(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department on Thursday night unsealed an indictment against two California men who allegedly conspired to blow up Democratic headquarters in Sacramento, California.
Ian Rogers and Jarrod Copeland were allegedly inspired by the unfounded belief that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump, the court documents say.
When investigators searched Rogers’ house in January, he allegedly had five pipe bombs, which court documents say were live. They also allegedly seized between 45 and 50 firearms, including at least three fully automatic weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition.
In text messages obtained by investigators and included in the federal indictment, Rogers and Copeland allegedly laid out their plan to bomb the building.
“I want to blow up a Democrat building bad,” Rogers wrote, according to the indictment.
They then discussed their target and Rogers said he was “thinking sac office first target,” to which Copeland agreed.
“I agree. Plan attack,” Copeland said, according to the court documents.
As the exchange concluded, Rogers allegedly wrote: “Let’s see what happens after the 20th we go to war.”
Shortly after Rogers was arrested in January, court documents say that Copeland contacted a militia group that Rogers allegedly belonged to, and the group instructed Copeland to destroy his phone.
Rogers and Copeland were previously charged federally via criminal complaint for allegedly possessing explosive devices and wanting to go after Democrats, but the complaint did not mention a planned attack on the Sacramento Democratic headquarters.
According to the complaint, investigators found a Three Percenters sticker on Rogers’ truck. The FBI has said the Three Percenters is a “radical militia group” with ties to the Capitol siege. Investigators also said they found a “White Privilege Card.”
A lawyer for Rogers declined to comment, and Copeland’s lawyer could also not be reached.
“Sad it’s come to this but I’m not going down without a fight,” Rogers allegedly texted, adding, “These commies need to be told what’s up.”
The special agent who authored the complaint wrote that he believes the messages show an intent to cause violence to prevent now-President Joe Biden from assuming office.
Rogers also discussed plans to attack Twitter and Facebook for banning Trump and possibly California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
He faces additional weapons and explosives charges in Napa County.
“I hope 45 goes to war if he doesn’t I will,” Rogers allegedly wrote.
(WASHINGTON) — The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is instructing airlines to inspect their Boeing 737 fleet for faulty altitude pressure switches that could potentially pose a safety risk.
The switches are part of a system designed to warn flight crew of cabin depressurization. Planes are equipped with two cabin altitude pressure switches so there is a backup if one fails. But the crew and maintenance personnel are not alerted of switch failures.
If both switches fail and the plane is over 10,000 feet in the air, the FAA says there is a danger of the cabin altitude warning system not activating. In that case “oxygen levels could become dangerously low.”
“A latent failure of both pressure switches could result in the loss of cabin altitude warning, which could delay flight crew recognition of a lack of cabin pressurization, and result in incapacitation of the flight crew due to hypoxia (a lack of oxygen in the body), and consequent loss of control of the airplane,” the agency said.
The FAA order affects around 2,500 planes in the U.S. including the Boeing 737 Max and 737 NextGen. The directive does not remove any planes from service and is unrelated to the 737 Max flight control system issues that contributed to two recent fatal crashes.
Airlines have roughly 90 days, or every 2,000 flight hours, to complete inspections and replace switches as needed. The inspections can take anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes and around 15 minutes for replacements. Previously, inspections of these switches were required every 6,000 flight hours.
According to the FAA, there have not been any in-flight switch failures. The concern was prompted by a test in September when an operator reported that both switches had failed on three different models of the Boeing 737.
In November, Boeing decided the failures were not a safety issue, the FAA said.
But “subsequent investigation and analysis led the FAA and the airplane manufacturer to determine, in May of 2021, that the failure rate of both switches is much higher than initially estimated, and therefore does pose a safety issue,” the FAA said, adding “addressing these failures requires immediate action.”
In response to the analysis, Boeing issued a reccomendation to ramp up switch insepections on all Boeing 737s.
“Safety is our highest priority, and we fully support the FAA’s direction, which makes mandatory the inspection interval that we issued to the fleet in June,” Boeing said in a statement to ABC News.
(PRETORIA, South Africa) — At least 117 people have been killed in ongoing riots across South Africa despite the efforts of heavily outnumbered authorities to quell violent unrest sparked by the imprisonment of former President Jacob Zuma.
South Africa’s acting minister in the presidency, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, said in a statement Thursday that the death toll now stands at 91 in Zuma’s home province of KwaZulu-Natal and 26 in the economic hub of Gauteng province. An additional six people were found dead on the roof of a mall in Thembisa township in Gauteng province, and the South African Police Service has opened an investigation to determine whether their deaths were related to the riots, according to Ntshavheni.
The South African Police Service said in a statement Tuesday that many fatalities occurred during “stampedes” as scores of people looted food, liquor, clothes and electrical appliances from shops in poor areas. Other deaths were caused by explosions when people tried to break into ATMs as well as shootings, according to police.
At least one police officer was killed in an attack on law enforcement, while seven others were injured responding to the riots, police said.
So far, 2,203 people have been arrested, according to Ntshavheni. But the chaos has continued in some areas and officials are “concerned about the economic impact of the violence, looting and destruction of infrastructure,” she said.
“Over the past few days, the main routes have been blocked by protesters with stones and other dangerous items,” Ntshavheni said in the statement Thursday, noting that such activities impact supply chains and the movement of key goods throughout the country.
“We wish to address those who are still undertaking the road blockage to desist from doing so because it is the poor, vulnerable and marginalized who will suffer as a result of their actions,” she added. “The impact of the looter’s actions will be felt more by the poor and middle class as many people stand a chance of losing their livelihoods.”
The South African Police Service is providing armed escorts for the transportation of critical supplies, such as food, fuel, medicine and oxygen, according to Ntshavheni.
There were also reports of clashes between looters and residents, with some members of the community brandishing firearms or other weapons “in an apparent retaliation against perpetrators of the public violence,” Ntshavheni said.
“We don’t want a situation where members of the public are at logger-heads with the law after such a noble effort,” she added.
Ntshavheni noted that the situation in Gauteng province is now “largely calm,” while KwaZulu-Natal province “remains volatile but much improved towards stability.” She attributed the improved situation to the additional boots on the ground in areas identified as potential “hotspots.”
The South African Police Service said it has recalled officers from leave and rest days, while the South African National Defence Force has deployed thousands soldiers to assist overstretched local law enforcement agencies.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has vowed to “restore calm and order,” describing the unrest as the worst the country has witnessed since the 1990s, before the end of the apartheid regime,
“Over the past few days and nights, there have been acts of public violence of a kind rarely seen in the history of our democracy,” Ramaphosa said in a televised address to the nation on Monday evening. “Let me be clear: We will take action to protect every person in this country against the threat of violence, intimidation, theft and looting. We will not hesitate to arrest and prosecute those who perpetrate these actions and will ensure that they face the full might of our law.”
The lawlessness has disrupted South Africa’s COVID-19 vaccination program, with some clinics forced to close, which Ramaphosa warned will have “lasting effects on our ability to consolidate some of the progress we were already witnessing in our economic recovery.” Vaccine shots are urgently needed in the country, which — along with other nations in Africa — is fighting a new wave of COVID-19 infections. The South African government recently reimposed and extended tight restrictions, including a nightly nationwide curfew, school closures, a ban on gatherings and limits on alcohol sales.
Violence and unrest has gripped parts of South Africa since Zuma turned himself in to police on July 7 to begin his 15-month jail term for contempt of court. South Africa’s highest court handed down the sentence after Zuma failed to appear before an inquiry examining corruption allegations during the nine years that he served as president. Zuma has maintained his innocence, saying he’s the victim of a politically motivated witch hunt, and his supporters took to the streets last week. But the protests appear to have reawakened deep-seated grievances over persistent poverty, unemployment and inequality, some 27 years after apartheid ended.
Following layoffs and an economic downturn from the coronavirus pandemic, South Africa’s unemployment rate stands at a record high of 32.6% and is even higher among the youth, at 46.3%, according to official numbers released in June by the national statistical service. Meanwhile, more than half of the country’s 60 million people were living in poverty last year, according to data collected by the World Bank Group.
“There is no grievance, nor any political cause, that can justify the violence and destruction that we have seen in parts of KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng,” Ramaphosa said. “The path of violence, of looting and anarchy, leads only to more violence and devastation. It leads to more poverty, more unemployment, and more loss of innocent life. This is not who we are as a people.”
(NEW YORK) — Purveyors of legal marijuana are cautiously applauding a Democrat-backed Senate bill to end the federal prohibition of pot, saying their businesses have been stymied by banking regulations that force them to deal in cash and make them a target for thieves.
For the first time in history, some Senate Democrats introduced a bill to decriminalize marijuana at the federal level and remove cannabis from the federal list of controlled substances — laws that led to more than 1.5 million arrests in 2019 alone, 32% of which were for nonviolent lower-level marijuana possession offenses, according to the nonprofit Drugpolicyfacts.org.
Federal laws have also created a legal gray area for businesses operating in states where marijuana is legal.
The Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act is backed by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who called the legislation “monumental.”
But some cannabis industry insiders told ABC News that while the draft legislation includes many things that would greatly benefit dispensaries and growers — like allowing them to get bank financing, accept credit cards and go public on the New York Stock Exchange — they would rather see the federal government leave the issue in the hands of states.
“I hope I’m dead wrong, but the cynic in me says why would a Democratically-controlled Congress want to put a legalization bill in front of a president from their party who has already said he doesn’t want to sign a legalization bill?” Kyle Kazan, the CEO of American cannabis production and distribution company Curaleaf, told ABC News.
Kazan also worries about federal involvement because of the damage done by the war on drugs.
Despite Schumer’s support for the bill, President Joe Biden still opposes federal legalization of marijuana, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Wednesday and the measure would need several Republicans to support it to pass.
‘Excited’ but staying ‘realistic’
The legislation, co-sponsored by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., would aim to expunge criminal records of most nonviolent marijuana offenses and create banking systems to help cannabis businesses, specifically hundreds of small and minority-owned companies wanting in on the so-called marijuana green rush.
Headset, a provider of data and analytics to the cannabis industry, forecast this week that the U.S. legal cannabis market will surpass $30 billion in sales in 2022.
The legislation, now in its early draft stage, would also allow states to craft their own cannabis laws, as states do with alcohol. A new federal excise tax would also be created similar to alcohol and tobacco.
The proposal would also clear the way for U.S. marijuana companies to use banking services, including holding bank accounts and taking out loans and allow companies to list on U.S. stock exchanges. Currently, cannabis companies do not have access to the banking system because their product is illegal in the eyes of the federal government.
Despite his doubts, Kazan, a former California police officer, said he would love to see the legislation pass, but have the federal government largely leave the details to the states.
“As much as I am cheering for Cory Booker and Chuck Schumer and (Senate Minority Leader) Mitch McConnell to come together on something, I think it would be best if they just said, ‘Let’s get the hell out of the way and let the states do it,'” said Kazan, whose company trades on the Canadian Stock Exchange. “The federal government has only done harm here with the war on drugs and the war on cannabis. You have tens of thousands of people that are serving hard time for nonviolent cannabis and other drug crimes. Just stop doing harm.”
Steve DeAngelo, a co-founder of Harborside Health Inc., a California cannabis company that also trades on the Canadian Stock Exchange, told ABC News that the legislation has been a long time coming.
“I’m excited. But I also want to be realistic about it,” said DeAngelo, who has been dubbed the father of the legal cannabis industry. “But it’s a great day when the Senate majority leader comes out supporting comprehensive legalization of cannabis at the federal level. That is a great day for our movement.”
To date, 18 states have legalized the recreational use of marijuana and 37 states, along with the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands, now allow the medical use of the drug.
A Pew Research Center Poll released in April showed that 91% of U.S. adults say marijuana should be legal for medical and recreational use.
DeAngelo cofounded a medical marijuana business in Northern California as a non-profit more than a decade ago and said it’s been an uphill climb ever since due to conflicts with federal regulations listing marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug with narcotics as heroin.
“Most successful businesses in the United States have an ability to go to a bank and get financing for a variety of uses at a reasonable interest rate. Cannabis businesses aren’t able to go to banks and get any type of financing,” DeAngelo told ABC News.
“When we’re trying to … just operate in an efficient way and do things like paying our taxes, those same banking laws can require us to do crazy things like go into tax offices with hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash in order to pay our back taxes,” he added. “Things aren’t safe or efficient.”
An increasing target for thieves
Having to have large amounts of cash on hand to do business and shelves stocked with high-grade cannabis, dispensaries and grow operations have increasingly become alluring targets for robbers.
In San Francisco last week, a group of robbers stormed a cannabis dispensary in the city’s Potrero Hill neighborhood, overwhelmed a security guard and took his gun before ransacking the business and making off in multiple getaway vehicles with boxes of marijuana, police said. On June 17, an attempted robbery at a pot dispensary in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles led to a shootout in front of the business that left a security guard critically wounded and one of the suspects dead, according to police there.
“It’s been a huge problem. People have died because of this,” DeAngelo said.
He said that allowing cannabis businesses to accept credit cards would help eliminate the need to have large amounts of cash on hand.
“That’s one of the good things that this will do,” he said of the legislation.
McConnell, the powerful Republican from Kentucky, has said he opposes the Senate bill, which will need 60 votes to pass, including 10 Republican votes.
DeAngelo said that if he had a chance to speak with McConnell, he’d say, “cannabis isn’t harmful but cannabis prohibition is.” He noted that during the COVID-19 pandemic many cities in states where recreational cannabis is legal designated pot dispensaries essential businesses along with pharmacies.
“They need to abandon old and outdated ways of thinking about cannabis,” DeAngelo said.
(NEW YORK) — As Americans start packing bars and live venues once again in the age of mass COVID-19 vaccination — with many abandoning masks and social distancing measures — a concerning reality check is taking place.
Health officials and front-line workers, particularly in pockets of the country with relatively low vaccination rates, are again warning the public that they are seeing an influx of unvaccinated patients who are becoming severely ill.
“This is the absolute worst that I’ve ever seen it,” Emily McMichael, a nurse at Mercy Hospital in Springfield, Missouri, told ABC News.
Nationally, more than 17,000 patients are currently receiving care around the country, the highest number in over a month, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The average number of new COVID-19 hospital admissions has also increased dramatically — to nearly 2,800 admissions a day — up by 35.8% in the last week.
And the distribution is fairly widespread: over a dozen states have seen significant increases in the number of patients coming into their hospitals in need of care, including Arkansas, which has seen a 76.4% increase in hospital admissions over the last two weeks, and Florida, with a nearly 90% increase.
Experts say the outlook for the country is mixed — while there won’t likely be a nationwide wave like spring 2020 or last winter, there is the possibility of regional surges in unvaccinated areas. And that spread can pose some dangers to the vaccinated population, specifically those who are vulnerable and in the possible creation of new variants that can mitigate or evade vaccines.
‘Nasty’ delta variant
Although there are still significantly fewer patients receiving care than the peak in January, when 125,000 patients were hospitalized, experts warn the uptick is concerning, particularly as the delta variant continues to spread rapidly across the U.S.
The highly infectious COVID-19 strain, which the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci called “nasty,” is now estimated to account for more than 57% of new cases nationwide. At the end of May, the variant was estimated to account for just over 3% of new cases.
Although it is still unknown whether the delta variant is more deadly than other variants, experts say it is more dangerous, given how quickly it spreads between people, thus, causing a greater number of infections, and therefore more illnesses and deaths overall.
This rapid spread has caused cases to increase in nearly every state in the country, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, with the national case average doubling in the last three weeks.
However, given the variation in vaccination levels from state to state and even community to community, its effects have varied widely.
“The impact of the more transmissible delta variant will not be felt in a uniform way across the country. Major pockets of unvaccinated people will continue to be the main hosts that will allow this virus to circulate,” said John Brownstein, Ph.D., the chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor.
“While vaccines will likely prevent a major national wave, tens of millions of Americans with no prior immunity still remain susceptible to the delta variant,” he added.
Communities with fewer vaccinations see significantly higher case rates
A new ABC analysis has found that over the past week, states that have fully vaccinated less than 50% of their total population have reported a weekly average coronavirus case rate that is three times higher than in states that have fully vaccinated more than half of their residents.
States that have fully vaccinated more than half of their residents reported an average of 15.1 new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people over the last week, compared to an average of 45.1 cases per 100,000 people in states that have vaccinated less than half of their residents.
The 14 states with the highest case rates all have fully vaccinated less than half their total population, and 10 out of the 11 states with the lowest case rates have fully vaccinated more than half of their total population, with the exception being South Dakota.
“In unvaccinated communities where you have increased mobility and reduced mask use and social distancing, we will continue to witness surges and unfortunately unnecessary hospitalizations and deaths,” Brownstein said.
With nearly 90% of Americans 65 years and older vaccinated with at least one dose, young Americans appear to be driving this recent increase. According to CDC data, 18- to 24-year-olds currently have the nation’s highest new case rate, with only 41.6% of the age group fully vaccinated.
The widespread national impact
For now, experts say they do not foresee a nationwide surge.
“It’s likely that COVID-19 is now moving into a phase where it’s a regional problem and not a systemic problem for the country, because of the differential in vaccinations. Fully vaccinated areas are going to see a very blunted impact of delta,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Georgetown Center for Global Health Science and Security, concurred, telling ABC News that “a surge in Missouri probably doesn’t mean much for states with high vaccination rates in terms of hospitalizations.”
However, large regional surges in areas of low vaccination could spark major problems for states with fewer health care resources, making the focus on hospital capacity urgent, the experts said.
But surges in under-vaccinated areas can pose a broader nationwide risk for those who are fully vaccinated but remain vulnerable.
“Uncontrolled transmission and population mobility means additional breakthrough infections in vulnerable populations, regardless of whether they happen to be in a state that has good vaccination coverage,” Brownstein said.
This is why some local health departments are again considering reinstating restrictions, in the hope of containing infections. On Tuesday, the Chicago Department of Public Health announced that unvaccinated travelers from Arkansas and Missouri, which have both recently experienced significant COVID-19 resurgences, will have to either quarantine for 10 days or present a negative COVID-19 test result.
In Los Angeles County, the nation’s largest, officials on Thursday reinstated a mandatory indoor mask mandate — regardless of vaccination status.
Brownstein also stressed the critical importance of containing the virus, because “unmitigated transmission further increases the probability that a variant with vaccine-evading properties might emerge.”
Although Rasmussen believes that it is unlikely that we will see the emergence of a variant that will fully evade vaccines, it is possible a new variant could reduce effectiveness enough to be problematic. In such a case, she said, boosters would become necessary.
Ultimately, said Adalja, “I think it has to be made very clear to people that the delta variant is a disease of the unvaccinated. The breakthrough infections that are occurring in vaccinated people are very, very rare, and not usually clinically significant.”
(LONDON) — More than 100 people have been confirmed dead while many more remain unaccounted for amid catastrophic flooding across western Europe, officials said.
Record rainfall in recent days from a slow-moving weather system has triggered flash floods in the region, particularly parts of western Germany and eastern Belgium. Swollen rivers and reservoirs have burst their banks, turning streets into raging torrents of brown floodwater that swallowed cars, homes, businesses and even entire villages.
The death toll in Germany was 93 as of Friday morning, with 50 of the fatalities reported in Rhineland-Palatinate state and 43 in neighboring North Rhine-Westphalia, the country’s most populous state, according to German news agency DPA. But authorities have warned that the figure is likely to increase.
Around 1,300 people were still listed as missing in the devastated Ahrweiler district of Rhineland-Palatinate state as of Thursday night, according to a statement from the local district administration.
An estimated 165,000 customers of Westnetz, the biggest power distribution grid company in Germany, were without electricity on Thursday, according to a statement from utility giant E.ON, which owns Westnetz.
In Belgium, the death toll rose to 15 on Friday morning, a spokesperson for the Belgian interior ministry told ABC News. Four people, including a 15-year-old, were also unaccounted for.
More than 20,000 customers were without power in Belgium’s Wallonia region on Friday morning, according to local media.
Search and rescue operations were ongoing in both Germany and Belgium.
Meanwhile, hundreds of people were evacuated during rescue missions in more than a dozen cities in the Wallonia region of southern Belgium on Thursday night, according to a spokesperson for the country’s interior ministry.
Speaking alongside U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed shock over the scope of devastation from the flooding.
“I grieve for those who have lost their lives in this disaster,” Merkel said during a joint press conference at the White House in Washington, D.C. “I fear the full extent of this tragedy will only be seen in the coming days.”
Armin Laschet, the premier of North Rhine-Westphalia and Germany’s leading candidate to replace Merkel in the September election, blamed the severe weather on global warming.
“We will be faced with such events over and over, and that means we need to speed up climate protection measures, on European, federal and global levels, because climate change isn’t confined to one state,” Laschet told reporters on Thursday during a visit to hard-hit areas.
(NEW YORK) — Starting next week, 150 Connecticut college students will begin training to go out into communities in their state that are lagging in vaccination rates and try to combat COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among young adults.
The program comes as the nation enters a period where the delta variant is surging in some locations and officials are having difficulty convincing millions of Americans to get vaccinated — currently the best hope of averting yet another wave of COVID-19.
Officials nationwide are trying to reach unvaccinated people — in particular those between the ages of 18 and 24, who have lower rates of getting the shot when compared to older age groups and the highest rates of COVID-19 cases.
“It really is meeting people where they are, giving them the important information for them to be able to make the decision for themselves,” Janelle Chiasera, dean of the School of Health Sciences at Quinnipiac University, which is working with the state health department on the Connecticut Public Health College Corps program, told ABC News. “What we’re trying to do is to get those people who are on the fence, over that fence to get the vaccine.”
Unvaccinated adults are “significantly younger,” according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s latest vaccine monitor report; 29% of the unvaccinated are 18- to 29-year-olds, compared to 17% of those vaccinated, for the smallest percentage of adults vaccinated.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 41.8% of Americans ages 18 to 24 are fully vaccinated, compared to 66% of those ages 50 to 64 and 80.9% of those ages 65 to 74.
The reasons are myriad, including fear of side effects, but experts stress the need to overcome that hurdle through targeted and trusted messaging.
“The more unvaccinated people you have, the more the chances that we’re setting up this virus to be able to create another variant,” Chiasera said. “We are allowing that virus to get smarter.”
Concerns about side effects
The reasons behind the reluctance are varied and not fully known. One may be the “lingering effects” of not prioritizing younger populations during the initial vaccine rollout, Dr. Monica Schoch-Spana, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and co-leader of CommuniVax, a national rapid research coalition focused on improving vaccine equity in Black, Hispanic/Latino and Indigenous communities, told ABC News.
A new study by University of California San Francisco researchers published in the Journal of Adolescent Health this week found that about 1 in 4 unvaccinated people between the ages of 18 and 25 said that they “probably will not” or “definitely will not” get the COVID-19 vaccine.
“There’s still that lingering perception that ‘I am young, I am strong, I can fight this thing off,'” Schoch-Spana said. “So there’s that youthful sense of invincibility that was reinforced early on when we had less vaccine available.”
Older adults and those with underlying conditions diagnosed with COVID-19 generally fared dramatically worse than those who were younger — more than 95% of deaths were in those 50 and older, according to CDC data.
Others are worried about potential side effects of the vaccine. A CDC report published last month found that one of the main reasons U.S. adults between the ages of 18 and 39 were not vaccinated were due to concerns about possible side effects. The UC San Francisco study found that was a concern for more than half of respondents. Neither study specified what those concerns were.
In a survey of patients at its California sites last month, COVID-19 testing and vaccination startup Curative also found that the number one reason people hadn’t gotten vaccinated until that point was due to concerns about side effects, according to Alexandra Simon, director of vaccines for the state.
“It could mean that they’re worried that they’re gonna have to miss work, they’re worried about cab fare, or they’re just kind of worried about getting sick,” Simon told ABC News. “I think there’s a ton of misinformation floating around about side effects.”
Chiasera said she has also heard concerns about blood clots and “fertility issues in women.”
The single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine has been associated with an extremely rare but severe blood clot disorder and, more recently, a rare neurological disorder called Guillain-Barre.
Experts and public health officials maintain that any risks from the vaccine are outweighed by the benefits. The vast majority of side effects are mild, and long-term side effects are “unlikely,” according to the CDC. Additionally, researchers have found that there’s a greater risk of developing clots from COVID-19 than from the vaccines.
Meanwhile, there is no evidence that any vaccines, including the COVID-19 vaccines, affect fertility in women or men, according to the CDC.
‘No sole, single identity’
More education could help with vaccination efforts. The CDC report on vaccination in young adults found that about two-thirds of respondents who were not sure about getting vaccinated reported they didn’t have adequate information about vaccine safety or effectiveness.
“There’s a lot that we see on social media about vaccines, but not a lot that people really truly understand about them,” Chiasera said.
Through Connecticut Public Health College Corps, the trained students will attend vaccine clinics, community efforts and do other outreach over the course of four weeks and be there to answer people’s questions on topics like the availability, safety and efficacy of the vaccines and side effects, Chiasera said.
“We’re realists in knowing that there are people — it doesn’t matter what you say, it doesn’t matter what you do — they’re not going to get their vaccine, but that is a small percent,” she said. “There’s a lot more people that are on the fence, and I think our best efforts are really on those people that are on the fence — that really truly have questions that they need answered to help make that decision.”
As much attention is being paid to reaching unvaccinated young adults, vaccination is a hyperlocal effort that can’t be generalized, Schoch-Spana said.
“One can’t expect some magic bullet to get everybody between the ages of 18 and 28 showing up in large numbers,” she said. “You really do have to think about, OK, if I want to target college-aged kids, what should I be doing? If I wanted to target Spanish-speaking youth, where do I need to go?”
“There’s no sole, single identity, so a youth-oriented vaccination campaign has to think about the different kinds of youths that are out there and to develop very specific communication approaches, outreach approaches and delivery locations to meet youth where they are,” she added.
‘Trusted influencers’ needed
It largely boils down to trust, and who the “trusted influencers” are, Schoch-Spana said.
Through its research, she said, CommuniVax has seen that in Black communities in rural Alabama, grandparents are the ones advocating for their grandchildren to get vaccinated; meanwhile, in Hispanic/Latino communities in rural Idaho, the younger generation is helping grandparents get shots.
“Different age groups have different levels of influence, according to where they are in their family and also the larger community,” she said.
In its survey of its California vaccination sites, Curative found that one reason why someone who was previously hesitant to get vaccinated ultimately did was because “someone I trust convinced me.”
A majority of patients at its California vaccination sites came based on referrals, most of which were from people who had been vaccinated at the site, Curative learned. After realizing that, they started a program dubbed “Vax Tripling,” based on the political organizing concept of vote tripling.
“It’s the idea that every person who commits to vote, you also ask them which three people they can talk to about voting,” Simon said. “So it’s kind of leveraging that trusted messenger network that happens organically.”
To further spur referrals, Curative created business cards with information about the site for patients to give to those in their community to turn “every person who chooses to get vaccinated into an ambassador for vaccination in general, in a way that is authentic to the community and real to their relationships,” Simon said.
(NEW YORK) — There were times throughout the COVID-19 pandemic when Maeghan Murdock worried about how her family — which includes a newborn — would keep up with all their growing financial demands.
Facing an inevitable $300 rent increase as bills piled up, their dreams of saving to eventually buy their own home seemed to be a far-fetched goal.
But then several rounds of economic impact payments came through. She and her husband were able to save those federal stimulus dollars and apply about $18,000 to help purchase a new home in Tucson, Arizona.
Now Murdock, 29, a non-profit professional, sees the Biden administration’s new, expanded child tax credit with its monthly payments as a means of bringing some stability to their family as her husband’s return to work as a professional chef depends on how fast the restaurant industry bounces back from the havoc wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The tax credits will help us make sure that we’re able to pay our mortgage and have things that we need for our child,” she said.
Even as Americans begin returning to work and school this fall in greater number, economic uncertainty for those living at or below the poverty line is still a top-of-mind concern. For the families of nearly 12 million children in the U.S. who live in poverty and disproportionately identify as African-Americans or Latinos, the Biden administration’s child tax credits could be a game-changer, but those monthly payments are scheduled to end in December.
Touting the payments as they started to go out Thursday, President Joe Biden called them “another giant step toward ending child poverty in America.”
“This has the potential to reduce child poverty in the same way that the Social Security reduced poverty for the elderly,” he said.
Biden’s American Rescue Plan proposes an extension of the tax credit for four more years through 2025, but Congress still needs to vote on that.
Senior administration officials say it is the president’s goal to see the child tax credits extended past this year and ultimately become a permanent fixture of U.S. government policy.
The Treasury Department says as much as $15 billion in funds are expected to go to the families of 60 million children, with average payments totaling up to $423 per family.
Democratic lawmakers are embracing the idea that these child tax credits will go far in tackling the nation’s long fought battle against child poverty.
“The expansion of the Child Tax Credit is one of the single biggest investments we’ve made in American families and children in generations, benefitting 96% of families with kids,” said Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., in a statement. “Now, we must seize the opportunity to make it permanent.”
The Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University found that the child tax credits could cut child poverty by more than half.
“We also know that families living below the poverty line are over 40 times more likely to enter the child welfare system than those above the poverty line,” said Laura Boyd, a public policy specialist with the Family Centered Treatment Foundation. “We have an ability and a moral obligation as a society to empower families, and the child tax credit is certainly one thing that will do that.”
Republican lawmakers have proposed their own payments for children and aren’t expected to move forward with a $3.5 trillion budget deal proposed by Democrats to extend the child tax credit.
The Federal Reserve found in a 2019 study that some 40% of Americans don’t have up to $400 in the bank to cover an emergency expense.
“We think it’s absolutely vital that it continue,” said John Sciamanna, vice president of public policy at the Child Welfare League of America. “This could be one of the most significant family supporting initiatives that we’ve ever dealt with in terms of the child welfare field. Poverty creates a range of factors and stressors on families.”
The Treasury Department estimates that families containing more than 26 million children who would have received less than the full child tax credit under the previous rules because their incomes were too low will now receive the full, expanded credit.
But millions of Americans who work in the cash economy and did not submit a tax return, which is how the Internal Revenue Service will determine eligibility for the credits, stand to miss out on these payments if they don’t register through agency’s non-filer portal.
An administration official said that the White House is coordinating an effort across Treasury and the IRS to identify and reach-out to non-filers who are likely to be eligible for these payments.
The White House coordinated effort will also seek to identify families of children that may be eligible by looking at individuals signed up for government welfare programs like the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) aimed at low-income households and focusing on high poverty zip codes, in addition to non-profit outreach.
The White House also hopes that its partnership efforts with children’s advocacy groups, women’s organizations, and faith-based organizations will help in identifying the estimated more than seven million children who won’t automatically receive the child tax benefit.
An IRS spokesman, in a statement, said that the agency is partnering with “non-profit organizations, churches, community groups and others hosted events in 12 cities last weekend to help people who don’t normally file a federal tax return to register for the monthly advance child tax credit payments.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki argued Thursday that it is only a small percentage of Americans who will not automatically receive the payments, but that the administration would continue to work at reaching those Americans, pointing to previous efforts to get stimulus payments out to individuals who didn’t pay taxes earlier this year.
(NEW YORK) — Half of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 developed complications associated with the virus, prompting experts to warn that long-term problems from COVID could strain the health system for years, according to new research out of the United Kingdom.
The study, published Thursday in the Lancet, analyzed hospital records from 73,197 adults in the U.K. who were hospitalized with severe COVID-19. Of those patients, 36,367 developed one or more complications during their hospitalization, including kidney problems, complex respiratory disease (such as bacterial pneumonia), acute respiratory distress syndrome, neurological problems (like seizures or stroke) and heart problems.
Overall, men and patients older than 60 were most likely to have complications, and the incidence of complications rose with age. Still, even young and previously healthy people had relatively high levels of complications. Among 19- to 29-year-olds, 27% developed complications, compared with 37% of 30- to 39-year-olds and 43% of 40- to 49-year-olds.
“This work contradicts current narratives that COVID-19 is only dangerous in people with existing comorbidities and the elderly,” Calum Semple, a professor at the University of Liverpool and coauthor of the paper, said in a statement. “Disease severity at admission is a predictor of complications even in younger adults, so prevention of complications requires a primary prevention strategy, meaning vaccination.”
The study also pointed to racial disparities in patient outcomes. White, South Asian and East Asian patients had similar rates of complications, but Black patients (58%) were more likely to develop complications than white patients (49%).
Following hospitalization, roughly a third of patients were less able to look after themselves than prior to contracting the virus, an effect that was most pronounced among men, older patients and those who’d been in critical care. Neurological complications had the biggest impact on patients’ ability to care for themselves.
“Policy makers and health-care planners should anticipate that large amounts of health and social care resources will be required to support those who survive COVID-19,” the study authors noted. “Data on long-term health difficulties posed by COVID-19 will be of great importance, particularly as a large proportion of COVID-19 survivors come from economically active age groups.”
The study had a few limitations. Since the research was conducted in the U.K., which has a different population and medical system than the United States does, the results can’t necessarily be extrapolated to the U.S. population. The study period (Jan. 17 to Aug. 4, 2020) took place toward the beginning of the pandemic and before vaccines were widely available, meaning the population skewed older. More research needs to be done to determine whether COVID-related health complications are temporary or enduring.
(NEW YORK) — A California mom is sharing a warning for other parents after her 16-month-old son’s wet diapers ended in a diagnosis of Type 1 diabetes, a chronic disease.
Courtney Moore, of Sacramento, said she began to notice in early July that her son, Maddox, was waking up with soaking wet diapers each morning.
She also noticed the toddler was waking up each morning extremely thirsty.
“When he woke up he would be so ferociously thirsty and reaching for my water bottle and chugging it,” Moore told ABC News’ Good Morning America. “I knew that wasn’t normal.”
Moore said she reached out to fellow moms on Facebook for ideas and searched the internet on her own, but did not believe Maddox’s symptoms were signs of Type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune disease in which the pancreas makes little to no insulin, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“When you do a Google search, what pops up is Type 1 diabetes, but we don’t have a family history of that,” she said. “Since we had no knowledge of Type 1 diabetes, I could justify all the different signs we were seeing.”
Moore said that, for example, she and her husband, Jason, attributed Maddox’s thirst to the hot weather of summer and the slight weight loss they noticed to the fact that he was an active toddler who was now walking.
After noticing that Maddox seemed more and more “off,” according to Moore, they took him to the doctor for bloodwork.
One hour later, Moore said she received multiple calls from the doctor’s office telling her to take Maddox to the emergency room because his blood glucose, or blood sugar, level was nearly 700. A normal blood glucose reading for a toddler Maddox’s age is 100 to 180.
“They said I needed to take him to the emergency room right away and my world just stopped,” said Moore. “I can’t imagine had we waited any longer.”
Maddox was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes and was immediately treated for diabetic ketoacidosis, a potentially life-threatening complication of diabetes that happens when the body doesn’t have enough insulin to allow blood sugar to be used as energy, according to the CDC.
He spent two nights in the hospital and then was sent home, where Moore and her husband are now overseeing Maddox’s regimen of insulin shots and blood glucose monitoring.
“I’m very blessed that he’s as young as he is in a sense because he doesn’t understand and he’s so resilient,” said Moore. “Yes, our lives got turned upside down but he’s happy and he’s doing really well.”
Moore took to Facebook to share what happened to Maddox in hopes of warning other parents to not ignore symptoms their children may be experiencing, like thirst.
“I’m sharing this because what we could’ve written off as being due to warmer weather and being an active toddler literally could’ve killed our son,” she wrote. “Moral of the story, parents, pay attention to your kids and trust your gut. We got very lucky.”
Describing why she spoke out about her family’s experience, Moore told GMA, “My point is not to scare people but just [remind them] to be very aware and keep tracking those things.”
What parents should know
Moore’s Facebook post highlighted how symptoms of Type 1 diabetes can be mistaken for other conditions or overlooked, especially in young children.
“It’s really hard at [Maddox’s] age when he can’t talk,” said Moore. “I fear for the parents who may not be adding things up and having something detrimental happen to their child.”
In addition to excessive thirst, frequent urination and unexplained weight loss, symptoms of Type 1 diabetes can include dry mouth, fatigue and weakness, increased appetite and slow-healing cuts, according to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on research and advocacy for Type 1 diabetes.
Type 1 diabetes, previously called insulin-dependent or juvenile diabetes, is a chronic disease for which there is currently no cure.
It is usually diagnosed in children, teens and young adults, but can develop at any age. Approximately 1.6 million Americans are living with Type 1 diabetes, including about 200,000 people under the age of 20, according to JDRF.
The disease is thought to be caused by an autoimmune reaction that destroys the insulin-making cells in the pancreas, according to the CDC. As a result, people with Type 1 diabetes must remain dependent on insulin, delivered via shots or an insulin pump, to stay alive.
In addition to taking insulin, people with Type 1 diabetes, like Maddox, must measure their blood glucose levels multiple times a day, by either finger pricks or wearing a continuous glucose monitor.
Unlike Type 2 diabetes, which is brought on by lifestyle factors, there is no known way to prevent Type 1 diabetes, according to the CDC. Family history of type 1 diabetes or any other autoimmune disease is commonly seen.
Common complications of Type 1 diabetes include hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar, and diabetic ketoacidosis. Long-term complications from the disease can include increased risk of nerve damage, kidney disease, cardiovascular disease and stroke.
