Notations From the Grid (Special Edition): Nowruz 2021: Celebrating the Iranian New Year

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Notations From the Grid (Weekly Edition): On the Week That Was In Our World

Our team was on assignment this week contributing to Operations Independence, the Orange County's COVID 19 Vaccination Effort.    This is as a visit was made to the UC Irvine Medical Center to remind all on how truly Healthcare Worker Heroes Are.

As a new week dawns, please enjoy a snapshot of the week that was that saw in our World courtesy the team at the Visual Capitalist, the Economist of London, the Washington Times, the Washington Post, the Financial Times  and Bloomberg: 

World White House rules out federal Covid-19 vaccine passports Republican resistance is growing to the idea of credentialing individuals who have received the jab APRIL 6, 2021 by Kiran Stacey and Lauren Fedor in Washington World Iran says blackout at Natanz facility was ‘nuclear terrorism’ Incident comes as world powers try to rescue landmark deal abandoned under Trump APRIL 11, 2021 by Najmeh Bozorgmehr, Tehran correspondent

Labour markets Riding high in a workers’ world A jobs rebound, shifting politics and technological change could bring a golden age for labour in rich countries

Charlemagne Thinking the unthinkable Emmanuel Macron’s troubles open up space for Marine Le Pen, but also bring greater scrutiny

The world’s biggest economy America’s boom has begun. Can it last? High-frequency economic data suggest it’s full steam ahead

Schumpeter Unbundling sport Brace for the Amazon effect on live sport

Working in the dark Design bias is harmful, and in some cases may be lethal The world is designed around white men. They share it with everyone else

Even transience is mutating Another species harmed by climate change: Japanese poets The seasonal markers that all haikus must contain are out of whack

 

Senate Democrats can pass Biden infrastructure package on party-line basis, parliamentarian says Senate Democrats will not have to court Republican votes on a Biden administration infrastructure package if they don't want to, according to a friendly ruling from the chamber's parliamentarian on Monday. Biden infrastructure plan calls for employing oil workers to plug leaking wells: How it would work President Joe Biden’s massive green infrastructure plan contains a proposal to address a long-standing environmental hazard while helping fossil fuel workers who lost their jobs during the pandemic or who are threatened by the administration’s push for cleaner energy. Read the full story here. NEWS Biden’s twofer 'infrastructure' approach could doom both bills By Naomi Lim Read the full story here.

Here’s the latest news from the global pandemic. Biden hails vaccine progress while warning of new virus wave ECB governor warns against sharp policy tilt when crisis passes One in four Philippine workers hit by Covid curbs still jobless

How vaccine skeptics created a movement

In early 2015, as news broke that a significant measles outbreak had hit Disneyland, Carl Krawitt was outraged. His son Rhett had been battling leukemia since he was 2. That meant his immune system was too weak to handle routine childhood vaccines. A disease like measles could be extremely dangerous, so it was crucial that others around Rhett be vaccinated. But there was a problem: Rhett had recently started kindergarten in Marin County, a San Francisco suburb with triple the number of vaccine exemptions of the California average at the time. Measles requires more than 95% of kids to be vaccinated to prevent outbreaks. Krawitt was aghast that children couldn’t take peanut butter to school because someone might be allergic, but it was OK for parents to forgo vaccinations for their kids and put his son’s life at risk. As millions of doses of Covid-19 vaccines roll out across the country, Krawitt’s story provides an important lesson in the urgent necessity of mass vaccination. Every person who hesitates puts people like Rhett at greater risk. Yet it’s a debate that’s still raging five years later amid the global pandemic. In the aftermath of the outbreak, the Krawitts began speaking out in support of a bill that sought to tighten state vaccine laws by getting rid of personal-belief exemptions. Rhett became the face of the bill, which passed. Vaccination rates went up, but there was an unintended consequence. “The anti-vaxxers came out,” Krawitt recalls in the third episode of “Doubt,” a new podcast from Bloomberg Prognosis that explores vaccine hesitancy. “They threatened us, they threatened my kid. They told lies. And it was scary.” The Disneyland measles outbreak made clear that the number of people opting out of vaccination was significant. But it also changed the people protesting vaccines. Before that, activists speaking out mainly had been parents concerned about their children’s safety. The push to get rid of personal-belief exemptions changed the conversation. It became political. It became about choice and freedom and democracy. And it’s where many of the arguments against vaccines that we’ve seen during the Covid pandemic first took shape.  “This is where we really saw this coalescence around the idea of vaccination as a civil liberties issue,” says Amelia Jamison, a doctoral student at Johns Hopkins University who studies health misinformation. “The anti-vaxxers kind of felt endangered or in peril. And then they started to mobilize.” In the new episode, we look at how the events of 2015 would foreshadow our current situation, when millions of Americans say they don’t trust the government when it comes to public health policy. The anti-vaxx movement that galvanized five years ago may become the biggest threat to ending the Covid pandemic.—Kristen V. Brown

The vaccine drive

The U.S. Vaccinates Its Way Out of Pandemic After a year of anxiety and isolation, millions of Americans a day are getting immunized against Covid-19, and starting to get their lives back. “It feels like a more optimistic time,” says Joseph Kanter, a Louisiana Department of Health official. See the stories here.

What you should read

Britain’s Ethnic Vaccine Gap Widens Racial Divide Skepticism, misinformation curb efforts to protect most diverse communities.

Environmental Implications of the Return to Office Telecommuting can save energy and reduce emissions, unless it doesn’t.

MRNA Shots Stop Infections in Real-World Study CDC report suggests shots effectively cut transmission, not just illnesses.

Vaccines Become a Race Against Time in Surge Not enough Americans are vaccinated to stave off a new wave amid strains.

World Leaders Call for Treaty on New Pandemics Treaty could provide the WHO with more power to fight new health threats.

Notations From the Grid (W-End Edition): Remembering Prince Phillip

 The World Remembered Prince Phllip, the Duke of Edinburugh, as he passed away this week: