Alberta acted like the pandemic was over. Now it's a cautionary tale for Canada

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THREE TORY PARTIES ON THE PRAIRIES

Saskatchewan faces similar surge in hospitals, while

 Manitoba is at risk from low vaccination rates

Adam Miller · CBC News · Posted: Oct 02, 2021 

Albertans are frustrated over the Kenney government’s response to the fourth wave of the pandemic as hospitals struggle to keep up with patients sick with COVID-19. On Thursday, Premier Jason Kenney announced all public servants would be required to be fully vaccinated by Nov. 30, but stopped short of introducing further restrictions. 2:14

The COVID-19 situation in Alberta has gone from bad to worse — providing a cautionary tale for the rest of Canada on how a string of bad policy decisions, low vaccination rates and a failure to act quickly are a recipe for disaster.  

Unlike Ontario, which has triple the population but is faring much better in the fourth wave after keeping many public health restrictions in place, Alberta resisted vaccine passports, lifted mask mandates and even planned to abandon test, trace and isolate protocols before backtracking as cases rose.

To put it bluntly, Premier Jason Kenney's "best summer ever" was a failure.

"The end of this terrible time is just two weeks away," Kenney infamously said on June 18. "We finally have the upper hand on this virus and can safely open up our province."

Fast forward to today and Alberta has the highest rate of infections in the country, at close to four times the national average, and Albertans are dying of COVID-19 at close to three times the rate of anywhere else in Canada — rivalled only by Saskatchewan.

While there's no redo button on Alberta's delta-fueled fourth wave, there are lessons — especially for other Prairie provinces that experts fear may not be far behind.

• Have a coronavirus question or news tip for CBC News? Email: Covid@cbc.ca.

Staff members work at an ICU in an Alberta hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic. Albertans are dying of COVID-19 at close to three times the rate of anywhere else in Canada. (Alberta Health Services)

Alberta's 'grave misstep' led to devastating 4th wave

Dr. Ilan Schwartz, a physician and assistant professor of infectious diseases at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, said the Alberta government "completely abdicated its responsibility" to ensure the health and wellbeing of citizens in the fourth wave. 

"Alberta was reckless in dropping all restrictions and declaring the pandemic over. Jason Kenney infamously declared that we were in the post-pandemic era, that COVID was no longer a risk and basically threw caution to the wind — that was a grave misstep," he said.

"But what made things much, much worse is the inability to respond to the data that demonstrated a rising number of cases."

Kenney finally accepted medical aid from the federal government and Newfoundland and Labrador Thursday, after rejecting calls for stricter measures days prior, and the Canadian Armed Forces and the Red Cross are sending medical staff to ease the burden on hospitals. 

---

"Our healthcare system has completely collapsed," said Schwartz. "It's not just that we're on the verge of collapse, I think that's misleading at this point — we've completely collapsed." 

Schwartz says Alberta hospitals are currently unable to offer life-saving surgery or safe emergency care to those that desperately need it and some are consistently running at more than 100 per cent ICU capacity, making for a "completely dysfunctional healthcare system." 

• Albertans dying from COVID-19 at more than three times the average Canadian rate

• Alberta health-care providers face growing mental health toll as ICUs pushed to breaking point

"People might think that they're vaccinated, and so they don't need to worry about this. But the fact is that if we can't provide safe ICU care, period, then everybody is at risk," he said. 

"Every time people get on a tractor, or get in a car, and go on the highway — there's always been risk associated with that — but now there's no safety net." 

---

Kenney announced Alberta's first government-imposed vaccine mandate Thursday, ordering all public servants be vaccinated by Nov. 30. But there is an option for regular testing instead, and the province stopped short of instituting further public health restrictions.

Schwartz says the next few weeks could be some of the hardest Alberta has faced in the pandemic — as cases, hospitalizations and deaths continue to rise while the healthcare system buckles under the pressure of an unrelenting surge in COVID-19 patients. 

"As a health-care worker it's completely demoralizing and we feel like we're just completely left to our own devices," he said. "We're just completely abandoned." 

A staff member works in an Alberta hospital ICU during the fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. On Wednesday, there were 1,100 people being treated for COVID in hospital — 263 of whom were in intensive care beds. (AHS)

Saskatchewan may be 'weeks away from peaking'

The situation is becoming similarly dire in nearby Saskatchewan, and infectious diseases experts there say the rise in COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths are largely being fuelled by unvaccinated pockets throughout the Prairies. 

"The short answer here is that we are almost assuredly in Saskatchewan on the same really, really bad, steep upward trajectory that Alberta is on," said Dr. Alexander Wong, an infectious diseases physician at Regina General Hospital and associate professor of infectious diseases at the University of Saskatchewan.

"Worst case scenario: I think we're still weeks away from peaking, which would pretty much guarantee an unsustainable need for an ICU triage type of environment — very, very similar to what Alberta is dealing with right now." 

• COVID hospitalizations and ICU admissions in Sask. have nearly tripled in last month: SHA

• 'Fall and winter of misery': Sask.'s top doctor says there may not be large Thanksgiving, Christmas gatherings

Wong says, among the Prairie provinces, Manitoba has a key difference: it created a vaccine certificate in June, months before other provinces, which pushed its vaccination rate higher. 

Alberta resisted implementing a vaccine passport system until late last month, but instead attempted to incentivize vaccination by offering unvaccinated residents $100 and entry into a $1-million draw to get the shot. Both had little impact on vaccine uptake. 

"It didn't increase vaccination, but it also cost us time when there could have been fewer new cases as a result of unvaccinated individuals frequenting indoor public spaces and infecting other people," said Schwartz.

Saskatchewan only unveiled a vaccine passport this week, but also allowed for a negative test for entry into non-essential businesses, at the same time Chief Medical Health Officer Dr. Saqib Shahab said the province is heading toward a "fall and winter of misery."

Manitoba at risk from unvaccinated pockets

Jason Kindrachuk, an assistant professor of viral pathogenesis at the University of Manitoba and Canada Research Chair of emerging viruses, says that while Manitoba has a slightly higher vaccine uptake than other provinces — there are stark differences among its populations in urban and rural settings that threaten to worsen their fourth wave. 

"We have a very very disparate uptake of vaccines across the south compared to most of the rest of the province," he said. "In Manitoba, we have three quarters of our population in one city … and Winnipeg vaccination rates got high pretty quick."

But Kindrachuk says the threat of a further rise in COVID-19 levels lies with unvaccinated populations in the southern regions of Manitoba that are driving transmission numbers to record highs — with one town in particular having a vaccination rate of just 24 per cent.  

• Manitoba rules target gatherings involving unvaccinated people, stores in area with worst immunization rate

• 'Significant transmission' of COVID-19 in southern Manitoba worrisome: top doctor

"We watched Alberta, we watched Saskatchewan, we're in a better place … but what happens if it starts to really roll through the south?" he said. "So the message for everybody is that the pandemic is not over." 

Manitoba is bringing in new rules for unvaccinated people starting Tuesday in an effort to stave off a rise in cases and additional pressure on the healthcare system, including restrictions on indoor gatherings and capacity limits for weddings and places of worship. 

Experts say the next few weeks could be some of the hardest Alberta has faced in the pandemic, with ICUs stretched beyond even typical surge capacity. (AHS)

Wong says the messaging from policymakers and public health officials in the Prairies throughout the pandemic has been one of "individual responsibility" when it comes to following guidelines, getting tested or getting vaccinated. 

"Now the narrative is very much pushing the societal blame and anger and frustration away from, frankly, policymakers and toward people who are unvaccinated," Wong said. In his view, the "shifting of blame" may have further increased vaccine hesitancy.  

"Even when the whole healthcare system is literally collapsing you're just not going to get any kind of buy-in at a societal level anymore to actually care."

Unlike Manitoba, Wong says Saskatchewan and Alberta will likely pay a "heavy human price" that will be "painful" in the weeks ahead, which he sees as unavoidable even if the government were to make the unlikely move of imposing another lockdown, or if vaccination rates climb. 

WATCH | Alberta, Sask. healthcare systems 'broken' by 4th wave surge, doctors say:

Dr. Aisha Mirza, an ER physician in Edmonton, and Dr. Hassan Masri, an ICU and critical care physician in Saskatoon, share how the provinces' hospitals and medical professionals are struggling amid a fourth wave of COVID-19. 16:41

"This is not a pandemic of the unvaccinated, this affects absolutely everybody — it's everybody whose surgeries are cancelled, and who won't have access to urgent surgeries if they get into an accident, or if their appendix bursts or if they have an aneurysm," Schwartz said.

"And whether there is ever the sort of political reckoning that is required in order to actually change course, to prevent these lives from being lost — I'm starting to lose hope.

KENNEY KILLED WHO

Doctors urge Albertans to demand government release COVID-19 modelling

By Phil Heidenreich Global News
Posted October 2, 2021 

The immense stress on Alberta's health-care system is beginning to impact those who didn't even need surgery at the time cancellations began.

Two prominent doctors have signed their names to a letter addressed to Albertans calling on them to demand that the provincial government release its latest COVID-19 modelling that is guiding its pandemic-related decisions.

In a letter dated Oct. 1, Alberta’s former chief medical officer of health Dr. James Talbot and Dr. Noel Gibney, professor emeritus at the University of Alberta’s department of critical care medicine, wrote that they “would like to know how long the fourth wave is going to last, how many more Albertans are projected to die and when we can expect elective surgeries to begin and ICUs to return to normal.”

The doctors cite Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Andrew Furey saying that earlier this week that Premier Jason Kenney told him his province’s help was not needed because Alberta’s predictive modelling suggests the additional resources aren’t needed at this time. On Thursday, Kenney announced he had accepted help from Newfoundland and Labrador, as well as from the federal government.


“Our health-care system is in crisis, ICU capacity is under killing pressure and the acute health-care workforce is spiritually, physically and mentally bone-weary,” Talbot and Gibney wrote.

READ MORE: COVID-19: Edmonton doctor recounts calling woman to share her mom’s dying moments





While Kenney said Thursday that his government is not considering additional health measures until it has a better sense of how effective measures brought in earlier this month have been at reducing COVID-19’s spread and hospitalizations, Talbot and Gibney’s letter reiterates suggestions they have made which they believe could help address “the astonishingly high COVID rates in our province.”

The recommendations include the “reinstitution of contact tracing and limited measures to prevent indoor transmission.”

“The premier has called our last recommendation a lockdown and further says he refuses to do anything that will punish the fully immunized,” the letter reads.

“Our call for limited restrictions to prevent indoor transmission are, at most, an inconvenience for the fully vaccinated who are, in fact, being punished now by a government whose continued inaction is depriving them of planned surgery, access to hospital beds and properly functioning ICUs.”

The health minister’s press secretary Steve Buick said the government is watching AHS’s “early warning system”, an internal capacity-planning tool updated constantly based on the latest trends.

He said it shows a wide range of potential scenarios at a given time, “ranging from a potential drop in admissions (if we’re at or near the peak in cases), to a potential increase”.

“The worst case informs contingency planning, but as the premier said we are working to ensure it does not happen, including the public health measures announced about 2 weeks ago,” Buick said.

“We continue to watch the data and the impact of recent changes and will take further action if and as warranted, including most recently the implementation of mandatory vaccination for the public service.”

Buick was pressed about releasing that data, but has not replied.

Talbot and Gibney also suggest they believe the government appears to be trying to allow COVID-19 to spread throughout the province in an attempt to achieve herd immunity.

“It is clear from the actions of the government of Alberta and the premier that their callous strategy is to stand by until enough Albertans have contracted COVID, become ill and then, hopefully, recovered, to get to the point where there are too few Albertans without immunity for the COVID virus to find new victims,” the letter reads. “Such a strategy will continue to cost us at least 20 unimmunized Albertan lives a day, create maximum stress for the health-care system and health-care workers and deprive thousands of Albertans of planned surgeries and other potentially life-saving treatments.

READ MORE: COVID-19: Saskatchewan woman who was scared after Alberta surgery cancelled says it’s back on

“Key to understanding this cold-blooded strategy is determining how long it will take to achieve this goal of ‘herd immunity.’ Knowing that tells us how many more Albertans will die from COVID or from being deprived of access to the health-care system and how long AHS (Alberta Health Services) and its employees must endure this killing stress.

“We believe Albertans should demand to see the data, the assumptions and the modelling used to make the decision to continue to do nothing.”

READ MORE: Alberta Opposition urges Premier Jason Kenney to make sure all caucus members are vaccinated

On Friday, Alberta Health announced 14 more deaths attributed to COVID-19 and that 1,630 additional cases of COVID-19 had been identified in the province in the past 24 hours.

In an email to Global News on Friday, AHS spokesperson Kerry Williamson said the health authority “continues to do all it can to ensure we have enough ICU capacity to meet patient demand, including opening additional spaces and redeploying staff.”

As of 12:15 p.m. on Friday, Williamson said Alberta had 374 ICU beds open, noting that number is because the province has worked to expand capacity to accommodate the surge in patients. Its normal baseline capacity is 173 ICU beds.

“There are currently 316 patients in ICU, the vast majority of whom are COVID positive,” Williamson said. “The number of patients in ICU has increased by five per cent in the past seven days.

“Provincially, ICU capacity (including additional surge beds) is currently at 84 per cent. Without the additional surge spaces, provincial ICU capacity would be at 183 per cent.” 

Gambia: The story of a Jammeh-era survivor

The West African country's decision to delay a long-awaited report into the crimes committed under longtime leader Yahya Jammeh comes as families torn apart by the brutal regime struggle to heal decades on.



Many Gambian families are still reeling from the trauma of the death of their loved ones during the regime of Yahya Jammeh

When Awa Njie married her late husband, Don Faal, in February 1994, she could hardly imagine the cruel fate that would befall her young family at the hands of her country's regime.

The couple met in her hometown of Farafefeeni, about 120 kilometers (70 miles) north of Gambia's capital, Banjul. At the time, Faal was stationed at an army barracks next door to Awa's house, separated by only a fence. They welcomed their first and only child a few months after their wedding.

But their lives changed after the July 1994 coup led by then Lieutenant Yahya Jammeh.

Faal was redeployed to the Fajara Barracks. Four months later in November, he and five other senior army officials were accused of attempting to overthrow Jammeh's new military regime.

Njie says her husband came home as normal on November 10. He didn't tell her that he had just been sentenced to death for his supposed crime.

Members of the Gambia Armed Forces are now being accused of horrific crimes during the years under Jammeh

"He would go to the door, then come back again, pick up his child from their bed, hug them and stand there looking at me," she told DW. "He did this three times before he left."

Faal never returned. On the night of November 11, 1994, he and the five other officers were executed.

At first, Njie had no idea that her husband had been killed. She went out looking for him in the morning after hearing gunshots. But she would only learn the tragic truth of his death days later.

"A police officer who worked with him called and asked: 'Are you Awa?'" Njie said. "I said yes. 'The wife of the late Don Faal?' I said, 'Late, why late?' He said: 'Awa, take heart, your husband was killed.' I fainted."


Former ministers in Jammeh's government, Edward Signateh (center) and Sana Sabally (right) testify at the Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission in 2019

A horrific death

Njie said the manner of her husband's death still haunted her today.

"They stabbed him, they shot him," Njie said. "How they killed him was terrifying. That trauma has never left me."

To make matters worse, Njie and her 8-month-old baby were repeatedly harassed after Faal's execution, forcing her to flee to neighboring Senegal. She only came home six months later.

Her son, now 27 years old, didn't know what happened to his father until Njie testified at Gambia's Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission (TRRC) in 2019, a probe into crimes committed under Jammeh's rule. During the hearings, some of her husband's killers admitted to their role in his murder.


Many Gambians welcomed the exile of former ruler Yahya Jammeh, but they are still awaiting justice for the crimes committed under his rule

Njie said her son was angry and often spoke of avenging his father's death. As the family's sole provider, Njie lost her teaching job shortly after Faal's death, leading to her son being unable to complete his secondary education.

To survive, Njie relies on petty trading. She still imagines what her life might have been like if her husband wasn't killed.

"By now I would have my own compound," she said. "Maybe it wouldn't be luxurious, but I would be fine. I would have my own job, and maybe I would have had other children with him."
Untold tragedies come to light

Njie never remarried and still clings to the good memories of her husband.

"He was the best," she said. "I lost a loving husband, a caring husband that I will never get in my life again."

Stories like Njie's are sadly common in Gambia. Victims of torture and the relatives of those who were killed or disappeared are still waiting for justice as the TRRC prepares to release its report following testimonies from nearly 400 people.

Based on South Africa's post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the TRRC was set up in 2017 after Jammeh lost the 2016 election to Adama Barrow.

Witnesses began giving evidence in 2019, detailing Jammeh's use of torture and rape and witch hunts at the hands of the so-called Junglers, a paramilitary group that acted as a death squad.


Former President Yahya Jammeh is currently in exile in Equatorial Guinea
Delayed justice

The official final report, spanning 16 volumes, was expected in July. However, it will now be released at an unconfirmed later date, with a member of the TRRC saying "we are not yet ready."

The TRRC has no power to prosecute. However, it can recommend prosecution for individuals identified as perpetrators or propose amnesty for people who have testified and expressed remorse over their crimes.

The government has six months to respond to the recommendations once the report is released. Barrow says he will wait to see the contents of the report before seeking any further action against Jammeh, who is currently in exile in Equatorial Guinea.

Sankulleh Janko contributed to this report.

Students sleep in parks to protest rising rents in Turkey

Accommodation in student dormitories has never been so scarce — or so expensive. Turkish students are staging an unusual protest: Hundreds of them are spending nights in parks.

Students in Izmir, Turkey, protesting the lack of affordable accommodation


For 18 months, in-person classes were suspended in Turkey because of the pandemic. When universities opened their doors again, many students were in for a nasty surprise: Rents have become almost unaffordable. This is partly because of inflation and the corresponding price fluctuations, which have also affected the housing market. On top of this, Turkey's government has not ensured that state-run student dormitories have sufficient capacity. There are barely 700,000 dormitory places for about 8.5 million students.

This difficult situation has motivated many students to air their grievances in public. For days now, students all across Turkey — more than 2,240 of them, according to the Interior Ministry — have been spending the night in public parks. The Barinamiyoruz (We Can't Find Shelter) movement began in Istanbul's Yogurtcu Park and was quickly emulated in other Turkish cities. In an open letter, the activists write that they have been left homeless by rent increases of 70-290%. "Because we have nowhere we can live in decent conditions," they write, "we will create this possibility ourselves."

Students are protesting by spending the night in parks

Yunus Emre Karaca, who studies international relations at Marmara University, spent the night with fellow students in Istanbul's Yogurtcu Park. "We're not sleeping on the streets for our own amusement," he told DW. "We're telling the story of millions of students."

Kemal Yilmaz, who is on a communication studies course at Izmit's Kocaeli University, also spent the night in the park. "When the universities opened, there was a stampede for the dormitories," Yilmaz said. "The massive demand, along with daily rent increases, meant that accommodation inevitably became exorbitantly expensive. So, although the universities are now open again, many people can't study."

Cayan Akbiyik, a philosophy student at Ege University in Turkey's third-largest city, Izmir, was participating in protests there. "We started doing this in Izmir because we saw friends of ours demonstrating in Istanbul, so we went and slept in Asik Veysel Park," Akbiyik said. But the authorities clamped down on their protest. "The police stopped students here," he said, "but they weren't arrested."
Echoes of Gezi

The police action had the effect of increasing public interest in the students' unorthodox protest. Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu attempted to justify the police deployment by claiming that the majority of the protesters were not students. "It has been established that the protests were predominantly carried out by left-wing fringe groups," he said, adding that he believed that members of alleged terrorist groups such as the Kurdistan Workers' Party had participated.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has also condemned the "sleeping students" movement. After a Cabinet meeting this week, he claimed that rising rents were the result of increased demand for housing after a long lull during the pandemic. He echoed Soylu in implying that the student protesters harbored subversive ideas. "I can unequivocally say that some of those who have been lying on benches in parks and gardens have no connection to studies, even if they call themselves students," Erdogan said. This is just another version of the Gezi Park incidents." Erdogan was referring to demonstrations that began in Istanbul's Gezi Park in 2013 and spread across the country. Those protests were triggered by plans for a large construction project on the Gezi Park site, and escalated when police instigated a violent clampdown on demonstrators.

Watch video 02:49 Turkish students march in rare defiance of Erdogan

This is not the first time that Erdogan has clashed with students. In early January, he appointed Melih Bulu rector of Istanbul's prestigious Bogazici University by presidential decree. In recent years, the government has tried to gain more influence over universities. Students and academics at the university said the appointment was "not legitimate" because Bulu is a member of Erdogan's ruling Law and Justice Party. Weeks of protests followed, during which numerous people were arrested. The president also likened the student protesters to "terrorists" at the time,

Their protests, however, ultimately paid off. After months of resistance from students, Erdogan issued another presidential decree in July, removing Bulu from office. The students currently spending the night in Turkish parks may take encouragement from their peers' success.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Media company Ozy to shut down after report highlights potential securities fraud
Tali Arbel
Associated Press

Ozy is shutting down less than a week after a New York Times column raised questions about the media organization's claims of millions of viewers and readers, while also pointing out a potential case of securities fraud.

The story triggered canceled shows, an internal investigation, investor concern and high-level departures at the company.

An emailed statement Friday from Ozy Media's board called it a company with many “world-class journalists and experienced professionals to whom we owe tremendous gratitude.” It said it was "with the heaviest of hearts that we must announce today that we are closing Ozy’s doors.”

The board's statement did not give the reason for shutting down the company based in Mountain View, California. Ozy did not respond to questions about why it was shutting down now or how many employees it had 

.

Ozy's CEO, former cable-news commentator and host Carlos Watson, started Ozy in 2013. It published stories on its website, made podcasts, newsletters and shows and hosted the OzyFest festival. Its website remained up on Friday afternoon.

The Times story said Ozy's chief operating officer and co-founder, Samir Rao, impersonated a YouTube executive on a call with Goldman Sachs while attempting to raise money from the investment bank. It also addressed long-held industry questions of whether Ozy was inflating its audience size.

In a tweet, Watson claimed 25 million newsletter subscribers – the New York Times, with a much bigger brand presence, says it has 15 million newsletter readers – and more than 30 million views on YouTube. The Times said fewer than 500,000 people went to Ozy's website in June and July, according to Comscore data.

On Thursday, Marc Lasry, the hedge-fund billionaire and Milwaukee Bucks co-owner who had been named Ozy's chairman in September, resigned, citing Ozy's need for someone experienced in crisis management and investigations. He remained an investor.

A high-profile employee, former BBC anchor Katty Kay, resigned earlier in the week, and an early investor, a venture capital firm, gave up its Ozy shares. The board had reportedly hired a law firm to review Ozy's business activities.

Cable network A&E pulled a special on mental health hosted by Watson that was scheduled for Monday night, and Watson stepped down from hosting a documentary Emmys awards show Wednesday night.

The website Crunchbase, which tracks corporate fund-raising, said Ozy had raised more than $70 million from investors as of late 2019.

Ozy Media is shutting down after reports about misconduct and lies at the company

PUBLISHED FRI, OCT 1 20211

CNBC
Alex Sherman@SHERMAN4949

KEY POINTS

Ozy Media’s board on Friday announced that the company is shutting down.

CEO Carlos Watson informed employees of the board’s vote.

Watson had a reputation for being demanding and temperamental but also built a diverse newsroom employees respected.

VIDEO 03:40 Ozy Media shutting down

Ozy Media CEO Carlos Watson informed employees Friday that the board had voted to shut down the company, according to a person familiar with the matter.

In a five minute phone call late in the afternoon, Watson informed Ozy’s staff of the decision, said the person, who asked not to be named because the conversation was private. A dejected-sounding Watson did not take any questions, the person said.

The New York Times was first to publish news of Ozy’s decision.

“At Ozy, we have been blessed with a remarkable team of dedicated staff,” the company’s board told the Times. “Many of them are world-class journalists and experienced professionals to whom we owe tremendous gratitude and who are wonderful colleagues. It is therefore with the heaviest of hearts that we must announce today that we are closing Ozy’s doors.”

A spokesperson for Ozy wasn’t immediately available for comment. According to Axios, which also reported Ozy Media is shutting down, the company had 75 full-time employees.

Full-time staffers are now waiting to hear if they will receive any severance or extended benefits from the abrupt shutdown, the person said. Freelance writers will be paid final pay checks next week, another person said.

The Times first reported on Sunday that an Ozy executive later revealed to be COO Samir Rao, impersonated a YouTube executive on a conference call with Goldman Sachs, which was considering a $40 million investment in the company. The company had also allegedly vastly inflated its monthly unique visitors, a metric used by media companies to attract advertisers.

That report set off a tailspin at the company.

On Wednesday, former BBC anchor Katty Kay, and one of Ozy Media’s executive producers, resigned from the company amid the fallout.

On Thursday, Marc Lasry resigned as the chair of Ozy Media after just three weeks on the job. Billionaire investor Lasry is the CEO of Avenue Capital Group and owner of NBA champions the Milwaukee Bucks.

“I believe that going forward Ozy requires experience in areas like crisis management and investigations, where I do not have particular expertise,” Lasry said on Thursday. He added that he remains an investor in Ozy Media.

CNBC also reported on Thursday that Ozy Media founder Carlos Watson lied when he claimed Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne invested in his company. The Osbournes filed a trademark lawsuit in 2017 over the company’s name Ozy Fest, which is the firm’s annual concert and festival. Osbourne told CNBC Watson leveraged his connections with billionaire Ozy Media investor Laurene Powell Jobs to threaten lawsuits. “This guy is the biggest shyster I have ever seen in my life,” Osbourne said.

Ozy also promised former producers that it was filming a show for A&E, according to a report from the Times on Thursday. But producers discovered that, too, was a lie, and that A&E never had plans to air interviews Ozy had filmed, according to The New York Times.

Previous employees at Ozy told CNBC Friday that Watson ran the company as a charismatic and temperamental leader. His demands on reporters — including writing four feature-length stories a week with “flavorful” prose — led several employees to quit from burnout. CNN spoke with other employees that mentioned similar stories of long work days and exhaustion.

Both Watson and Rao gained reputations for screaming at employees in the workplace, according to five ex-employees. One said working at Ozy felt like a Wall Street trading floor and thought the pair’s time working at Goldman Sachs may have contributed to their demeanors.

Watson would frequently boast of Ozy’s reach at internal meetings, said three people who were present for them, but reporters and editors saw little evidence of Ozy’s popularity. Still, they stayed with the company because they believed in its mission: to report stories and trends that other media outlets hadn’t yet discovered. Former Ozy employees also credited Watson with building a diverse workplace and allowing them to cover outside-the-box issues.

“I’ve never seen a workplace as diverse as Ozy’s,” one ex-employee said. “That was a huge reason to stay at the company.”

But the demanding pace and Watson’s temper caused many to leave -- often to Watson’s chagrin. Several noted Watson attempted to keep them and even contacted them after they’d quit.

“There’s a real guy in there, somewhere,” one ex-employee said of Watson. “It’s just tough to cut through the vanity.”

Watson was the face of the company both literally and figuratively, the employees said. He would ask to be more prominently featured on the website, with links to his YouTube talk show, “The Carlos Watson Show,” two of the people said. A YouTube advertisement for the show cites a quote from Deadline calling Watson “The Best Interviewer on TV.” That line was actually said by Rao, the executive who impersonated the YouTube executive, in a 2020 Deadline article about “The Carlos Watson Show.”

WATCH: NYT’s Smith discusses Marc Lasry’s resignation from Ozy

   

Ozy Media to shut down after advertisers flee, chairman resigns and Sharon Osbourne cries foul

By 

Will Feuer and

 

Alexandra Steigrad

  

October 1, 2021 

Ozy Media advertisers began jumping ship as the company's chairman, 

Marc Lasry (right), called it quits and, separately, reality star Sharon Osbourne 

shared surprising allegations about Ozy Media's CEO.WireImage; Getty Images

Ozy Media said late Friday it would shut down after big advertisers put their campaigns on hold and the digital media startup’s billionaire chairman resigned amid a slew of bizarre scandals — including surprise allegations from reality star Sharon Osbourne.

“At Ozy, we have been blessed with a remarkable team of dedicated staff. Many of them are world-class journalists and experienced professionals to whom we owe tremendous gratitude, and who are wonderful colleagues. It is therefore with the heaviest of hearts that we must announce today that we are closing Ozy’s doors,” a statement from its board said, according to the New York Times.

As of Friday evening, the site was still online. There was no immediate indication of when or how it would turn out the lights.

Ford, Airbnb, Goldman Sachs and Target are among the firms that had earlier pressed pause on their campaigns with the media company, costing Ozy as much as $5 million in revenue, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday, citing unnamed sources.

Ford confirmed the news, saying: “We are pausing our advertising while Ozy Media addresses their current business challenges.” Airbnb, Goldman Sachs and Target did not immediately return requests for comment.

Late Thursday, billionaire Marc Lasry, who is owner of the Milwaukee Bucks NBA team and CEO of the buyout firm Avenue Capital, resigned as Ozy’s chairman after just three weeks on the job.

“I believe that going forward Ozy requires experience in areas like crisis management and investigations, where I do not have particular expertise,” Lasry said. “For that reason, I have stepped down from the company’s board. I remain an investor in the company and wish it the best going forward.”

Separately Thursday, reality star Sharon Osbourne said the company’s disgraced co-founder and CEO Carlos Watson falsely claimed that she and her husband, heavy-metal legend Ozzy Osbourne, were investors in the company.

Sharon Osbourne said Ozy Media co-founder and CEO Carlos Watson lied about her and husband, Ozzy Osbourne, being investors in the venture.

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Earlier this week, a New York Times report uncovered that Ozy’s co-founder and COO Samir Rao impersonated a YouTube executive on a call with potential investor Goldman Sachs. That article and several follow-ups have also claimed that Ozy frequently inflated key business metrics to other investors and even lied to its own employees about business operations.

Since then, the FBI has reportedly begun looking into the phone call that alleged Rao pretended to be a YouTube exec in order to drum up investor dollars. Although Ozy has not publically released a statement, Watson tweeted Monday that the Times article was a “hitjob.” He hasn’t tweeted since.

The dustup with the Osbournes started in 2017 when the couple filed a trademark lawsuit over Ozy Media’s annual concert and festival, which is called Ozy Fest. For years, The Osbournes had produced the Ozzfest music festival, which featured acts such as Black Sabbath, Tool and Slayer.

Ozy Media co-founder and CEO Carlos Watson called an unflattering report by the New York Times a “hitjob” in a tweet earlier this week but has not tweeted since.

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“Fun fact: our friend Ozzy and Sharon sued us briefly, and then we decided to be friends and now they’re investors in Ozy,” Watson said on CNBC two years ago. 

That was a flat-out lie, according to Sharon Osbourne, who spoke to CNBC on Thursday.

“This guy is the biggest shyster I have ever seen in my life,” she said, adding that Watson tried to intimidate her while the lawsuit was being filed, saying that Ozy Media has a slew of resources and could draw out the legal battle so much that the family would be saddled with exorbitant legal fees for years to come.

The two sides settled after the Osbournes shelled out $300,000 in legal fees. The settlement required that Ozy Media submit musical acts and advertisers to Osbourne for approval, so as to make sure there was no overlap. 

SV Angel, an early investor in Ozy led by legendary Silicon Valley venture capitalist Ron Conway, surrendered the shares it acquired in the company in 2012, Axios reported.

Separately, veteran journalist Katty Kay, who joined Ozy in May, announced her resignation from the media company after writing on Twitter that she found the allegations to be “deeply troubling.”

Ozy’s board earlier this week announced that it hired a law firm to launch an external investigation “following reports of conduct that is not in keeping with our standards of values.” The board also said it asked Rao, the COO at the center of some of the allegations, “to take a leave of absence pending the results of the investigation.”

However, in the original Times story that sparked the flurry of activity at the media upstart darling, Lasry — then the chairman of the board — said the board was aware of the incident and supported how it was handled.

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“The board was made aware of the incident, and we fully support the way it was handled,” he was quoted as saying. “The incident was an unfortunate one-time event, and Carlos and his team showed the kind of compassion we would all want if any of us faced a difficult situation in our own lives.”

Dwindling Alaska salmon leave Yukon River tribes in crisis


STEVENS VILLAGE, Alaska (AP) — In a normal year, the smokehouses and drying racks that Alaska Natives use to prepare salmon to tide them through the winter would be heavy with fish meat, the fruits of a summer spent fishing on the Yukon River like generations before them

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© Provided by The Canadian Press

This year, there are no fish. For the first time in memory, both king and chum salmon have dwindled to almost nothing and the state has banned salmon fishing on the Yukon, even the subsistence harvests that Alaska Natives rely on to fill their freezers and pantries for winter. The remote communities that dot the river and live off its bounty — far from road systems and easy, affordable shopping — are desperate and doubling down on moose and caribou hunts in the waning days of fall.

“Nobody has fish in their freezer right now. Nobody,” said Giovanna Stevens, 38, a member of the Stevens Village tribe who grew up harvesting salmon at her family's fish camp. “We have to fill that void quickly before winter gets here."

Opinions on what led to the catastrophe vary, but those studying it generally agree human-caused climate change is playing a role as the river and the Bering Sea warm, altering the food chain in ways that aren't yet fully understood. Many believe commercial trawling operations that scoop up wild salmon along with their intended catch, as well as competition from hatchery-raised salmon in the ocean, have compounded global warming's effects on one of North America's longest rivers.

The assumption that salmon that aren't fished make it back to their native river to lay eggs may no longer hold up because of changes in both the ocean and river environments, said Stephanie Quinn-Davidson, who has worked on Yukon River salmon issues for a decade and is the Alaska Venture Fund's program director for fisheries and communities.

King, or chinook, salmon have been in decline for more than a decade, but chum salmon were more plentiful until last year. This year, summer chum numbers plummeted and numbers of fall chum — which travel farther upriver — are dangerously low.

“Everyone wants to know, ‘What is the one smoking gun? What is the one thing we can point to and stop?’” she said of the collapse. “People are reluctant to point to climate change because there isn’t a clear solution ... but it’s probably the biggest factor here."

Many Alaska Native communities are outraged they are paying the price for generations of practices beyond their control that have caused climate change — and many feel state and federal authorities aren't doing enough to bring Indigenous voices to the table. The scarcity has made raw strong emotions about who should have the right to fish in a state that supplies the world with salmon, and underscores the powerlessness many Alaska Natives feel as traditional resources dwindle.

The nearly 2,000-mile-long (3,200-kilometer) Yukon River starts in British Columbia and drains an area larger than Texas in both Canada and Alaska as it cuts through the lands of Athabascan, Yup’ik and other tribes.

The crisis is affecting both subsistence fishing in far-flung outposts and fish processing operations that employ tribal members in communities along the lower Yukon and its tributaries.

“In the tribal villages, our people are livid. They’re extremely angry that we are getting penalized for what others are doing," said P.J. Simon, chairman and chief of the Tanana Chiefs Conference, a consortium of 42 tribal villages in the Alaska interior. “As Alaska Natives, we have a right to this resource. We have a right to have a say in how things are drawn up and divvied up.”

More than a half-dozen Alaska Native groups have petitioned for federal aid, and they want the state's federal delegation to hold a hearing in Alaska on the salmon crisis. The groups also seek federal funding for more collaborative research on effects that ocean changes are having on returning salmon.

Citing the warming ocean, Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy requested a federal disaster declaration for the salmon fishery this month and has helped coordinate airlifts of about 90,000 pounds (41,000 kilograms) of fish to needy villages. The salmon crisis is one of the governor's top priorities, said Rex Rock Jr., Dunleavy’s advisor for rural affairs and Alaska Native economic development.

That's done little to appease remote villages that are dependent on salmon to get through winter, when snow paralyzes the landscape and temperatures can dip to minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 29 C) or lower.

Families traditionally spend the summer at fish camps using nets and fish wheels to snag adult salmon as they migrate inland from the ocean to the place where they hatched so they can spawn. The salmon is prepared for storage a variety of ways: dried for jerky, cut into fillets that are frozen, canned in half-pint jars or preserved in wooden barrels with salt.

Without those options, communities are under intense pressure to find other protein sources. In the Alaska interior, the nearest road system is often dozens of miles away, and it can take hours by boat, snow machine or even airplane to reach a grocery store.

Store-bought food is prohibitively expensive for many: A gallon (3.8 liters) of milk can cost nearly $10, and a pound of steak was recently $34 in Kaltag, an interior village about 328 air miles (528 kilometers) from Fairbanks. A surge in COVID-19 cases that has disproportionately hit Alaska Natives has also made many hesitant to venture far from home.

Instead, villages sent out extra hunting parties during the fall moose season and are looking to the upcoming caribou season to meet their needs. Those who can't hunt themselves rely on others to share their meat.

“We have to watch our people because there will be some who will have no food about midyear,” said Christina Semaken, a 63-year-old grandmother who lives in Kaltag, an Alaska interior town of fewer than 100 people. “We can’t afford to buy that beef or chicken."

Semaken hopes to fish next year, but whether the salmon will come back remains unknown.

Tribal advocates want more genetic testing on salmon harvested from fishing grounds in Alaska waters to make sure that commercial fisheries aren't intercepting wild Yukon River salmon. They also want more fish-tracking sonar on the river to ensure an accurate count of the salmon that escape harvest and make it back to the river's Canadian headwaters.

Yet changes in the ocean itself might ultimately determine the salmon's fate.

The Bering Sea, where the river meets the ocean, had unprecedented ice loss in recent years, and its water temperatures are rising. Those shifts are throwing off the timing of the plankton bloom and the distribution of small invertebrates that the fish eat, creating potential chaos in the food chain that’s still being studied, said Kate Howard, a fisheries scientist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. Researchers have also documented warming temperatures in the river that are unhealthy for salmon, she said.

Because salmon spend time in both rivers and the ocean during their unique life cycle, it's hard to pin down exactly where these rapid environmental changes are most affecting them — but it's increasingly clear that overfishing is not the only culprit, Howard said.

“When you dig into all the available data for Yukon River salmon," she said, "it’s hard to explain it all unless you consider climate change.”

Alaska Natives, meanwhile, are left scrambling to fill a hole in their diet — and in centuries of tradition built around salmon.

On a recent fall day, a small hunting party zoomed along the Yukon River by motorboat, scanning the shoreline for signs of moose. After three days, the group had killed two moose, enough to provide meat for seven families, or about 50 people, for roughly a month in their small community of Stevens Village.

At the end of a long day, they butchered the animals as the Northern Lights blazed a vibrant green across the sky, their headlamps piercing the inky darkness.

The makeshift camp, miles from any road, would normally host several dozen families harvesting salmon, sharing meals and teaching children how to fish. On this day, it was eerily quiet.

“I don’t really think that there is any kind of bell out there that you can ring loud enough to try to explain that type of connection,” said Ben Stevens, whose ancestors founded Stevens Village. "Salmon, to us, is life. Where can you go beyond that?”

Nathan Howard And Gillian Flaccus, The Associated Press

How psychedelics are returning to the world of medicine

Millions of people in Germany have been diagnosed with depression. Researchers believe that drugs such as LSD and psilocybin can offer an effective treatment. They could also bring big profits.


Psychedelic drugs could be used to treat depression

On July 13, there was a rainy sky above the southern German city of Mannheim. But, despite the uninspiring weather, it was a day of hope for millions of people with depression — because the first patients of a research project run by the Central Institute of Mental Health were scheduled to have a psychedelic experience.

They wore a blindfolds and headphones that played music and were accompanied by two therapists. The hallucinogen used for the inner journey is called psilocybin.

This active ingredient was isolated about 60 years ago. It gives the magic mushrooms their "magic" — i.e., their mind-altering effect. And it has been banned almost worldwide, including in Germany, for over half a century.

Even for the Mannheim researchers, "obtaining the substance has proven to be the highest hurdle." That's according to researcher and psychiatry professor Gerhard Gründer.


Can 'magic mushrooms' help treat depression?

"There are not that many manufacturers in the world from whom you can obtain such a substance in the required quality. It was a long and laborious process," he said.

But that laborious process is becoming more common. Hallucinogenic trips have long ceased to be solely the recreational pastime of hippies. A growing number of scientific studies point to the potential of psilocybin-assisted therapy for treating depressed patients — even those for whom other therapies have been exhausted. The Mannheim study, with a total of 144 patients, is now large enough that Gründer "expects statistically robust conclusions."
Depression is a widespread condition

According to estimates by the World Health Organization, about 300 million people worldwide live with depression. In Germany, that number is an estimated 5 million, and the Health Ministry has referred to it as a "widespread disease."

A conservative estimate is that around one in five patients cannot be helped with conventional treatment methods. "There is a huge need," Gründer said, adding that his institute is almost overrun with inquiries from patients.

In conventional therapies, patients are treated with daily doses of antidepressants. The new approach is fundamentally different.

"Here, it's a matter of taking this substance once or twice," Gründer said. "This is a very disruptive therapy that becomes embedded in a psychotherapeutic program."

Gründer believes that there is a huge need for unconventional therapy

Subjects in earlier studies reported life-changing experiences and significantly improved mental states, and were even able to stop taking their antidepressants, often a state that lasted for many months after the healing trip. The prospect of being able to significantly improve the condition of severely depressed people with just a few psychedelic sessions is worth over €2 million ($2.3 million) in funding to the ministry of education and research.

The fact that public money is now also flowing into research with psilocybin in Germany shows that psychedelic research is slowly edging from the fringes into the medical mainstream.

Psychedelic substances have returned to where they once stood in the 1950s and '60s — to the center of psychiatric, medical and psychological research.

An international meeting on psychedelic therapy took place in Berlin in mid-September
International meeting of experts in Berlin

This could be seen in mid-September in Berlin, when the Insight 2021 conference took place, organized by the Mind Foundation. According to its website, the foundation advocates the "evidence-based, safe and legal use of psychedelic experience in medicine and society." The venue for the meeting of the center of international psychedelics research is the Berlin Charite, one of Germany's most prestigious medical institutions.

For four days, attendees discussed neurological processes, compared the effects of LSD, psilocybin and other drugs with diagrams, and presented the state of research in a wide variety of fields. Even an employee of the German drug approval authority, the federal authority for drugs and medical devices, was there.

"We managed to destigmatize the topic; a discourse has emerged," Mind Foundation co-founder Andrea Jungaberle said in summary. "How this discourse will affect day-to-day medical business remains to be seen."

Experts are already enthusiastic. "How ecstasy and psilocybin are shaking up psychiatry" a headline of the science magazine Nature gushed at the beginning of the year.

Watch video02:08 Drug use: Why do we get high?

Psilocybin on the stock market

A growing number of companies are also keen. If they had their way, psilocybin, the ecstasy active ingredient MDMA and other substances would soon be used across the board to treat depression, addiction, and an array of other diseases. At least, that is the goal of the biotech holding company ATAI Life Sciences, owned by German investor Christian Angermayer.

Angermayer has discussed his own psilocybin experiences in German media, including newspapers Handelsblatt and Wirtschaftswoche — and this summer he took his company public in New York. Just three years after its founding, the psychedelic holding is already worth over $2 billion.

ATAI's holdings include Compass Pathways, a British company that has developed its own synthetic psilocybin. Compass Pathways is currently conducting a phase 2 trial with the drug involving more than 200 patients at 22 locations in 10 countries, currently the largest psilocybin clinical trial in the world. The company, which is also listed on the Nasdaq in New York, has been valued at over $1 billion after only five years in existence.

Watch video 42:36 LSD is back

The Berlin Registry of the Mind Foundation shows that the "trip therapy boom" has allowed an entire industry to flourish. It lists about 130 companies in the psychedelic industry, from A Whole New High, which offers psilocybin retreats in the Netherlands, to Wavepaths, a specialist for the right sound via headphones for an inward journey.

Even Andrea Jungaberle is not entirely comfortable with the rapid development. "Our best friend and our biggest enemy is the hype," she states soberly, promoting an "appropriate approach between demonization and transfiguration."

Swiss psychotherapist Peter Gasser, who has been working with LSD and MDMA for 30 years, shares this assessment.

"This pace almost scares me," he said. "This scaling up of small niche treatments: Just a few patients per the study, now you're already thinking in terms of millions." Gasser fears that the quality of treatment could suffer "because it's seen as too technological or too schematic."