March 2022 – Page 18

The worst idea of 2020

It’s year-end-list season. Usually, the Vox science team has some fun and compiles a year-end list of bad ideas in health and science that ought to die with the end of the year. In the past, we’ve targeted homeopathic medicine, declared it was time to end the relevance of the fatally flawed Stanford Prison Experiment, and dispelled myths about climate change. This year, though, we have only one target for intellectual demolition.

With the end of 2020, let’s leave behind the idea of using herd immunity acquired through natural infections as a means of combating the Covid-19 pandemic. That’s a lot of words to describe a simple, terrible idea: that we could end the pandemic sooner if more people — particularly young, less at-risk people — get infected with the coronavirus and develop immunity as a result.

As a response to a pandemic, the idea is unprecedented. “Never in the history of public health has herd immunity been used as a strategy for responding to an outbreak, let alone a pandemic,” World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in October. “It is scientifically and ethically problematic.”

And yet it held sway — at the White House, in particular.

Former White House adviser Scott Atlas (who is a neuroradiologist, not an epidemiologist) was particularly vocal about pursuing more infections. “When younger, healthier people get infected, that’s a good thing,” Atlas said in a July interview with the San Diego news station KUSI-TV. “The goal is not to eliminate all cases. That’s not rational, it’s not necessary if we just protect the people who are going to have serious complications.”

Let’s be clear: It’s not a “good thing” when young people get sick. For one, some of these young people may die, more may get severely ill, and a not-yet-understood proportion of them could suffer long-term consequences. The more people infected, the more chances for rare, horrible things to happen, like a 4-month-old developing brain swelling after testing positive for Covid-19. For that reason, among others, attempting to keep infections to only young or lower-risk people is a foolhardy game to play.

Why building up herd immunity through natural infections is a bad idea

There’s an almost-understandable case for why some people would push for a herd immunity strategy. We are isolated from those we care about, businesses are hurting, education has suffered, and so has our mental health. What if we could just get back to some parts of normal life and contain the risks to those who are least likely to get hurt?

This thinking has proved reckless. Sweden, a country that pursued a more permissive strategy when it came to social distancing, has a much higher death rate than fellow Scandinavian countries.

And look at what happened in Manaus, Brazil: The city of around 2 million people experienced one of the most severe, unchecked Covid-19 outbreaks in the world. Researchers now estimate that between 44 and 66 percent of the city’s population was infected with the virus, which means it’s possible herd immunity has been achieved there (another estimate pegged the infection rate at 76 percent). But during its epidemic period, there were four times as many deaths as normal in Manaus for that point in the year.

More typically, the term “herd immunity” is referred to in the context of vaccination campaigns against contagious viruses such as measles. The concept helps public health officials think through the math of how many people in a population need to be vaccinated to prevent outbreaks. It’s not meant to be applied to control a pandemic through natural infection. Here are five reasons why:

Even if we could limit exposure to the people least likely to die of Covid-19, this group still can suffer immense consequences from the infection — such as hospitalization, long-term symptoms, organ damage, missed work, high medical bills, and yes, death.
Herd immunity is a very high bar to reach from natural infections. There’s no single, perfect estimate of what percentage of the US population has already been infected by the virus. But by all accounts, it’s nowhere near the figure needed for herd immunity to kick in. The CDC now estimates that there have been 91 million SARS-CoV-2 infections in the US — around 27 percent of the population (though this may be an overestimate). It would take around 60 percent of the population to achieve herd immunity. That’s a rough guess; it could be higher. So we’re about halfway there. Who wants to double the destruction already caused by this virus? In the US, more than 330,000 people have died. (Plus, herd immunity doesn’t work on a nationwide basis but a community-by-community basis. In other words, some communities are still much more vulnerable than others.)
Scientists don’t know how long naturally acquired immunity to the virus lasts, or how common reinfections might be. If immunity wanes and the reinfection rate is high, it will be all the more difficult to build up herd immunity.
By letting the pandemic rage, we risk overshooting the herd immunity threshold. Once you hit the herd immunity threshold, it doesn’t mean the pandemic is over. “All it means is that, on average, each infection causes less than one ongoing infection,” Harvard epidemiologist Bill Hanage told me. “That’s of limited use if you’ve already got a million people infected.” If each infection causes an average of 0.8 new infections, the epidemic will slow. But 0.8 isn’t zero. If a million people are infected at the time herd immunity is reached, per Hanage’s example, those already-infected people may infect 800,000 more.
A herd immunity strategy is likely to harm some groups more than others. There are multiple reasons someone could experience a severe case of Covid-19. It’s not just age — conditions such as diabetes and hypertension also exacerbate risk. So do societal factors including poverty, working conditions, and incarceration.

In the US, severe Covid-19 deaths have disproportionately impacted minorities and less advantaged populations. Encouraging herd immunity through coronavirus infection risks further isolating these already marginalized communities from society, since they may not feel safe in a more relaxed environment. Or, even worse, we risk sacrificing their health in the name of reaching a level of population immunity sufficient to control the virus.

Soon, herd immunity will be a good thing — because of vaccines

Thankfully, we now have a means of building up herd immunity without the risks conferred by infections: vaccines. Unlike the immunity conferred by an actual viral infection, immunity obtained via vaccine doesn’t come with the cost of sickness and death. Vaccines are safe. And while they won’t turn the pandemic around overnight, they will help end it.

We still have to do some difficult waiting. Vaccine rollouts will be slow. Throughout 2020, “herd immunity” was used as a stand-in for “let the pandemic spread.” There was also persistent and erroneous wishful thinking by some who said herd immunity had already been reached, or could be reached sooner than scientists say, or without incurring horrible losses. Yes, the economic restrictions of the pandemic were, and still are, painful. But it’s also true the government could have done more to help.

Soon, herd immunity will become a good-news phrase as we build toward it collectively — and safely — through vaccines. As the vaccines get distributed, herd immunity will develop in a controlled, ethical manner. The pandemic will wane.

And as it does, let’s not forget: The calls to build up herd immunity through infections were a terrible idea. Let’s not repeat them in the future.

Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the Covid-19 death rate in Sweden compared to other European countries.

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In 2020, scientists documented hundreds of new species. Here are a few.

It’s the year 2020, and scientists are still discovering new species of life on Earth. No one knows exactly how many types of life are yet undescribed in the scientific literature; estimates range from around 86 percent to as high as 99.99 percent. And even though we’re living through an age of great biodiversity loss, the scope and breadth of life on planet Earth is still revealing itself to scientists around the world.

This year, researchers at the California Academy of Sciences have described 213 new species in scientific journals: “101 ants, 22 crickets, 15 fishes, 11 geckos, 11 sea slugs, 11 flowering plants, eight beetles, eight fossil echinoderms, seven spiders, five snakes, two skinks, two aphids, two eels, one moss, one frog, one fossil amphibian, one seahorse, one fossil scallop, one sea biscuit [a.k.a. sand dollar], one fossil crinoid (or sea lily), and one coral,” the academy lists in a press release.

These species weren’t necessarily first spotted this year. Instead, they were officially described in the scientific literature as unique species, some after decades of research.

Terry Gosliner, a curator of invertebrate zoology at the California Academy of Sciences, added one species of sea slug he first saw on a dive in the Philippines 23 years ago. As a sea slug expert, he knows immediately when he’s spotted one he hasn’t seen before. “It’s like if you walk into a room, and you know, almost immediately, if there’s a person in there who you haven’t met before,” he says.

But on that first encounter decades ago, Gosliner didn’t collect a specimen that would allow for DNA analysis, which is crucial for understanding if a presumed new species is actually new to science. Plus, this particular sea slug was nocturnal. “You just happen to have a chance encounter with it on a night dive,” he says. He found a second specimen in 2010. By then, “it was like encountering an old friend that you hadn’t seen forever,” he says.

It’s taken even more time to determine that this creature — now named Hoplodoris rosans — is a truly new entry in the scientific books of life. “The easiest part is finding them,” Gosliner says of discovering new species. The hard part is the scientific work that comes next.

After finding a species, “it’s a very lengthy process after that,” he says to describe a new species. Scientists need to study the DNA, the internal anatomy and external anatomy, “so that you can make comparisons about how that species differs from all the other species that are known.” Then those discoveries have to be written up and submitted to a peer-reviewed journal.

Gosliner and his colleagues also got to name the new species. They call it Hoplodoris rosans for a few reasons. Hoplodoris is the genus of the sea slug. But its species name, rosans, is named after the rose. They chose that because, for one, there are reddish-pink spots on the underside of the body. And two: “It has in its reproductive system this very large spine that holds mates when mating that was shaped like a rose thorn,” Gosliner says.

Along with Hoplodoris rosans, researchers at the California Academy of Sciences have described this year:

A pygmy seahorse about the size of a grape, called Hippocampus nalu.

A gecko residing in the city of Guwahati, India, called Cyrtodactylus urbanus.

The first species of pipefish known to live among red algae, called Stigmatopora harastii.

A newly described flowering plant in Brazil in the Microlicia genus, Microlicia capitata.

And a new sea biscuit (sand dollar) in the Philippines, Clypeaster brigitteae.

Why scientists need to keep documenting life on Earth. And how you can, too.

It’s been a tough year full of sickness and death with the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s hopeful knowing how much there is yet to be discovered about our world. And it’s important work, too.

Between 2010 and 2020, 467 species have been declared extinct (though they might have actually gone extinct in decades prior), according to the global authority on species conservation status, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, or IUCN. Others have been brought to the brink, and still more are seeing serious declines in their population numbers.

In all, the UN’s Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services estimates as many as 1 million species are now at risk of extinction if we don’t act to save them; that number includes 40 percent of all amphibian species, 33 percent of corals, and around 10 percent of insects.

A species can be discovered nearly anywhere: In 2012, a new species of ant was discovered in New York City, of all places. If you’re interested in species sleuthing, Gosliner recommends using the iNaturalist app to document critters and plants you see out in the world.

There, a community of citizen scientists can help determine if what you’ve scouted is truly new. And you don’t need to find something new, per se, to contribute to science. “Just yesterday,” he told me on December 18, “on iNaturalist there was a species of nudibranch [sea slug] that was found in the tide pools just south of San Francisco, that nobody had seen for many, many years. And so that was a really exciting thing to have documented.”

To protect more species, scientists need to know they exist in the first place.

“Describing new species is really documenting biodiversity on the planet,” Gosliner says. “There’s so many areas that we may lose species before we even know that they existed. If you never knew it existed, [and] then it disappeared — that’s kind of a tragedy from my standpoint. There’s the element of the excitement of discovering something new. But also, there’s the urgency that we really need this information to be able to protect biodiversity on the planet.”

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History for Ardscoil Rís as they take a first colleges title back to Limerick

Updated Thu 8:10 PM

Ardscoil Rís 1-17
St Kieran’s College 0-15

Robert Cribbin reports from Croke Park

ARDSCOIL RÍS OF Limerick captured their first ever All-Ireland senior hurling colleges title after claiming a five-point victory over Kilkenny aristocrats St Kieran’s College in Croke Park this afternoon.

Ardscoil Rís were appearing in their fourth ever final and after losing out in all three previous deciders to St Kieran’s in 2010, 2011 and 2016, Niall Moran’s side finally reversed the trend.

Kieran’s themselves were in a seventh consecutive showpiece and they were hoping to make it five wins in six, and despite Harry Shine giving them an opening minute lead, they were chasing shadows for the majority of the contest as the Limerick school were fully warranted winners.

Despite Niall O’Farrell squandering a 19th minute penalty for the Munster finalists, the youngster who was a late addition to the team caused huge problems for Kieran’s as he finished with seven points in total.

It was nip and tuck up until that point with Kieran’s leading 0-5 to 0-4 after Shine and Joe Fitzpatrick impressed early on but the final 10 minutes of the half belonged to Ardscoil Rís as they hit six points on the trot to go into the break with a commanding advantage.

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Source: Tom Maher/INPHO

As they always tend to do, Kieran’s battled back and when they got within two points of their opponents with the wind at their back they appeared to be in prime position to catch the Limerick side in the final stretch.

Unlike previous years, though, it was Niall Moran’s Ardscoil Rís team who finished the better and when David Kennedy shot past Alan Dunphy in the 55th minute for the game’s only goal, celebrations could begin in earnest as they powered to a 1-17 to 0-15 success.

Scorers for Ardscoil Ris – Niall O’Farrell (0-7, 0-4f, 0-1 65), David Kennedy (1-3), Shane O’Brien (0-4), Rian O’Byrne, Jack Golden, Dylan Lynch (0-1 each).

Scorers for St Kieran’s College – Harry Shine (0-4, 0-2f), Joe Fitzpatrick (0-4, 0-1f), Ben Whitty (0-3, 0-1 65), James Carroll, Donagh Murphy, Padraig Naddy, Paddy Langton (0-1each).

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Ardscoil Ris – Seimi Gully; Evan O’Leary, John Fitzgerald, Colm Flynn; Michael Gavin, Cian Scully, Vince Harrington; JJ Carey, Rian O’Byrne; Shane O’Brien, Niall O’Farrell, Jack Golden; Brian O’Keeffe, Oisin O’Farrell, David Kennedy. Subs: Dylan Lynch for Flynn 48 mins, Diarmuid Stritch for O’Byrne 58 mins, Sean McMahon for O’ Keeffe 59 mins.

St Kieran’s College- Alan Dunphy; Jack Butler, Adam O’Connor, Paddy Langton; Padraig Lennon, Joe Fitzpatrick, Conor Cody; James Carroll, Killian Doyle, Ted Dunne, Harry Shine, Ben Whitty, Donagh Murphy, Luke Connellan, Padraig Naddy. Subs: Anthony Ireland Wall for Naddy 41 mins, Alex Sheridan for Murphy 51 mins, Nick Doheny for Dunne 56 mins.

Referee – Liam Gordon (Galway)

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Big electric trucks and buses are coming. Here’s how to speed up the transition.

There’s a growing consensus in the climate change community that the key to transitioning the US economy from fossil fuels is to electrify everything — shift the electricity grid over to carbon-free power and shift other big polluting sectors like transportation and heating over to electricity.

When it comes to transportation, electrification is going to be tricky. Not long ago, the consensus was that the cost and power limitations of batteries would make it difficult to fully electrify anything larger than passenger vehicles.

But batteries have been progressing in leaps and bounds. Full electrification is still beyond the reach of huge vehicles, the long-distance airliners and container ships, but recently it has become a possibility for a large and significant category of vehicles in the middle: medium- and heavy-duty trucks and buses.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, just 6 percent of the registered vehicles on US roads in 2018 were medium- and heavy-duty, but they were responsible for 23 percent of transportation-sector greenhouse gas emissions (about 7 percent of total US emissions).

Since they mostly run on diesel engines, they also produce enormous amounts of air and noise pollution, which fall disproportionately on low-income and communities of color that may live closer to highways and are more likely to use buses. Long-haul trucks alone, while responsible for less than 6 percent of vehicle miles traveled on US highways, produce about 40 percent of its particulate pollution and 55 percent of its nitrogen oxides.

The global toll is immense: 180,000 deaths a year from diesel pollution.

That’s where medium- and heavy-duty electric trucks (MHDETs) come in. They are quiet, emit zero tailpipe pollution, and draw power from an increasingly clean electricity grid. An impossible dream a decade ago, they are now the subject of fierce competition from big automakers like Daimler, Volvo, VW, and Tesla, with multiple models slated to hit the road in coming years.

As countries across the world start cracking down on carbon emissions — and cities ramp up their fight against diesel pollution — there’s going to be an enormous market for clean alternatives. According to the Department of Transportation, there are over 14 million large trucks and buses on US roads. Wood Mackenzie expects the number of electric trucks on US roads to rise from 2,000 in 2019 to more than 54,000 by 2025, around 27 times growth. The research firm IDTechEx expects the MHDET market to reach $47 billion by 2030.

Demand is partly being driven by big fleet owners like Amazon, Walmart, Ikea, Anheuser-Busch, and Pepsi, which are transitioning to MHDETs. (Amazon recently ordered 100,000 electric delivery vans.)

Policymakers are helping, too. In July, governors of 15 states signed a memorandum agreeing to set up a MHDET task force, develop an action plan, and jointly “strive to make sales of all new medium- and heavy-duty vehicles in our jurisdictions zero emission vehicles by no later than 2050,” and in the interim, “strive to make at least 30 percent of all new medium- and heavy-duty vehicle sales in our jurisdictions zero emission vehicles by no later than 2030.” New York City, Los Angeles, Houston, and other cities are already exploring electric buses.

And don’t forget Jeff Bezos. One of his big climate gifts was $100 million over five years to the World Resources Institute, which will use it in part on a program to electrify school buses. Before him was the Hewlett Foundation’s 2020 Zero Emission Road Freight Strategy 2020-2025.

MHDETs are gaining momentum and there is every reason to believe that they will come to dominate the market. But societies do not have to simply sit back, watch markets, cross their fingers, and hope for the best. They can accelerate the spread of MHDETs — and their associated health and climate benefits — by targeting the many barriers that remain in a smart, proactive way.

To get a better sense of those barriers and opportunities, let’s look at two reports that were recently released on the subject, one from the Electrification Coalition (a collection of businesses and nonprofits) and one from the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). Both focus on the challenges of electrifying MHDETs and how to overcome them.

The total cost of fleet electrification remains high

The purchasers of big buses and trucks are not typically buying single vehicles. They are almost all managers of fleets of vehicles. So the question of whether to electrify goes beyond whether the next truck might be cheaper electric. Electrifying a fleet is a big, complicated process that involves buying and installing new charging infrastructure and changing operational procedures, in the face of considerable uncertainty and risk.

EDF offers a framework that tries to pull all these costs and risks together into a single metric: the total cost of electrification (TCE). TCE goes beyond the conventional metric of total cost of ownership (TCO), meant to be inclusive of capital, operations, and infrastructure costs, to include less quantifiable social, operational, and even psychological costs.

So what are these barriers to MHDETs? The Electrification Coalition identifies nine:

1. Higher upfront vehicle costs and associated tariffs

Several surveys have found that the higher upfront costs associated with fleet electrification — not only the vehicles but the associated infrastructure — are the primary deterrent for fleet managers. And upfront costs are higher today, though that is changing. Bloomberg New Energy Finance expects medium-duty EVs to reach cost parity by 2025 and heavy-duty EVs by 2030.

Here’s a graph from the Hewlett Foundation showing when TCO parity will be reached by various kinds of electric trucks. Note that all classes of EV trucks will be cheaper on a TCO basis by 2030:

In addition, new heavy-duty trucks face a steep (12 percent) federal excise tax, which is even more on the higher-price EVs.

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“The near-term higher upfront costs associated with MHDETs are likely to remain a substantial barrier to fleets for the next five to 10 years,” the Coalition writes.

2. Costly and complex charging infrastructure processes

Fleet managers are daunted by the complicated considerations involved in determining how much charging infrastructure is needed to support a fleet of MHDETs, finding a way to pay for it, and then fighting through the siting, permitting, and interconnecting hassles.

3. Early market and limited model availability versus limited fleet demand

Because there hasn’t been much regulatory pressure and MHDETs are relatively new and untested, fleet managers have been wary and demand has been low; because demand has been low, there are limited models and options available. (This should change soon as models roll out in coming years.)

4. Entrenched market advantages of diesel trucks

Diesel has been playing a big role in commercial transportation for a century; consequently, the vehicles, supply chains, and service networks are well-developed. MHDETs are newer and still trying to work all that stuff out.

5. Commercial and industrial electricity rate structures not aligned to charging needs

On average, electricity is a cheaper fuel than gas or diesel, but that cost advantage can be eroded or erased by bad rate design, with fixed rates or high peak charges.

6. Lack of verified data on total cost of ownership and performance specifications

Because there aren’t that many MHDETs on the road, and pre-production models don’t release their specs, it can be difficult for fleet managers to verify whether particular MHDETs can meet their fleet’s operational needs.

7. Limited availability of certified service centers and technicians

Again, because this is nascent technology, there aren’t many support services and trained technicians — that’s a major problem when it comes to these big vehicles because they tend to be used intensely and require continual support.

8. Concerns with grid resiliency

As more fleets electrify, there are greater concerns about the pressure put on electrical infrastructure that is in some cases already under stress, especially in congested areas. “Without proactive evaluation and investment to support these potential grid and generation upgrades,” the Coalition writes, “the transition to electrified freight could see significant delays and infrastructure impediments.”

9. Antiquated vehicle and facility ownership structures

Many fleet operators use leased facilities that may not have the infrastructure to handle electrification, and even if they can persuade the owners to allow upgrades, they have little incentive to take on all the costs for a property they don’t own. The cost of facility upgrades needs to be shared, perhaps with utilities as well.

As you can see, some of these problems involve “hard costs” like equipment and infrastructure, some involve “soft costs” like operational changes, and others are simply risks, which impose costs of their own. Fleet managers are not hyper-rational interest maximizers. They have limited knowledge, time, mental energy, and staff to devote to these questions. These frictions and uncertainties — about infrastructure, battery performance, maintenance costs, shifting public policies — can easily become overwhelming. The old ways of doing things, maintaining and ordering more diesel vehicles, have their own inertia.

Measures to accelerate MHDETs must target the full range of barriers.

Financing and policy tools can hasten the spread of electric trucks and buses

There are lots of financing, policy, and private-sector tools that can reduce the barriers to fleet electrification. Both reports get pretty deep in the weeds, so I will just briefly summarize. The Electrification Coalition offers the simplest way of dividing up the toolkit:

1. Policy

Local, state, and federal governments can all takes steps to boost MHDETs, including targets for vehicle sales, programs to fund and expand charging infrastructure, clean fuel standards (like California’s), and purchase incentives, among others.

2. Utilities

Utilities can set up programs that support private investment in vehicle charging infrastructure. They can more carefully and comprehensively assess the impact of EV growth on electricity demand, in order to plan and invest wisely. Perhaps most of all, they can reform electricity rates to be friendlier to electric fleets.

3. Supply chain

Participants in the MHDET supply chain can work to ease frictions as well. They can standardize charging connectors, invest in smart, networked EV charging management software, take proactive steps to guard against upstream supply disruptions (by diversifying materials), and set up a network of MHDET service centers and trained technicians.

4. Corporations

Corporations that want to clean up their operations can set deployment goals for MHDETs and run pilot programs for new vehicles and networks. They can combine fleet orders and make big purchase commitments to help drive economies of scale.

5. Collaboration

All the aforementioned parties will need to work together to share knowledge and best practices, technical and funding support, and outreach to the public and other stakeholders.

This barely scratches the surface, of course. (EDF has its own extensive list of tools.) But it gives a sense of the breadth of instruments and participants involved. All that’s required to drive MHDETs to market scale is the leadership to get this kind of cooperative action moving.

Unlike a carbon price, real industrial policy is going to be complicated and messy

For many years, climate policy wonks looked at the vast array of economic sectors and activities that must change in order to substantially reduce carbon emissions and concluded that the best and most efficient way forward was to change them all at once, with a single instrument: a price on carbon. Pulling on that one lever would move every part of the economy in concert. It is an elegant dream.

The fixation on carbon pricing lives on in many quarters, but for many climate hawks the elegant dream does not match how politics or people actually operate. What has worked in the past, and is likely to work in the future, is industrial policy: targeted, sector-specific efforts to accelerate some technologies and practices and phase others out. Industrial policy is at the heart of the new climate policy alignment on the left, evident in the Green New Deal, in the many policy platforms and proposals that spilled out of it, and in President-elect Joe Biden’s climate plan.

Industrial policy doesn’t look like an elegant dream. It looks like these reports on MHDETs.

It requires a detailed understanding of the dynamics within the sector, the key barriers to change, and the kinds of tools that have proven effective against such barriers. The barriers can be technological, they can grow out of archaic practices or regulations, or they can be socio-psychological. There’s no way to understand them and the opportunities for overcoming them until the stakeholders are heard, the data is crunched, and the analysis is done. It’s a hands-on, labor-intensive affair, especially if done well.

And because it involves so much effort from so many parties, it’s inevitably messy to implement, full of compromises and half-measures, rarely optimized to an economist’s satisfaction.

But throughout American history, industrial policy has produced wonders, from transistors and computers to pharmaceuticals, renewable energy, and, uh, fracking. If the US can muster the will, it can engineer a rapid transition from diesel trucks and buses to electric. It has done much bigger things than that.

The clean-energy transition will be accomplished not by any one policy, but sector by sector, fighting for every inch. Electrifying trucks and buses is worth the fight.

Why restaurants are open and schools are closed

Close the bars. Open the schools.

Public health experts have been repeating this same refrain since the summer, when many states and cities reopened businesses like bars, restaurants, and gyms — all areas where the coronavirus is thought to spread readily — without a clear plan to reopen school buildings. And the call has only gotten louder in recent weeks as cases skyrocket in a third viral wave and officials close schools while keeping indoor dining open.

For example, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on November 18 that school buildings would close in the city in response to rising cases — but gyms and reduced-capacity indoor dining remain open, at least for now.

While there remains some debate, schools don’t appear to be major sources of viral spread in this pandemic. Restaurants, bars, and gyms, however — places where adults congregate, often in close quarters and often without masks — do seem to contribute to outbreaks. Indeed, many European countries that have locked down to mitigate their second waves have allowed schools to remain open while such businesses close. “It seems very clear to me that schools ought to be our priority,” Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, a research organization at the University of Washington, told Vox.

So why aren’t more places in the US closing the bars and keeping the schools open?

There are a lot of reasons, from agreements with teachers’ unions to pressure from restaurant and other lobbying groups to parents’ understandable fears of exposing their children — and potentially themselves — to a deadly virus. But one big reason for the seeming disconnect has gone somewhat overlooked: the lack of help from the federal government.

Money from the federal CARES Act kept many businesses afloat through shutdowns earlier this year, and expanded unemployment benefits and $1,200 stimulus checks kept many laid-off workers out of poverty. But with no more help on the horizon for businesses or ordinary people, shutdowns at the state and local level could have a steep cost, many say, leaving some local leaders hesitant to try them.

“I think we’re going to see a lot of layoffs again, and I think we’re going to see a lot of people go out of business,” Adam Ozimek, chief economist at the freelancing platform Upwork and the owner of two small businesses in Pennsylvania, told Vox.

Closing down schools, meanwhile, doesn’t have the same immediate economic impact, since teachers can still work and get paid while classes are remote. But shuttering school buildings does affect students’ learning, as well as parents’ ability to work, which will hamper any economic recovery in the future — as well as hurting kids and families today. In some ways, policymakers may be trading short-term economic damage for longer-term devastation, as an entire generation of working parents — the majority of them mothers — is forced to choose between getting a paycheck and caring for kids.

In general, the choice of restaurants over schools is yet another way the US government’s handling of the pandemic has caused needless pain, many say. “It’s not the Covid pandemic that has harmed so many businesses,” Ozimek said. “It’s our mismanagement of the Covid pandemic.”

Many places are leaving businesses open while schools are closed

While schools closed in all 50 states this spring as the first wave of the pandemic swept around the country, reopening in the fall has been a more uneven process: As of this summer, 49 percent of school districts planned for fully in-person classes, while 26 percent planned for a fully remote start and 12 percent planned on a hybrid model. Since then, some districts, especially in urban areas, have pushed back plans to return to in-person instruction as this fall’s surge in virus cases arrived.

But the evidence so far suggests that schools themselves have not been a major driver of outbreaks. In New York City, the largest district to try some in-person learning, the average test positivity rate in schools was just 0.17 percent as of last week, compared with close to 3 percent in the city as a whole. In Florida, meanwhile, reopening schools in the fall did not appear to lead to a surge in cases among children.

Some have argued that we don’t yet know enough about transmission within schools to say much about their safety, noting that little current research has focused specifically on Black and other students of color who come from communities that have been disproportionately affected by the virus.

Meanwhile, the risks to teachers — who, as adults, are more likely to become seriously ill from the virus — appear to be greater than the risks to students. And reopening of schools has often been driven more by politics than by science, with President Trump calling for schools around the country to reopen this summer in the face of rising caseloads, and without the financial assistance many said they needed to do so safely. Thanks in part to his pressure, schools are more likely to be open in more conservative areas of the country, which have tended to have fewer restrictions overall even as cases rise.

But in general, public health experts have not ranked schools among the most dangerous venues for Covid-19.

There’s a growing body of evidence, however, that restaurants, bars, and gyms are significant contributors to community transmission. A recent study using cellphone mobility data, for example, found that these venues were some of the biggest contributors to the spread of the virus in the spring, and that reducing capacity in them could be an effective way of reducing transmission in the future. In one CDC study, people who tested positive for Covid-19 were twice as likely to have eaten in a restaurant recently as those who tested negative, as Benjamin P. Linas wrote for Vox.

But even as states and cities reimpose restrictions to combat the fall surge, restaurants and gyms remain open in some places where most schools are closed or on the verge of closing — like Boston and New York City — even though closing eateries might do far more to curb spread. In other areas, such as San Francisco, indoor dining has closed only recently in response to new surges, while schools never opened in-person at all. Meanwhile, areas such as New York and New Jersey have instituted smaller restrictions like curfews on restaurants, even though some public health experts are skeptical of their efficacy.

Overall, while leaders are moving to impose restrictions as cases rise, the country is taking a slow and piecemeal approach in which schools can sometimes feel like an afterthought. And some of the reasons say a lot about the federal government’s failure to adequately respond to Covid-19.

Decisions about schools are reflective of larger pressures on cities and states

A lot of factors have gone into districts’ decisions to close or open schools. Teachers, for example, have been concerned about the risks to their health, especially in places where school buildings are old and poorly ventilated. When New York City reopened schools earlier this year, de Blasio announced that they would close if the citywide positivity rate hit 3 percent on a seven-day average, a threshold the teachers’ union urged the city to stick to as cases rose.

Some parents pushed back against the plan, arguing that schools should not shutter since they have not been major drivers of spread. “It seems like schools are the only thing being threatened with a shutdown,” said Daniela Jampel, a New York City parent who organized a petition to keep schools open, told Gothamist.

But other parents have concerns about keeping schools open. Some have chosen not to send their children back in person — in New York, for example, only 26 percent of students have attended class in person this year. And around the country, many Black and Latinx families, who often come from communities hard-hit by the virus, have been more wary than white parents about sending their kids back in person. In a poll conducted in the summer, about 67 percent of Black families said they supported keeping school remote, compared with just 32 percent of white families.

De Blasio announced on November 18 that schools in the city would close since the city’s positivity rate had hit the 3 percent threshold. Meanwhile, indoor dining, gyms, and other businesses remain open, although New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said that closure of dining rooms in the city could be coming soon.

Overall, decisions about school are fraught because they involve children — and even though kids seem less vulnerable to the virus than adults, parents and policymakers are often leery of putting them in harm’s way.

But there’s another big reason schools are closed while restaurants are open: money.

State and local authorities are in a tough position on ordering the closure of businesses like restaurants and bars. “It’s a really fragile time for small businesses,” Ozimek said, with many still taking in reduced revenue or losing money in the recession. “Then you add a several-month lockdown onto it, or even a several-week lockdown — that’s just a recipe for businesses who have made it this far not being able to go any further.”

And business closures or contractions will likely lead to layoffs. Some (though by no means all) of the millions of Americans laid off or furloughed in the spring have been rehired or gotten new jobs, Ozimek notes. But if more businesses fail, fall closures could be even more devastating — we could see “a lot of permanent layoffs as the businesses go under and people don’t have a job to go back to.”

For example, in hard-hit El Paso, Texas, 300 businesses have already shuttered due to the pandemic, according to the Washington Post. And 300 more, including restaurants, nail salons, and retail stores, don’t have enough cash on hand to survive for more than a month — and the city is already under a shutdown of nonessential businesses until December 1.

Around the country, “if we have more shutdowns, we are going to see unemployment rates spike again,” Lucy Dadayan, a senior research associate with the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center at the Urban Institute, told Vox.

Closing schools doesn’t have quite the same immediate economic effect, something local and state leaders are likely factoring into their decision-making — teachers can still work remotely and draw salaries, and public schools, at least, won’t shut down permanently due to virus-related closures.

Of course, closing schools still has economic effects — for example, a disproportionate share of women dropped out of the workforce in September, with the demands of child care and homeschooling likely a major factor. And then there’s the long-term impact of school closures on students. Research conducted in the spring found significant learning losses, with Black and Latinx students and those from low-income neighborhoods disproportionately affected.

Meanwhile, uncontrolled surges of the virus will likely also lead to layoffs and business closures, even without shutdowns, as fewer people go out and spend money. “Even if some businesses are still open and functioning despite the surge in cases, we are not functioning at full capacity,” Dadayan said. “The economy is not going to be back at the place where it was before the pandemic anytime soon.”

In a way, closing schools while leaving businesses open simply shifts the burden of the pandemic onto families with kids, where the impacts are no less severe, even if they’re less immediately visible. “Especially low-income families need their child to be in a supervised space so they can go to work, or even if they’re working from home,” Lake said. “Academically and economically, it’s a little bit crazy to prioritize bars over schools.”

To close businesses without economic devastation, states and cities need federal help

But when it comes to restrictions on businesses, authorities at the state and local level have been hamstrung, to some degree, by Washington’s inability to act.

“The federal government did not give them the tools and help they need to shut down those businesses without doing serious, long-term harm to their economies,” Ozimek said.

The biggest tool they need, many say, is stimulus money — funding, like that provided by the CARES Act, that could help keep businesses afloat and help ordinary people pay their bills if they’re not able to work. As Vox’s German Lopez reports, experts agree that such stimulus is necessary to help people and the economy weather the kinds of lockdowns that seem increasingly necessary as cases surge and winter approaches.

Many European nations like Britain and France have heeded this lesson and enacted furlough programs under which the government steps in to pay a portion of wages for companies affected by the pandemic. These programs have, so far, helped Europe avoid the huge layoffs that the US has faced: While unemployment here went from 3.5 percent to 14.7 percent between February and April, Europe saw a smaller rise from 6.5 percent in February to 7.4 percent in August, according to the Washington Post.

But so far, there’s little sign of another stimulus on the horizon, with Republicans in the Senate opposing both enhanced unemployment and a second round of checks to American taxpayers, which House Democrats made part of their proposal. President-elect Joe Biden has called for restart grants to help small businesses recover from the pandemic, as well as a government-funded workshare plan to help businesses bring back workers, but these, too, would likely need the support of Congress. Democrats face a steep challenge in winning control of the Senate in Georgia’s runoff elections in January.

He has also selected a team of experts to manage the Covid-19 response, including Céline Gounder, an infectious disease specialist who spoke to the New York Times this week of the importance of prioritizing schools over businesses like restaurants. “I would consider school an essential service,” she told the Times. “Those other things are not essential services.”

Ultimately, the country will need a plan for supporting both students and workers — who often have kids at home themselves. Unfortunately, such a plan doesn’t seem forthcoming under the current administration, and the country has to get through a fall and winter under Trump. Without a change in direction, we may continue to see states and cities prioritize businesses over schools — because the federal government has left them with only bad choices.

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Social distancing is a luxury many can’t afford. Vermont actually did something about it.

In the middle of March, while many Americans were panic-buying milk and toilet paper, Michael Redmond had other things on his mind: how to safely house the dozens of people who rely on his organization for a bed to sleep in every night.

The executive director of the Upper Valley Haven social service agency in White River Junction, Vermont, had read the reports that the new coronavirus could easily circulate among people living in close proximity — retirement homes, prisons, or homeless shelters like his.

So he contacted the state to ask for advice. “‘Don’t worry,’” he recalls an official telling him. ‘“We’ve entered into contracts with local motels. If you feel you can’t operate your shelter, everyone can be given a room in a motel.’”

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Within days, Redmond was able to cut the number of beds in his shelter to reduce crowding and divert additional clientele to state-subsidized motel rooms. His nonprofit also organized outdoor dining and meal deliveries to further support social distancing.

Eight months into the pandemic, Redmond has seen no Covid-19 cases among his patrons. Overall, there have been fewer than six cases in Vermont’s homeless population, according to the state health department. That’s far less than a 1 percent infection rate — a stark contrast with the 25 percent infection rate among the homeless across the US.

Vermont has also remained an island of low coronavirus spread generally. Even with a recent surge — from fewer than 10 cases per day in September to 57 on November 18 — it’s consistently had one of the lowest infection rates in the continental US: 14.6 cases per 100,000 in the last seven days compared to 27 in New York, 74 in Georgia, 84 in Colorado, and 185 in North Dakota. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease doctor, has called Vermont “a model for the country.”

Researchers studying Covid-19 policy say Vermont’s successes are inextricably linked to its approach to helping at-risk groups avoid the virus. “Vermont’s prioritization of its vulnerable populations has helped both to protect those [people] from the worst outcomes we’ve seen in other settings but also contributed to the much lower transmission rates in the state,” said Anne Sosin, the program director of Dartmouth College’s Center for Global Health Equity.

“If we look globally,” Sosin continued, “the countries that have done better [with Covid-19] prioritized their vulnerable populations.”

Vermont’s health leaders recognized this very early in the pandemic. And instead of relying only on stay-at-home orders or curfews — which tend to benefit people who can work from home or fully isolate if they test positive — the government designed a response with the needs of high-risk groups in mind.

The package of measures now includes state-supported housing for the homeless, hazard pay, meal deliveries, and free, pop-up testing in at-risk communities. The state’s Republican governor, Phil Scott, is even proposing $1,000 stipends for people who’ve been asked to self-isolate.

Most states have “been using really blunt public health and policy measures to respond to the pandemic,” Sosin said. Vermont highlights a different way. When governments “tailor responses to the needs of our most vulnerable populations,” she added, “we can stop the virus and save lives.”

Covid-19 is not an equal-opportunity disease. Covid-19 policies haven’t reflected that.

There’s a fatal flaw embedded in the basic Covid-19 test, trace, and isolate trifecta used around the world: It doesn’t account for the fact that the coronavirus is not an equal-opportunity pathogen. The people who are most likely to be tested, and to have the easiest time quarantining or isolating, are also the least likely to get sick and die from the virus.

From the United Kingdom to Sweden to Canada, we have evidence that the virus preys on people employed in “essential service” jobs (bus drivers, nurses, factory workers), which don’t allow for telecommuting or paid sick leave; people in low-income neighborhoods; and people in “congregate housing” like shelters, prisons, and retirement homes.

People of color tend to be overrepresented in these groups — but there’s no biological reason they’re more likely to get sick and die from the virus. Simply put: They tend to work jobs that bring them outside the home and into close contact with other people, live in crowded environments ideal for coronavirus contagion, or both.

“My guess is that the only globally consistent finding about Covid-19,” Stefan Baral, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said, “will be an inverse relationship between Covid-19 incidence and the square feet per person per household.”

This means that, even when social distancing orders are in place, because of an individual’s work or living circumstances, they may be less able to physically distance. If they test positive, they may not be able to isolate.

The Green Mountain State has features that might have helped in this regard: It’s more rural and less dense than many other areas in America.

But focusing on Vermont’s size or rurality misses important lessons in what the state did right during the pandemic, said Sosin, who has studied the state’s Covid-19 response. Vermont also has attributes that put people there at higher risk. The state borders New York, home to America’s deadliest outbreak, and ranks fourth in the nation for the largest percentage of people age 65 and older, and last when it comes to ICU beds per capita. Other even smaller states, like Wyoming, or more rural places, like the Dakotas or Nebraska, are grappling with some of the worst outbreaks in America.

So what’s the key to Vermont’s success? It’s pretty simple, Sosin said. Instead of just talking about how “social distancing is a privilege,” leaders in the state designed programs and policies to overcome barriers to social distancing.

How Vermont kept its coronavirus rate low

Vermont’s governor was quick to shut down when the virus began surging in neighboring New York, closing schools in mid-March and issuing a stay-at-home order a week later. But the approach to helping people keep their distance and then reopen was much more nuanced — and involved everyone from the state and municipal governments to nonprofit workers and volunteer community groups.

In early March, there was the decision by the state to subsidize motel rooms to alleviate crowding in homeless shelters, said Sarah Phillips, director of the state’s Office of Economic Opportunity and the leader of Vermont’s Covid-19 homelessness response team. While the program built on an existing motel voucher system the state had in place, “what we’re doing now is far beyond what we’d normally provide for emergency housing and is entirely due to the need to provide non-congregate shelters” in the pandemic, she said.

There are currently 1,400 households in motels around the state — above the usual 300 at this time of year. The state also gave personal protective equipment and cleaning supplies to shelter workers, and made funding available to take other actions, like improving ventilation.

To support the motel program, social services organizations organized food and health services. Redmond’s Upper Valley Haven agency, for example, brought a mobile food pantry to the motels where people were staying, and partnered with a health clinic organized by students at Dartmouth’s medical school to connect the motel residents with primary care, and addiction and mental health support.

Communities across the state also formed mutual aid societies, Sosin found, mapping out their towns, and going “door to door or house to house, to identify vulnerable residents and organize services to support them so they could stay home.”

Vermont tests a lot: It has consistently had high per capita test rates and among the lowest test positivity rates in the country. But the testing has always been tailored, said Vermont’s health commissioner, Mark Levine. Since the beginning of the outbreak, the state health department organized free, pop-up testing in neighborhoods, housing facilities, or workplaces where the virus had begun to spread, or there was a risk of an outbreak. Instead of waiting for people who needed testing to find it, Levine said, they brought testing to the people.

Nursing homes and prisons were other priority areas. After two outbreaks in retirement homes at the start of the pandemic, the health department put restrictive visitation policies in place, and tested and quarantined new residents moving in. “We have not had an outbreak since that time until this most recent surge. And that’s because of our ‘protecting the most vulnerable’ steps we took,” said Levine, who described a similar approach — and success — in state prisons.

In May, Vermont expanded hazard pay to support essential workers making less than $25 per hour. More than 35,000 front-line workers will benefit from the program. The governor has also asked lawmakers for $700,000 to offer $1,000 stipends for people who need to quarantine or isolate but may be worried about missed income from work.

When the case count dropped close to zero in May, the state took a gradual approach to reopening, lifting restrictions on different sectors one at a time, every two weeks — the coronavirus incubation period — to understand what, if any, impact reopening had on viral spread.

Even though cases are now climbing in Vermont — with 57 on November 18 — Levine says, “We’re very optimistic.”

That’s because, just like last spring, Vermont is responding in a fast and targeted manner. Since new cases tend to be connected to travel and household gatherings, officials have tightened the borders and outlawed multi-household gatherings, even ahead of Thanksgiving. Shops, schools, and restaurants — which haven’t so far been identified as major local sources of contagion — remain open.

“That’s pretty strict,” Levine said. “We’re hoping, if everyone listens to us, we will not see any further surge.” But it remains to be seen if Vermont’s targeted approach can keep working, with lax measures contributing to rising cases in other parts of the country.

What the rest of America can learn from Vermont

There’s a simple adage in public health: “Never do a test without offering something in exchange,” said Johns Hopkins’s Stefan Baral. So when a patient gets tested for HIV, for example, they’re offered treatment, support, or contact tracing. “We’re not just doing the testing to get information but also providing a clear service,” Baral added, and potentially preventing that person from spreading the virus any further. “This is basic public health.”

With Covid-19, the US has failed at basic public health. Across the country, people have been asked to get tested without anything offered in exchange.

“If we are asking people to stay home and not work, we have to make sure society is supporting them,” Baral said. “An equitable program would support people to do the right thing.” And doing the right thing involves taking the types of approaches Vermont has.

“President-elect Biden’s plans for Covid-19 must ensure that the social goods of effective quarantine and isolation are supported by society,” Baral wrote in an op-ed with Yale University’s Gregg Gonsalves, “including the provision of paid leave and temporary housing support, especially for those in multigenerational households, and alleviating barriers to testing and health care.”

The Biden administration may be constrained by Congress but still could change the course of the pandemic with a stronger focus on equity. The president-elect has appointed a health equity researcher — Yale University’s Marcella Nuñez-Smith — to co-chair his transition team’s coronavirus task force. She’ll be focused on addressing the disparities the pandemic has once again revealed, she told Politico, moving “from policies to the blueprint on day one.”

But there’s no need to wait for the new administration to take these actions, Sosin said, noting that Vermont’s governor is a Republican. “These are not Democratic policies,” she added. “It’s good leadership and policy.”

Naas hold off four-time winners St Brendan’s in thriller to win first Hogan Cup for Kildare

Naas CBS 3-14
St Brendan’s Killarney 2-15

Richard Commins reports at Croke Park

NAAS CBS BECAME the first Kildare school to lift the Hogan Cup after a high-quality encounter with four-time winners St Brendan’s Killarney in the Masita GAA All-Ireland Post Primary Schools Football Championship in Croke Park this afternoon.

Two goals from man-of-the-match Kevin Cummins and one from Fionn Cooke proved crucial as Naas saw a six-point half-time lead whittled down to a single point with three minutes remaining with the Kerry school valiantly trying to pull off a dramatic comeback win.

But in a riveting end-to-end encounter, one of the best matches played in Headquarters in recent years, Naas held their nerve, kicking some excellent scores into the Hill 16 end to keep ‘The Sem’ at bay before Cummins audaciously chipped the St Brendan’s goalkeeper Aaron O’Sullivan for the clinching third goal two minutes from the end of normal time.

57 nóim

Coláiste an Bhréanainn Cill Airne 1-15
Meánscoil Iognáid Rís, Nás na Ríogh 3-13

"Chomh dána de chríoch!"

Kevin Cummins with a fantastic goal for @CBSNaas 🤩@GAA_BEO @officialgaa
#GAABeo

BEO/LIVE AR @TG4TV pic.twitter.com/zXsjYbs8aI

— Spórt TG4 (@SportTG4) March 17, 2022

Sean Broderick’s point stretched the lead to five points before an injury time finish to the net from Sem substitute Mark O’Shea gave the Kerry side hope again. It wasn’t to be with Naas, the beaten finalists the last time this final was played in 2019, adding the Hogan Cup to three Leinster titles in the last four competitions.

It caps a remarkable few months for Kildare’s county town, with the local Naas GAA club having won Leinster and All-Ireland Intermediate hurling titles after the club’s senior teams completed a rare double of county titles.

Naas were the more dominant side in the early stages but failed to make it pay on the scoreboard, the more efficient St Brendan’s edging ahead three points to two with Cian Foley’s eighth minute point.

The Kildare side were boosted three minutes later though with impressive corner forward Cummins latching onto a long fist pass from Cian Boran and placing a superb shot across O’Sullivan and into the top right-hand corner of the net at the Canal End.

Five minutes before half-time intelligent centre-half forward Colm Dalton put Fionn Cooke through to confidently slot home a second goal with CBS going into the break six points clear (2-6 to 0-6).

The Sem came out fighting after the break and within two minutes of the restart a long ball from Killian O’Sullivan was only diverted into the path of William Shine by a Naas CBS defender and their best forward on the day found the same corner as Cummins had earlier.

The Killarney boys would rue shooting three successive wides after that and as an end-to-end feast of attacking football developed, Naas CBS were the more clinical. Three points in a row, however, from Cian McMahon (2) and Luke Crowley between the 52 nd and 54 th minutes had Naas nerves jangling with the gap down to a point (2-12 to 1-14).

Cummins settled the nerves though with a brilliant dummy and point and despite an equally impressive score from the classy Shine at the other end, a booming kick-out from David McPartlin found its way to Niall Dolan who put Cummins through for his vital late goal.

Scorers for NAAS CBS: Kevin Cummins 2-5 (2fs), Fionn Cooke 1-0, Gavin Thompson (1f) 0-3, Niall 0-2, Sean Broderick 0-2, Dara Crowley, Colm Dalton 0-1

Scorers for St Brendan’s Killarney: William Shine 1-5 (0-1f), Cian McMahon 0-4 (2fs), Mark O’Shea 1-0, Cian Foley, Luke Crowley 0-3 each.

NAAS CBS: David McPartlin (Raheens); Tim Ryan (Naas), Charlie Murphy (Naas), Cian Boran (Eadestown); Robert Fitzgerald (Naas), Fionn Tully (Raheens), Jack McKevitt (Naas); Dara Crowley (Raheens), Daire Guerin (Naas); Sean Broderick (Ballymore Eustace), Colm Dalton (Sallins), Fionn Cooke (Raheens); Niall Dolan (Raheens), Gavin Thompson (Raheens), Kevin Cummins (Naas).

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Subs: Jack Taaffe (Naas) for Cooke 43, Elliot Beirne (Naas) for Thompson 60, Darragh Jameson (Eadestown) for Fitzgerald 61, Daniel Lenihan (Naas) for Broderick 63.

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St Brendan’s Killarney: Aaron O’Sullivan (Legion); Cian Lynch (Glenflesk), Tomás Clifford (Firies), Harry Byrne (Dr. Crokes); Darragh Fleming (Legion), Dara O’Callaghan (Kilcummin), John Kelleher (Glenflesk); Liam Randles (Dr. Crokes), Killian O’Sullivan (Glenflesk); Mikey Moriarty (Beaufort), Cian Foley (Kilcummin), Luke Crowley (Glenflesk); Cian McMahon (Dr. Crokes), Alex Hannigan (Dr. Crokes), William Shine (Legion).

Subs: Charlie Keating (Dr. Croke’s) for Hennigan HT, Rian Colleran (Fossa) for Clifford HT, Mark O’Shea (Kilcummin) for Moriarty 37, Michael Mullane (Glenflesk) for
Randles 54, Aodhán O’Neill (Renard) for Foley 61.

Referee: Paul Faloon (Down)

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Tyrone Ladies appoint experienced new manager ahead of relegation play-off in three weeks

THE TYRONE LADIES have appointed Seán O’Kane as the new manager ahead of their Division 2 relegation play-off against Clare in three weeks.

The previous manager, Kevin McCrystal, stepped down from the position on Sunday following a mixed start to their 2022 campaign.

Speaking to Gaelic Life about his exit, McCrystal explained that the players “decided they want to go down a different path and I have informed the executive of my decision to step aside.” He had been involved with the senior ladies and development squads for the last five years.

A statement released from Tyrone Ladies reads that O’Kane will take over the squad with immediate effect having previously enjoyed three successful terms with Tyrone.

“Formerly the north Tyrone man has had stints with Donegal, Antrim and Armagh while he also took Glenelly to an All-Ireland club final and most recently, Seán has been in charge of Jordanstown.

“With Tyrone, he won Ulster junior and senior titles, adding an All-Ireland junior crown over five years and three separate terms. Seán is set to finalise his backroom team over the next number of days, but plans to hit the ground running.

“Welcoming Seán back to his native county, Tyrone chairperson Donna McCrory wishes him and the team all the best for the rest of the year.”

Tyrone will meet Clare in their relegation play-off on Sunday, 3 April at Glennon Brothers Pearse Park in Longford.

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Natural disasters are increasing. The world’s poorest are left to fend for themselves.

More than 100 disasters — many of which were climate- and weather-related — have affected more than 50 million people around the world since March, when the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. And though the money needed to protect against these disasters in the countries at risk exists, it’s not getting to those who need it most.

Those are the key findings of a new report from the Geneva-based International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) released Tuesday. In it, the authors make clear that while global attention has been focused on the coronavirus pandemic — for good reason — the climate crisis and the resulting disasters facing communities around the world are just as catastrophic.

“It’s a very, very serious crisis the world is facing currently,” IFRC Secretary General Jagan Chapagain said of the Covid-19 pandemic, speaking at a virtual news conference on November 17. But he noted that while there is some good news regarding the possibility of a vaccine for Covid-19, “unfortunately, there is no vaccine for climate change.”

The IFRC report, titled “World Disasters Report 2020: Come Heat or High Water,” uses what’s known as “extreme event attribution” to show that over the past 10 years, climate- and weather-related disasters such as storms, floods, and heat waves have impacted 1.7 billion people. Over that same period, an additional 410,000 lives were lost, the majority of which were in lower- or middle-income countries.

Extreme event attribution is an emerging scientific field that has allowed scientists to study how human-induced climate change is connected to extreme weather events. As Vox’s Umair Irfan explains, in this field, “scientists construct models to evaluate the counterfactual of what would have happened in a certain event without climate change and compare it to observed results.”

And they have found that although global warming caused by fossil fuel emissions does not directly cause hurricanes or droughts, it is magnifying the risks and frequency of such events.

The authors of the IFRC report found that such catastrophes have been rising in number since the 1960s — and that a sharp increase of 35 percent has been recorded since the 1990s. The proportion of all disasters that can be attributed to climate change has also grown, from 76 percent in the 2000s to 83 percent in the 2010s.

Making matters worse, the report found that the world’s most vulnerable people aren’t getting the financial assistance they need to withstand such disasters, even though the funds they require exist.

The report’s authors argue that the speed at which governments and banks worldwide have developed economic stimulus packages is proof that funds can be assembled rapidly to meet existential threats. And they want to see governments mirror that energy when it comes to addressing the climate emergency.

A recent study, for instance, found that the money pledged globally for pandemic recovery thus far has surpassed $12 trillion. According to the IFRC, the stimulus model created during the pandemic would be a good model for governments to generate the $50 billion needed each year over the next 10 years to help 50 developing nations adjust to the worst impacts of climate change.

But they also warn that any money raised in the future can’t be distributed as aid has been to date: The report found that when it comes to receiving funding, the countries most vulnerable to the effects of climate change are being left behind.

Why the countries most in need of climate change aid money aren’t getting it

Of the 20 countries considered most vulnerable to climate change and associated disasters, the IFRC found that none were in the top 20 countries receiving funding.

In climate science, vulnerability generally describes the likelihood that a country will experience negative impacts from storms and other extreme weather events. A community’s or country’s vulnerability can be measured in the long or short term, but it basically involves sensitivity to harm like natural disasters and the ability to adapt, or cope through processes like evacuation plans.

It’s also an issue of social protection. If homes are damaged, do people have funding available to make repairs? Do people have savings? Or do they need to rely on selling livestock and then have no means to make a living?

Somalia was ranked as the most vulnerable country in the IFRC’s report due to high levels of food insecurity and drought, but it only ranked 71st in per-person funding disbursements. None of the countries with the five highest disbursements had high or very high vulnerability scores, suggesting that more can be done to reach those most in need.

The main reason money isn’t flowing to where it is most needed is that, as IFRC’s senior analyst of humanitarian policy and project coordinator Kirsten Hagon told me, there is no framework for giving climate-related aid to countries that are seen as being unable to manage large influxes of capital.

Donor countries give aid mostly to governments. This means that to receive assistance, countries must have governments able and willing to meet criteria set by donors, such as putting forth funding proposals and showing financial capability. People living in some of the most affected countries often do not have governments that can meet these criteria, making it difficult for them to be eligible to get international help.

The result, as Hagon told me, is that “the vast majority [of donor countries] think they will invest in safe countries and someone else will in the ones that are trickier and nobody does. And so you see examples like the Central African Republic where nothing’s being invested there.”

Although the outlook for disaster preparedness looks bleak, there are ways to save lives

According to the report, a few things can be done immediately to help people prepare for the increasing frequency of extreme events and prevent the loss of lives.

One of the biggest is to focus on disaster preparedness plans at the local, rather than national, level — ensuring that communities have individually tailored plans that include designated signals to communicate when it is time to evacuate and transportation to shelters that can keep them safe.

Because, as Hagon told me, “without those basic things that have to happen at the community level, that have to be designed with and by the community, then you’re not going to save lives.”

Donors must also work together to identify which countries are being left behind and then find a way to fill the gaps. They should also consider more flexible criteria that different countries can meet and be able to apply for funding.

The IFRC has also called on organizations and governments to examine their own practices — and says it will begin with itself, in order to make sure its work is “climate smart,” taking climate change impacts like warmer temperatures and sea level rise into account when doing its work.

The coronavirus pandemic has shown how international solidarity can actually work to address global crises and how massive amounts of money can be generated to save lives and invest in solutions. Now, climate experts hope a similar effort can be applied in a global mission to save lives and prevent deaths from climate-related disasters in the most vulnerable communities.

“We have to scale up all of the things that we already know, but we have to take them to another level because this is a crisis like none that’s ever really faced humanity before,” Hagon said.

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Pfizer and BioNTech have applied for emergency approval for their Covid-19 vaccine

Just last week, Pfizer and BioNTech revealed that their experimental Covid-19 vaccine, called BNT162b2, was at least 90 percent effective in an early analysis. On Wednesday, the pharmaceutical and biotech companies reported that their vaccine was even more effective after it cleared more clinical trial benchmarks for safety and efficacy. And on Friday, they said they are requesting an emergency use authorization (EUA) from the Food and Drug Administration.

If granted an EUA, the BNT162b2 vaccine could be administered to certain high-risk groups in the United States — most likely health workers — as soon as mid-December. Pfizer and BioNTech are filing for similar approvals in other countries as well.

“Filing for Emergency Use Authorization in the US is a critical step in making our vaccine candidate available to the global population as quickly as possible,” said Ugur Sahin, CEO and cofounder of BioNTech, in a statement.

The companies are confident in their vaccine after showing strong results from their phase 3 clinical trial: Out of 170 Covid-19 cases, eight people that received the vaccine got Covid-19 versus 162 in the placebo group, an efficacy of 95 percent. They also say there are no “serious safety concerns related to the vaccine.”

A competitor, the vaccine developer Moderna, also recently reported that its vaccine was 94.5 percent effective in an early analysis.

It’s worth pausing to reflect on where we are: At the one-year anniversary of the first detection in China of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the pathogen that causes Covid-19, there are now two highly effective vaccine candidates developed at a record pace, both using mRNA, a new vaccine technology that has never before been approved for use in humans.

The announcements are a breathtaking feat of science, international collaboration, and public investment. “The study results mark an important step in this historic eight-month journey to bring forward a vaccine capable of helping to end this devastating pandemic,” said Albert Bourla, Pfizer chair and CEO, in a statement.

But there are concerns as well. Pfizer and BioNTech’s announcement of its efficacy results came, for the second time, in a press release instead of a peer-reviewed paper, although the companies revealed far more about the demographics of their clinical trial than in their first report. BNT162b2 also has some of the most stringent cold storage requirements of any vaccine, demanding temperatures of minus 70 degrees Celsius (minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit) or lower, which may make widespread distribution challenging. The vaccine is also administered in two doses spaced several weeks apart. That adds a huge logistical burden to rolling it out.

That the clinical trial racked up so many Covid-19 cases among its volunteers so quickly is also a grim reminder of just how fast the disease is spreading right now.

And it will likely take months before any Covid-19 vaccine gets full FDA approval, which would allow the general public to have access to it. Even then, immunizing millions of people in the US against Covid-19 would be an endeavor unprecedented in its speed and scale. So getting an EUA is just one step toward ending the pandemic.

Pfizer and BioNTech say their Covid-19 vaccine was safe and effective across a diverse pool of volunteers

Pfizer and BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine data so far is still preliminary, but it likely received validation from its Data Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB). This is an independent group of scientists that serves as an intermediary between the pharmaceutical companies and the clinical trial participants to ensure that there is no meddling in the trial. The DSMB meets with the companies at regular intervals to go over their observations of the trial. The fact that Pfizer and BioNTech were able to make this announcement likely means the committee reported this information to them during an analysis.

“To date, the Data Monitoring Committee for the study has not reported any serious safety concerns related to the vaccine,” the companies reported in their press release. In a separate trial of 8,000 participants, Pfizer and BioNTech reported that the only severe side effects they found that occurred in more than 2 percent of volunteers were fatigue, observed in 3.8 percent of participants, and headache, observed in 2 percent. Surprisingly, the companies found that older adults reported fewer and milder side effects.

The trial also recruited a diverse pool of volunteers to see how well the vaccine would work among different populations. About 30 percent of US trial participants came from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, and 45 percent were between the ages of 56 and 85. “Efficacy was consistent across age, gender, race and ethnicity demographics,” the companies reported.

What emergency use authorization means for a Covid-19 vaccine

During a public health crisis, the FDA can grant an EUA to allow unapproved medical products to treat or prevent serious diseases when there are no adequate alternatives on the market.

The benchmark for an EUA is lower than it is for full approval of licensure. In general, the treatment in question has to have a likely benefit, whereas approval demands evidence of a proven benefit.

However, it’s not just about efficacy. A vaccine has the additional hurdle of a much higher bar for safety than conventional drugs. Since a vaccine has to be distributed to millions of people, including those who are healthy and those who have preexisting conditions, the rate of complications has to be extremely low for both full approval and an EUA.

“The thing people need to keep in mind is the safety data. Do we have enough data on safety at this point that we can go forward with the EUA?” said Jose Romero, chair of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), an independent group of health experts that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccines. “I think the FDA, ACIP, and all of the pharmaceutical companies have said over and over again that safety is paramount as they move forward with full licensure or an EUA for vaccines.”

The burden of approving a Covid-19 vaccine isn’t just on the companies. The FDA also has to be transparent about how it is making decisions. This is especially important given that public mistrust of a vaccine could be a major hurdle in the effort to contain the Covid-19 pandemic in the US.

Some experts are worried that the FDA damaged its credibility this year with its decisions to grant EUAs to treatments like hydroxychloroquine and convalescent plasma based on weak data, which may have been driven by political pressure from the White House. Some researchers have also criticized the FDA’s full approval of the antiviral drug remdesivir. These decisions have sown doubt about the FDA’s decision-making, and the agency will have to go out of its way to rebuild fragile trust with the public to roll out a vaccine.

How do we decide who gets a Covid-19 vaccine first?

Once an EUA is granted, the Covid-19 vaccine can start to be administered to people outside of the clinical trial. Health workers — doctors, nurses, first responders, medical cleaning staff — are the top priority. “They’re certainly high on the list,” Romero said.

Then the vaccine would be targeted at people who are likely to suffer severe complications from Covid-19, such as people over the age of 65 with other underlying health conditions.

However, there are 18 million health workers in the US alone. There are almost 50 million Americans over the age of 65. More than 10 million Americans are immunocompromised, and more than 100 million US adults have diabetes or prediabetes.

Pfizer and BioNTech said they only expect to have 50 million vaccine doses around the world by the end of the year. And remember, this is a two-dose vaccine, so 50 million doses will only protect 25 million people. That means there won’t be enough to go around, even for people at high risk. The companies do expect to have 1.3 billion doses ready in 2021.

ACIP is now putting together its recommendations for how to prioritize people for Covid-19 vaccination. But Romero explained they will also have to consider that there will likely be multiple vaccines on the market shortly. A dozen Covid-19 vaccine candidates are already in phase 3 trials, each with their own unique traits and caveats.

“It’s a little silly to think that all vaccines are going to be ranked the same, because they’ll have different characteristics,” Romero said. “Some vaccines may be better in younger populations; some may be better in older populations.”

The advisory committee will also have to weigh practicality, including the minus 70 degree Celsius storage requirements of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. “Those are going to be very important and impact significantly the logistics of getting these vaccines out and into the arms of recipients,” Romero said. “It’s hard to imagine how you’re going to set up a system to deliver a vaccine that requires storage at minus 70 [Celsius] into the widespread community.”

It’s likely, then, that the BNT162b2 vaccine will be reserved at the outset for health workers who are already working in and around facilities that have the ultra-cold storage systems for this vaccine, or those who are near facilities that are equipped to distribute it. For those in far-flung regions or people who don’t have sophisticated $10,000 freezers nearby, a vaccine with easier storage requirements may be recommended. Moderna’s vaccine, for example, only needs long-term storage at minus 20 degrees Celsius (minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit) and is stable for 30 days between 2°C and 8°C (36°F to 46°F).

Pfizer and BioNTech say they do have a solution for getting their vaccine to places without ultra-cold freezers. “The companies have developed specially designed, temperature-controlled thermal shippers utilizing dry ice to maintain temperature conditions of -70°C±10°C,” according to their press release. “They can be used be as temporary storage units for 15 days by refilling with dry ice. Each shipper contains a GPS-enabled thermal sensor to track the location and temperature of each vaccine shipment across their pre-set routes leveraging Pfizer’s broad distribution network.”

However, even with a green light from the FDA and assembly lines cranking out millions of vaccine vials, developers like Pfizer and BioNTech will still have to keep an eye on the people who received the vaccine to ensure there aren’t any super-rare complications that could arise. “I think it’s important for the public to understand that the process doesn’t end with approval,” Romero said.

For their part, Pfizer and BioNTech said they will continue monitoring their clinical trial participants for two years.

As these vaccines gradually roll out, people will still have to keep up measures to limit the spread of the virus: wearing masks, maintaining social distance, keeping up good hygiene. Until there is widespread vaccination, Covid-19 will remain dangerous and deadly, and the steps taken to mitigate it now will ensure a smoother and more effective campaign to halt the pandemic.

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