its funny you assholes try to bring Trump into this... Being that he got the mRNA vaccines rolling with billions in orders.
Chicago vaccine passport considered to open concerts, sporting events this summer https://abc7chicago.com/chicago-considers-electronic-vax-pass-for-concerts-sporting-events/10557870/ There is a Chicago initiative to offer an electronic COVID vaccine passport, akin to what's rolling out in New York State, that would allow stadiums, concert venues and other businesses reopen to fully-vaccinated people. The blockchain certified proof of vaccination is acceptable to many people who typically are concerned with government overreach. "Vaccinate mandates like the vax pass can be consistent with civil liberties, values and principles when there's a grave threat to public health," said Colleen Connell, executive director of ACLU Illinois. The city plans to incentivize young people, especially, to get vaccinated and earn other benefits like haircuts and pedicures for doing so. Cook County is working with PromoShare, a company that enables event producers, sports teams and venues to tap their fans as influencers, to encourage vaccine take up, but a vax pass would be a step up. "If they need a vax pass to go to a music festival to see their favorite band or their favorite artist, I think they're going to run to get the vaccine," said Ernesto Pedroza of PromoShare. The system would rely on blockchain technology, the decentralized distributed leger behind Bitcoin. "It is a way of verifying vaccination and a way of verifying that information and sharing it among key stakeholders, and being bale to have that information be secure, transparent, and verifiable, it is much better than a piece of paper," said Lamont Black, finance professor at DePaul University. Fake vaccination certificates can be found for sale on the internet. "This would be a way that is verified by a hospital, by the regulators," Black explained. "Then when you're checked going into a sports event or something else, everyone knows that information is true, and it is secure on the blockchain." For now, concerns revolve around equity. Many said there would need be an analog or paper alternative for people who do not have access to a smartphone. The city's final plan has yet to be unveiled, but other promoters that ABC7 spoke to were reluctant to endorse a vax pass, specifically. Both the White Sox and the Cubs said they'd wait for more details, and will have nothing to do with a future vax pass until Major League Baseball gives them some guidance.
The majority corporate America will require employees to be vaccinated. In many ways this is important to employee retention. Top-performing people don't want to work for companies where they will be exposed to anti-vaxxer plague rats everyday -- they will take their skills to companies that have rational policies to protect their health. Most U.S. companies will require proof of Covid vaccination from employees, survey finds https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/29/mos...-covid-vaccination-from-employees-survey.html A broad majority of U.S. employers, 65%, plan to offer employees incentives to get vaccinated and 63% will require proof of vaccination, according to an ASU/Rockefeller Foundation survey. Overall, 44% will require all employees to get vaccinated, 31% will just encourage vaccinations and 14% will require some employees to get vaccinated. More than 60% of companies in the U.S. will require proof of vaccination from their employees, according to a new survey conducted by Arizona State University with support from the Rockefeller Foundation. A broad majority of U.S. employers, 65%, plan to offer employees incentives to get vaccinated and 63% will require proof of vaccination, according to the survey. Overall, 44% will require all employees to get vaccinated, 31% will just encourage vaccinations and 14% will require some employees to get vaccinated. When it comes to consequences for failing to comply with company vaccination policy, 42% of businesses said the employee will not be allowed to return to the physical work environment, and 35% said disciplinary actions are on the table, up to and including possible termination. The survey, released Thursday, represents the responses of 957 facilities across 24 industry sectors in the U.S. Most of the respondents were businesses with 250 or more employees. Testing still remains critical to employers with 70% of respondents currently conducting Covid tests that are mostly mandatory. In terms of employee well-being, the corporate respondents said burnout increased 54% and mental health concerns overall increased 59%. However, morale and productivity also both when up by nearly 50%. Looking forward, 66% of employers are planning to allow employees to work from home full-time through 2021, and 73% intend to offer flexible work arrangements when the pandemic is over. However, 73% of businesses want employees to work from the office at least 20 hours a week. “This is not just a bubble that goes back to ‘normal’, there will be some positive flexibility after the pandemic ends and we go back to in-person work,” said Mara G. Aspinall, a professor at Arizona State University’s College of Health Solutions and one of the authors of the survey. Employees are mainly concerned about their personal health, risk of infection and safety of the workplace, according to the survey. Thirty-eight percent of employees want to return eventually but not immediately and about one quarter said they are reluctant to return at all, according to the businesses that responded to the survey. “The pandemic has changed the traditional office environment in many ways, possibly forever, yet a majority of employers are indicating they see real value in employees continuing to interact face-to-face,” Nathaniel L. Wade, a co-author of the study who is also affiliated with ASU’s College of Health Solutions. “We really wanted to make sure we’re giving public information to help people make good decisions.” Most employees, about 51%, would prefer to wait until the government or health agencies allow them to return to work, and about 47% said they would return to in-person work when the entire workforce is vaccinated. “Employers have been relatively quiet in the pandemic, we’re now entering the next phase where employers are creating their own policies so that employees can go safely and sustainably back to the workplace,” Aspinall said. “People want to get back to normal, but they want to do it in a safe way.”
People not getting the COVID-19 vaccine will stop the U.S. recovery dead in our tracks.... causing restrictions to be left in place for a long time. It has reached the point where states are trying to figure out how to wind down the operations. Decline in US Covid vaccinations presents new problem: how to shrink operations With less than one-third of Americans fully vaccinated, health authorities switch from mass vaccination clinics to outreach campaigns https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...-clinics-outreach-campaigns-vaccine-hesitancy A decline in daily Covid-19 vaccination rates has left US public health authorities with a new problem – how to effectively shrink operations. In the campaign to immunize all American adults against the coronavirus, most of the difficulties to date have involved overwhelming demand and restricted supply. Now, with less than one-third of Americans fully vaccinated, local public health authorities described a sense of whiplash as they pivot from mass vaccination clinics to outreach campaigns, all within a couple of weeks. “Weknew that when folks became eligible the vaccine-ready folks, or eager, [would] come out right away,” said Mary Jo Brogna, director of nursing at Harbor Health Services, which runs a community clinic in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. “Reaching the final percentage of herd immunity,” believed to be at least 70% of all adults, “is going to be dependent on outreach and addressing any vaccine hesitancy,” said Brogna. For most of 2021, the story of the vaccine campaign has been overwhelming demand. Emergency authorities took over stadiums, big-box stores and community centers staffed with dozens of nurses and volunteers to inoculate thousands of people per day. But in the last two weeks daily vaccination rates in the US have peaked and declined from a high of 3.2m daily vaccine administrations per day to 2.5m. Now, health authorities nationally are experiencing what red states such as Mississippi and Wyoming began to see early signs of – a major slowdown. “Across the country we started out with mass clinics and those mass clinics worked very well for the older individuals,” said Gary Edwards, executive director of the Salt Lake County health department in Utah. However, he said, “we’ve reached a point, and it’s been very interesting how quick that happened, that the mass-clinic model is not reaching the segment of the population we’re trying to reach,” said Edwards. The phenomenon is repeated across the country. Local authorities in Los Angeles, California; Colorado; Florida; Nevada and Texas are poised to close mass vaccination sites by the end of May. Georgia has already decided to shut down all of its mass vaccination sites by the end of May, citing lack of demand. The state is far behind the nation in terms of administering vaccines, with 34% of the population having received at least one dose, compared with 43% nationally. In Galveston, the public health director apparently inquired about a “pause” in vaccine shipments, as he worried the district would not be able to use all those shipped before they expire. The reasons for the slowdown are nuanced, most experts said. Vaccine hesitancy, especially among conservatives and racial minorities, is playing a role. But so too are difficulties with scheduling and transportation, as working-aged adults have fallen far behind older adults in terms of vaccination rates. One of the most notable trends in the immunization campaign is the relatively low rates of vaccination among adults aged 18-49. In this age group, 9-12% of people are fully vaccinated, compared with more than 27% among people aged 50-64. “I had a patient the other day where I was trying to go through the process of online scheduling with him and we just kept hitting a wall,” said Dr Ann Chahroudy, a pediatric infectious disease specialist and faculty at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Crucially, his also might be one of the most important groups to vaccinate. In summer 2020, research in the journal Science found that working-aged adults 20-49 were the most likely to transmit the disease to more than one person. “Thus, working adults who need to support themselves and their families have fueled the resurging epidemics in the United States,” an international group of researchers concluded. The same age group appears to be driving cases now in states such as California and Utah. Also notable is the lack of uptake in conservative regions. Data from the CDC shows states across the south and west have the highest levels of vaccine hesitancy, and uptake is notably low across these states. Multiple polls have now found Republicans are more likely to say they will not get vaccinated. “Reaching those young Republicans and conservative groups becomes a priority, because it’s the difference between normalcy or something less,” said Dr Peter Hotez, a vaccine researcher and the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College in Houston, Texas. Lack of vaccine uptake, he said, “is not going to be homogeneously distributed. That means Covid-19 becomes a red state disease”. The politicization of the pandemic and dismissal of science on the right, especially by Donald Trump, has led many influential conservative pundits to question Covid-19 public health measures – from Fox News’s Tucker Carlson to the influential podcaster Joe Rogan. “We’ve got to rip the anti-science out of the Republican party,” said Hotez. “We have to help our conservative brothers and sisters.” High levels of vaccine hesitancy are also being blamed for imbalances in supply and demand, such as in Illinois. But, as Cape Cod shows, the whole story is much more nuanced. Barnstable county, known regionally as the Cape, has the lowest rate of vaccine hesitancy in the nation. Just 6% of residents there are believed to be somewhat hesitant, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The county has administered more shots than any other in Massachusetts, and 59% of people here have received at least one vaccine dose, compared with 43% nationally. In no uncertain terms, it’s a success story. Nevertheless, demand has also stalled at Brogna’s clinics, and public health authorities there are still trying to figure out why. “We’re surveying our own patients,” said Brogna. “We’re reaching out and looking at patients who have not been vaccinated to say, ‘Gee we’ve contacted you three times and noticed you haven’t scheduled a Covid vaccine. Can we talk about it?’” she said.
New York, New Jersey and Connecticut will let many businesses fully reopen on May 19, a major step in a region that was once a pandemic epicenter. Monday, May 3, 2021 1:37 PM EST Restaurants, offices, retail stores, theaters, museums, barber shops, amusement parks and gyms and fitness centers will all be allowed to operate at full capacity for the first time since restrictions were adopted last year to prevent the spread of the virus. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/03/nyregion/new-york-city-subway-reopen.html
Most states stopped requiring people on unemployment from proving they were searching for a new job during the pandemic. Now states are starting to revert back. Arizona governor to resume job-seeking requirements for unemployment benefits https://thehill.com/homenews/state-...ume-job-seeking-requirements-for-unemployment Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) announced Monday that the state will resume job-seeking requirements for Arizonans on unemployment benefits, saying the state has largely recovered from the recession brought on by COVID-19 restrictions. Ducey's office said in a news release that the decision was taken to "support job creators throughout Arizona as employment opportunities grow and the COVID-19 vaccine is available for anyone who wants it." “A year out from the start of the pandemic, jobs and vaccines are readily available,” Ducey said in a statement. “Arizonans are ready to get back to work. Our economy is booming, jobs need filling, more than 2 million Arizonans are fully vaccinated, and vaccination appointments are available to anyone who wants one.” Monday's executive order rescinds one the governor implemented in March 2020 waiving the requirement for Arizonans on unemployment benefits to prove that they are actively seeking employment in order to obtain the weekly checks. As part of the now-rescinded order, Arizonans who lost their jobs could apply for benefits the same day; a one-week waiting period was reinstated as part of the governor's order Monday. “As President Reagan said, the best social program is a job,” Ducey said. “This statement rings true today. Unemployment benefits are still available to Arizonans who need them, but now that plenty of jobs are available, those receiving the benefits should be actively looking for work.” Just under a third of Arizona's total population is fully vaccinated, according to a tracker using state health department data operated by the Springfield News-Leader.
Federal judge vacates CDC's eviction moratorium https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/551910-federal-judge-vacates-cdcs-eviction-moratorium A federal judge on Wednesday vacated a nationwide freeze on evictions that was put in place by federal health officials to help cash-strapped renters remain in their homes during the pandemic. The ruling was a win for a coalition of property owners and realtors, who brought one of several challenges against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) eviction moratorium, which was put in place under former President Trump and later extended through June. In a 20-page ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Dabney Friedrich, who was appointed by Trump, ruled that the agency exceeded its authority by putting in place the temporary eviction ban. "The question for the Court is a narrow one: Does the Public Health Service Act grant the CDC the legal authority to impose a nationwide eviction moratorium? It does not," Friedrich wrote. This developing report will be updated.
I don't think this bracelet will take off unless the company providing it actually goes & cross-checks your vaccination card with a database to ensure you are not submitting a fake vaccination card. New wristbands serve as wearable vaccine card https://www.cbs17.com/news/national-news/new-wristbands-serve-as-wearable-vaccine-card/ How do you know if the people around you have been vaccinated? A new wearable device aims to show you, and some are already buying in. “If we had something where you can say, ‘Hey, I support the vaccine effort, I’ve been vaccinated, I’m safe to be around,’ then that would help us as we start to open back up,” Dr. Toshof Bernton, the man behind the idea for the new accessory, told NewsNation affiliate KSWB. His bracelet, the Immunaband, runs about $20 and stores vaccine records on it so people don’t have to haul around their vaccine cards. Once purchased, the customer sends in a copy of their vaccine card and the company loads the record to its encrypted website. The bracelet then comes in the mail with a QR code on it. If someone wants to verify the wearer’s vaccine records, they pull out their cell phone, snap a picture of the QR code and see the record. “Lets say somebody stole it,” Dr. Bernton adds. “They can get to the website, but unless they know your pin, they can’t get to your card.” Dr. Bernton sold his first bracelet about three weeks ago, and thousands of them have gone out the door since then. In fact, he said one customer sent him a photo from a Knicks game at Madison Square Garden in New York. The policy at MSG reads: “Guests can now enter with proof of a negative antigen COVID-19 test or full vaccination.” Dr. Bernton said the fan told him he was allowed in with the bracelet after an employee at the gate pulled up the website through the QR code. Additionally, he says a lot of companies in the travel and hospitality industry are buying the bracelets for their employees, including a restaurant owner in Los Angeles. “It’s a little too much,” said one San Diego woman who FOX 5 interviewed on the streets of Little Italy Wednesday. “Sometimes you go to a restaurant and you don’t even know the waiter’s name. I don’t need to know their medical history like that.” Others thought the idea sounded helpful. “I think that’s actually pretty good because a lot of people have doubts about going to certain areas,” Keshaun Slaughter, who was also out in Little Italy Wednesday, said. You can learn more on the ImmunaBand website.
America is finally winning its fight against the coronavirus https://www.axios.com/coronavirus-c...mic-dd3297c7-4b54-460b-93ca-45389f5d6389.html America’s battle against the coronavirus is going great. The big picture: For the first time in a long time, nobody needs to cherry-pick some misleading data to make it seem like things are going well, and the good news doesn’t need an endless list of caveats, either. It’s just really good news. We’re winning. Be happy. By the numbers: The U.S. averaged fewer than 40,000 new cases per day over the past week. That’s a 21% improvement over the week before, and the first time the daily average has dipped below 40,000 since September — eight months ago. New cases declined last week in 37 states. Not a single state moved in the wrong direction. Deaths from the coronavirus are at their lowest level since last July — about 600 per day, on average, per the AP, and may soon hit their lowest point of the entire pandemic. Nationally, hospitalization rates are also falling significantly. The U.S. is finally winning its battle against COVID-19 thanks almost exclusively to one weapon: the vaccines. More than 107 million Americans have gotten both doses of either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, and the vaccination drive in the U.S. has been underway for nearly six months. All of that real-world experience has confirmed that the vaccines are highly effective, and it has produced no new safety concerns. 99.7% of hospitalized coronavirus patients are unvaccinated, the Cleveland Clinic said this week — more real-world evidence that the vaccines prevent the type of serious infections that were killing over 3,000 Americans per day just a few months ago. What’s next: Almost 60% of American adults have gotten at least one shot, and roughly 45% are fully vaccinated. The next step: vaxxing the 12- to 15-year-olds. Demand seems to be slowing, but continuing to get more shots into more arms is essential to cementing America’s progress — and the safe return to work, school, restaurants and travel that can come with it.