by Kenny Stancil
Refuting President Joe Biden’s recent claim that “the pandemic is over,” a group of physicians, epidemiologists, and other experts warned in an open letter published last month that Covid-19 remains a deadly and disabling threat, including in the United States, which is ill-prepared for a possible winter surge “fueled by the emergence of new Omicron strains.”
“We know from our clinical and research experience that the pandemic is far from over, and that national efforts to secure the health and well-being of the American public are far from complete,” the scholars wrote in the esteemed British Medical Journal. “We are deeply concerned that the Biden administration is minimizing Covid at a time when it needs to be redoubling its efforts to ensure funding and resources to prevent another surge.”
“The U.S. hasn’t put in the effort needed to move into a new phase with confidence,” states the letter. “Booster coverage, even among older Americans, is abysmal, with only half of vaccinated adults having received a booster. This places the U.S. 73rd globally for booster coverage. Fewer than six percent of immunocompromised Americans—a group that accounted for nearly one in five hospital admissions during the BA.2 surge—have received Evusheld, a therapy to help prevent Covid-19.”
To make matters worse, just four percent of eligible Americans have so far received the new bivalent booster tailored to protect against the dominant subvariant. Recent polling found that over half of fully vaccinated adults don’t know they are eligible for the shot, and less than one-third say they plan to get their fourth vaccine dose “as soon as possible.”
Rampant right-wing anti-science campaigns have played a significant role, to be sure, but so too has the nation’s for-profit healthcare model as well as efforts to normalize the ongoing dangers posed by the continuously mutating coronavirus.
Soon after Biden downplayed the pandemic in his “60 Minutes” interview, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that masking will no longer be universally required in healthcare facilities and nursing homes.
“If Biden’s recent comment indicates that the administration is positioned to pull back further pandemic mitigation,” the public health experts warned, “the U.S. will be preparing for a major storm without even an umbrella in hand.”
“Pandemics do not end with a flip of a switch,” they wrote, adding:
“Despite the widespread belief that the pandemic is over, death and disruption continue. As Americans embrace what McKinsey and Company has called “individual endemicity”—in which people let their risk tolerance dictate the preventive measures they take—transmission rates remain at dangerous levels in nearly every county of the U.S. Throughout the summer, the U.S. recorded approximately 3,000 deaths per week, at least the equivalent of a 9/11’s worth of deaths each week, and often more. The Delta and Omicron surges took 350,000 American lives in seven months, almost seven times as many fatalities as claimed by the most severe flu season in years. In early September 2022, Covid-19 was the second leading cause of death in the United States, claiming more lives than stroke and common cancers.
“Beyond its outsize death toll, Covid-19 is leaving many Americans in diminished health and with less economic security. More than seven percent of Americans report experiencing protracted post-Covid symptoms; recent estimates suggest long Covid has forced at least 500,000 people out of the workforce. The continuing impact of the pandemic is particularly devastating given its unequal burden on communities of color and socioeconomically vulnerable populations, who are less likely to have private insurance to cover prevention, testing, and treatment costs.”
The U.S. is in a different position than it was when the pandemic first emerged thanks to the increased availability of vaccines, tests, and treatments made possible by robust government funding. But the money underpinning the free provision of those medical tools is rapidly disappearing, leading to what Adam Gaffney, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard University and a pulmonary and intensive care unit doctor, calls “the rationing of Covid-care by ability to pay.”
While Biden has repeatedly asked Congress to authorize billions of dollars in additional spending to address Covid-19 and Monkeypox—including resources that would be directed toward international efforts—lawmakers, led by Senate Republicans, have refused for months to allocate new money. The president’s premature assertion about the end of the pandemic, meanwhile, has only bolstered right-wing demands for austerity, and the continuing resolution passed last month excluded funding for both infectious disease outbreaks.
“Biden’s claim is almost guaranteed to sap political will for funding the public health and medical resources Americans need to ‘live with Covid,’” says the letter published October 7th. “But even as a prematurely ‘post-pandemic’ order takes shape, cities are beginning to report spikes in wastewater surveillance—an ominous sign of trouble ahead.”
Earlier this year, the White House sounded the alarm about a potential coronavirus surge in the coming months that could infect up to 100 million people nationwide, resulting in a million hospitalizations and nearly 200,000 additional deaths in a worst-case scenario.
People in the U.S.—already home to more than one million of the world’s Covid-19 deaths—have died at a significantly higher rate than their counterparts in other wealthy nations, where universal healthcare, paid sick leave, and other lifesaving rights were won decades ago. Notably, average life expectancy in the U.S. has declined substantially over the past two years.
“We need a full-court press this fall to reverse these trends and reach more of the public with boosters and antivirals,” the experts wrote.
Echoing recommendations made recently by the People’s CDC, the letter continues:
“The U.S. must make smart investments in the future of our country’s response. We need to continue prioritizing tests, masks, treatments, and ventilation. Failing to produce these resources and make them widely accessible will effectively waste the benefits of the scientific advances we’ve made thus far. Inadequate funding may also slow or stop our progress towards developing new and more protective nasal and pan-coronavirus vaccines and therapies.
“The Biden administration, with the support of Congress, must be clear: The pandemic is not over—and with strategic investment and planning, we can greatly mitigate its impact. We need a robust national booster campaign, more investment in tests, treatments, and next-wave vaccines, better protections for the immunocompromised and other high-risk groups, and healthier buildings that protect against Covid and other diseases. Leaders and policymakers must not accept or normalize our dangerous current status quo: dramatic reductions in life expectancy, declining health and economic security for many, and the ongoing loss of hundreds of lives per day.”
Globally, the pandemic has caused more than 15 million deaths. People in low-income countries have been deprived of equal access to lifesaving Covid-19 medical tools, leaving billions of people in Africa and other parts of the Global South completely unprotected.
The Lancet’s Covid-19 commission declared last month that “widespread failures during the Covid-19 pandemic at multiple levels worldwide have led to millions of preventable deaths and a reversal in progress towards sustainable development for many countries.
“The best chance to stop this pandemic is to make vaccines available for everyone, everywhere,” a pair of experts wrote recently in Lancet Infectious Diseases. “The efforts to provide booster doses should be balanced with the efforts to attain vaccine equity.”
This work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
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New Ruling Leads to Fresh Call For Impeachment of Clarence Thomas
by Kenny Stancil
A long-standing call for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to face impeachment proceedings was renewed Monday after the right-wing judge indicated in an unsigned dissent that he would have blocked enforcement of the House January 6 panel’s subpoena for the communications records of Arizona Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward.
The House committee investigating the deadly January 6 insurrection “is seeking Ward’s records related to her role in former President Donald Trump’s effort to steal the 2020 election as a fake elector casting ballots in the Electoral College for Trump,” HuffPost reported.
In a 7-2 vote, the Supreme Court on Monday paved the way for the panel to obtain Ward’s phone records, rejecting the Arizona GOP chair’s appeal. Right-wing Justice Samuel Alito joined Thomas in dissenting.
This marked the second time Thomas has tried to hinder the committee’s probe of the Trump-led effort to remain in office despite his 2020 election loss—a plot in which Thomas’ wife, right-wing activist Ginni Thomas, played a major role.
Thomas, in January, was the only justice to vote against the release of White House records to the panel. Two months later, text messages between former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Ginni Thomas showed that she had been in communication with Trump’s team about efforts to overturn President Joe Biden’s electoral victory.
Weeks later, it was revealed that Ginni Thomas had lobbied Republican lawmakers in Arizona and other states to reject Biden’s electors and appoint fake ones who would support Trump. Since late March, congressional Democrats have called on Clarence Thomas to recuse himself, resign, or be impeached for apparently trying to shield his wife’s anti-democratic political activities from scrutiny.
“His wife, Ginni Thomas, pressured Arizona officials to illegally overturn Trump’s loss,” Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a D.C.-based watchdog, noted Monday. “It’s absurd that Thomas did not recuse.”
“Justice Thomas must face an impeachment inquiry,” the pro-democracy advocacy group Free Speech for People tweeted.
A petition calling for the impeachment of Clarence Thomas has garnered more than 1.2 million signatures since details about Ginni Thomas’ direct participation in Trump’s failed coup were first made public.
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Seabrook False Alert Report Inadequate
At 10:50 a.m. on the morning of July 12th, vacationers relaxing on the beaches of Rye, North Hampton, Hampton, and Seabrook, New Hampshire were startled to hear loudspeakers broadcasting an alarming message: “Attention. Attention. There is a problem at Seabrook Nuclear Power Station. The beaches are closed. Leave the beach area at once and turn on your radio for more information.” In addition, some local citizens began driving around the area, urging people to evacuate.
Fortunately it was all just a big mistake. The plant was running normally. The system was just being tested, and someone had pushed the wrong button. Unfortunately, it took authorities an hour to convey that message to a literally alarmed public.
On September 21, 2022 the Department of Safety [DoS] issued a report on the incident, titled: “NextEra Seabrook Station Siren Activation Report.” Not surprisingly, members of the New Hampshire House Committee on Science, Technology, and Energy have been taking interest in this incident.
According to Rep. Peter Somssich, Chair of the Committee, the report “provides more details about the July 12th incident and also suggests some corrective actions, [but] it is still not enough to address all the issues that were raised as the result of the accidental ‘Field Test.’
“The July 12th incident demonstrated the need for the “ReadyNH.gov” evacuation pamphlet to undergo a serious review, since New Hampshire residents did not behave as this plan envisioned. In addition, the phone notification procedures appeared to be haphazard with many households in the Evacuation Planning Zone (EPZ) not receiving a phone alert, while others vacationing in Florida were sent the alert. The incident also underscores the need for the State of New Hampshire to have its own independent 24/7 radiological monitoring system, whether by contracting with C-10 for such services (which Massachusetts has been doing) or by creating its own comparable network of monitors. Relying entirely on information from the operators of Seabrook Station for timely and reliable information may be wishful thinking, as the September 21st report illustrates. Finally, any report should address the remote possibility of a cyber-attack or a terrorist incident, in which case New Hampshire must have its own reliable communications procedures in place.
“In a letter dated November 14, 2022 I called on Director Rob Buxton to undertake an additional investigation so that areas not addressed by the September 21 report can be thoroughly reviewed and additional actions implemented.”
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A Long Winter for Old Glory?

A Flag Police volunteer from Kittery reports, “While the Frisbees Wharf Restaurant seemed to thrive this season, their American flag needs replacement.”
Flag Police H.Q. salutes the volunteer for his initiative, but has a quibble with his assessment of the situation.
“Given the current presentation of this flag,” reads the persnickety memo, “i.e., streaming from a single grommet, apparently due to halyard failure, its true condition cannot be determined at this time.” Whatever.
According to its website, the restaurant is now closed for the season.
That’s understandable enough, given the weather…but is this to be the status quo until spring?