(NEW YORK) — Fresh off a run of success in North American competitions, the United States Men’s National Soccer Team earned the number ten spot in FIFA’s latest world rankings.
The U.S. beat Mexico 1-0 in the final of CONCACAF’s Gold Cup earlier this month, leading to a ten-place rise on the official list.
The squad conceded just one goal in six matches in the Gold Cup, winning all six. They also won five of six games in the CONCACAF Nations League.
FIFA’s World Rankings will play a key role in next year’s World Cup. If the U.S. remains in the top 10, it would have a chance of being seeded, getting a more favorable draw, and avoid having to play other nations within the top 10.
The U.S. has not been among the top 10 in FIFA’s rankings since the 2006 World Cup.
Just above the U.S. in the rankings, Mexico placed number nine. They have been the top-ranked team in CONCACAF since February 2017.
Atop the rankings, FIFA identifies Belgium as the best team. Following them, Copa America runners up Brazil rank second, France sits third, and Euro Champs Italy is in fifth. Euro runners up England sit one spot ahead of Italy in fourth.
The next update to the rankings will be published in September.
(NEW YORK) — As the Taliban sweeps across Afghanistan and claims at least nine provincial capitals in just days, a new U.S. military analysis warns that the country’s capital, Kabul, could become isolated in 30 to 60 days and could fall to the militant group in 90 days, a U.S. official confirmed to ABC News.
The warning is even more dire than a previous intelligence assessment — a sign of how quickly the Taliban have gained momentum on the battlefield, surprising the Biden administration, according to two U.S. officials.
President Joe Biden announced in April that he would withdraw all remaining U.S. forces from Afghanistan, saying it was time to end America’s longest war and let the Afghan people, including the Taliban and the U.S.-backed Afghan government, decide the country’s future.
But that future is increasingly grim, with fears of the government’s collapse and all-out civil war. There are growing concerns for the U.S. personnel that will remain at the embassy in Kabul and the 650 U.S. troops who will stay to protect it, with planning underway for some time now about a possible evacuation, according to two other U.S. officials, who spoke to ABC News on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive plans.
“Our posture has not changed. As we do for every diplomatic post in a challenging security environment, we evaluate threats daily and make decisions on how best to keep those serving at our embassy safe,” a State Department spokesperson told ABC News.
The Taliban’s spokesperson in Doha, Qatar, said Wednesday, “Anyone who attacks international embassies and institutions will be punished.” But the group’s fighters have committed atrocities across the country in districts they’ve retaken, according to U.S. and Afghan officials, including extrajudicial killings of police officers, airmen, women’s rights activists, journalists and more.
The U.S. embassy’s Emergency Action Committee is “no doubt … meeting every day to review the current level of threat and whether any additional steps need to be taken to increase security, reduce the number of personnel, or, if deemed necessary, initiate a full evacuation,” said Mick Mulroy, the former top Pentagon official for the Middle East who served in the CIA and U.S. Marines in Afghanistan.
The question is at what point does one become necessary.
“When does the situation make the continuation of the diplomatic mission untenable? When does it not make sense that 99.99% of the personnel in the embassy are for security? When will putting the remaining U.S. personnel at risk for a mission that has essentially ended not be worth it? These are the questions they will be asking, probably every day,” said Mulroy, now an ABC News contributor.
While two U.S. officials said evacuation planning has been reviewed for some time, State Department spokesperson Ned Price declined to comment on any plans. Instead, he told reporters Wednesday, “We have and will continue to make our own decisions based on, first and foremost, the threat assessment, the safety and security of our people.”
In the meantime, the U.S. embassy has continued to quietly draw down some staff since it went on ordered departure on April 27 — leaving only emergency personnel behind and allowing it to shift certain roles out of Afghanistan “whose functions can be performed elsewhere,” according to a State Department spokesperson.
But the Pentagon is pushing back on the “narrative” that the Taliban will seize the capital and other major cities, with its spokesperson John Kirby saying Wednesday, “No potential outcome has to be inevitable, including the fall of Kabul, which everybody seems to be reporting about.”
Kirby declined to comment on the U.S. military analysis, but he told reporters that while the Taliban “keep advancing,” there is still fight left in the Afghan security forces that the U.S. built, trained and equipped.
“The narrative that in every place, in every way, the Afghan forces are simply folding up and walking away is not accurate,” he said.
One U.S. official told ABC News, however, that those Afghan forces have an uphill battle, as momentum swings the Taliban’s way with their capture of nine provincial capitals — winning over heavy weaponry from Afghan troops, freeing their prisoners from government facilities, and building a powerful narrative about the government’s collapse.
The Afghan military strategy to hold onto major population centers meant deploying its best troops — special operations forces — to top cities like Herat, Lashkar Gah and Kandahar, according to this official. But while the Taliban have been held at bay there, the group’s fighters targeted other opportunities, winning critical successes across the country’s northern provinces.
“Right now what we see is an issue of leadership. It’s both political and military leadership. We need to see Afghans’ leaders united,” Price told reporters at the State Department.
Rallying that leadership has been part of U.S. special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad’s job in Doha, where he is trying to pressure both the Taliban and Afghan government delegations to resume peace negotiations — and urge the Taliban to accept a reduction in violence and a ceasefire.
Khalilzad held meetings Tuesday and Wednesday with both delegations and fellow envoys from the United Nations and key countries, including Pakistan, Qatar, China and Russia. On Thursday, he’s expected to meet the Taliban and Afghan government teams “separately to encourage them to engage productively in Afghan peace negotiations and not squander this historic opportunity to end 40 years of conflict,” the State Department spokesperson told ABC News.
Afghan Foreign Minister Mohammad Haneef Atmar said Wednesday that it is the U.S. and other powers that need to do more to “accelerate the negotiation process” and pressure the Taliban to participate in good faith, “backed up by real political, economic, maybe even enforcement measures.”
Critics continue to denounce the Biden administration for pursuing these negotiations — saying the Taliban has demonstrated it has no interest in talks. But Price said the U.S. continues to see diplomacy as the only way forward — calling the week’s meetings a “necessary, but insufficient step” and conceding progress “has been painfully slow.”
In the meantime, the humanitarian crisis for Afghan civilians continues to spiral. Over 18 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance across the country, around 400,000 have fled their homes to seek refuge and the U.N.’s humanitarian response remains vastly underfunded with a shortfall of almost $800 million, its spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said Wednesday.
But Biden himself seems un-phased by the violence, telling ABC News Tuesday, “I do not regret my decision.”
Here’s the latest in Kelly Clarkson‘s divorce from Brandon Blackstock: The singer is reportedly asking to have her famous maiden name legally restored.
According to legal docs obtained by The Blast, Kelly is asking for a default judgment in her case, which will officially make her divorced. She is also asking for her name to be restored and legally changed it moving forward.
The Blast reports that Brandon “isn’t putting up a fight in this department, and most of the time the judge signs off on these sorts of requests right away.”
Kelly and Brandon tied the knot in 2013 and split in June 2020; they are now currently trying to hash out their finances, including spousal support and child support.
(NEW YORK) — Over 1 million customers are without power in the Midwest Thursday morning after severe storms slammed the region.
The storms included several reported tornadoes.
Power was knocked out in Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Illinois and Indiana. Michigan has the most outages with 810,202, according to PowerOutage.us.
That same storm system will bring more severe weather on Thursday from Kansas to Illinois and into the Northeast. The biggest threat will be damaging winds, but isolated tornadoes are possible.
Meanwhile, 126 million people in the country are enduring the extreme heat, which spans 30 states from California to Maine. Humidity will make it feel like 105 to 110 degrees from Kansas City to New York City on Thursday.
Tropical Depression Fred is also still on the radar. Fred is expected to pass Cuba Thursday and Friday with some gusty winds and heavy rain.
Fred is forecast to strengthen back to a tropical storm on Friday night as it moves through the straits of Florida.
Fred will move over the Florida Keys by Saturday with heavy rain and gusty winds.
Fred will then turn north and head for Florida’s panhandle by Sunday night into Monday morning. Heavy rain is expected across Florida from Tallahassee to Miami this weekend. Flash flooding is possible in South Florida.
Lil Nas X makes such cinematic videos that it’s not surprising that the “Industry Baby” rapper has set his sights on the silver screen. Asked by Variety about his acting aspirations, he says, “Absolutely, that’s going to happen for sure,” but adds that he turned down a big acting opportunity not long ago.
Noting to Variety that, acting-wise, he’d “like to do some stuff like Euphoria,” Nas adds, “I was actually going to do Euphoria, but I didn’t want to take time from finishing my album. It was going to be great.”
He didn’t reveal which part he was offered on the hit HBO drama, which is currently filming its second season, but declares, “Season 3 it is.”
“I definitely want to get into acting, but I feel I have to give it my all, and I want to focus on music for right now,” he explains. “I want my first movie to be amazing.”
So if we can’t see him in an Emmy-winning HBO series, what kind of parts would Lil Nas X like to play in the future?
“Honestly, I want to dabble around in a lot of things like I do in music,” he tells Variety, and cited several movies of different genres he admires.
“A Star Is Born. Let’s also do a Grown Ups 2. Let’s do an Obsessed with Beyoncé. Maybe we claim the sequel. We do the gay version of Obsessed.”
2009’s Obsessed stars Beyoncé as a woman who learns her husband’s office temp, played by Ali Larter, is obsessed with him. As it turns out, Nas actually met Beyoncé at her and JAY-Z‘s Halloween party in 2019.
“She just said she’s super-proud of me and to keep going; it was a next-level experience,” he reveals.
Robin Williams‘ children have spoken out on the seventh anniversary of the comedian’s death.
Zak Williams, the late actor’s eldest child, shared a heartfelt message directed at his father, while daughter Zelda Williams spoke to others grappling with loss.
“Dad, seven years ago today you passed on. The joy and inspiration you brought to the world carries on in your legacy and in your family, friends, and fans you so loved,” Zak Williams wrote Wednesday. “You lived to bring laughter and to help others. I will be celebrating your memory today. Love you forever.”
“Sending love out there today to all the folks navigating loss. New, old, the connective tissue of that deeply human pain can be hard to bear, but I find it easier sometimes knowing how many others have felt the same sting,” Zelda Williams added. “We’re not alone. X”
Robin Williams was 63 years old when he died by suicide in 2014. His children pay homage to their father every now and then on social media, and through actions in their personal lives. Zak Williams, a mental health advocate, named his son McLaurin, which was Robin’s middle name, while Cody Williams, the comedian’s youngest child, got married on his father’s birthday in 2019.
If you are in crisis or know someone in crisis, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741. You can reach Trans Lifeline at 877-565-8860 (U.S.) or 877-330-6366 (Canada) and The Trevor Project at 866-488-7386.
(NEW YORK) — The United States is facing a COVID-19 surge this summer as the more contagious delta variant spreads.
More than 618,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 and over 4.3 million people have died worldwide, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.
Just 58.8% of Americans ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Here’s how the news is developing Thursday. All times Eastern:
Aug 12, 7:59 am
Fauci talks booster shots
The Food and Drug Administration is poised to authorize a third COVID shot for the immunocompromised on Thursday, sources told ABC News.
About 3% of the population would qualify, Dr. Anthony Fauci told ABC News’ “Good Morning America.”
He said the boosters would be “for example, people who have transplantation and are on immunosuppressive drugs for that; people on therapy for cancer — cancer chemotherapy; people with advanced HIV disease; and people who are receiving immune suppressive therapy for a variety of diseases.”
When asked if the boosters would be available to everyone, Fauci said, “You have to follow people, which we’re doing in real-time, mainly a non-immune compromised, either an elderly person or a younger person … to determine if their level of protection goes below a critical level.”
He added, “If and when it does, and it’s likely that it will because no vaccine is gonna last forever, we’re gonna be ready and have a plan to give those individuals the additional dose they might need.”
Aug 12, 1:55 am
University of Mississippi Medical Center opening field hospital in garage
The University of Mississippi Medical Center, overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients due to the delta variant, is opening a field hospital in one of the center’s garages.
The unit will have 50 beds and will likely be available to take in patients by Friday, Gov. Tate Reeves wrote on Twitter Wednesday.
The news comes as Mississippi recorded 3,163 positive COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Aug 11, 11:33 pm
4 Georgia school districts pause in-person learning
Four school districts in Georgia recently paused in-person learning as positive cases of the coronavirus among staff and students swelled in the first days of school this month.
The districts — Macon, Taliaferro, Glascock and Talbot — account together for less than 1% of Georgia’s 1.7 million students, but the need to shut down in-person learning so early in the school year worries district officials.
“The difference now in this outbreak that we see than the outbreak that happened last school year is that this seems to be more centered on kids rather than adults, so that scares me to death,” Jack Catrett, the superintendent of schools in Talbot County, told Columbus ABC affiliate WTVM.
Talbot County, which had 11 students test positive on Friday, shut its doors to students for one week, with kids returning Monday. The other three districts have planned for two-week pauses to in-person learning.
(WASHINGTON) — Among the dozens of election reform laws changing rules regarding how voters cast ballots, several have also diminished secretaries of states’ authority over elections or shifted aspects of election administration to highly partisan bodies, such as state legislators themselves or unevenly bipartisan election boards.
“Inserting partisan actors into election administration … is really a worrying trend when you understand it in the context of what happened in 2020,” said Jessica Marsden, counsel for Protect Democracy, a nonprofit founded by former executive branch officials in the White House Counsel’s Office and Department of Justice.
Partnering with States United Democracy Center and Law Forward, Protect Democracy distributed a memo raising the alarm over the “particularly dangerous trend” of state legislatures attempting to “politicize, criminalize, and interfere in election administration.”
Analyzing the Voting Rights Lab’s state-level bill tracker and bill descriptions, ABC News identified at least nine states, including battlegrounds Arizona and Georgia, that have enacted 11 laws so far this year that change election laws by bolstering partisan entities’ power over the process or shifting election-related responsibilities from secretaries of state.
Each law was enacted by a Republican governor or by Republican-controlled legislatures voting to override Democratic governors’ vetoes.
These new laws include one that requires local election boards in Arkansas to refer election law violation complaints to the State Board of Election Commissioners — made up of five Republicans and just one Democrat — instead of their respective county clerks and local prosecutors; another that generally bars the executive and judicial branches in Kansas from modifying election law; and one giving Ohio state legislative leaders the power to intervene in cases challenging state statutes and cases challenging redistricting maps.
‘Backlash’ to officials’ 2020 actions
Some of these changes appear to be in direct retaliation to actions officials took last year around the election.
Arizona Democratic secretary of state, Katie Hobbs, can no longer represent the state in lawsuits defending its election code. That power now lies exclusively with the Republican attorney general — but only through Jan. 2, 2023, when Hobbs’ term ends.
In Kentucky, where the Republican secretary of state and Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear were heralded for their bipartisan collaboration to give electors absentee and early voting options they’d never had before, state law now explicitly opposes such coordination during a state of emergency. Beshear vetoed this bill, which curtails his office’s emergency powers, but the Republican-majority legislature voted to override him.
And in Montana, then-Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat, used his emergency powers to authorize counties to conduct all-mail elections for the June primary and November election. Every county opted to do this in June, and about 80% of the state’s counties, including the eight most populous, did in November. But in April, Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte signed into law a bill barring the governor from changing election procedures unless the legislature signs off on it.
“This is unprecedented in ways that I couldn’t have even dreamed up myself,” Audrey Kline, the national policy director for the National Vote At Home Institute, told ABC News. “It does feel like there’s a backlash, and there’s really a misunderstanding about how elections really work.”
Concern over so-called ‘takeover’ provision of Georgia election bill
Georgia’s sweeping election law rewrite, enacted at the end of March, spurred protests, boycott calls and corporate outrage over changes to the voting process.
Gov. Brian Kemp and other Republicans have defended the law as “making it easy to vote and hard to cheat,” but Democrats, including Kemp’s 2018 opponent, Stacey Abrams, described it as “Jim Crow 2.0.”
Both Marsden and Kline pointed to its provisions shifting control over elections as among the most concerning enacted so far.
The law removed Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who withstood direct pressure from then-President Donald Trump to “find” enough votes to overturn the election, as chairman and a voting member of the State Election Board, which investigates potential fraud and irregularities.
But the provision the two experts highlighted is one allowing state legislators to request a “performance review” of local election boards. If the State Election Board, which currently has three Republicans and one Democrat, determines a review yields enough evidence of wrongdoing or negligence under the law, the state will appoint a superintendent who takes on the local, multi-person board’s responsibilities, including hiring and firing power, and certifying elections.
Enough Republican lawmakers have already called for a performance review in Democratic-leaning Fulton County, the most populous in Georgia and the target of several 2020 election conspiracies. It’s a long way from any potential “takeover,” which is how Democrats describe the process, but up to four counties could have a superintendent at once.
How a “takeover” could impact a future election’s outcome is unclear, but the concept itself injects “confusion and uncertainty” into the election process, Marsden argued.
Extreme bills die, but unease for future elections doesn’t
Some of the most extreme pieces of legislation introduced never passed, Marsden noted. In Arizona, a bill that would have given the state legislature power to undo the certification of presidential electors by a simple majority vote up until the inauguration died in committee.
The bill failing isn’t a “safeguard,” she warned, because this is exactly what some Republicans wanted to happen last year to appoint electors supporting Trump in key battleground states he lost, but baselessly claimed he would’ve won if not for nonexistent mass voter fraud.
Trump, who may seek a comeback in 2024, still says it should have happened. He again attacked Kemp in a statement Wednesday for not calling one to appoint new electors, which Kemp said at the time would have been illegal.
But the former president’s vendetta against officials who did not bend to his demands around the election is not as damaging to the election process as the widespread lack of trust Republicans now have in U.S. elections.
Achieving full nonpartisan elections, conceded Kline, is not really possible. But what must exist are “bipartisan counterbalances” — like having a Republican-Democratic duo determine voter intent together when a ballot marking is unclear — and operating under the same set of basic facts.
A checkmark, for example, clearly indicates a voter’s intent, she said, even though voters are supposed to fill in the entire oval on a ballot.
What happens when Americans no longer believe in the same set of facts around elections?
“I think we’re all wrestling with these questions,” Kline said. “Leaving it up to a bipartisan team is probably as close as we can get to a perfect sort of check-and-balance system. But when we can’t agree on basic facts, it becomes more difficult.”
(WASHINGTON) — Pentagon Protection Force Agency Officer George Gonzalez was a beloved son, brother and friend. He was a Yankees fan and a “one of the good guys,” according to an obituary shared by the agency.
Gonzalez was allegedly killed by a 27-year-old suspect who ambushed him while he was patrolling the Pentagon bus station last week, first stabbing him and then shooting him with his own weapon, according to law enforcement sources.
Gonzalez’s ambush and the fatal shooting of Chicago Police Officer Ella French, is part of the 47 police officer killings so far in 2021, according to the FBI’s Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted Program (LEOKA).
That’s more than in all of 2020, when there were 46, according to the data. And there have been nearly as many officers killed this year as the entirety of 2019 (48) and 2017 (48).
Out of the killings reported this year, 36 have involved a firearm, according to the data.
April was the deadliest month for law enforcement, with eight killings reported.
The FBI said in its report that the southern region was deadliest for law enforcement with 24 killings and 17 accidental deaths through the end of July. This contrasts with the Northeast, which had no officers killed.
Laura Cooper, the executive director of the Major City Chiefs Association (MCCA) which represents police chiefs from across the country, said the number of law enforcement deaths is “alarming.”
“We continue to witness horrific acts of violence being committed against those who we need to protect our communities,” Cooper explained. “These senseless acts have a chilling effect across the law enforcement community, and we wait for the day where line of duty deaths reach an all-time low.”
The FBI reports that accidental killings of police have also increased 20% though the end of July.
And law enforcement officers have also continued to die from COVID-19.
Apart from the accidental deaths, 54 died from complications due to the virus.
(NEW YORK) — As the number of COVID-19 infections surges across the United States, with unvaccinated children among the most vulnerable, parents across the country are left wondering what decisions to make to keep their families safe.
Adding to the confusion is the fact that the COVID-19 surge, spurred on by the delta variant, is happening as millions of children are heading back to school, forcing kids to brace, along with parents and teachers, for yet another unpredictable, unprecedented school year.
“The way to think about this is, this is a rapidly evolving and dynamically changing situation,” Dr. Jennifer Ashton, ABC News’ chief medical correspondent and a board-certified OBGYN, said. “It requires flexibility and patience and resilience and an open-mindedness to use new data, new information, new knowledge to affect a better health outcome, not only for us as individuals or our children, but for those people around us.”
Ashton, a mother of two college-aged children, said she looks at the latest COVID-19 data not only as a medical doctor, but also as a mother looking out for her children.
“I wear multiple hats,” she said. “I’m speaking to my own children about their behavior, and even though they are both fully vaccinated, what steps can they take to lower their risk as low as possible?”
Here are Ashton’s answers to five of the most pressing questions from parents amid the COVID-19 surge.
1. Why does it seem children are more vulnerable to COVID-19 now, amid the delta variant?
Viruses such as COVID-19 stay alive in their hosts, in this case humans, by mutating, which is what has created the delta variant, according to Ashton.
“The delta variant is one of several variants, you could also think about it as a mutation, compared to the novel strain of the coronavirus,” she said. “And right now, this delta variant definitely appears to be significantly more transmissible … and there is a suggestion that it may be causing more severe illness.”
Currently, only children ages 12 and older are eligible to receive a COVID-19 vaccine in the U.S. Among children younger than 12 and children of any age who are not vaccinated, the data shows an “almost exponential increase” in the number of pediatric cases of COVID-19, according to Ashton.
“The majority [of the cases], 80-90%, are thought to be the delta variant,” she said. “It is unclear at this point if the pediatric age group is more susceptible to the delta variant or if this is just the delta variant doing its thing and attacking the most vulnerable population, which is, in this case unvaccinated children.”
2. Why is there a renewed call for people, particularly children, to wear face masks?
Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reversed its mask guidance and recommended that schools embrace universal masks, backtracking on an earlier recommendation that vaccinated students and staff could go without masks indoors.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), an organization of nearly 70,000 pediatricians, has also called for schools to enforce universal masking mandates.
The reason, according to Ashton, has to do with how much more transmissible the delta variant is than other strains of COVID-19.
“[The CDC] has done outbreak investigations using delta variant data and they have found that the viral load, or the amount of virus that is shed by someone who is vaccinated compared to someone who is unvaccinated, if they’re infected with the delta variant, is largely the same,” Ashton said. “There is very little risk of recommending children of this age group wearing a face covering, and we have seen the impact positive impact of benefits in reducing transmission and infection rates.”
She continued, “It’s always better, especially in the setting of a dramatic increase in case numbers, that we do more and not less, and that’s why you’re seeing these recommendations from the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics.”
The need for face mask wearing extends beyond school to family interactions, like when an unvaccinated child interacts with vaccinated grandparents, for example, according to Ashton.
Medical experts also recommend that unvaccinated people, including children, wear face masks in indoor settings and follow other guidelines, like social distancing and hand washing. They also recommend that families who may have children of different ages who are vaccinated and unvaccinated all wear face masks when in indoor settings like grocery stores and schools.
3. How do I know what activities are safe for my children?
Ashton said parents can consider six factors when deciding what activities are safe for their children: Time, space, people, place, vaccination status and mask wearing.
1. Time: “Will your child be in a given environment for a prolonged period of time. Right now, that number, according to the CDC, is set at 15 minutes cumulative time in 24 hours. We know that the more time exposure, the higher the risk.”
2. Space: “How much space will there be between your child and the people that your child will be around? We know three to six feet right now is kind of the number whereby the risk goes up if you’re in that area. It goes down if you’re greater than six feet away, so that’s important.”
3. People: “How much space there is around people in that environment? When you take into account those parameters, that can help you stratify risk.”
4. Place: “Is there ventilation where [your] children are going to be? Is it an indoor setting, which we know has a higher risk in general? Or is it an outdoor setting, where there is a better wind or ventilation? That is very important.”
5. Vaccination status: “Certainly an option for some parents, depending on the age of their children, is to only put their children in environments where they know that the majority or all of the people in that environment are fully vaccinated. That might not be possible if you’re talking about children under the age of 12.”
6. Mask wearing: “That is a variable that is under our control. So even if everyone is not masked, if your child is masked, that can add some degree of added protection.”
4. Why do we seem to have taken several steps backwards in the pandemic?
“We are still learning about this virus,” said Ashton, responding to parents who may be frustrated by the pace of progress more than one year into the pandemic. “We’re still learning about different populations and their risk to the virus and to different variants every single day.”
“As we learn more, we have to maintain the ability to pivot and adapt our behavior, because if you look at this pandemic, and certainly what’s going on right now, there are really just two variables at play,” she said. “There’s the way the virus is behaving, and there’s the way human beings are behaving. It’s challenging enough if one of those variables is changing, but if both are changing at the same time, it can really be a moving target of sorts.”
5. Is the COVID-19 vaccine worth getting now amid the delta variant?
Absolutely, according to Ashton.
“It is critically important to understand that the goal of these vaccines is to save lives and reduce the risk of hospitalizations,” said Ashton. “And even amongst the delta variant, the vaccines are still largely doing their job.”
“That does not mean 100% of the time. That does not mean there will not be breakthrough cases of people that you know, that I know who become infected with COVID-19,” she said. “What it does mean is that the chance of dying of COVID, requiring ICU admission or hospitalization is dramatically reduced.”
Ashton said people who are getting vaccinated are taking the “most critical step” toward protecting not just themselves but also children who cannot yet be vaccinated.
“We have now nine months of personal experience in this country with hundreds of millions of people having been vaccinated with an excellent safety profile,” she said. “Right now [the vaccine] is the best tool we have so not to use it would be a tremendous missed opportunity.”
