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The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are effective against the virus variant identified in Britain. It is less effective against the virus variant from South Africa. The U.S. banned all travel to and from South Africa effective Jan 30. U.S. coronavirus cases were at 125,000 on Jan 24 down 20% for the week. 

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Moderna is placing a big bet on vaccine production into 2022 by adding more production lines both for the US use and for export to other countries. From 1 billion doses it plans to triple production with partners around the world to 3 billion doses in 2022.

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The US received a boost in the economy with larger public spending than the European Union countries and more spending on vaccines. This is changing quickly as the EU has secured a large order of vaccines from Pfizer and other companies. France and Germany are now making steady progress in their vaccination drives. Britain has already secured results in the NHS vaccination drive, a leader in the field.

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Arizona, Utah and South Carolina are 3 states that are cited by the US Labor Department for not adopting any portion of the Occupational and Health Safety Emergency Standard for health care workers. The Labor Department says that by not adopting these standards for social distancing, mask use and paid time off for vaccination, these states are risking the health and safety of health care workers. OSHA sent letters to these states revoking the states abilities to run their own occupational health safety programs.

Texas is one of the states where governors are opposing the Biden vaccine mandate. Airlines based in Texas, both Southwest Airlines and American Airlines, say they will follow the Biden vaccine mandate for federal contractors, as they are required by law to abide by the president's order.

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Ignorance about the risks and benefits of good healthcare was once seen as a problem in less developed countries such as in South Asian region. The coronavirus is changing this so quickly that it leaves one incredulous. This report in WSJ shows how people in the U.S. are questioning the risks of coronavirus, skeptical about prevention measures, and questioning the value of a vaccine. From El Paso, Texas to Boise, Idaho in smaller towns and cities across the U.S. there are higher daily cases because of this attitude. The U.S. had daily cases of new infections of 195,000 on december 2 during the second wave. Compare this with 31,000 in India on December 1 for 4 times the population and one can see that nothing can be treated as given or a state of affairs that will exist in the future- the capacity for change is upto oneself. Even this reversal for the U.S. can be changed starting with a clean slate and a clean heart after lessons are learned.

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Already vaccination experts at the Baylor College of Medicine cited here say they foresee another wave of the coronavirus in the Southern US because of vaccine skepticism barriers to vaccination, and much of the population not being vaccinated. The percentage of the population in the Carolinas, Georgia, Georgia and Louisiana, that has both doses of vaccine is low. About 50% have had just one dose. In southern states Mississippi and Alabama the vaccination rates are much lower leaving large parts of the population unvaccinated. The widespread presence of the Delta variant in the UK and the R rate being between 1.00 and 1.2 in UK shows that the UK even with higher vaccination rates than the US is still facing a danger of another wave as it reopens.  The ominous aspect of this is that from just over 400,000 the vaccinations per day dropped to 316,000i n the US. This means there will be a period when vaccination drive is stalled while the reopening is fully underway with a new contagious variant twice as contagious as the original coronavirus. This leaves the US at risk of another wave, with the south and western US, younger people who are out more and unvaccinated, more at risk.  ...

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US president Biden takes strong action to prevent the spread of coronavirus Delta variant by introducing a vaccine mandate for 100 million workers, about two thirds of all American workers. All employers with more than 100 employees will have to require their employees to get vaccinated. All federal government workers and contractors, and recipients of medicare or federal funds are required to get vaccination.

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Plans for the Quad countries to launch a new effort in the last quarter of 2021 to produce 1 billion vaccines in 2022 for adding to supplies in the Indo-Pacific region that includes Indonesia, Malaysia Thailand and Vietnam. Japan would provide the financing for the manufacture of vaccines in India using American technology and raw material supplies. Australia would help with delivery in the Indo-Pacific region. The foreign ministers of the Quad countries, US, Japan, Australia and India, will meet on June 29 in Matera, during a G-20 foreign ministers meeting in Italy. 

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The US Supreme Court throws out a lawsuit that said the Biden administration unlawfully pressured social media platforms to remove content seen as disinformation. The ruling said the two states Louisiana and Missouri and five parties had no rights to bring their claims before a judge. Earlier lower courts had ruled against the government . The claims by the two states were shown through emails written by government officials to Facebook asking why it had not removed disinformation that said Covid vaccines were harmful. This issue of the usefulness of vaccines for Covid was a major issue in 2022.

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President Trump has decided to go big with a second aid package for $1.8 trillion in aid. With the second wave of the pandemic here the Trump administration has decided to go ahead with a second major aid effort in October 2020 to help small business, airlines and direct aid of $1200 in checks to families across the U.S.

The increasing number of layoffs and a stalling in further improvements in reducing unemployment in October is showing the need for a second major effort to aid families and small. business.  This will be needed before a vaccine and drug treatment is found by the end of the year.

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HV.1 and EG.5 are the dominant Covid variants in November 2023 each taking up about 25% of cases in the US. Paxlovid works against these variants. The new Pfizer vaccine also works against these Covid variants. More than any single variant the rapid rate of virus evolution, the many mutations, are the chief concern of experts. Overall they combine to produce the threat we face in public health.

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RFK Jr. nomination heads to the full Senate for confirmation as Health Secretary to bring new ideas and solutions to tackle obesity and disease in the US. He called the US health condition dismal as it is, not just for what is spent. RFK Jr called the US a sinking ship when it comes to the health of its people as he answered questions from Senators at Senate hearings. Ron Johnson, Senator from Wisconsin, said RFK Jr. was an answer to his prayers for someone who could help tackle this crisis. RFK Jr. said he was pro-vaccine and his opposition was only to some aspects of vaccines in certain situations. He also said that his father Robert Kennedy who died in 1968 when RFK Jr. was only 14 years old had told him when he was just 13 that it was important to have a fierce skepticism.  The magnitude of the crisis is so large and the budget is so large that only someone with the experience and one who has fought hard won battles against coal and for the environment for decades, and with the tenacity of RFK, is capable of taking the action needed today. Many senators applauded Make America Healthy Again, even as others asked RFK Jr. to support all vaccines at a time of public skepticism of the government. ...

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The large majority of vaccine disinformation has been traced to just 12 persons, according to a report cited by the White House. This report is from the Center for Countering Digital Hate. They have a combined following of 59 million on social media with Facebook being the largest. Of 812,000 Facebook posts looked at by CCDH 65% came from these 12 persons.

On Facebook alone 73% of all anti-vaccine content comes from these 12 persons. These 12 include a religious zealot, a wellness blogger, some physicians who have taken on pseudoscience, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Only 3 have been removed from one platform of the 12 persons. US president Biden is critical of the role of social media in this pandemic.

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Hit hard by the pandemic the people of Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico are showing less vaccine hesitancy. This is enabling this region to catch up with the US in vaccinations. The difference is that people trust vaccinations. About two thirds of people in Chile and Uruguay are vaccinated. Supplies of vaccine are coming in from US, UK, Russia and China. Brazil is now doing 1.5 million vaccinations a day, compared to 750,000 in US daily. This report says that on a per capita basis taking into account the populations US is currently vaccinating at half the rate of Mexico and a third of the rate in Peru and Colombia, Argentina. With 8% of the population Latin America had one third the deaths making vaccination urgent and essential for this region. People are taking the threat of Delta variant seriously in the region. Astonishing as it may sound after all the publicity of deaths in Brazil this report in WSJ says 88% of people in Brazil want to get vaccinated, while 67% say this in the US, poll from Ipsos. Peru, Argentina, Mexico, Chile all top the US, says WSJ. ...

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Indian prime minister Modi says he welcomes US president Biden's strong commitment to strengthen India-US strategic partnership, and says it will be a force for global good. The first action planned on which discussions were made is how to make vaccine supplies accessible and affordable in needed quantities in Asia, Africa and Latin America. US and India bring technology and manufacturing knowhow to do this. 

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French Premier Castex makes an effort to reassure the public in France as he takes the jab in Paris. The Astra Zeneca vaccine is back in use in France and new trials from the US show its 100% effectiveness in prevention of hospitalization and deaths, 79% effectiveness in preventing symptomatic illness. Experts also say it is safe.

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Latin America has made a huge turnaround through successful vaccination drives. Today more people are vaccinated as a percentage of the population in Latin America at 62% than in the US at 56% or Europe at 60%, according to Our World in Data project at Oxford University. There is little resistance to vaccines in Latin America after successful vaccine campaigns against yellow fever and other diseases. During the first year of the pandemic Latin America had one third of the deaths in the world with 8% of the population. Deaths after vaccination drives have dropped to 8%.  Brazil with 617,000 deaths from coronavirus was second only to the US with 800,000 deaths. Brazil is now back to normal after a successful vaccination drive that has 66% of the population fully vaccinated, and 80% with one dose, some of the highest rates in the world, according to Our World in Data at Oxford University. In Colombia with 50 million population about 50% of people are fully vaccinated. Cases have dropped from 30,000 in June to 2000 a day and deaths from 700 daily that month to 50 a day in December 2021. In Buenos Aires, Argentina's capital, 83% of three million population are fully vaccinated, 14% have received a booster. Buenos Aires city health minister says Argentine society has an affinity for vaccination campaigns. "They rapidly accepted receiving them," he says. Yet from the point of view of new variants emerging there is a different situation in rural areas. In industrial states such as Sao Paulo 78% are fully vaccinated, yet less than 40% are fully vaccinated in poor Amazon state of Roraima.   We make it a point to honor the brave reporters in these countries who provide the reports in the WSJ, as we did earlier for NYT Stephanie Nolan's reports from South Africa and Zambia about frontline workers against Omicron in Africa.  Luciana Magalhaes in Sao Paulo, Jenny Carolina Gonzalez in Bogota, and Sylvina Frydlewsky in Buenos Aires and Kejal Vyas writing this report from San Salvador. ...

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The US has a history of vaccination mandates, going back to the Revolutionary War under George Washington when all soldiers in 1777 were required to be vaccinated and Boston required the population to be vaccinated in 1809 for smallpox. Vaccine mandates were adopted during the measles, and diphtheria vaccination campaigns, and for other diseases. It is only through the mandates that these diseases were controlled. The coronavirus is no different as states and cities across the US take up mandated vaccination to avoid taking any risks with the fast spreading Delta variant.

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Risks are increasing in the southeast and midwestern states in the US where vaccination rates are as low as 30%. The Delta variant of coronavirus is now the dominant virus strain in the US. It is highly transmissible, estimated to be about 50% more transmissible than the original virus. The region covering Missouri, Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska, as well as Wyoming is affected, in addition to the southeastern states, as these states have lower rates of vaccination and vaccine skepticism. As communities in the US and UK reduce pandemic restrictions and open for the summer the risks of last year are being brought up by experts. 

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Dr. Michiaki Takahashi of Osaka, Japan, who developed the chickenpox vaccine in 1972. He decided to do research on a vaccine for chicken pox after his son contracted chickenpox in 1964 and barely survived. At the time he was at Baylor Medical College in Houston. The U.S. alone has about 4 million chickenpox cases a year. This vaccine is now used all over the world.

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US president Biden says efforts are being made to provide emergency assistance to India for vaccine making supplies, as well as therapeutics, ventilators and other equipment. The White House says "The United States has identified sources of specific raw material urgently required for Indian manufacture of the Covishield vaccine that will be immediately be made available for India." Joe Biden said that "Just as India sent assistance to the United States as our hospitals were strained early in the pandemic, we are determined to help India in its time of need." This assistance is now being coordinated at the highest levels and being done round the clock. Chancellor Merkel of Germany - "The fight against the pandemic is our common fight. Germany stands in solidarity with India and is urgently preparing a mission of support."  The European Union's von der Leyen said "The EU is pooling resources to respond rapidly to India's request for assistance via the EU Civil Protection Mechanism. We stand in full solidarity with the Indian people."   ...

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The first Quad Summit of leaders of US, Australia, India and Japan takes place on March 11, 2021. The Quad is a force for good says the Indian prime minister, with its focus on vaccines, climate change and emerging technologies. 

The leaders affirmed the need to ensure equitable access to the vaccines for speedy economic recovery and benefitting global health. Mr. Biden affirmed the need for the Indo-Pacific region to be "governed by international law, free of coercion and upholding universal values."

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Joe Biden only the second US president after John F Kennedy to visit the Vatican, says "its good to be back" as he talks with the Pope for well over 75 minutes. Biden is a devout Catholic and never misses Sunday Mass. He thanked the Pope's advocacy for the world's poor and for ensuring vaccine supplies for all the world's people.

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US EU relations are on a better track with president Biden, yet tough talks on issues such as Russia and China, vaccines, climate change remain, and there is the uncertainty of new leadership in France and Germany with upcoming elections.