COVID-19

As pandemic lifelines expire, Americans in housing free fall

Tue, 2020-12-08 09:52 — mike kraft

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Clarence Hamer doesn’t expect to hang on to his house much longer.

His downstairs tenant owes him nearly $50,000 in back rent on the four-bedroom duplex he owns in Brownsville, Brooklyn. Without those rental payments, Hamer has been unable to pay the thousands he owes in heat, hot water and property taxes. In September, after exhausting his life savings, he stopped paying the mortgage, too.

“I don’t have any corporate backing or any other type of insurance,” said Hamer, a 46-year-old landlord who works for the city of New York. “All I have is my home, and it seems apparent that I’m going to lose it.”

America’s mom-and-pop landlords, along with their tenants, have been dangling by a thread for nine months. Now, with Congress still deadlocked over the contours of a second pandemic stimulus package, they are entering a new housing abyss, a perilous period of pandemic limbo as the last of the safety nets are set to expire.

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The US sees its deadliest Covid-19 week since April, with more than 15,600 deaths

Tue, 2020-12-08 09:34 — mike kraft

The US sees its deadliest Covid-19 week since April, with more than 15,600 deaths As the US nears 15 million reported Covid-19 infections, it's adding case numbers at its fastest rate ever -- and officials are racing to ramp up vaccine protocols as well. Madeline Holcombe, CNN CNN

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Covid-19 vaccine: First person receives Pfizer jab in UK

Tue, 2020-12-08 09:17 — mike kraft

A UK grandmother has become the first person in the world to be given the Pfizer Covid-19 jab as part of a mass vaccination programme.

Margaret Keenan, who turns 91 next week, said it was the "best early birthday present".

She was given the injection at 06:31 GMT - the first of 800,000 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine that will be dispensed in the coming weeks.

Up to four million more are expected by the end of the month.

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New data: Pfizer’s Vaccine Offers Strong Protection After First Dose

Tue, 2020-12-08 09:06 — mike kraft

WASHINGTON — The coronavirus vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech provides strong protection against Covid-19 within about 10 days of the first dose, according to documents published on Tuesday by the Food and Drug Administration before a meeting of its vaccine advisory group.

The finding is one of several significant new results featured in the briefing materials, which include more than 100 pages of data analyses from the agency and from Pfizer. Last month, Pfizer and BioNTech announced that their two-dose vaccine had an efficacy rate of 95 percent after two doses administered three weeks apart. The new analyses show that the protection starts kicking in far earlier.

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HHS, DoD buy up 650,000 more doses of Eli Lilly’s COVID-19 antibody therapeutic

Mon, 2020-12-07 20:28 — mike kraft

HHS, DoD buy up 650,000 more doses of Eli Lilly’s COVID-19 antibody therapeutic - Homeland Preparedness News In preparation for rising cases of COVID-19, the United States Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Defense (DoD) have purchased an additional 650,000 doses of Eli Lilly and Company’s investigational monoclonal antibody therapeutic, bamlanivimab. This puts the total … Read More » Chris Galford Homeland Preparedness News

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Police raid home of fired Florida data scientist who built COVID-19 dashboard

Mon, 2020-12-07 19:58 — mike kraft

Agents raid home of fired Florida data scientist who built COVID-19 dashboard "They pointed a gun in my face. They pointed guns at my kids," Rebekah Jones tweeted. Jeffrey Schweers Tallahassee Democrat

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U.S. meatpacker Smithfield Foods offers to store COVID-19 vaccines in ultra-cold freezers

Mon, 2020-12-07 18:31 — mike kraft

U.S. meatpacker Smithfield Foods offers to store COVID-19 vaccines in ultra-cold freezers Smithfield Foods, the world's biggest pork processor, said on Thursday it had offered to help U.S. health officials distribute COVID-19 vaccines and store them in ultra-cold freezers that are in high demand to support a public vaccination campaign. Tom Polansek U.S.

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Opinion: What South Korea Can Teach Us About Vaccine Hesitancy

Mon, 2020-12-07 18:25 — mike kraft

In early September, officials in South Korea announced an ambitious plan to vaccinate 30 million people against the flu — 10 million more than last year, an increase aimed at keeping down rates of the flu while the country battled the coronavirus.

But as The Times reported last week, the internet soon got in the way. As the vaccine was distributed, a few logistical problems popped up, and South Koreans began circulating grave stories online — pictures of vaccine boxes that looked like they had been stored unsafely, reports of vaccine contaminated with mysterious white particles.

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Trump administration officials passed when Pfizer offered in late summer to sell the U.S. more vaccine doses.

Mon, 2020-12-07 18:08 — mike kraft

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/12/07/world/covid-19-coronavirus#trump-covid-vaccine-pfizer

Trump administration officials passed when Pfizer offered in late summer to sell the U.S. government additional doses of its Covid-19 vaccine, according to people familiar with the matter. Now Pfizer may not be able provide more of its vaccine to the United States until next June because of its commitments to other countries, they said.

As the administration scrambles to try to purchase more doses of the vaccine, President Trump plans on Tuesday to sign an executive order “to ensure that United States government prioritizes getting the vaccine to American citizens before sending it to other nations,” according to a draft statement and a White House official, though it was not immediately clear what force the president’s executive order would carry.

That included whether it would expand the U.S. supply of doses beyond what is spelled out in existing federal contracts.

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