Some counties in Missouri have vaccination rates well below 40%. Hospital administrators say intensive care unit beds are once again filling, this time with young, unvaccinated adults.

In several states, including Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming, the Delta variant is responsible for at least 50% of new cases.

Source: Missouri leads nation in new COVID-19 infections | CIDRAP

But in another DW article “Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said that no shots had been fired at the British ship.”

Source: UK PM Johnson slams Russia over Black Sea warship incident | News | DW | 24.06.2021

The truth is, disabled and older people were not “vulnerable” to the virus simply because of their health or age: they were vulnerable because the government did not bother to keep them safe. What happened to our “most vulnerable” during the pandemic was not some terrible tragedy. It was the all too predictable consequence of a system that decided the lives of disabled and older people mattered less than those of the rest.

When deaths start to mount, it becomes remarkably easy to lose sight of the value of a life. In April last year, as hospitals buckled under rising cases, the British Medical Association set out guidance – later withdrawn – to ration treatment away from Covid patients with certain disabilities. By the second wave, people with learning disabilities who had fallen sick with the virus were having “do not resuscitate” orders imposed on them. These moments were shocking, but ultimately they barely registered as a scandal. It is remarkable how easily injustice can be accepted if it is being inflicted on the right set of people.

Source: During Covid, to be ‘vulnerable’ is to be told your life doesn’t matter | Frances Ryan | The Guardian

Police in western Canada have arrested more than 270 people as a conflict over old growth logging in British Columbia’s ancient rainforests continues to grow.

At the protest blockades in the remote woodland, hundreds of activists have been chaining themselves to giant tripods made from the trunks of felled trees, suspending themselves in trees for days or more at a time, and even securing their arms inside devices called “sleeping dragons” cemented into the roadway.

The movement is an attempt to pressure the British Columbia government to halt the cutting of what activists and experts say is the last 3% of ancient trees left standing in the province.

Source: ‘War in the woods’: hundreds of anti-logging protesters arrested in Canada | Canada | The Guardian