Coronavirus corruption: Israel’s inexcusable failure – opinion

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It is simply unconscionable that Israel has spent more time in lockdown than any other nation in the world and yet it still doesn’t have the COVID-19 pandemic under control.

Protests Against Military Coup Swell Across Cities in Myanmar

Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Myanmar’s major cities, chanting slogans against the military junta and demanding the release of deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other detained politicians on Sunday, as a two-day internet blackout was lifted.

In five of Myanmar’s seven largest cities, car horns honked and protesters waved the red peacock flag of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy and been adopted as the main symbol of defiance to the now week-old coup.

There have been no reports of violence after two days of swelling street protests, in response to the coup by military leaders who justified their takeover with the unsubstantiated claim that the landslide victory by Aung San Suu Kyi’s party in a Nov. 8 election was fraudulent.

In Yangon, the biggest city in the country of 54 million people, tens of thousands of protestors marched on city hall and thronged around Sule Pagoda, the center of 2007 monk-lead protests and other pro-democracy movements against five decades of direct military rule.

“There are more protesters on street today than yesterday,” Phyu Sin Thu, a Yangon resident who participated in the protest, told RFA’s Myanmar Service.

“So far, there has been no violence. As the protests went on, more and more people joined in to the marching crowd. The security forces were present but they didn’t stop us from marching. They didn’t try to disperse us either,” she added.

In Mandalay, the country’s second largest city, demonstrators marched around the moat of Mandalay palace, where by midday the crowd grew to thousands marching on foot and motorbikes.

Internet access was restored in most parts of the country by mid-day Sunday. In a move that rights groups warned would leave millions vulnerable to abuses and cut off from coronavirus information, authorities suspended telephone and internet service Saturday, following the suspension of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram,

“They always use measures like cutting internet access or electricity to suppress us,” said a resident of Mandalay, who requested anonymity for security reasons.

“The more they suppress us, the more we will resist them.  We are going to protest more in coming days,” the citizen told RFA.

Motorcycle Rally

Sunday’s protests in Yangon were the largest in a week of growing outrage at the military’s ouster of elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi and the biggest since 2007 Buddhist monk-led protests that were put down by the previous junta with an estimated 13–31 deaths and hundreds of arrests.

In the capital Naypyitaw, government employees and others staged a motorcycle rally as government offices, parliament, and other key locations were under heavy security.

Protesting crowds of thousands also turned out to chant slogans and sing songs in Lashio in northern Shan State, Pathein in Irrawaddy region, and Mawlamyine in Mon state,

In Myawaddy on the Thai-Myanmar border city in Kayin state, brawls erupted when the authorities tied to arrest protestors in front of city hall and security forces tried to disperse the crowd by firing some gun shots into the air. The police detained six people who led the protests in the border town, RFA has learned.

Min Thu, a NLD member, told RFA that Aung San Suu Kyi and president Win Myint were in good health. They remain in detention in the capital.

On Feb. 1, the military dissolved parliament, declared a one-year state of emergency, and took over all branches of government, citing unproven allegations of voter fraud in national elections last November.

Aung San Suu Kyi, 75 and set to start a second five-year term, was arrested in the bloodless coup along with other ruling party leaders and cabinet ministers, and army chief Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing was installed as leader of a junta council of mostly military officers with some civilians.

Across the country, supporters of the embattled Nobel laureate said they would carry on.

“We will keep marching to show the world about what the military regime did. We will have more protests,” said Yangon protester Phyu Sin Thu.

Reported by RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Ye Kaung Myint Maung. Written in English by Paul Eckert.

Buccaneers beat Chiefs in Super Bowl LV for Tom Brady’s magnificent seventh

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Whoever said records were made to be broken didn’t have Tom Brady in mind.

Tampa Bay’s ageless marvel captured a record-extending seventh Super Bowl championship on Sunday night, helming the underdog Buccaneers to a 31-9 rout of the defending champion Kansas City Chiefs and further bolstering his claim as the greatest quarterback ever in the epilogue of a storied career that shows no sign of winding down.

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Pfizer Is Doubling Its Output of Covid-19 Vaccines

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31.9 million Americans have already received one or both doses of a Covid-19 vaccine — including more than 9.3 million people who have been fully vaccinated.

And now USA Today reports:

Pfizer expects to nearly cut in half the amount of time it takes to produce a batch of COVID-19 vaccine from 110 days to an average of 60 as it makes the process more efficient and production is built out, the company told USA TODAY. As the nation revs up its vaccination programs, the increase could help relieve bottlenecks caused by vaccine shortages.

“We call this ‘Project Light Speed,’ and it’s called that for a reason,” said Chaz Calitri, Pfizer’s vice president for operations for sterile injectables, who runs the company’s plant in Kalamazoo, Michigan. “Just in the last month we’ve doubled output.”

The increased speed and capacity is not unexpected, said Robert Van Exan, president of Immunization Policy and Knowledge Translation, a vaccine production consulting firm. “Nobody’s ever produced mRNA vaccines at this scale, so you can bet your bottom dollar the manufacturers are learning as they go. I bet you every day they run into some vaccine challenge and every day they solve it, and that goes into their playbook,” he said…

As soon as vials of vaccine began coming off the production line, engineers started analyzing how production could work faster and better. “We made a lot of really slick enhancements,” he said. Production is getting faster. For example, making the DNA that starts the vaccine process first took 16 days; soon it will take nine or 10. Though quality control and testing has accelerated, company officials say FDA regulations and best manufacturing practices are still being met. Along with improving speed, Pfizer also is increasing output by adding manufacturing lines in all three plants.

As the vaccine effort continues, more efficiencies are expected.

Across America a bout 20.6 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine have already been administered.

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Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Coronavirus tracker: California reports 10,324 new cases and 336 new deaths as of Saturday

California saw 661 fewer hospitalizations on Saturday, Feb. 6 from the previous day, lowering the total number of hospitalizations to 12,476, a 45.4% decrease from the Jan. 6 high of 22,853, according to California public health websites.

California communities reported 10,324 new cases of the coronavirus Saturday, bringing the total number of cases to 3,386,885.

The 14-day average of 17,367 daily new cases is down 59.1% from the Jan. 1 high of 42,468.

There were 336 new deaths reported Saturday, for a total of 43,974 people who have died from the virus.

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Sources: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Johns Hopkins University, the World Health Organization, the California Department of Public Health, The Associated Press, reporting counties and news sources

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