'Silver lining': Albania medicinal herbs bloom in pandemic

Issued on: 06/07/2021 -

Demand for medicinal plants such as cornflower is blossoming amid the coronavirus pandemic Gent SHKULLAKU AFP

Sheqeras (Albanie) (AFP)

Scents of sage, lavender and cornflowers rise from the meadows of Albania, which has seen soaring overseas demand for medicinal herbs since the coronavirus pandemic.

In Sheqeras, at the foot of the Mali i Thate mountain in Albania's south, it is the season for cornflowers, a plant traditionally valued for its ability to boost the metabolism and resistance to infections.

Early in the morning, before the heat of the day, dozens of women wearing broad-rimmed hats, hand-pick the magnificent signature-blue flowers that attract clouds of butterflies and bees.

The cornflowers are then dried in darkened rooms to preserve their colour before being shipped abroad.

For the past few years, Albania has been one of Europe's top producers of medicinal herbs, mostly wild plants harvested in the foothills.

About 95 percent are exported to the United States, Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany or Italy.

- Booming exports -

Demand has been soaring since the coronavirus pandemic increased interest in herbs believed to strengthen the immune system and amid growing enthusiasm for natural and organic products.

"Every cloud has a silver lining," says Altin Xhaja, whose company, Albrut, has, like many others in the sector, expanded areas under cultivation and intensified harvesting of wildflowers.#photo1

In 2020, Albania exported more than 14,000 tonnes of medicinal and aromatic herbs worth 50 million euros ($59 million).

That was 15 percent more compared with the previous year, official figures show.

And the trend continues, with exports 20 percent higher in the first three months of 2021 from a year earlier.

- 'We have to be quick' -

The boom is a windfall for one of Europe's poorest countries which, with a population of 2.8 million people, is largely dependent on tourism along the Adriatic coast that has been hard-hit by the pandemic.

Nettle, wild apple trees, cowslip and other medicinal plants provide a living for some 100,000 Albanians, who have long used them themselves in traditional remedies.

"It's a race against time. We have to be quick," says Xhaja.

"Cornflowers are the most expensive at the moment; a kilo of dried flowers will go for around 30 euros," he says.

Just next to the fields of cornflowers, a beautiful violet carpet of mallows can wait a bit longer before the harvest.

As dozens of workers busily select and sort plants at his factory in Lac, north of Tirana, Filip Gjoka says that the sector has also benefited from tensions between Washington and Beijing.#photo2

"The trade war between the United States and China has forced many Western players to turn towards the Albanian market," says Gjoka, who also heads the association of medicinal and aromatic herbs.

Around 30 Albanian companies are authorised to export the plants used in herbal medicine due to their anti-inflammatory, anti-septic and even anti-stress properties.

They are used to make teas rich in vitamin C and antioxidants, oils or ointments.

- 'Sage if my life' -

The rocky plateaus in Albania's north are home to sage, for which demand has increased by 40 percent, prompting farmers to increase the area under cultivation.

"It was unforeseen. It had to be done quickly to be able to respond" to the demand, says farmer Pjeter Cukaj, wiping the sweat from his forehead.

"These plants provide a living for more than 50 percent of families in the region," he adds, crediting local sage, lavender and wild herbs with "magical powers" for the health.

But farmers complain about the difficulty in finding funding for expansion and the construction of storage and drying facilities, and say that any financial aid they do get comes in dribs and drabs.

Professionals are also calling for a law for labels to guarantee quality, which would promote the sector's growth.

"Everything is pure, without pesticides, without anything," says Edlira Licaj, as she pulls weeds from around the sage along with a dozen other women.#photo3

"We do everything by hand," she says.

Meanwhile, 91-year-old Drane Cukaj attributes her longevity to the sage infusion she drinks every morning.

"Life is in the meadows, sage is my life, my love, it has always made me happy," says the mother of nine who also has 40 grandchildren.

Cukaj says she's convinced that the wild herbs "help against the coronavirus".

Still, that didn't stop her from getting the jab -- just in case.

© 2021 AFP

As Big Oil Execs Roam Free, Climate Activist Gets 8 Years in Prison

"How many years do you think ANY fossil fuel CEO will serve for knowingly destroying our planet's climate?" asked one climate group in response to Jessica Reznicek's sentence.

#NoDAPL water protectors Jessica Reznicek (L) and Ruby Montoya during a 2017 appearance on Democracy Now! (Photo: Democracy Now! screen grab)

BRETT WILKINS, STAFF WRITER

July 5, 2021

Environmentalists in recent days expressed outrage over the eight-year prison sentence handed to Jessica Reznicek—a nonviolent water protector who pleaded guilty to damaging equipment at the Dakota Access Pipeline in Iowa—while calling the fossil fuel companies who knowingly caused the climate emergency the real criminals who should be held to account.

"Why is Jessica Reznicek going to prison and Big Oil executives aren't?"
—Rebecca Parson, congressional candidate

United States District Court Judge Rebecca Goodgame Ebinger last week sentenced Jessica Reznicek to eight years behind bars, $3,198,512.70 in restitution, and three years' post-prison supervised release after the 39-year-old activist pleaded guilty to a single count of damaging an energy facility.

In September 2019 Reznicek and 31-year-old Ruby Montoya were each indicted on nine federal charges including damaging an energy facility, use of fire in the commission of a felony, and malicious use of fire. Each of the women faced up to 110 years in prison. Montoya has yet to be sentenced.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice:

Reznicek, as early as November 8, 2016, and continuing until May 2, 2017, conspired with other individuals to damage the Dakota Access Pipeline at several locations... Specifically, the defendant admitted to damaging and attempting to damage the pipeline using an oxy-acetylene cutting torch and fires near pipeline instrumentation and equipment in Mahaska, Boone, and Wapello counties [in] Iowa.

The Des Moines Register reported Ebinger said a terrorism sentencing enhancement could apply because "not only the flow of oil, but the government's continued response were targets of this action."

However, environmentalists and other observers questioned the sanity of a system that prosecutes as terrorists people protecting the planet against the existential threat of a climate emergency caused largely by fossil fuel use, while protecting and rewarding perpetrators of what a growing number of international jurists call the crime of ecocide.

Reznicek's sentencing on June 30 came on the same day as the publication of secretly recorded videos showing a senior ExxonMobil government affairs executive discussing lobbying related to infrastructure legislation, involvement with "shadow groups" that cast down on scientific consensus about the climate emergency, and "wins" during the Trump administration. ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel corporations have known about human-caused global heating for decades.

"How many years do you think ANY fossil fuel CEO will serve for knowingly destroying our planet's climate?" tweeted 350 Tacoma in response to Reznicek's sentencing.

The Nation editor-at-large Mark Hertsgaard noted in a recent opinion piece published in Common Dreams that "oil companies, the executives in charge of them, the propagandists they've employed, and the politicians they've funded have largely escaped blame, much less had to pay–whether through financial penalties or prison time—for the immense damage they have done."

Prior to her sentencing, Reznicek told the court that she acted out of concern that the pipeline—which has a history of leaks—would further contaminate Iowa's drinking water.

"The toxins we enter into our waterways here in Iowa enter into the Mississippi, which enters into the Gulf," she explained. "Going to this extreme was out of character for me."

"It wasn't an easy thing to do," Reznicek said. "It wasn't an easy decision to make. I discerned it at length. The conclusion that I made was that, in my heart, this was the right thing to do. In my heart, this was not violent. In my heart, the laws that protect this pipeline are the laws that are violent."

"The people who are constructing the pipeline are ultimately the people who are contributing to the desecration of the Earth," she added.

FBI Omaha Special Agent in Charge Eugene Kowel said following Reznicek's sentencing that "protecting the American people from terrorism—both international and domestic—remains the FBI's number one priority."

"We will continue to work with our law enforcement partners to bring domestic terrorists like Jessica Reznicek to justice," Kowel added. "Her sentence today should be a deterrent to anyone who intends to commit violence through an act of domestic terrorism."

Some activists contrasted Reznicek's sentence to the leniency shown so far toward participants in the deadly January 6 attack on the United States Capitol.

Other activists noted that direct action protests can result in the cancellation of pipeline projects. They point to President Joe Biden's rescission of the Keystone XL Pipeline's permit and, more recently, last week's cancellation of the Byhalia Connection Pipeline in Mississippi and Tennessee as proof of what grassroots organizing can accomplish.

Reznicek's sentencing came as Indigenous-led direct action protests against the Line 3 tar sands pipeline project in Minnesota and elsewhere continue—and Stop Line 3 water protectors face felony charges for engaging in peaceful civil disobedience.

 

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

 

Context in science reporting affects beliefs about, and support for, science

UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO

Research News

BUFFALO, N.Y. - How the media frame stories about science affects the public's perception about scientific accuracy and reliability, and one particular type of narrative can help ameliorate the harm to science's reputation sometimes caused by different journalistic approaches to scientific storytelling, according to a new study led by a University at Buffalo researcher.

"What our experiment shows is that the way the news media talk about science focuses too much attention on individuals in a way that doesn't accurately describe the way science actually works," says Yotam Ophir, an assistant professor of communication in UB's College of Arts and Sciences and the paper's lead author.

Ophir stresses that the public benefits from reports of scientific errors, but that benefit can be even greater if media coverage of failure includes mention that ongoing scrutiny is one of the hallmarks of the scientific enterprise.

Science is a process. It's not a set of eureka moments and brilliant discoveries. It's about a community of scholars who continuously, skeptically and constructively check each other's work, Ophir points out. And since much of the public's knowledge about science comes from the media, the absence of reporting on the community-based, self-correcting nature of science is worrisome.

"This becomes a problem when science makes mistakes - and science will inevitably make mistakes," says Ophir, an expert on the effect of media content on audiences. "When this happens, the narrative frequently shifts to a description of crisis, a moment that could lead people to lose faith in the reliability of science itself."

He says the media can better communicate the values of science by explaining how identifying and correcting scientific mistakes is evidence of a healthy scientific process. And the key is a new type of story, according to the study's findings published in the journal Public Understanding of Science.

Ophir and co-author Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a professor of communication at the University of Pennsylvania, call this story "problem explored." Its efficacy for explaining how science works emerged from their online study involving nearly 4,500 participants between the ages of 18 and 81.

To begin, the researchers performed a comprehensive content analysis. They identified that science stories generally fall into three broad categories:

• There is the "honorable quest," a story that chronicles a scientific achievement with a hero scientist who has produced reliable and consequential knowledge.
• The "counterfeit quest" is a story that initially reports a scientific success later found to be fraudulent, unethical or methodologically flawed.
• "Science is broken" relates to issues of replicability, an inherent part of the scientific process through which scientists repeat an experiment to see if their results match those of a previous published experiment. Replicability failures are often framed as evidence that science is broken.

Ophir and Jamieson also introduced, along with a control story unrelated to science, another narrative.

"In this new condition, which we call 'problem explored,' stories of replication failures and those about prominent research that's later found to be wrong remain part of the narrative, but failures are explained to be part of the scientific process," he says.

"We found the scientific failure narratives to be most detrimental to trust in science," says Ophir. "But if you better contextualize a failure story, we found it possible to ameliorate those detrimental effects.

"Contextualizing explains the nature of science. It's this processes of reassessment and re-evaluation that makes science strong."

As an example, Ophir points to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's temporary halting of delivery of Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine after reports surfaced of rare clotting events in some patients.

"The vaccine received federal approval, but was then pulled. How do you talk about this without creating distrust in science?" he asks. "The cynical way would be to use the case as evidence that science doesn't work, but that's misleading. What happened is that science worked exactly as it should. Concerns arose after approval; the data was re-examined; and scientists concluded that the risks were minimal and redeployed the vaccine."

The "problem explored" narrative, in addition to putting scientific failures in context, also generates a slipstream that restores some of the lost faith resulting from "science is broken" stories.

That the "problem explored" narrative didn't surface as part of the researchers' content analysis could be due to a number of factors. News directors might question whether such stories are newsworthy. Researchers themselves might be reluctant to share stories of successful replication as opposed to more novel advances.

But it's not just the media, and Ophir says this research is not about finger pointing.

"There is an interaction between sources and journalists," he says. "The 'science is broken' story, which is relatively recent, is something that came from scientists themselves. However well intentioned, the narrative they promoted and the way journalists accepted and framed the stories created indications of scientific unreliability."

Just as Ophir says this study suggests how a contextually framed story can provide insights into a healthy scientific process, the research also speaks to a healthy relationship between scientists and journalists.

"This is not about blame," he says. "I strongly believe that journalists do their best to serve the public. It's our job as scientists to provide them with stories that better contextualize our work."

 

Scientists warn on the harmful implications of losing Indigenous and local knowledge systems

The study has been published in the Journal of Ethnobiology

SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY

Research News

IMAGE: ACROSS THE VAST MAJORITY OF OUR PLANET, THE HISTORICAL AND CURRENT LAND-USES OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES AND LOCAL COMMUNITIES, TOGETHER WITH THEIR INTERWOVEN PRACTICES AND KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS, ARE ESSENTIAL FOR SUSTAINING... view more 

CREDIT: JOAN DE LA MALLA

Five Simon Fraser University scholars are among international scientists sounding an alarm over the "pervasive social and ecological consequences" of the destruction and suppression of the knowledge systems of Indigenous Peoples and local communities.

Their paper, published today in the Journal of Ethnobiology, draws on the knowledge of 30 international Indigenous and non-Indigenous co-authors, and highlights 15 strategic actions to support the efforts of Indigenous Peoples and local communities in sustaining their knowledge systems and ties to lands.

Study co-lead, SFU archaeology professor Dana Lepofsky, says, "We worked hard to find a balance between discussing the threats to Indigenous and local knowledge and highlighting how Indigenous Peoples and local communities are taking action to turn around these threats. Around the world, Indigenous Peoples and local communities are celebrating, protecting, and revitalizing their knowledge systems and practices.

"As scientists, policymakers, and global citizens, we need to support these efforts in our professional activities, in the policies of our governmental agencies, and in our personal choices."

The authors summarize how the knowledge systems and practices of Indigenous Peoples and local communities play fundamental roles in safeguarding the biological and cultural diversity of our planet. They also document how this knowledge is being lost at alarming rates, with dramatic social and ecological consequences.

"Although Indigenous and local knowledge systems are inherently adaptive and remarkably resilient, their foundations have been and continue to be compromised by colonial settlement, land dispossession, and resource extraction," says study co-lead Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares, a post-doctoral researcher from the University of Helsinki, Finland. "The ecological and social impacts of these pressures are profound and widespread."

The paper is part of the "Scientists' Warning to Humanity" series, which highlights threats to humanity caused by climate change, biodiversity loss and other global changes.

###

 

Secret to weathering climate change lies at our feet

New research on the microbiome of grass shows that the future lies with healthy bacteria

UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST

Research News

 

IMAGE: DROUGHT-STRICKEN FARMLAND IN NEW MEXICO view more 

CREDIT: RICHARD WELLENBERGER/ISTOCK/GETTY IMAGES PLUS

AMHERST, Mass. - Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently discovered that the ability of agricultural grasses to withstand drought is directly related to the health of the microbial community living on their stems, leaves and seeds.

"Microbes do an enormous amount for the grasses that drive the world's agriculture," says Emily Bechtold, a graduate student in UMass Amherst's microbiology department and lead author of the paper recently published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology. "They protect from pathogens, provide the grass with nutrients such as nitrogen, supply hormones to bolster the plant's health and growth, protect from UV radiation and help the grass manage drought." Yet, the increased severity and longevity of climate-change-driven drought conditions across the world is sapping the ability of the microbiome to thrive.

Since 60% of all agriculture is grass-related - think of the cows, sheep and other grass-munching livestock that provide meat, milk, cheese, leather, wool and other staples - the bacteria living on grass touches every aspect of our lives, from what we eat for breakfast to food security, economics and international development.

The new research, which is the first of its kind, focuses on two different types of grasses: those that make up the majority of grasslands in temperate zones and those that predominate in tropical regions. "The goal of this research," says Klaus Nüsslein, professor of microbiology at UMass Amherst, and the paper's senior author, "is to be able to manage the interactions between plants and the bacteria they host in order to support a truly sustainable agriculture." Until now, however, it was largely unknown how grass and its microbiome supported one another, and what effects drought might have on the bacterial communities.

The researchers, whose work was supported by the Lotta M. Crabtree Foundation and the National Science Foundation, grew their temperate and tropical grasses in two different greenhouses. Each greenhouse's climate was controlled to mimic natural climactic conditions. Once the grasses reached maturity, the researchers further divided each group into three sub-groups. The first, the control group, maintained optimum climactic conditions. A second sub-group had its climate altered to mimic mild drought conditions, while the third was subjected to severe drought conditions. Over the course of a month, the researchers counted, gathered, and sequenced the DNA of the bacteria across all the groups of grasses and compared the results.

What they found was that when the bacteria showed signs of drought-induced stress, so did the plants. As expected, the tropical grasses were better able to withstand drought than the temperate grasses, but there were significant shifts in the microbiomes of all the grasses under severe drought conditions. Not only were there fewer total bacteria, but the microbial communities became less diverse, and so less resilient to environmental stress. In some cases, there was an increase in the count of bacteria that can prove harmful to grass.

However, there is hope. A few potentially beneficial bacteria were shown to thrive under mild drought conditions. More research needs to be done, but, says Bechtold, their research indicates that plans to actively support and biofertilize with these beneficial bacteria could be the key to weathering the drought conditions that will only become more widespread in the era of global warming.

###

Contacts:
Klaus Nüsslein, nusslein@microbio.umass.edu
Daegan Miller, drmiller@umass.edu

NY PENSION FUND MANDATED

Bill pending Cuomo’s signature requires mandated savings plans for small-business employees

Employers with at least 10 workers would be required to offer the Secure Choice Program if the measure is signed into law.

By RALPH ORTEGA

JULY 5, 2021

A bill passed by both the state Senate and Assembly would create a mandated savings plan for private sector employees throughout New York. Legislation creating the Secure Choice Program goes back three years, and supporters are now lobbying for Gov. Andrew Cuomo to put his signature on an amendment that would give workers at small businesses with at least 10 employees the chance to put their money into a Secure Choice IRA. Employees also would be able to opt-out under the current legislation, which has support from Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie. 

City & State caught up with Beth Finkel, New York State director for the AARP, which has been among the groups hoping to see the bill signed into law. Finkel in a Q&A interview discusses why her group representing the interests of aging New Yorkers is backing the legislation, its origins and how the latest amendmendment impacts the small businesses. 

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

What does the Secure Choice Savings Program do and why do you want to see it signed into law?

This is a state facilitated retirement savings program, and there are over 3 1/2 million New Yorkers who haven't been able to save for their retirement through the workplace. We know that if you can save for your retirement through the workplace, then you are 50 times more likely to save for your retirement. In fact you're 20 times more likely to save for your retirement if it's automatically enrolled. This bill does both of those things. We want to empower people to save for their own retirement so that they can age with dignity and make the decisions that they want to make as they live their lives. 

Doesn’t this bill have its origins going back three years? 

There was an original bill three years ago and it got passed and which Gov. Andrew Cuomo did sign. They were supposed to create a commission and get it up and running, but it was not done within the three years that it was supposed to be done. And so they put a one-year extension on it. In the meantime, that bill was a weaker bill. It is not mandated for employers to participate and does not have an opt-out for employees. 

How is the new bill different? 

So this new bill that state Sen. Diane Savino and Assemblyman Robert Rodriguez shepherded through and which passed both houses, has both of those components in it. Any employer with 10 or more employees will be mandated to participate, which, by the way, is at no major additional cost to them. There's no matching funds from employers. This is really empowering people to save their own money for their retirement.

How badly needed is this proposed law?

Well, it's hard to believe, but that 3 1/2 million New Yorkers who can’t save for their retirement through the workplace, that’s over 50% of all the state employees who work in private industry. I don't have to tell you that it's pretty hard to live on Social Security alone when you retire. As a matter of fact, the average annual amount of Social Security paid across the country is around $20,000, but it's less than that in New York. Can you imagine retiring in New York with under $20,000 a year of income? You're not able to make any kind of decisions about the quality of your life. You are just surviving. This bill allows people to save for their own retirement, which is so essential to people's security as they age.

How likely are people going to engage in saving money for retirement after the coronavirus had such a devastating impact on the economy, and which led to job losses?

It’s Interesting you should ask that. We know that many small businesses in New York are now struggling to find employees. There are a lot of open jobs and a lot of those are in small businesses. That's the beauty of this program, because this and something that you can offer your employees as a recruitment tool and also to retain the employees that you already have. You can help them save for their retirement. 

You said this bill doesn’t come with any major economic impact on small businesses. Can you please elaborate on that? 

I'm so glad that you asked that question. It’s so negligible. The only thing that a business has to do is add another line to their payroll stub. If they use a big payroll company, it's either no-cost or a low-cost. It would not cost more than $500 a year for any business. No matter how many employees you have, it’s $500. What can you get for $500 today that makes sure that your employees are going to be able to save for their retirement. And by the way, it is absolutely against the rules for any employer to do any matching funds. And one other point, which is important, it takes away the fiduciary responsibility for the businesses. That responsibility lies solely with the state, once this state-facilitated program is up and running. We know it’s been a deterrent for small businesses for a long time, the cost of running a 401k, and having the fiduciary responsibility. Both of those pieces are taken away and the state takes them on. We know that small businesses want to do the right thing by their employees, but before this, they felt that there were barriers. With this program, there will be no more barriers.

New York City in April approved its own mandated employee retirement savings plan for the private sector. Will this compete or clash with the proposed state program?

They actually are mandated to start their savings program in August. With New York City going it alone, their program will take 1 million to 1 1/2 million employees out of the system that the state would have relied upon to join their savings system. They must ensure that they have the most people possible in the state program to make it feasible. So it’s really important for the state to jump in right now. Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Carl Heastie understand this and we know that the governor understands this and we hope that they close it up as soon as possible.

Ralph Ortega

is City & State's Editor in Chief.

Covid Protections Kept Other Viruses at Bay. Now They’re Back

When we masked and stayed home, we were shielded from winter viruses. As we get back to normal, some will resurge—and our immune systems may not be prepared.

PHOTOGRAPH: SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/SCIENCE SOURCE

IN THE MIDDLE of June, staffers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent out a bulletin to state health departments and health care providers, something they call a Health Advisory—meaning, more or less, that it contains information that’s important but not urgent enough to require immediate action. (”Health Alerts” are the urgent ones.)

The advisory told epidemiologists and clinicians to be on the lookout for respiratory syncytial virus, usually known as RSV, an infection that puts about 235,000 toddlers and senior citizens in the hospital each year with pneumonia and deep lung inflammation. RSV was cropping up in 13 southern and southeastern states, the agency warned, and clinicians should be careful to test for the virus if little kids showed up sneezing, wheezing, or with poor appetites and inflamed throats.

Normally, this bulletin would be no big deal: The CDC frequently sends out similar warnings. What made it odd was the timing. RSV is a winter infection. By June, it should be gone. Instead, it was spreading—and has since continued to spread up the East Coast.


You can think of the bulletin, and the virus it flagged, like an alarm bell. We already know that the things we did to defend against Covid disrupted the viral landscape over the past 16 months, suppressing infections from almost every winter pathogen. Now RSV’s out-of-season return tells us that we could be headed into viral havoc this winter, and no one knows just yet how that might play out.

“RSV has sprung back quicker than we predicted,” says Rachel E. Baker, an associate research scholar at the Princeton Environmental Institute. She was the first author on a study published last December that predicted lockdowns, masking, and social distancing would suppress RSV and flu in the US by at least 20 percent. “The idea was that, because we have a lack of population immunity—a build-up of susceptibility—things would spread fast, even outside the typical RSV season. And that’s what we’re starting to see right now,” she says. (It turns out, she adds, that the 20 percent was conservative; data is still being gathered, but depending on location, up to 40 percent might have been suppressed.)

To understand why what’s happening now is so off-track, imagine a normal winter. We talk about “flu season,” but, in fact, winter (in either hemisphere) contains overlapping epidemics from a range of respiratory infections—not just flu but RSV, parainfluenza, human metapneumovirus, enteroviruses, adenoviruses, other long-known coronaviruses that don’t cause Covid, and rhinoviruses, which are responsible for at least a third of what we think of as everyday colds.

Despite being common, those viruses aren’t necessarily benign. Flu can cause ear infections, pneumonia, and inflammation of the brain and heart, and has killed anywhere from 12,000 to 61,000 Americans in past seasons. RSV kills up to 500 kids younger than 5 each year. One variety of enterovirus, known as EV-D68, is linked to a floppy paralysis resembling polio. Rhinovirus causes asthma flare-ups.

So it was excellent news when researchers began to notice that the normal cycles on which these viruses occur had been disrupted during Covid. In cities, in counties and provinces, in nations, and broadly across the world, most of the viruses that should have been circulating effectively vanished. Infections caused by them were detected only sporadically, if at all.

Of course, they didn’t actually go away. They just couldn’t get to us: The things we did that protected us from Covid protected us from them, too. But they’re still out there—and now that we’re relaxing our protective behaviors, they are finding us again.

The US isn’t the only place to experience an out-of-season RSV surge. Australia, South Africa, Iceland, and various European countries did also. In France, RSV arrived four months late—April instead of December—according to Jean-Sébastien Casalegno, a physician and virologist at the Institut des Agents Infectieux of the Hospices Civils in Lyon and first author on a March preprint describing the outbreak.

There are not a lot of models to indicate what might happen next. Will RSV return again this year and have a smaller, weaker season in its normal time slot? Will it slowly rotate around the calendar til it ends up back where it belongs? “Seasonality will probably come back after several seasons,” Casalegno says. “What’s complicated is next season, what will happen.”

Viruses are seasonal for complicated reasons, not just because they have evolutionary preferences for particular temperatures and humidity, but because winters tend to be the time when people crowd together indoors. But they are also seasonal because it takes a while to build up a sufficiently large number of vulnerable people—those who have not previously been exposed, or vaccinated if a vaccine exists—to provide a virus with enough territory to reproduce and pass copies of itself to new hosts.

Just how that group of “susceptibles” expands is slightly different for each virus. For RSV, which usually observes an annual cycle, the youngest children are at most risk. By school age, most kids have gained immunity from infection, or from repeated exposures that didn’t cause symptoms but still allowed their immune systems to create a defense.

Children may be susceptible not just because they themselves weren’t exposed, but because their mothers also were not. A national study of RSV antibodies in pregnant women is finding lower levels in their blood than were recorded in past years, which means they may not possess the same degree of protection to pass on. This could mean that, when RSV bounces back, more children might contract the virus or become sicker than they otherwise would, or catch it earlier in their lives, in their most vulnerable months.

EV-D68 is also seasonal, but in a more complicated way. First, its outbreaks occur in summer, not winter. Second, as demonstrated in the first analysis of its seasonality, published in March in Science Translational Medicine, both the respiratory illness it causes and that floppy paralysis seems to recur every two years. That analysis found that the cycles are driven by climate conditions, but also by the immune system: Women who are exposed to EV-D68 while pregnant pass antibodies against it to their infants. Thus, for their first 6 months, babies are protected against the disease, and become vulnerable as that passive immunity wanes. That later vulnerability, combined with seasonality, seems to drive the slower accumulation of susceptibles.

The last EV-D68 outbreak was predicted to occur last summer, in 2020. Just as with RSV and flu, it did not arrive, and for similar reasons: Masking, distancing, hand-washing, and staying home protected kids who would have been vulnerable then. And as with RSV, no one is sure what will happen next.

“There’s nothing about enteroviruses that makes them love even years—they don’t have a lucky number,” says Kevin Messacar, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado and Children's Hospital Colorado who was a coauthor on that March analysis. “The model for this whole family of viruses, which is well-described, would not predict that we would wait until 2022 for an outbreak because we missed a cycle. It would say we are continually growing the pool of susceptibles who haven’t seen that virus.”

And then there’s flu—always the most unpredictable of the respiratory infections, because it mutates nonstop to evade our immune defenses, periodically swaps its dominant strains for new ones, and sometimes triggers mild disease years and sometimes devastating ones. Flu is also, right now, the future infection that is causing the most anxiety. Without some dramatic return to social distancing, “I am expecting an inordinately bad flu season,” says Sarah Cobey, an immunologist and associate professor of ecology and evolution at the University of Chicago. “I expect more people to get infected with flu. I also expect there to be a lot of really bad flu infections.”

If more people are susceptible, more are likely to get sick, unless something intervenes. (More on that in a minute.) And as more people get sick, there will be more people passing on the virus to other susceptibles.

But also: Not everyone who gets exposed to the flu gets really sick. Some people have a transient brush with it—just enough to boost their existing immunity, sort of like a top-up. In 2020, not only did few people get severe flus, but few received this immune system refresher. So now the population’s ability to defuse the flu’s attack is out of practice—and those who would normally be somewhat susceptible when a new season begins may be more likely to become seriously ill.

About that intervention: That would be the influenza vaccine. It doesn’t work equally well every year—sometimes its annual recalibration to anticipate flu’s latest mutations misses the target—and not everyone takes it. Still, the shot is the best defense against contracting the flu and becoming seriously ill. But every year, flu shots barely arrive on time; the process that begins with strain selection and ends up with vaccine vials on trucks is always a race to the finish. If the next flu season begins early, it could arrive before the vaccine.

“It’s not uncommon to see small clusters of infection when schools and colleges go back into session,” congregating in close quarters just as cooling temps become flu-friendly, says Emily Toth Martin, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. “Take that and put it into a scenario where we have low population immunity—more dry wood in the forest. If one of those fall clusters starts to take off, the timing of the vaccine could miss it.”

Further complications could arise. The vaccine could be less effective than normal. Its composition every year arises through predictions made from viruses isolated from patients during the previous season, but with so few cases last year, the strain selection might have been skewed. And the flu could cause even more serious illness than it normally does—because it might be contracted by people recovering from Covid-19, who have been left with long-term breathing or lung-clearance problems.


None of this sounds good, but there is a potential bright spot. It's possible that a quirk in how viruses encounter our biology may undercut these dire predictions of illnesses to come. If overlapping waves of different viruses wash over us next winter, our bodies’ responses to the first-arriving infections might excite our immune systems enough to protect us against later ones.

Immediately after the 2009 H1N1 avian flu, Casalegno and colleagues launched a study asking why that epidemic seemed to start later in France than in other European countries. They concluded that an early, intense wave of rhinovirus got in the way of the flu. It triggered immune responses in rhinovirus-infected people that effectively bounced the flu virus off their airway cells.

Last year, Ellen Foxman of Yale Medical School and colleagues showed how that phenomenon, known as viral interference, might work. They demonstrated that rhinovirus infection in cultured cells taken from human airways triggered the release of interferon, an immune system protein, which protected the cells from being entered by the 2009 virus. This June, they showed that the same response could also protect cells against the Covid coronavirus, by keeping it from latching on and replicating. In between those two papers, Pablo Murcia and team at the University of Glasgow confirmed the same result in cell cultures, and also modeled that the interaction could be meaningful for an entire population as well as for individuals. Under certain circumstances, lots of colds could keep Covid from spreading.

All of that is speculative—or at least insufficiently modeled. The population dynamics of seasonal infections are intricate in the best of times, and there is not yet enough data to say what multiple, possibly off-kilter, waves of them will do to people, especially those with lesser immunity or damaged health.

But there is this: We already know how to prevent those infections, or at least how to mitigate them. Much of the world kept them mostly at bay for more than a year through fairly simple actions. Keeping up with wearing masks, staying home when sick, and washing hands could make a difference in how the next viral season unfolds.

“All of these viruses will come back at some point—but if we still have some measures in place, they may come back in a more gradual way,” Messacar says. “If we stop everything simultaneously, there’s a high chance that those pathogens could resurge with even more spread than would typically be seen.”



Maryn McKenna (@marynmck) is a contributor for WIRED. She writes about public and global health and food policy, and she is a senior fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University. She is the author of Beating Back the Devil, Superbug, and *Big Chicken: The Incredible Story... Read more
CONTRIBUTOR

FROM THE RIGHT

When the Trump magic is gone

Does the former president understand or, more importantly, care why some Americans still support him?

Former president Donald Trump at his rally in Sarasota, Florida (Getty)

Written by:
Pedro L. Gonzalez
THE SPECTATOR

JUL 6,2021

It seems the summertime auguries bode badly for former president Donald Trump, who has made a business of harmlessly splashing his feet in the Rubicon. He has reportedly made up his mind about running for president again in 2024 but won’t say whether he’ll cross the river yet — so you’ll just have to keep giving him your money to find out. Naturally, people are growing bored and frustrated with the spectacle.

QAnon supporters are probably Trump’s most fervent followers, and they received his recent rally in Wellington, Ohio, with a sigh of ennui. Apart from the standard artillery blasting traitorous RINOs, Trump railed against the rising tide of crime and ridiculed ‘woke’ generals. But the diehards snored. ‘Judging by the Trump-supporting normies I live with, they were bored with his speech,’ said one QAnon devotee, articulating the general mood of the online movement. ‘I support Trump but this is getting ridiculous.’

The Ohio rally was followed by a visit to the southern border, where Trump briefly excoriated President Joe Biden’s immigration policies before turning the spotlight on himself. ‘We did a hell of a job,’ he bragged. ‘Now we have an open, really dangerous border.’ Continuing on his quasi campaign trail, Trump hit the Sarasota Fairgrounds in Florida, where he thundered about the plight of his supporters after the events at the Capitol on January 6. ‘And how come so many people are still in jail over January 6 when nobody paid the price for the fire and carnage and death that took place in Democrat run cities throughout our country,’ he said, ‘including antifa, and BLM? How come, how come?’
The problem with Trump now is that if he intends to run for president in 2024, his platform apparently consists of complaining about issues he either created, exacerbated, or did little to nothing about while in power.

The former president surrounded himself with and continues to endorse ‘RINOs’, from Nikki Haley then to Tim Scott now. Trump responded to the crimewave he’s now campaigning against with the Platinum Plan’s concessions, which included more — not less — criminal justice reform, $500 billion in reparations, and the federalization of Black Independence Day, otherwise known as ‘Juneteenth’. Trump staffed his administration with ‘woke’ military brass, like former defense secretary Jim Mattis, who in November called on Biden to eliminate ‘America First’ as a guiding principle of defense strategy. Even as Trump prepared to visit the border, the Government Accountability Office reported that his administration completed just 69 miles of the wall system he promised Americans, undercutting his claim in early June that there were only ‘small remaining openings in areas of the almost 50-mile long wall.’ Even on immigration, his signature issue, Trump’s record is mixed.

The Migration Policy Institute credits COVID-19 with doing more to dramatically reduce legal immigration than any of the Trump administration’s policies. Approval of H-1B visa applications, for instance, reached their highest point under Trump ahead of the pandemic immigration ban. The National Bureau of Economic Research found in June that while Trump ‘reduced immigration among deported Mexicans and at least temporarily among Central Americans, it had no effect on the overall inflow of unauthorized Mexican workers.’ This matters because the narrative that Trump had ‘solved’ the immigration issue was being used by the end of his presidency to justify increasing the levels of seasonal guest workers and rationalize amnesty.

And to the question of ‘how come so many people are still in jail over January 6?’ the answer is simple: Trump didn’t grant them clemency when he had the power to do so, as he did with Charles Kushner, Democrat megadonor Salomon Melgen, or rappers Lil Wayne and Kodak Black. There is no lobby for or political gain in clemency for the forgotten Trump supporters. Vice President Kamala Harris, at least, led efforts to get rioters and looters out of jail through the use of private dollars and foundations that funded legal defense teams. Trump has the wherewithal but not the will and still seems entirely self-centered, as Republican mailers indicate.

The subject line of an email sent to the unfortunate souls whose contact information is forever trapped in the infernal GOP database reads: ‘Trumppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp.’ The body isn’t much better. ‘President Trump is holding an EPIC Rally in Florida TONIGHT and we need your help,’ it reads. ‘We need the Florida Rally Blitz to be a HUGE success to prove that the American People still support President Trump and the GOP.’

A good question is whether Trump understands or, more importantly, cares why some Americans still support him.

Apart from his increasingly stale and contradictory campaigning, Trump faces another problem now: Florida governor Ron DeSantis. The former Navy officer has effectively navigated the truculent waters of everything from the pandemic — he resisted draconian quarantine measures — to crime — he signed a bill that empowers people to defend themselves against looters and rioters. DeSantis isn’t perfect, but he has proven himself competent in a way that Trump did not. In late June, DeSantis edged out Trump in a presidential straw poll, 74 percent to 71 percent. That likely grates on the former president’s pride, who recently asserted himself in the governor’s home state.

Ahead of the Sarasota rally, DeSantis’s team reportedly asked Trump to postpone the event out of respect for the tragedy in Surfside, Florida, where a condominium collapsed, killing and wounding scores. The ongoing search and rescue efforts continue to dig up more bodies in ruins, among which was the seven-year-old daughter of a Miami firefighter. A Trump rally amid this crisis, DeSantis’s team argued, would seem tasteless and tone-deaf, especially when the tragedy has resulted in a rare moment of community unity despite the otherwise rancorous political polarization of the times. Trump’s team flatly rebuffed those concerns; his show would go on. Although DeSantis held his tongue, he did not attend the Sarasota rally — and Trump did not mention him there. It’s likely a matter of time before these tensions boil over.

Part of Trump’s success in 2016 stemmed from the magic of the unknown factor. You did not know what you would get but hoped that Trump would punish your enemies and reward your friends at the very least. That did not happen. Trump pledged economic populism in 2016; he instead delivered corporate tax cuts in 2017 and promised a capital gains tax cut in 2020. He extended clemency to the enemies of his supporters while they were hauled off to jail, where guards have allegedly beaten them. Still, it didn’t matter because policy took a backseat to personality and ‘plan-trusting.’ But the plan, if there ever was one, exploded, and Trump supporters are paying the price. All that remains is the persona of Trump that is losing its luster and energy — the ‘magic’ — with every blustering rally.


By Pedro L. GonzalezPedro L. Gonzalez is the associate editor at Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.

GOP Culture War Over Critical Race Theory Bleeds Into School Board Recalls

People hold up signs during a rally against "critical race theory" (CRT) being taught in schools at the Loudoun County Government center in Leesburg, Virginia on June 12, 2021. - "Are you ready to take back our school"

 
By Summer Concepcion
|
July 6, 2021 

Efforts to recall school board members as the GOP hijacks “critical race theory” to manufacture another faux culture war are rising nationwide.

Axios first reported Tuesday that at least 51 recall efforts involving K-12 school boards have been initiated so far this year, which target at least 130 elected members of those boards, citing data from Ballotpedia.

According to Ballotpedia, recall efforts within school boards this year are more than twice the annual average. Between 2006 and 2020, Ballotpedia found a yearly average of 23 recall efforts against 52 school board members in comparison.

California alone holds 22 of the current recall efforts, while Arizona and Idaho hold six and four recall efforts, respectively.

Although school board recalls have largely been apolitical in the past — typically spurred from issues over mismanagement or allegations of corruption — this year’s recall efforts center around mask mandates and the critical race theory culture war that the right-wing has hijacked and appropriated, according to Ballotpedia’s analysis.

Some examples of this: a political action committee spearheaded by former Trump Justice Department official Ian Prior is sponsoring a recall of school board members in Loudoun County, Virginia over critical race theory. Another recall effort targeting two of the five members of the Litchfield Elementary School District Governing Board in Arizona is due to members’ objections regarding critical race theory.

The push to recall school board members comes as the GOP has taken on critical race theory as one of its flailing efforts to hype divisive culture wars — the party has attempted to create a caricature of the academic theory that differs dramatically from the academic and legal concept that was first developed in law schools in the 1970s.

Conservatives in recent weeks have attempted to make “critical race theory” a national issue as pundits and right-wing pressure groups push for state legislatures to ban or discourage teaching on systemic racism in public schools.

Local Trump-aligned pressure groups have also prompted an exodus of election officials recently as the former president continues to espouse falsehoods of a stolen election. Election workers have faced threats and intimidation during and after the 2020 presidential election amid Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud.

The White House Is Working On A Plan To Push Back Against Powerful Companies

July 06, 2021

Asma Khalid

White House press secretary Jen Psaki and Brian Deese, director of the National Economic Council, take questions from reporters on Friday. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The White House will unveil an executive order in the next few days aimed at promoting competition in parts of the economy — such as airlines and agriculture — where a handful of large companies exert a lot of market power, press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters.

The order will direct government agencies to issue rules that are intended, according to the Biden administration, to create a more equitable market for consumers.

Specifically, it would direct the Department of Agriculture to a make it easier for farmers to fight back against corporate agriculture companies, bring claims under the Packers and Stockyards Act, and aim to prevent chicken processors from underpaying farmers, a source said. The proposed changes would also protect farmers from retaliation when they speak out about bad behavior.

The president will also encourage the Federal Trade Commission to allow farmers to repair their farming equipment as they choose, rather than being limited by tractor manufacturers that prevent farmers from using independent repair shops through the use of proprietary tools, software and diagnostics that force farmers to use dealers for repairs.

Psaki said the White House plans to direct the USDA to clarify that meat can only be labeled as a "Product of the USA" when the livestock is raised in the United States — and that the label cannot be used when meat is merely processed in the United States.

The executive order is a broad measure that intends to deal with competition across multiple industries. The White House's thinking is that antitrust measures, such as this executive order, will help drive more durable economic growth in the long run.

The order will also direct the Department of Transportation to create a series of rules the White House says ought to create more transparency and assistance for airline passengers.

"These rule-makings will specifically ensure that if a passenger pays to check a bag, they should get that fee back if the bag doesn't arrive on time," Brian Deese, director of the National Economic Council, told reporters on Friday. "Also, if the passenger pays for a service like Wi-Fi, and it doesn't actually work, that you will get that fee back quickly."

Copyright NPR 2021.