Friday, September 30, 2022

In sacred Brazil dunes, critics see evangelical encroachment


Brazil Sand Dune Dispute Members of the Indigenous community join Afro Brazilian community members in a protest march, in Salvador, Brazil, Sunday, Sept. 18, 2022. Protesters called on authorities to take action against projects that would have environmental impact on the dunes, including one to accommodate evangelical pilgrims congregating at the Abaete dune system, an area members of the Afro Brazilian faiths consider sacred. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)More

DAVID BILLER
Wed, September 28, 2022 at 10:00 PM·7 min read

SALVADOR, Brazil (AP) — The vast blanket of white sand overlooking Salvador is a place to escape rumbling traffic, pinging phones and crying children. A space to find solitude and, increasingly, God.

Evangelicals have been converging on the massive Abaete dune system for some 25 years but especially lately, with thousands now coming each week to sing, pray and enter trancelike states. Some scrawl prayers on scraps of paper to be burned.

“I never tire of coming up here and glorifying,” said Deja Soares, 47, adding that she has seen the paralyzed walk and the blind see. “The things God does here are incredible.”

This year the dunes have become a flashpoint after City Hall began building a plaza and welcome center at one spot along their base, with a staircase up the sand soon to follow. A future phase would entail a platform atop the plateau. Defenders of the project say it’s necessary to protect the fragile dunes from the increasingly heavy foot traffic.


But it has come under fire from Afro Brazilian religious groups, who have been performing their own rituals in the dunes for generations, and protest what they see as elected officials abusing their power to coopt and Christianize yet another public space. They say their objections reflect evangelicals’ rising influence in the country’s halls of power and politics straining interreligious relations ahead of Oct. 2 general elections.

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This is the second installment in The Associated Press' two-part package about the intersection of politics and religion in Brazil.

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While Catholicism is still the largest religion in Brazil, in recent years it has slipped below 50% of the population to lose its status as a majority faith, and is projected to be overtaken by evangelical churches in a decade.

This year there are nearly 500 evangelical pastors running for state and federal legislatures, more than triple the number in 2014, according to data from political analyst Bruno Carazza. Sóstenes Cavalcante, leader of Congress' evangelical caucus, told AP he believes they can win a third of the Lower House’s seats, matching their share of the population.

Increased political power has, at times, altered the dynamics of public space nationwide, including in Bahia state, whose capital is Salvador.

One mayor in Bahia recently symbolically bestowed the key to the city on God and subjugated all other spiritual entities to Christ. Another in Salvador's metro region renamed a market “Jeová Jireh,” meaning “The Lord Will Provide,” and vendors selling specialized products to members of Afro Brazilian faiths were allegedly barred from obtaining stalls. Bahia’s state legislature was adorned with a 30-foot panel featuring a Bible and the ark of the covenant.

“There is a project to dispute territory and power that is already being executed,” said Lívia Sant’Anna Vaz, a state prosecutor focusing on human rights discrimination.

It was in that context that the dunes project was greenlit by an evangelical pastor who served as infrastructure secretary. Workers are toiling day and night to complete it this month.

On Sept. 18 roughly 200 evangelicals made a four-hour pilgrimage to the site, some barefoot as they traversed Salvador’s streets to arrive at the steep rise of sand they call the “Holy Mountain.”

Clad in flowy white garments, they faced the city and raised their hands as Bishop Wedson Tavares prayed for God to influence the election. With flags of Brazil and Israel in his shaking fists, he blessed elected officials from city councilors on up to President Jair Bolsonaro — a fervent supporter of evangelical interests — and pleaded for his reelection.

“Take the direction, in Jesus’ name, of this country, so your people can be happy!” the bishop said, kneeling with his eyes squeezed shut. “Because your word says that when the just govern, the people rejoice!”

Spectacles like that have Jaciara Ribeiro, a priestess of the Afro Brazilian Candomble faith, which has historically faced repression in Salvador, convinced that the public works project is a ploy for evangelicals' electoral support.

“It’s a political concession,” she said. “They are building as a function of partisan politics. Doing that ‘Holy Mountain’ is for the evangelical vote. That’s it.”

Previously she would climb that dune to retrieve barbatimão leaves for rituals honoring the deity Oxalá, but lately she has begun avoiding it. Members of her nearby temple have been insulted when walking past or had Bibles brandished at them, she said.

Roque Soares, director of an environmental nonprofit that helped develop the project, denied that politics are at play and said the aim is to keep the crowds from eroding the dunes and provide them with bathrooms.

The dunes are personal for Soares, who is also an evangelical pastor and a police detective. Decades ago he used to go there to smoke marijuana, sleep with women and hunt birds. After he converted, he said, it was there the Lord cured four hernias that doctors said would require surgery.

“I started coming to this place with another perspective, to seek out God’s presence,” said Soares, 53. “I found many different people from different denominations, different parts of our city and the interior of our state.”

The area affected by the project is only a tiny fraction of the vast dune system. Soares noted it didn't face opposition until an evangelical pastor and city councilman presented a bill to officially christen the location “Holy Mountain The Lord Will Provide.”

While backlash forced the withdrawal of that proposal, evangelicals still call the area “Holy Mountain” — as does the mayor. At a packed meeting inside Salvador’s convention center, he told hundreds of cheering Christians that he was building “Holy Mountain” so they can manifest their faith. Then a bishop from one of Brazil's largest evangelical churches called four legislative candidates onto the stage and asked the crowd to vote for them.

Amid the dispute, several “Holy Mountain” signs put up by Roque's nonprofit have been damaged, and some evangelicals accuse members of Afro Brazilian faiths of being responsible.

In mid-September, Ribeiro, who is known as Mother Jaciara of Oxum, received word that the federal public defenders’ office had sued to suspend the project. She took it as a sign the deity Oxum had heard their pleas, and she wanted to go there to celebrate. But she worried that members of her temple would be afraid to join, intimidated by the evangelical presence.

“They have an army of God. I’d like to have an army of Oxum,” she said with a wink.

Forces mustered soon enough, and practitioners of Afro Brazilian faiths gathered days later to protest the project and other measures seen as environmental aggressions against the dunes.

Dressed in white, they marched to Abaete Lagoon, the traditional site in the dunes for most for their rituals, and lined up along the water in a symbolic hug for the area.

From a sound truck, a Candomble priestess urged people to political action. Many wore stickers supporting left-wing legislative candidates, at least two of whom were present, and former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who is running against Bolsonaro.

Down the lagoon's shore, an evangelical pastor called three church members into the water to be baptized, plunging their heads beneath the surface and then hugging them tightly.

The pastor, Edy Santos, said afterward that he wasn’t bothered by the continuous drumming from the protest and that he refuses to talk politics with his flock, even when they ask.

“Our country is totally divided. It’s a division of thoughts,” said Santos, 32. “And the church came to unite.”

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
























Jewish sect in Mexico escape from detention after police raid





People escape Mexican detention center, after raid on Jewish sect, in Huixtla

Thu, September 29, 2022 
By Jose Torres

HUIXTLA, Mexico (Reuters) - A group of about 20 members of a fundamentalist Jewish sect escaped from a Mexican detention center in the southern state of Chiapas on Wednesday night, according to a Reuters reporter who filmed the incident.

The group were being held by Mexico's National System for Integral Family Development, or DIF, following a raid by Mexican police on Friday that targeted Lev Tahor - a strict Jewish sect that practices arranged marriages and full-body coverings for girls as young as three.

The sect is estimated to consist of about 200 to 300 people and rejects the state of Israel.

Neither the DIF nor the office of Mexico's Attorney General's office responded to requests to comment on the case.

On Tuesday, Israel's foreign ministry issued a statement about the raid, saying it "took place after Mexican police gathered incriminating evidence against several members of the cult on suspicion of drug trafficking, rape and more."

Mexican police did not respond to requests for comment.

The Israeli statement said two Lev Tahor members were arrested on human trafficking and severe sexual offences.

It added that many of the members were Israeli citizens and that one former member had taken part in the raid in a bid to be reunited with his 3-year-old son who had remained in the sect. The two were reunited and have returned to Israel, the statement said.

Other members of the sect were transferred to the DIF facility.

The Reuters video showed the group overpowering guards and forcing their way out through a door of the compound where they were being held. Those escaping included children and women holding babies.

"They wouldn't let us leave", said David Rosales, a member of the sect, after the escape. "This is a violation of freedom and religious rights."

Videos shared overnight by Mexican media had shown children climbing on the bars of the facility, crying and calling for their families.

Founded in the 1980s by Israeli Shlomo Helbrans, the Lev Tahor practice an austere form of Judaism. Winning admiration from some Jews for its devoutness, the group is condemned by others as a cult-like sect.

Lev Tahor ("Pure Heart" in Hebrew) has faced multiple allegations of kidnapping, child marriage and physical abuse since it was founded in the 1980s.

Earlier this year, two Lev Tahor leaders were sentenced in the United States to 12 years in prison for kidnapping and sex trafficking crimes.

The group has moved countries frequently, including from the United States, Israel, Canada, Guatemala, Mexico and parts of Europe.

(Reporting by Jose Torres, Henriette Chacar, Sarah Morland and Valentine Hilaire, Editing by Diane Craft and Rosalba O'Brien)
Hungarians protest change in abortion rules





Wed, September 28, 2022 

BUDAPEST (Reuters) - More than 1,000 Hungarians protested on Wednesday against a change in abortion rules that took effect on Sept. 15, which women's rights groups say would "humiliate" and torment women while having no effect on the number of abortions.

Under the rules amended by Conservative Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government, pregnant women must submit evidence from their healthcare provider of a definitive sign of life, widely interpreted as the heartbeat of a foetus, before requesting the procedure.

The government gave no reason for the change and denied it would amount to a tightening of rules. Some political analysts have said it could be aimed at winning votes for Orban's Fidesz party from the far-right Our Homeland party, which won seats in parliament for the first time in April, and had campaigned for these changes to abortion rules.

"Although the government pretends to be 'pro-life', these measures do not protect a single life: the real purpose of the sneaking restriction is the humiliation of women and to exercise control over women's lives," organisers said in a statement.

They called on Orban's government to provide safe living conditions for women expecting children and to make contraception accessible to everyone.

Protesters, some of whom carried placards saying "My body, my life, my decision" or "Free of charge contraception for everyone," gathered outside Hungary's parliament and planned to march to the Interior Ministry, which drew up the reforms.

"I think this is a very bad requirement as going for an abortion in itself is... a hugely traumatising experience," said Laura Fekete, 22, a student, referring to the change which means women must effectively have heard the foetus' heartbeat.

"I believe it is up to each and every individual to decide if they want to have a child or not... and the government should not meddle in this."

Current rules allow Hungarian women to request an abortion in cases of rape, risks to the mother's health from the pregnancy, a severe disability of the unborn child or in case of a serious personal crisis.

The number of abortions fell to about 22,000 in Hungary last year from over 90,000 in 1990 based on official statistics.

Nearby Poland, among Europe's most devoutly Catholic countries, has a near-total ban on abortion.

(Reporting by Krisztina Than; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)
Uganda Ebola outbreak in 5 points - 23 deaths linked so far: 'No cure but...'

Manjiri Chitre | Edited by Swati Bhasin - Monday


Uganda has reported 18 confirmed cases and 18 probable cases of Ebola so far, reported the country's ministry of health - fuelling fears of a spreading outbreak for which a vaccine has not yet been found. It also reported that a total of 23 people have died due to the disease - five confirmed and 18 probable deaths. The World Health Organization (WHO) has also dispatched a team to the East African country to help respond to the outbreak.


Uganda Ebola outbreak (AFP)© Provided by Hindustan Times

Here are the top five updates on the Ebola outbreak:

1. The Uganda health ministry has confirmed 18 cases of the Ebola disease from the Mubende, Kyegegwa, and Kassanda districts. Along with this, another 18 probable Ebola cases are also recorded. A total of 23 people have died due to the virus, the ministry said - out of which five are confirmed Ebola deaths and 18 are probable deaths.

Also read: Ghana reports highly infectious Ebola-like Marburg virus: Symptoms, treatment

2. The World Health Organization (WHO) has dispatched a team to the East African country to help respond to the health crisis. According to the WHO, while there is no cure for the disease, early detection of cases and treatment of symptoms greatly increases the chances of survival.

3. The WHO also said that a vaccine that is highly effective against the Ebola-Zaire strain does not provide cross-protection against the Ebola-Sudan strain.

4. The current outbreak first began in a small village in Mubende district around the beginning of September. On September 20, Uganda's health ministry announced the country's first fatality from the highly contagious Ebola virus since 2019.

5. The Ebola disease includes a haemorrhagic fever whose symptoms include intense body weakness, muscle pain, headache, sore throat, vomiting, diarrhea, and rashes among others.

(With inputs from agencies)

Ugandan president rules out Ebola containment, says ‘very easy to stop’ virus
NOT JUST MISINFORMATION, BUT DISINFORMATION
Daniel Stewart - Yesterday 

The President of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, has ruled out the application of a confinement because of the Ebola outbreak detected in the district of Mubende and has downplayed the epidemiological situation in the African country by stating that "it is very easy" to stop its spread.



Archive - Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni - XINHUA / ZUMA PRESS / CONTACTOPHOTO© Provided by News 360

"There is no need for confinement. We simply have to be careful with a few things. This time we are fighting (the disease) in a different way," said the president, who refused to "close schools, prevent people from going to churches or markets or from moving".

"We, who are used to fighting in war, when we heard about the characteristics of Ebola we decided to fight in a different way," he explained, before assuring that the authorities "have the capacity" to deal with the outbreak.

Thus, he stated that "this disease does not need great measures". "It is not spread through the air. It is an enemy that we can easily fight. The big battle is to wash our hands. Let there be no panic, because it is very easy to stop it," he argued.

Museveni has also confirmed that among the confirmed cases of Ebola there are five health workers who were exposed to the first patient identified as infected, who has already died, as reported by the Ugandan newspaper 'The Nile Post'.

The Ugandan Ministry of Health indicated on Monday in its latest report that 36 cases have been confirmed to date - 18 confirmed and 18 probable - including 23 deaths - five confirmed and 18 probable. Thirty-five people are also in hospital.

Uganda declared the Ebola outbreak on September 20 after confirming the death of a patient who tested positive, after which the World Health Organization (WHO) said the confirmation followed an investigation by the national rapid response team after six "suspicious deaths" in the district over the past month.

The agency noted that the outbreak is of the Zaire strain. To date, seven outbreaks of this strain -- four in Uganda and three in Sudan -- have been detected. Uganda reported its last case of this strain in 2012, while in 2019 it declared an outbreak for the Zaire strain, imported from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Uganda's Ebola outbreak: Why is it so serious?

By Anne Soy
Senior Africa correspondent

  • PublishedShar
IMAGE SOURCE,AFP
Image caption,
Health workers are at risk from treating Ebola patients

An outbreak of Ebola in Uganda is proving more difficult to deal with than more recent epidemics, but the president has rejected calls for a lockdown.

So far 31 cases have been confirmed, though it is feared that there could be many more.

What is Ebola?

It is a deadly virus with initial symptoms which can include a sudden fever, intense weakness, muscle pain and a sore throat.

Subsequent stages can include vomiting, diarrhoea and - in some cases - both internal and external bleeding, known as haemorrhaging.

The incubation period can last from two days to three weeks. Ebola can be associated with other illnesses such as malaria and typhoid.

Why is this outbreak so serious?

The fact that it was three weeks before the first case was detected on 20 September has caused concern.

Ebola spreads between humans by direct contact with bodily fluids and contaminated environments. Funerals can be a particular risk if mourners have direct contact with the body.

Most of the 31 cases identified are in Uganda's central district of Mubende, of whom six people have died.

However, the death toll may be higher as the health ministry says there were 18 deaths, linked to confirmed cases, where samples were not taken as they were buried before being tested.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates the case fatality rate is between 41% and 100%.

Is there a vaccine?

Another concern is that this is the Sudan strain of Ebola, for which there is no approved vaccine, unlike the more common Zaire strain.

This means there has been no vaccination of health workers, who account for six of the confirmed cases.

IMAGE SOURCE,GETTY IMAGES
Image caption,
Ebola vaccines developed in the last few years have not been tested on the Sudan strain

The Zaire strain was responsible for the largest ever outbreak of Ebola, in West Africa from December 2013 to 2016. More than 11,000 people died.

With more than 28,000 cases in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, scientists carried out intensive research into Ebola vaccines.

Two years after that epidemic ended, the then unlicensed Ervebo vaccine, developed by Merck, was used during an outbreak of the Zaire strain in the west of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

It was granted clearance by the WHO, which said it had limited infections and saved lives.

A second vaccine by Johnson & Johnson has since been approved for use by the European Medicines Agency.

But neither of these vaccines has been tested against the Sudan strain.

Nonetheless Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni said his government was exploring whether it was worth trying them.

How is Uganda dealing with the outbreak?

The focus is on contact tracing - finding those who have been in close proximity with patients, especially those who attended the community funerals.

A 51-bed treatment facility is operational in Mubende district, the epicentre of the outbreak, and a second facility is due to be set up soon.

President Museveni said two mobile laboratories would be sent to Mubende by Friday, so that people would not have to travel for tests and so risk spreading the virus.

Medics have expressed concern about the lack of adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) such as gloves and masks. They have also called for the affected region to be put under quarantine.

However, President Museveni ruled out restrictions, saying: "Ebola is not spread like corona[virus]" as it is not an airborne disease.

He said markets, schools and places of worship would remain open, but urged people to observe personal hygiene and avoid close contact.

How does Ebola spread?

Ebola jumps to humans from infected animals, such as chimpanzees, fruit bats and forest antelope.

Bushmeat - wild forest animals hunted for human consumption - is thought to be the natural reservoir of the virus.

It then spreads between humans by direct contact with contaminated bodily fluids - blood, saliva, vomit, semen, vaginal discharge, urine, faeces and sweat.

Men who have recovered from Ebola have also been found to harbour the virus in their semen for a period after recovery.

What precautions can be taken?

To prevent infection, health professionals advise avoiding contact with cases, including stopping shaking hands, washing hands with soap and water and cleaning surfaces with chlorinated water.

It is also important to isolate cases and their contacts. Countries usually set up holding centres for suspected cases and treatment centres for laboratory-confirmed cases.

IMAGE SOURCE,EPA
Image caption,
Quarantines have been ruled out

In eastern DR Congo, which borders Uganda, survivors of Ebola played a key role in providing care for infected patients as it has been established that they cannot be re-infected.

However, medical teams must wear full PPE when attending to cases to prevent infection.

Bodies, in a body bag, must be buried by those wearing proper PPE. More recent innovations have included having body bags with clear covers around the face to enable families to view the body safely before burial.

New Infectious Threats Are Coming. The U.S. Probably Won't Contain Them.


Apoorva Mandavilli
Thu, September 29, 2022 

From left: Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC director, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Biden administration's top medical adviser, and Dr. Robert Califf, the FDA commissioner, during a Senate hearing on monkeypox, on Capitol Hill in Washington on Sept. 14, 2022. (Anna Rose Layden/The New York Times)

If it wasn’t clear enough during the COVID-19 pandemic, it has become obvious during the monkeypox outbreak: The United States, among the richest, most advanced nations in the world, remains wholly unprepared to combat new pathogens.

The coronavirus was a sly, unexpected adversary. Monkeypox was a familiar foe, and tests, vaccines and treatments were already at hand. But the response to both threats sputtered and stumbled at every step.

“It’s kind of like we’re seeing the tape replayed, except some of the excuses that we were relying on to rationalize what happened back in 2020 don’t apply here,” said Sam Scarpino, who leads pathogen surveillance at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Pandemic Prevention Institute.

No single agency or administration is to blame, more than a dozen experts said in interviews, although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has acknowledged that it bungled the response to the coronavirus.

The price of failure is high. COVID has killed more than 1 million Americans so far, yielding untold misery. Cases, hospitalizations and deaths are all falling, but COVID was the third leading cause of death in the United States in 2021 and seems likely to keep killing Americans for years.

Monkeypox is spreading more slowly now, and has never posed a challenge of COVID’s magnitude. But the United States has reported more monkeypox cases than any other country — 25,000, about 40% of the global total — and the virus is likely to persist as a constant, low-grade threat.

Both outbreaks have revealed deep fissures in the nation’s framework for containing epidemics. Add to that plummeting public trust, rampant misinformation and deep schisms — between health officials and those treating patients, and between the federal government and states. A muddled response to future outbreaks seems almost inevitable.

“We really are poorly, poorly prepared,” said Larry O. Gostin, director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University.

New infectious threats are certainly on the way, mostly because of the twin rises in global travel and vaccine hesitancy, and the growing proximity of people and animals. From 2012 to 2022, for example, Africa saw a 63% increase in outbreaks of pathogens that jump to people from animals, compared with the period from 2001 to 2011.

“In people’s minds, perhaps, is the idea that this COVID thing was such a freak of nature, was a once-in-a-century crisis, and we’re good for the next 99 years,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University School of Public Health.

“This is the new normal,” she added. “It’s like the levees are built for the one-in-a-100-years crisis, but then the floods keep happening every three years.”

Chronic Underfunding


Ideally, here’s how the national response to an outbreak might unspool: Reports from a clinic anywhere in the country would signal a new pathogen’s arrival. Alternatively, ongoing wastewater surveillance might sound the alarm for known threats, as it has recently for polio in New York state.

The information would flow from local health departments to state and federal authorities. Federal officials would rapidly permit and offer guidance for the development of tests, vaccines and treatments, rolling them out equitably to all residents.

Not one of these steps worked smoothly in the two recent outbreaks.

“I’m very familiar with outbreak response and pandemic preparedness, and none of it looks like this,” said Kristian Andersen, a virologist at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego who has spent years studying epidemics.

Andersen said he had assumed that the flaws exposed by the coronavirus would be repaired as they became apparent. Instead, “we’re worse prepared now than we were early in the pandemic,” he said.

Public health in the United States has always operated on a shoestring. The data systems used by the CDC and other federal agencies are laughably out of date. Many public health workers were abused and attacked during the pandemic and have fled their jobs, or are planning to.

More money won’t solve all the problems, several experts said. But additional funding could help public health departments hire and train staff, update their aging data systems and invest in robust surveillance networks.

But in Congress, pandemic preparedness remains a tough sell.

President Joe Biden’s budget request for fiscal year 2023 includes $88 billion over five years, but Congress has not shown any inclination to approve it.

The United States spends between 300 to 500 times more on its military defense than on its health systems, and yet “no war has killed a million Americans,” noted Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, who led the CDC under former President Barack Obama.

Renewed Urgency

The United States was supposed to be the very best at managing outbreaks. An assessment of global health security in 2019, a year before the arrival of the coronavirus, ranked the nation first among all others — best at preventing and detecting outbreaks, most adept at communicating risk and second only to the United Kingdom in the rapidity of its response.

But all of that assumed that leaders would move quickly and decisively when faced with a new pathogen, and that the public would follow instructions. The analyses did not account for an administration that underplayed and politicized every aspect of the COVID response, from testing and masks to the use of vaccines.

Too often in a crisis, government officials look for easy solutions, with dramatic and immediate impact. But there are none for managing pandemics.

“A pandemic is by definition a problem from hell. You’re vanishingly unlikely to be able to remove all of its negative consequences,” said Bill Hanage, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Instead, he added, officials should bet on combinations of imperfect strategies, with an emphasis on speed over accuracy.

In both the coronavirus pandemic and the monkeypox outbreak, for example, the CDC at first tried to maintain control over testing, instead of disseminating the responsibility as widely as possible. The move led to limited testing, and left health officials blind to the spread of the viruses.

The Food and Drug Administration was slow to help academic labs develop alternatives for testing, and encouraged the highest quality of diagnosis. It may be reasonable for officials to ask which test is faster or which one produces the least errors, Hanage said, but “all of them are better than not doing anything.”

Gostin, of Georgetown University, has worked with the CDC for most of his career, and was among its staunchest defenders early in the pandemic.

But he became increasingly disenchanted as the United States was forced to rely on other countries for vital information: How effective are boosters? Is the virus airborne? Do masks work?

“Virtually in every case, we got our information and acted on it from foreign health agencies, from the U.K., from Israel, from South Africa,” Gostin said. The CDC “always seemed to be last and weakest,” he said.

Many at the CDC and other health agencies seemed to be paralyzed, fearful of being held accountable if things go wrong, he added: “They’re covering their rear ends trying to follow the procedure. It all boils down to a lack of fire in their bellies.”

Divided Responsibilities


The most intractable hurdle to a coordinated national response arises from the division of responsibility and resources between federal, state and local governments, along with gaps in communications between the public health officials coordinating the response and the doctors and nurses actually treating the patients.

The complex laws that govern health care in the United States are designed to protect confidentiality and patient rights. “But they are not optimized for working with the public health system and getting the public health system the data that it needs,” said Dr. Jay Varma, director of the Cornell Center for Pandemic Prevention and Response.

Generally, states are not obligated to share health data, such as the number of cases of infection or demographic details of vaccinated people, with federal authorities.

Some state laws actually forbid officials from sharing the information. Smaller states like Alaska may not want to hand over details that leave patients identifiable. Hospitals in small jurisdictions are often reluctant to surrender patient data for similar reasons.

Health care systems in countries like Britain and Israel rely on nationalized systems that make it much easier to collect and analyze information on cases, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Biden administration’s top medical adviser.

“Our system isn’t interconnected like that,” Fauci said. “It isn’t uniform — it’s a patchwork.”

A CDC official said the agency understood the perspective of the states, but the current rules on data sharing created “constraints and hurdles.”

“I don’t think it’s a matter of scapegoating states,” Kevin Griffis, a spokesman for the agency, said. “It’s simply a statement of the fact that we don’t have access to the information that we need to optimize a response.”

Legislation introduced in Congress might help remove those barriers, he added. The measure would require health care providers, pharmacies, and state and local health departments to report health data to the CDC.

Epidemics are managed by public health agencies, but it is clinicians — doctors, nurses and others — who diagnose and care for patients. An efficient outbreak response relies on mutual understanding and exchange of information between the two groups.

The sides did not communicate effectively in either the COVID pandemic or the monkeypox outbreak. The disconnect has led to absurdly convoluted procedures.

The CDC has not yet included monkeypox in its disease reporting computer system, for example. That means state officials must manually type in data from case reports, instead of simply uploading the files. A request for testing must often be faxed to the state laboratory; the results are often routed through a state epidemiologist, then to the provider, then to the patient.

Few public health officials understand how health care is delivered on the ground, some experts said. “Most people in the CDC don’t know what the inside of a hospital looks like,” said Dr. James Lawler, co-director of the University of Nebraska’s Global Center for Health Security.

Frieden, who once led New York City’s health department, suggested that embedding CDC staff into local health departments might help officials understand the obstacles involved in responding to an outbreak.

Frieden has also proposed what he calls a “7-1-7” accountability metric, loosely modeled on a strategy employed to address the HIV epidemic. Every new disease should be identified within seven days of emergence, reported to public health authorities within one day and responded to within seven days.

The strategy may give the government a clearer sense of the problems impeding the response, he said.

In the United States, “what we have is repeated cycles of panic and neglect,” Frieden said. “The single most important thing we have to do is break that cycle.”

© 2022 The New York Times Company
Discovery of ‘fingerprint’ confirms alarming predictions of Greenland ice sheet melt

Sarah Sloat
Thu, September 29, 2022 

Scientists now have unambiguous proof that a phenomenon critical to predicting the impact of climate change exists.

Researchers announced Thursday that they had detected the sea level “fingerprint” of the Greenland ice sheet melt, pinpointing the unique pattern of sea level change linked to the melting ice.

It’s the first time such a fingerprint has been definitively measured. While scientists agreed such fingerprints theoretically exist, the dynamic nature of the ocean had made it difficult to identify them confidently — until now.

The findings, which were possible with the help of high-resolution satellite observations, detail the unique pattern of sea level change linked to the Greenland ice sheet. The fingerprints are factored into models to predict overall sea level rise.


The discovery confirms and adds confidence to the sea level changes forecast by computational models. They are critical for understanding the consequences of climate change and preparing for future hazards. It is now more than clear that the melting of the Greenland ice sheet is accelerating, said Sophie Coulson a postdoctoral fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Coulson is the lead author of the study that led to the findings, which were published in the journal Science.


Greenland Ice Sheet (Kerem Yucel / AFP via Getty Images file)

Until recently, fingerprint science was restrained by a lack of satellite observations — records documented only the southern tip of Greenland, making it difficult to examine the oceans around it.

The Greenland ice sheet, which covers almost 80% of the island country, contains enormous quantities of frozen water. The rapid melting of the Greenland ice sheet is responsible for 20% of the current sea level rise globally, and a recent study predicted its disintegration would raise global sea levels by at least 10 inches, even if people stop burning fossil fuels.

The study was possible thanks to new satellite data shared by the Copernicus Marine Service, data that spanned over 30 years and extended to higher latitudes. Coulson plugged observations of ice-thickness change into a computational model and created a prediction of sea level from 1993 to 2019. She then compared the forecast against the new satellite data — and found a perfect match.

“It was really an exciting moment for us when we first looked at that side-by-side comparison of those observations to the model predictions,” Coulson said. “The images were staggeringly similar.”

It was especially surprising because it’s unusual in geophysics to prove something is happening with a certainty of more than 99.9%, Coulson said. But it was clear that the pattern of sea level change revealed by the satellites was the fingerprint of the melting ice sheet — and that the estimation of sea level change predicted by both earlier models and Coulson’s new one was accurate.

“We can really say with great certainty that sea level fingerprints exist,” Coulson said. “The theory was correct.”

Knowing fingerprints can be a tool to accurately predict sea level change is critical because the future of Earth’s oceans is so uncertain.
 Greenland Ice Sheet (Sean Gallup / Getty Images file)

“We know global sea levels will rise and that the amount and pace of sea level rise will depend on our greenhouse gas emissions,” Yarrow Axford, an associate professor at Northwestern University who studies the impact of climate change on Greenland’s glaciers and ice sheet, said by email. She was not a part of Coulson’s study.

“But how fast the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica will respond to warming is a really big unknown, and frankly a very scary unknown,” Axford said.

Fingerprints are already used to inform ocean level projections and coastal planning. In the U.S., an estimated 30% of the population lives in coastline communities. Every inch of sea level rise is expected to make coastal storms more catastrophic for those populations.

That is partly because sea level changes can lead to more destructive storm surges, one of the deadliest aspects of hurricanes. Hurricane Ian’s storm surge, along with its winds and flooding rain, has caused devastation across Cuba and Florida. Sea level rise, along with other aspects of climate change, is expected to increase the intensity and frequency of hurricanes.

“We’re already being forced to adapt to sea level rise around the world, and we need to do a lot more still to prepare,” Axford said. “Having decent projections of how fast our coastlines will retreat is essential for making tough decisions and the right big investments now in preparation for future sea level rise.”