All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

Shooting Death, Raid of Protester’s Grave Spark Anger in Myanmar’s Mandalay — Radio Free Asia

Shooting Death, Raid of Protester’s Grave Spark Anger in Myanmar’s Mandalay Myanmar security forces shot dead an anti-junta demonstrator in Mandalay on Friday, driving the death toll from violent crackdowns in Myanmar’s second-largest city up to 11, while the hasty exhumation of the body of protester killed earlier in the week added to anger at military authorities.

The death came as more police quit their jobs to join the protest movement and the U.S. ambassador in Yangon had his first meeting with the junta in the nearly five weeks since the army deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her elected government, sparking daily protests across the country.

In Mandalay, Zaw Myo was shot in the neck as he marched with fellow engineers in a morning protest. Though he received emergency treatment at a private clinic, he died of his wound a few hours later, leaving behind a pregnant wife and a young son, they said.

Source: Shooting Death, Raid of Protester’s Grave Spark Anger in Myanmar’s Mandalay — Radio Free Asia

Gov. Greg Abbott rejects aid from Biden administration in dispute over coronavirus testing for migrants

Translation: Governor is afraid he will be ousted from office unless he plays the racist anti-immigration card to divert attention from all the Texans who have died because he has repeatedly tried to reopen state and schools too soon and left Texans in the freezer… “Abbott’s comments about migrants with coronavirus have sparked dismay among many advocates along the border. The governor, along with other Texas politicians, has a history of describing migrants in terms that suggest they are a threat. In 2019, a day before a gunman targeting Mexicans killed 22 people in El Paso, Abbott sent out a campaign mailer calling on supporters to “DEFEND” Texas at the border. He later said “mistakes were made” about the mailer.”
Migrants in MPP cross the Paso del Norte International Bridge from Ciudad Juárez to El Paso on Feb. 26, 2021.

Migrants crossed the Paso del Norte International Bridge last month from Ciudad Juárez to El Paso.

Credit: Justin Hamel for The Texas Tribune

Gov. Greg Abbott appeared this week to rebuff help from the federal government to give coronavirus testing to migrants before they are released from federal custody, saying it’s a federal responsibility to screen immigrants coming into Texas.

The announcement came after Abbott, a Republican, repeatedly accused the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden of “releasing immigrants in South Texas that have been exposing Texans to COVID.” The Biden administration denied that Thursday, and CNN reported that Abbott was “stalling” on a federal offer to pitch in on testing migrants.

Abbott and Biden have been fighting for days over coronavirus safety protocols and whose actions have been putting the health of Texans at risk. After Abbott announced this week that he was lifting Texas’ statewide mask mandate and capacity restrictions on businesses, Biden called that decision “Neanderthal thinking.” Abbott shot back in multiple interviews and social media posts that Biden’s immigration policies were the real threat to Texans and accused the president of releasing migrants with COVID-19 into Texas.

“The Biden Administration is recklessly releasing hundreds of illegal immigrants who have COVID into Texas communities,” Abbott wrote in one tweet Wednesday afternoon.

Asked for evidence of that claim, Abbott’s office pointed to news reports from NBC News, Fox News and the New York Post earlier this week that 108 migrants had tested positive since Jan. 25 in Brownsville after being released by federal authorities. The city has been conducting the tests since late January. It’s unclear from the reports how many of the asylum seekers are staying in Texas. The majority of migrants apprehended by or who surrender to federal authorities usually leave for places farther north.

Migrants released from custody while their asylum cases are pending are given notices to appear for court, a document that, when issued, signals the beginning of removal proceedings for migrants if they cannot convince federal authorities they have the right to stay. The office of Customs and Border Protection in South Texas did not respond to a request for comment seeking more information about the testing process.

The testing in Brownsville was reportedly administered by the city. NBC reported that 6.3% of the migrants tested were confirmed to have the coronavirus. That rate is smaller than the positivity rate statewide, in which an average of 8.3% of tests came back positive over the past seven days. The 108 tests over the past five weeks is a small share of the more than 3,800 confirmed cases in Cameron County reported by the state since Jan. 25.

After Abbott began upbraiding Biden for releasing the migrants, CNN reported that the Department of Homeland Security had tried to use Federal Emergency Management Agency dollars to help local officials test migrants released from federal custody and isolate them if they test positive. The grant money needed state approval to be allocated, CNN reported.

Abbott seemed to make clear Thursday that he was not interested in the federal offer. He argued in a statement that border security is “strictly a federal responsibility,” and thus the Biden administration alone should “test, screen, and quarantine” migrants who may have COVID-19.

“Instead of doing their job, the Biden Administration suggested it did not have the sufficient resources and, remarkably, asked Texas to assist them in aiding their illegal immigration program,” Abbott said. “Texas refused.”

Asked about Abbott’s statement, the White House referred to comments that press secretary Jen Psaki made Thursday that the federal policy is for coronavirus testing for migrants released from custody “to be done at the state and local level with the help of NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] and local governments.” She added that the policy states that migrants should be tested “before they are even moved to go stay with family members or others they may know while their cases are being adjudicated.”

Since before the 2020 election, the number of migrants apprehended on the border has increased significantly. From October through January, more than 296,000 undocumented immigrants have been apprehended. That’s more than half of the 458,000 apprehended in all of the 2020 federal fiscal year, according to federal statistics.

The Biden administration has also stopped adding migrants to the Trump-era Migrant Protection Protocols, which forced tens of thousands of asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for their hearings in American courts. Some of the first MPP arrivals began entering Texas last week at Brownsville and El Paso, but they are tested for COVID-19 before entering, confirmed Ruben Garcia, the director of the Annunciation House shelter network that is temporarily housing the migrants.

The release of asylum seekers from custody with notices to appear has been a lightning rod issue for Republicans who incorrectly claim that most asylum seekers ignore the notices and instead try to live in the shadows unlawfully. A 2019 study from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, which uses Freedom of Information Act requests to track immigration court cases, found that more than 80% of all migrants show up for their court hearings, and that number increases to nearly 100% if the asylum seekers have representation.

But Abbott said Thursday that Texas “will not aid a program that makes our country a magnet for illegal immigration.”

Texas has already been sending tests to border communities, however. The Texas Division of Emergency Management confirmed to the Tribune that it has provided testing to “local officials in border communities who have been responding to an influx of individuals crossing the international border.”

“Since the end of January, the state has provided 40,000 COVID-19 tests to Brownsville, McAllen, Laredo, and Del Rio to meet the testing need not being fulfilled by the federal government,” the division’s spokesperson, Seth Christensen, said in a statement.

As for whether the state will provide more tests to border cities, Christensen said TDEM “does not have any outstanding requests from our local partners for testing resources.”

Abbott’s comments about migrants with coronavirus have sparked dismay among many advocates along the border. The governor, along with other Texas politicians, has a history of describing migrants in terms that suggest they are a threat. In 2019, a day before a gunman targeting Mexicans killed 22 people in El Paso, Abbott sent out a campaign mailer calling on supporters to “DEFEND” Texas at the border. He later said “mistakes were made” about the mailer.

Clara Long, the associate director with the U.S. Program at Human Rights Watch, said Abbott’s comments this week are disturbing but not surprising as the governor tries to distract from his own executive order, which critics say will put Texans at risk.

“That fact that that is just such a political statement seems so revealed by the mask [order],” she said. “Do you care about people’s health or do you not? But it’s just clear it’s not about protecting Texans or protecting migrants. It’s about political gain.”

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Trump Official Arrested in Storming of Capitol Left Little Mark Before Riot

Federico Klein was an outspoken religious conservative with a “perfectly suburban” background before the F.B.I. arrested him for assaulting Capitol Police. Federico Klein was an outspoken religious conservative with a “perfectly suburban” background before the F.B.I. arrested him for assaulting Capitol Police.

Killings by Police Declined after Black Lives Matter Protests – Scientific American

Since Black Lives Matter protests gained national prominence following the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., the movement has spread to hundreds of cities and towns across the U.S. Now a new study shows police homicides have significantly decreased in most cities where such protests occurred.

Source: Killings by Police Declined after Black Lives Matter Protests – Scientific American

Burmese Union Federations Call for International Support Against Coup

As the Burmese military coup leaders escalated repression against the democracy uprising in the country this week, two Burmese union federations this week called for international pressure on their government. The Confederation of Trade Unions Myanmar (CTUM) is asking for international sanctions against the regime.

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Blog: 

As the Burmese military coup leaders escalated repression against the democracy uprising in the country this week, two Burmese union federations this week called for international pressure on their government. The Confederation of Trade Unions Myanmar (CTUM) is asking for international sanctions against the regime.

Denying Junta Access to Myanmar’s Foreign Reserves Seen as Key Anti-Coup Goal

U.S. President Biden’s executive order freezing U.S. $1 billion of Central Bank of Myanmar foreign currency reserves at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on Feb. 10 was a first step to keep cash out of the hands of the military that requires other countries to follow up, activists said.

With further reserves estimated at U.S. $5.7 billion stored in other countries, activists campaigning for justice and accountability for the Feb. 1 coup in Myanmar say other countries should follow the Fed and stop the junta from using state funds to blunt the impact of economic sanctions.

U.S. President Biden’s executive order freezing U.S. $1 billion of Central Bank of Myanmar foreign currency reserves at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on Feb. 10 was a first step to keep cash out of the hands of the military that requires other countries to follow up, activists said.

With further reserves estimated at U.S. $5.7 billion stored in other countries, activists campaigning for justice and accountability for the Feb. 1 coup in Myanmar say other countries should follow the Fed and stop the junta from using state funds to blunt the impact of economic sanctions.

“The military now has control over the Central Bank and the Treasury, and they can repurpose the legitimate revenues of the government for their own use,” said Paul Donowitz, Global Witness’s campaign leader for Myanmar. He noted that soon after the coup, the army detained the Central Bank governor and replaced the bank leadership with their own people.

“The question for the international banks and banking regulators is how they can ensure that Myanmar’s state revenues held in the account of the State cannot be misappropriated by the military,” he added.

A Washington-based trade and commerce expert told RFA that Biden’s executive order cleared the way to target the bank following an attempt to access the $1 billion on Feb. 4 that was blocked by Fed safeguards after triggering a red flag. 

“They made it a point to clarify that entities within the government of Myanmar after the coup d’etat include the Central Bank. That was a very deliberate addition,” the source added, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Reuters news agency cited two sources familiar with the transaction in a report on Thursday that said Biden’s executive order was designed to grant the New York Fed the legal authority to hold the $1 billion of Myanmar reserves indefinitely.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimated the country’s gross reserves at $6.7 billion in January.

The Washington banking expert said three Singaporean banks hold the Central Bank of Myanmar’s remaining foreign reserves.

“The Central Bank of Myanmar manages its foreign reserves through its reserve accounts in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the three main commercial banks of Singapore, namely DBS [Development Bank of Singapore], UOB [United Overseas Bank], and OCBC [Overseas Chinese Banking Corporation],” said the expert.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) in a Feb. 23 statement said that its “regular surveillance of the banking system has not found significant funds from Myanmar companies and individuals in banks in Singapore.”

“MAS expects financial institutions to remain vigilant to any transactions that could pose risks to the institution, including dealings with companies and individuals subject to financial sanctions by foreign jurisdictions,” MAS said.

RFA sought further comment from the MAS on the three banks, but received no reply.

RFA’s expert called the statement by MAS “evasive” – saying it covers only “Myanmar companies and individuals” and not Myanmar government funds or the Central Bank, which is a government entity whose independence and integrity were compromised by the coup and military appointments.

“If Singapore’s monetary authorities and banks are seeing suspicious transactions, they should definitely take action to prevent the looting of the State resources from Myanmar. They should respond to these suspicious transactions by flagging them, freezing the account, and investigating them,” said Donowitz.

Yadanar Maung—a spokesperson for the rights group Justice For Myanmar—said “Without an immediate response now, the military will continue to commit atrocities against the people and transfer assets into their private hands.”

“The international community and the banking industry must support the people’s struggle by taking immediate action,” she said.

Attempts to contact the newly appointed officials of Central Bank of Myanmar for comment were unsuccessful.

Reported and translated by Ye Kaung Myint Maung for RFA’s Myanmar Service. Written in English by Richard Finney.

Why comparing Covid-19 vaccine efficacy numbers can be misleading

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan this week turned down 6,200 Johnson & Johnson vaccine doses for his city. “Johnson & Johnson is a very good vaccine. Moderna and Pfizer are the best,” Duggan said in a news conference. “And I am going to do everything I can to make sure that residents of the city of Detroit get the best.”

Scientists say that this is the wrong way to think about Covid-19 vaccines, and that judging the Johnson & Johnson vaccine as inferior based on its lower reported efficacy is misleading.

Such actions are especially worrying at the current stage of the pandemic. Covid-19 has killed more than 500,000 Americans, and while cases seem to be declining, the virus is still spreading, new variants are gaining ground, and some parts of the country are already relaxing precautions (which health officials warn could end up prolonging the pandemic).

Turning down vaccine doses while supplies of all Covid-19 vaccines are still stretched thin undermines the campaign to curb the pandemic.


A shipment of the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine arrives at a hospital in Bay Shore, New York, on March 3. | Johnny Milano/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The best Covid-19 vaccine for you is most likely still the first one you can get.

Three different Covid-19 vaccines are now being distributed across the United States, and all three are highly effective at the most important thing: preventing hospitalizations and deaths from Covid-19. But some people remain worried that Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine is less effective at preventing disease to begin with.

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan this week turned down 6,200 Johnson & Johnson vaccine doses for his city. “Johnson & Johnson is a very good vaccine. Moderna and Pfizer are the best,” Duggan said in a news conference. “And I am going to do everything I can to make sure that residents of the city of Detroit get the best.”

Scientists say that this is the wrong way to think about Covid-19 vaccines, and that judging the Johnson & Johnson vaccine as inferior based on its lower reported efficacy is misleading.

Such actions are especially worrying at the current stage of the pandemic. Covid-19 has killed more than 500,000 Americans, and while cases seem to be declining, the virus is still spreading, new variants are gaining ground, and some parts of the country are already relaxing precautions (which health officials warn could end up prolonging the pandemic).

Turning down vaccine doses while supplies of all Covid-19 vaccines are still stretched thin undermines the campaign to curb the pandemic.

In clinical trials, the vaccines produced by Pfizer/BioNTech, by Moderna, and by Johnson & Johnson reduced the fatality rate of Covid-19 by 100 percent compared to their placebo groups. They also kept all recipients out of the hospital. That means they can potentially downgrade Covid-19 from a public health crisis to a manageable problem.

“The goal of a vaccine was really to defang or tame this virus, to make it more like other respiratory viruses that we deal with, so when you look at the three approved vaccines in the US, all of them are extremely good at that metric,” said Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security.

The vaccines do have some important differences. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is one dose, while the others require two. It also can be stored at refrigerator temperatures, while the others require freezer temperatures. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is also less expensive, about $10 per dose, roughly half as much as the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. The Moderna vaccine costs between $25 and $37 per dose.

These factors give Johnson & Johnson an edge in logistics and could help the shots get to people in harder-to-reach places. Saad Omer, the director of the Yale Institute for Global Health, told Vox last month that it’s a vaccine that “can increase equity.”

But when Johnson & Johnson filed for an emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration for its Covid-19 vaccine in early February, it reported that its overall efficacy in preventing Covid-19 cases that produced symptoms was 66.1 percent. The Moderna vaccine and the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines reported efficacy levels around 95 percent.

That gap in efficacy numbers is fueling some people’s perception that the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine isn’t as good. However, scientists say that these numbers can’t be fairly compared to one another. The efficacy levels of the Covid-19 vaccines are specific to the clinical trials that produced them, and those trials were not conducted in the same ways.

In addition, health officials have been emphasizing that the most important numbers — how well the vaccines prevent hospitalizations and deaths — are consistent across the board and are arguably more comparable. Even after these vaccines have begun distribution, researchers are finding that Covid-19 vaccines are doing a remarkable job of keeping people alive.

That’s why the recommendation remains that the best Covid-19 vaccine for the vast majority of people is the first one they can get. “That’s how I think of these vaccines, as basically interchangeable,” said Adalja.

Why it’s hard to make direct comparisons between the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine and the one from Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech

To gauge how well vaccines work, companies test them in several stages, looking to ensure they are safe, to find the correct dose, and to figure out how much protection they provide. These trials are designed to test vaccines individually, not to pit them against each other. So direct comparisons don’t always make sense and one has to be careful to understand the nuances of how each result was obtained.

But health officials have acknowledged that the earlier results of the Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines shifted expectations of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

“If this had occurred in the absence of a prior announcement and implementation of a 94, 95 percent efficacy [vaccine], one would have said this is an absolutely spectacular result,” said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, about the Johnson & Johnson vaccine during the press conference in January.

In phase 3 clinical trials, Covid-19 vaccines were tested against the virus in the real world, in actual people against the actual virus. This involves testing tens of thousands of participants to see who ends up showing symptoms, randomly dividing them into groups that receive the actual vaccine and groups that receive a placebo (without revealing who got what).

Testing in the real world means dealing with all the confounding factors of the real world. Depending on which volunteers are selected and where they are, they face different infection rates of the virus. They have varying access to health care. Some places had more strict lockdowns than others, or started them at varying times, so participants experienced different public health measures. Michigan issued a mask mandate in March 2020 while California issued one in June 2020, for example.

Timing is critical too. The Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech finished enrolling participants in their phase 3 trials in October and reported their results in late November. The Johnson & Johnson phase 3 trial only finished enrolling participants in December 2020 and reported their results in January.

That means the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was tested during one of the most severe stages of the pandemic, when transmission, cases, and hospitalizations were at their worst in many places around the world, including the US. The trial also captured efficacy against the new variants of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes Covid-19) which began circulating at this point in some parts of the world. Several of these variants have shown themselves to be more contagious, deadlier, and more likely to evade protection from vaccines and prior immunity.

And Johnson & Johnson’s efficacy results included trials in other countries, whereas the results from Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech were mainly from US-based participants.

Johnson & Johnson found that vaccine efficacy shifted depending on the country in which it was studied. The vaccine was found to have a 72 percent overall efficacy after four weeks in preventing Covid-19 symptoms in the US. Under the same benchmarks in South Africa, where a coronavirus variant with worrisome mutations that help it escape vaccines has been spreading widely, the company found a 64 percent efficacy.

When it came to preventing severe and critical cases of Covid-19, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was 85.9 percent efficacious in the US while in South Africa, efficacy against severe and critical disease was reduced to 81.7 percent.

The fact that these vaccines were tested in different ways at different times is why it’s so hard to make apples-to-apples comparisons. “I don’t even look at those efficacy numbers and compare them head-to-head like that,” Adalja said. “Biostats 101: You cannot compare trial results like that unless they were done in a head-to-head fashion.”

Researchers still need more information about Covid-19 vaccines, especially as new variants spread

The huge emphasis on the fact that vaccines prevent hospitalizations and death doesn’t mean that preventing the symptoms of Covid-19 is not important. Millions of people in the US have preexisting health conditions and could suffer from the disease even if they don’t end up in the hospital. About 10 percent of Covid-19 survivors have reported persistent symptoms even after the virus has faded away, the so-called long haulers. It hints that the disease can cause long-term damage.

And while vaccines can protect an individual, it’s less clear how well they prevent transmission from person to person (although evidence is mounting that the available Covid-19 vaccines reduce the virus’ spread). That’s why vaccinated people are encouraged to continue wearing masks until vaccinations are widespread.

An ideal Covid-19 vaccine would reduce deaths, hospitalizations, symptoms, and transmission, and right now, all of the three Covid-19 vaccines available in the US check these boxes, even for people with risk factors for severe disease or long-term illness.

“I wouldn’t be picky if I’m a high-risk person, because being picky may leave you out in the cold of not being vaccinated,” Lawrence Corey, a professor studying virology at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. “We have still an incredible epidemic going on here.”

There are some people with a history of severe allergic reactions or certain immunological conditions who will have to be careful about selecting a vaccine, and some may not be able to receive one at all. But that makes it all the more important to vaccinate everyone around a vulnerable person, which helps build herd immunity.

The looming concern, though, is how well Covid-19 vaccines will hold up as the SARS-CoV-2 virus continues to mutate and new variants arise. Already, vaccine manufacturers are investigating booster doses and modifications of their shots to better counter the newer versions of the virus.

Researchers will also have to figure out how well existing vaccines are holding up against the variants in the real world. While vaccine clinical trials were conducted independently of each other, it would behoove scientists to coordinate from here on out, sharing protocols and pooling data to draw more useful conclusions.

“Imagine what will happen when these studies generate results, each with their own populations, eligibility criteria, validation procedures and clinical endpoints,” wrote Natalie Dean, an assistant professor of biostatistics at the University of Florida, in Nature. “If we don’t want our final answers to be a jumble, we must act now to consider how data can be compared and combined.”

In the meantime, it’s important to keep in mind that vaccines are one part of a comprehensive public health response to Covid-19. Social distancing, hand washing, mask wearing, testing, tracing, and isolation remain critical to speeding up progress toward the end of the pandemic.