sea creatures, recorded more than 2,000 years ago.

They believe that misunderstandings of these descriptions contributed to myths about medieval sea monsters.

Whales are known lunge at their prey when feeding, but recently whales have been spotted at the surface of the water with their jaws open at right angles, waiting for shoals of fish to swim into their mouths. A clip of this strategy was captured in 2021 and went viral on Instagram.

This strategy seems to work for the whales because the fish think they have found a place to shelter from predators, not realising they are swimming into danger.

It’s not known why this strategy has only recently been identified, but scientists speculate that it’s a result of changing environmental conditions - or that whales are being more closely monitored than ever before by drones and other modern technologies.

Dr John McCarthy, a maritime archaeologist in the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Flinders University, first noticed intriguing parallels between marine biology and historical literature while reading about Norse sea monsters.

“It struck me that the Norse description of the hafgufa was very similar to the behaviour shown in videos of trap feeding whales, but I thought it was just an interesting coincidence at first. Once I started looking into it in detail and discussing it with colleagues who specialise in medieval literature, we realised that the oldest versions of these myths do not describe sea monsters at all, but are explicit in describing a type of whale, says Dr McCarthy.

“That’s when we started to get really interested. The more we investigated it, the more interesting the connections became and the marine biologists we spoke to found the idea fascinating.

Old Norse manuscripts describing the creature date from the 13th century and name the creature as a ‘hafgufa’.

This creature remained part of Icelandic myths until the 18th century, often included in accounts alongside the more infamous kraken and mermaids.

However, it appears the Norse manuscripts may have drawn on medieval bestiaries, a popular type of text in the medieval period. Bestiaries describe large numbers of real and fantastical animals and often include a description of a creature very similar to the hafgufa, usually named as the ‘aspidochelone’.

Both the hafgufa and aspidochelone are sometimes said to emit a special perfume or scent that helps to draw the fish towards their stationary mouths. Although some whales produce ambergris, which is an ingredient of perfume, this is not true of such rorquals as the humpback.

Instead, researchers suggest this element may have been inspired by the ejection of filtered prey by whales, to help attract more prey into a whale’s mouth.

Research co-author Dr Erin Sebo, an Associate Professor in Medieval Literature and Language in the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Flinders University, says this may be another example of accurate knowledge about the natural environment preserved in forms that pre-date modern science.

“It’s exciting because the question of how long whales have used this technique is key to understanding a range of behavioural and even evolutionary questions. Marine biologists had assumed there was no way of recovering this data but, using medieval manuscripts, we’ve been able to answer some of their questions.”

“We found that the more fantastical accounts of this sea monster were relatively recent, dating to the 17th and 18th centuries and there has been a lot of speculation amongst scientists about whether these accounts might have been provoked by natural phenomena, such as optical illusions or under water volcanoes. In fact, the behaviour described in medieval texts, which seemed so unlikely, is simply whale behaviour that we had not observed but medieval and ancient people had.” 

The new paper on ancient descriptions of whales is: McCarthy, J., Sebo, E. and Firth, M., 2023. Parallels for cetacean trap feeding and tread-water feeding in the historical record across two millennia. Marine Mammal Science, pp.1-12. Accessible in full at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mms.13009

The original 2017 description of the tread-water feeding behaviour by whales in the Gulf of Thailand is: Iwata, T., Akamatsu, T., Thongsukdee, S., Cherdsukjai, P., Adulyanukosol, K. and Sato, K., 2017. Tread-water feeding of Bryde’s whales. Current Biology, 27(21), pp.R1154-R1155. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982217312435 

A digital reconstruction of a humpback whale trap feeding (J. McCarthy).

CREDIT

John McCarthy, Flinders University

Icelandic Physiologus (c.1200) depiction of the Apsido feeding 

(Reykjavík AM 673 a II 4to fol. 3v Public Domain, color and contrast corrected).

Above: Ortelius's 1658 map of Iceland showing various mythological sea creatures. Below, a detail of a sea creature labelled H, ‘the greatest of whales’ which could not chase fish but caught them through cunning 

(Public Domain, color and contrast corrected).

VIDEOS

Bryde's Whales engaging in tread-water feeding in the Gulf of Thailand 2 (video courtesy of Surachai Passada, Department of Marine and Coastal Resources)

Bryde's Whales engaging in tre [VIDEO] | EurekAlert! Science News Releases

Bryde's Whales engaging in tread-water feeding in the Gulf of Thailand Close Up

Bryde's Whales engaging in tre [VIDEO] | EurekAlert! Science News Releases

JOURNAL

Marine Mammal Science

DOI

10.1111/mms.13009 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Case study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Parallels for cetacean trap feeding and tread-water feeding in the historical record across two millennia

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

28-Feb-2023

Crypto Regulatory Initiatives Show SEC’s Dominance Among US Regulators: JPMorgan

Will Canny
Thu, February 23, 2023 

Jesse Hamilton


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Recent regulatory initiatives have shown the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) dominant position in the U.S. in regulating the digital assets space, JPMorgan (JPM) said in a research report last week.

Its actions have also shown the SEC’s bias in viewing most crypto, with maybe bitcoin (BTC) as the only exception, as securities, the report said. It noted that SEC Chair Gary Gensler started pushing back against implementing special rules for the crypto industry in September, arguing that most cryptocurrencies should be classed as securities and thus be regulated under existing securities laws.

“Given the above it should not come as a surprise that the SEC looks at the offering of a staking service as being similar to offering any other type of security,” the note said. This opens the way for other firms offering staking services to have to be registered as a securities platform with the SEC, the report added.

The bank predicted more regulatory actions on stablecoin issuers, custody and protection of investors’ digital assets, and on the unbundling of broker/trader/lending/clearing/custody activities.

It also expects mandated regular disclosure, reporting and auditing of reserves, assets and liabilities across major crypto entities, analysts led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou wrote. These regulations will lead to “convergence of the crypto ecosystem towards the traditional financial system over time,” he added.

“Staking business should shift more towards direct staking for institutional investors and more towards decentralized (DeFi staking) alternatives for retail investors,” the note said. DeFi is an umbrella term for a variety of financial applications carried out on a blockchain.

Ether (ETH) will likely see additional selling pressure on Ethereum following the forthcoming Shanghai upgrade, as crypto exchange Kraken has 1.2 million ETH staked on the network, a significant amount of which is owned by its U.S. clients. Adding the 1 million ether from staking rewards that could be withdrawn immediately after the upgrade, the downside risk to ether becomes even more significant, the note added.

Read more: Bernstein: SEC Tightening of Crypto Regulations Is Not an Existential Threat.

Crypto Long & Short: Washington Plays Tennis With Crypto


Glenn Williams, Nick Baker, Jodie Gunzberg
Wed, February 22, 2023 

This week, Glenn Williams Jr. examines what politicians are saying about crypto regulation in Washington, D.C.

Then, Jodie Gunzberg, managing director of CoinDesk Indices, talks about the crypto sectors that continue to thrive despite the regulatory crackdown.
– Nick Baker

You’re reading Crypto Long & Short, our weekly newsletter featuring insights, news and analysis for the professional investor. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Wednesday.

A Descent Into Partisanship for Digital Assets Won’t Benefit Anyone

I took the time last week to tune into the Senate hearing on cryptocurrencies titled “Crypto Crash: Why Financial System Safeguards are Needed for Digital Assets.” Quarterbacked by Democrat Sherrod Brown and Republican Tim Scott, it focused on the need for increased regulation within the digital asset space, punctuated by recent industry collapses.

At times I question the importance of even monitoring these events. It’s getting to the point where if you’ve heard one, you’ve heard them all. One concern, however, is whether the regulation of digital assets is drifting more and more into partisan waters, which I think is negative for all involved.

If the discussion around cryptocurrencies devolves into a scenario where one’s stance can be accurately predicted by which side of the aisle they sit on, it will have sunk to a level of simplistic discourse; a new technology like crypto deserves better than that. For that reason I often find political discussions around crypto as more akin to political theater.

But if you’re going to operate within a sector, it makes sense to have an idea of which way the regulatory winds are blowing. It certainly makes sense to challenge your own ideas with ones that may be counter to your own. I would encourage all to watch it, even at 1.25x speed – which I may or may not have done.

(Highcharts.com)

Chairman Brown’s testimony appeared to target cryptocurrencies in general. The overarching theme from my perspective is that the sector itself is not just vulnerable to fraud, but intrinsically emblematic of it. My guess is that if I sat down with him and discussed cryptocurrencies, it would largely revolve around its usage in criminal activity and the “greater fool theory” – the idea that the only value crypto has to the owner is being able to sell it to a bigger fool in the future at a higher price. It’s worth noting, however, that his testimony concluded with a list of pre-existing financial regulatory methods. Examining where crypto fits within an already existing framework at least implies that a place is seen for it.

Ranking member Scott’s testimony seemed to center around the failure of current regulators, with Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler singled out specifically. An acknowledgement that financial innovation is an engine for growth was stated, along with an emphasis on the need for existing regulation to be conducted in a timely and appropriate manner. My guess is that if I sat down with him and discussed cryptocurrencies, he’d ask me if I knew where Gary Gensler was.

From there, testimony was provided by Lee Reiners of the Duke Financial Economics Center, Professor Linda Jeng of the Georgetown Institute of International Economic Law and Professor Yesha Yadav of the Vanderbilt University Law School. Each provided their views on cryptocurrencies, discussing the harnessing of innovation, development of a self-regulatory organization (SRO) and the banning of cryptocurrencies outright. I think some of their suggestions warrant consideration, while other suggestions seem openly hostile to the asset class itself.

For example, a focus on clear disclosures by crypto exchanges makes perfect sense to me. A well-informed investor is prone to making decisions based on an underlying idea they believe to be true. It doesn’t guarantee that the idea is right, but at least it’s rooted in something.

The prohibition of the commingling of funds is also something that makes sense. I can’t think of a good reason why customer funds and firm funds shouldn’t be separated. It’s been the case for years within traditional finance, and for good reason.

The creation of self-regulatory organizations (SRO) within crypto rang as a viable option to explore as well. What also stood out is that it was presented as a practical (though not perfect) way to improve the current regulatory framework in short order. SROs exist within traditional finance, so a blueprint for implementing them already exists.

I take issue with the notion that bitcoin being 14 years old means it’s not a “new” asset class. While bitcoin’s genesis block was mined in 2009, a significant amount of trading activity has occurred within the last three to four years.

Moreover, it strikes me as incongruent to state bitcoin’s existence since 2009, but only noting its performance as an asset since 2021. The fall from $69,000 to $21,000 should absolutely be stated. But its rise in price from less than 10 cents to $21,000 since 2009 should be mentioned as well if the objective is to be balanced.

Still, what was most encouraging about the witness testimony is that, agree or disagree, I’m not able to automatically determine their political affiliation based on their recommendations. I don’t know if I can say the same for the people asking the questions, however.

There’s a cadence that is beginning to present itself in these hearings that mirrors that of a tennis match – one where politicians alternate back and forth between pro-crypto and anti-crypto statements, directing the bulk of their questions to whichever witness aligns most with their political party’s’ decided stance.

I sincerely hope that this does not become the norm. Extreme partisanship would be detrimental to all parties involved, because it will likely remove the nuance necessary to allow for technical innovation, while protecting individual investors from bad actors.

Ultimately, investor protection, financial inclusion and innovation are all necessary elements for healthy growth within the digital asset space. As members of the U.S. Congress work to achieve these goals, I hope that they view them more from the lens of individuals than as members of a political party.

– Glenn C. Williams Jr., CMT

Bitcoin, DeFi and Computing Thrive Amid Crypto Crackdown

After bitcoin’s (BTC) best January since 2015, it has retreated because the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is cracking down on crypto, and inflation was slightly hotter than expected. Despite these challenges, crypto continues to dramatically outperform traditional asset classes.

The CoinDesk Market Index (CMI), the broad measure of crypto returns, surged 6.5% in February through Feb. 16. Stocks haven’t done nearly as well, with the S&P 500 up only 0.5%. The Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Bond Index fell 2.2%, while the Bloomberg Commodity Index lost 3.9%.

A key reason why crypto is doing so well: Bitcoin is on a tear because the Ordinals Protocol essentially brings non-fungible tokens (NFT) to that blockchain. “This has demonstrated a new, high-value use case for the longest-running cryptocurrency chain,” CoinDesk Chief Content Officer Michael J. Casey recently wrote.

(CoinDesk Indices. Bloomberg. Data ending 2/16/2023)

The big gain in the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index (XBX) shows the enthusiasm. But many other digital assets performed even better. There are 158 total digital assets in the CMI, and 109 of them did better than bitcoin. These outperforming assets were concentrated in the CoinDesk Digital Asset Classification Standard’s (DACS) DeFi and Computing sectors.

Although they make up only 2% and 1.4%, respectively, of the CMI’s weight, their gains stand out. Month to date, Computing is up 23.5%, giving it a gain of 91.5% so far this year. DeFi is up 12.4% in February and nearly 66% in 2023. Computing has been driven by excitement over artificial intelligence (AI), with ChatGPT and Bing dominating the conversation. DeFi is the sector many are looking to for greater security and infrastructure.

Although Computing and DeFi are relatively small by market cap, there are many constituents in each sector: Computing has 23 assets and DeFi has 39. So opportunities for big gains (alpha, for you pros) are plentiful.

(CoinDesk Indices. Data ending 2/16/2023)

However, bitcoin is still in high demand as the most established, largest, most-liquid asset with the longest track record and deepest derivatives market. So, in order to mix bitcoin with some of these potentially high performers, some market participants prefer the CoinDesk Large Cap Select Index (DLCS), which is similar in concept to other market-cap-weighted flagship indexes to measure various asset classes.

Still, the digital asset market is in its early days, so the concentration is high currently with five assets (which are in two sectors) accounting for 70% of the index’s market capitalization. Therefore, some prefer a broader sector exposure through the CoinDesk Market Select Index (CMIS) that spans five sectors with at least five market-cap-weighted assets from each sector.

– Jodie Gunzberg, CFA, managing director of CoinDesk Indices
Takeaways

From CoinDesk’s Nick Baker, here’s some recent news worth reading:

MT. GOX: Once upon a time, in the early days of crypto, there was an exchange called Mt. Gox (which stood for Magic: The Gathering Online eXchange, just to clue you into the vibe). The business collapsed spectacularly because of a 2014 hack. The ensuing bankruptcy process has dragged on and on, but there was important news last week that may signal the end is in sight: The two largest creditors picked the repayment option that could allay fears the restructuring will tank the price of bitcoin (BTC).

CANADIAN CRACKDOWN: Canada is close to boosting requirements on crypto exchanges, putting it toward the front of the pack in terms of tangible action in the aftermath of FTX’s collapse. Surely, it will not be the last to do something, though.

SHANGHAI VOLATILITY: The Ethereum Merge didn’t stir up ETH prices much back in September. But there’s reason to believe that Shanghai, the Ethereum upgrade that will allow staked ETH to be unstaked, could generate volatility.


JUMP CRYPTO: Last week the Securities and Exchange Commission didn’t identify the company that made more than $1 billion from the terraUSD/luna ecosystem before it collapsed. (The unnamed company wasn’t accused of wrongdoing.) But sources told CoinDesk that it’s Jump Crypto, which declined to comment.


BRAGGING: CoinDesk journalists won one of the biggest prizes in journalism, a George Polk Award, for the scoop that led to FTX’s collapse and two explosive followups.

To hear more analysis, click here or here for CoinDesk’s “Markets Daily Crypto Roundup” podcast.

One of Biden’s top COVID advisors believes vaccine critics ‘quietly’ got jabbed on the side

Eleanor Pringle
Wed, February 8, 2023 

David Kessler wasn't one of the people wheeled out in front of the press pack every day during the pandemic.

If he was on-screen, the White House's Chief Science Officer for the COVID-19 Response Team was often speaking to President Biden in a desperate bid to get the nation's response right "the first time".

When he got the call from the President's team in mid-2020 to help strategize a response to the strange and terrifying new disease, the former FDA commissioner believed he "wasn't good at it". Three years on he said he still feels that way, despite the fact that 269 million people have had at least one shot of a vaccine.

And even those who spread doubt about the jab rollout are likely to be among the 81% of the population who have had it, Kessler believes.- 

Speaking to Politico from his home in Maryland, the former head of Operation Warp Speed said: "The fact is, 226 million people got the primary series. Push comes to shove, many of those who are being critical of vaccines, I think quietly they’ve gotten the vaccine."

Having taken on Warp Speed after it was created under the Trump administration, Kessler also cautioned against those who confused a questioning mindset with undermining basic facts. Or, as he sees it: "Creating enough doubt so people go, well, maybe I don’t need to do this."

He added: "I’ve lived this before. In 1952, with the first data that smoking caused cancer. The mantra of the industry was, “not proven, not proven, not proven.” It created enough doubt that it gave people a crutch who didn’t want to quit. It gave them a reason to continue to smoke.

"These vaccines are not perfect. But certainly, if you’re over 50, if you have any risk factors, the benefit/risk [ratio] is just overwhelming. So yes, ask questions. But please make sure that people who need this, whose lives are really at risk, take advantage of a very important potentially lifesaving tool."

He added that disinformation would be the next frontier to battle, as the "virus is not done with us yet".

Kessler's Tucker Carlson regret

Although happy to have served out of the limelight, Kessler did reveal he had one regret: not sitting down with Fox News host Tucker Carlson to attempt to find some "common ground".

Carlson has long criticized the vaccine rollout, calling it "unethical" and "immoral" as well as peddling unfounded claims that vaccines are linked to cardiac arrest.

Kessler added opening communication between vaccine skeptics and the scientific community is core to America's "greatness", as it is a country built of people who "know how to solve problems together."
There's more work to do

That problem-solving may well need to be aimed at a next-generation vaccine, Kessler hinted. Time and again COVID has proved it can mutate –the latest strain, dubbed 'Kraken', is the most transmissible yet with a study warning it could spawn other immune-evasive mutations.

As well as needing to provide a level of protection against future strains Kessler added that they needed to be affordable.

President Biden announced at the end of January that the public health emergency would end in May, thus reducing some levels of government support. Among the measures will be the end of free at-home tests and hospitals not getting any extra cash for treating COVID patients.

The cost of getting vaccinated is also expected to rocket once the government stops forking out for them.

Pfizer said in October 2022 that it plans to sell the Covid vaccine it developed with BioNTech at $110 to $130 per dose for teens and adults once government funding runs out.

Kessler, who began serving the Oval Office under President George H.W. Bush at the FDA, announced his retirement at the start of this year.

He finished by saying there's a lot of work left to be done on COVID and that the road will be far from easy, but offered some optimism in that it was a "once-in-a-century" pandemic.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com