“We are often asked if now is the time for a climate strike. After all, there are other crises, like the Putin one, to tackle.”

With these words, German activist Elisa Bas addressed reporters ahead of Friday for Future’s tenth global strike on March 25.

For the past two years, the youth-led climate movement has not only been organizing around COVID-19 measures ⁠— which limited its trademark demonstrations ⁠— but also around a barrage of headlines. The pandemic, the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan and the war in Ukraine have dominated the news cycle for months and even years on end.

But much of the movement has decided it needs to integrate other emergencies into its activism instead of vying for attention.

Source: How Fridays for Future keeps the climate relevant as other crises rage | Environment | All topics from climate change to conservation | DW | 25.03.2022

Over the course of the past two weeks, Covid positivity rates have ticked upward in New York City. But case rates among students have surpassed those in the general population (13.3 per 100,000 versus 9.6 citywide, for a seven-day period ending on March 22), figures the city’s Department of Education did not address when I reached out to ask about them. Some schools have had significant jumps. Hunter elementary school ended the week of March 12 with four cases; the week of March 19, there were 24.

One complaint advocates of continued masking have had is with the availability of data on Covid cases coming from the city’s education department, which offers a daily tracker some find insufficiently comprehensive. One group, Parents for Responsive Equitable Safe Schools, set out to scrape data regularly and deliver a broad view. What their figures reveal is an increase in the total number of Covid cases in New York City schools this academic year, which jumps from 135,977 cases on March 7 to just under 137,900 cases on March 23, a notable increase over the previous two-week period.

Even if most children have not fallen especially sick since the repeal of masking rules, consequences remain. Given that students need to isolate for five days when they test positive, the rise in cases means that hundreds of children are kept out of school after two years of what are obviously significant academic losses resulting from reduced or nonexistent in-person learning. What they have instead is “asynchronous” learning at home.

With funding for additional COVID-19 support at a stalemate in Congress, a new KFF analysis looks at potential scenarios that United States might face if a 4th COVID-19 vaccine dose is recommended to the public. The analysis finds that the U.S. government does not have enough funding to purchase vaccine doses remaining to fully cover the population under any of the predicted scenarios.

If 4th doses are authorized and recommended for all ages, there will be a deficit of almost half a billion doses to cover everyone, including fully vaccinating those not yet up to date with their vaccinations. If 4th doses are provided only to people ages 65 and older, the deficit would be 162.5 million doses with the current supply.

Source: New KFF Analysis Finds That the U.S. Government Does Not Currently Have Enough Vaccine Doses to Fully Cover Every American with a 4th Dose | KFF

Russian tanks

Source: One month later Twenty-eight snapshots that capture Russia’s destructive war against Ukraine — Meduza

After years of participating in various opposition movements, Dubovsky knew he had to leave the country. His girlfriend, Alina Savelieva, went with him. On February 24, when the Russian army invaded Ukraine, Dubrovsky, who was by then fully settled in Ukraine, offered assistance to people fleeing the regime. “My fellow countrymen, if you decide to leave Russia and you manage to end up in Georgia, know that I’m always ready to help by taking several people into my home. My resources are limited, but I can definitely give you a place to sleep and something to eat,” he wrote on Twitter on February 24. Since then, according to Dubovsky, he’s helped accommodate 56 Russians.

“I’ve even run out of friends of friends. There’s far from enough housing. One girl came with no education and no work experience, just 200 dollars in her pocket and a toad in a jar. I called a Georgian friend who owns a hotel, he called his friend, and that friend had a relative with another hotel. They gave the girl a bed, a small salary, and an administrative job,” he tells me.

Source: ‘We’ll all go back when the regime falls’ How Tbilisi become a hub for Russian political emigrants — Meduza

Five weeks ago, 25-year-old contract soldier Albert Sakhibgareyev was in Russia’s Belgorod region, several miles from the Ukrainian border, where his brigade was “conducting training exercises.” Sakhibgareyev says he and his fellow soldiers would fire “wherever they were ordered to,” though what exactly they were firing at was unclear. According to him, he didn’t understand he was in a real war until the Ukrainian side started firing back; soon after that, he deserted. Meduza reports on how a soldier from Bashkortostan decided enough was enough. Source: ‘Nobody understood what was happening’ Meduza tells the story of Albert Sakhibgareyev — a Russian contract soldier who deserted from the war in Ukraine — Meduza

Source: Наші серця — з Україною An appeal from Meduzaʼs newsroom to Ukrainian readers — Meduza