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 | | The New York Times |
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Masks back up in Philadelphia |
Philadelphia's newly reinstated mask mandate went into effect on Monday for all indoor public places. |
In so doing, Pennsylvania's largest city became the first major American metropolis to tell residents to cover their noses and mouths again this spring, though businesses there can choose to require proof of vaccination instead. |
The masking rule is a response to sharply rising numbers of new coronavirus cases. It kicked in automatically, based on Philadelphia's own guidelines, because the average number of new cases reported in the city had risen above 100 a day, and more significantly, had increased by more than 50 percent in 10 days. |
"The thing is, I could be wrong — people two weeks from now could be laughing at me," Cheryl Bettigole, the city's health commissioner, told The New York Times. "But if I manage to save lives because I'm right, that's worth the risk." |
The move has implications for other locales: The Omicron subvariant BA.2 has reversed the decline in new-case counts throughout the Northeast. After months of off-and-on mask guidance, Philadelphia will be a case study: Can a city get people to start wearing masks again? |
Philadelphia has been broadly compliant with public health directives for the past two years, and many people know the direct cost of the disease: Thousands there have died from Covid-19. But many people in Philadelphia, like others around the country, have long since lost their appetite for vigilance. Even some of the most cautious have grown weary. |
Shane Dodd, a restaurant owner, said that he did not look forward to dealing with the occasional stubbornly anti-mask customer, worried about losing business to the suburbs and feared it would deter some Covid-conscious customers. |
"There's really no sense of stability with regards to business," he said, adding, "It's a never-ending story." |
India stalls a new global death tally |
The result comes after more than a year of research and analysis by experts around the world. It includes deaths from conditions complicated by Covid and deaths of those who did not have Covid but needed treatment they could not get because of the pandemic. It is the most comprehensive look at the lethality of the pandemic to date. |
But for months, India has stalled publication of death tolls, trying to keep the new estimate from becoming public. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government has stood by its own count of about 520,000 and argues that the agency's process was not "collaborative." |
The worse-case scenario — 4.2 million estimated deaths — is eerily similar to the W.H.O.'s estimate of at least four million, Times journalists report. That would give India the highest tally in the world. |
"The Modi government's pandemic response has been very mixed," said Stephanie Nolen, a global health reporter for The Times who reported on the W.H.O.'s numbers. They've had successes on vaccinations, "but their management of the Delta wave led to a massive surge of of arguably preventable deaths. That's presumably the thing that they don't want to be held accountable for, that they're trying to obfuscate." |
India's undercount has pulled global numbers down significantly. More than a third of the additional nine million deaths tabulated by the W.H.O. are estimated to have occurred there. |
India is not alone in undercounting pandemic deaths: The new numbers also reflect undercounting in other populous countries, like Indonesia and Egypt. A large number of countries, including nearly all of those in sub-Saharan Africa, do not register most deaths. For those, the statisticians have had to rely entirely on modeling. |
"It's not just India," Stephanie said. "People everywhere will have a greater ability to hold their governments accountable if they have an accurate count of who died." |
And the global count matters. It's morally and psychologically important to acknowledge and respect the dead — as well as just to hold countries and governments accountable. "People deserve an accurate accounting of their life and their existence," Stephanie said. |
But there are also practical implications: The global data is also essential for understanding how the pandemic has played out. It will be useful to explore how much vaccines actually saved lives, and it will be necessary for scientists and experts to prepare for future crises. |
"You learn a great deal from the dead for the living," Stephanie said, adding, "Knowing how many people died and where they died and when they died tells us what's gone wrong with the pandemic response." |
- China's strict lockdowns are hurting its vast economy: Truck drivers have been trapped on highways, production lines have stalled and some importers have had to source goods from outside the country.
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- Some people in Shanghai may have to sleep at work even after the city's lockdown ends. The city reported its first deaths from the outbreak on Monday, The Associated Press reports.
- One person who spent time in a Shanghai isolation center described limited access to showers, lights on all night and sleeping in rows of cots next to strangers, according to The A.P.
- The travel industry is experiencing a "great comeback." Travelers are experiencing chaos.
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What else we're following |
- The Supreme Court ruled that the Pentagon may take disciplinary action against an airman who said he had a religious objection to the coronavirus vaccine.
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What is the point of getting a second booster when Israeli studies say it's only good for four weeks? And that it may not be protective against new variants? — Barbara Page, Northern New Jersey |
Thank you for the question, Barbara! Here's an answer, from Apoorva Mandavilli, a science and global health reporter with The Times. |
The evidence for a second booster is complicated. How useful it is and for how long depends on your age and other risk factors. Israeli studies show the immunity boost from a fourth shot does wane fast in terms of preventing infection, particularly with the variant BA.2. But in older adults, a second booster shot may enhance protection against severe illness for longer. A study published this month in The New England Journal of Medicine found additional protection against severe illness in adults 60 and up seemed to last at least six weeks after a fourth dose. The benefit was strongest in adults 80 and older. All of the vaccines have proved remarkably resilient so far, even against the Omicron variant, which may sidestep immune defenses. If a new variant emerges and can evade immunity, all of us — regardless of how many doses we've had — may need a fresh batch of vaccines tailored to it. |
Let us know how you're dealing with the pandemic. Send us a response here, and we may feature it in an upcoming newsletter. |
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