Climate change is transforming Illinois

Climate change is transforming Illinois, with more to come, major report by The Nature Conservancy concludes

Human health, agriculture, water supplies and ecosystems are at risk without immediate, lasting action, according to comprehensive assessment

April 20, 2021 | Chicago, IL

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Illinois is undergoing a rapid change in weather patterns that already has started to transform the state, a major new scientific assessment by The Nature Conservancy in Illinois details.
The assessment foretells long-term, serious effects on cities and rural communities alike from climate change that include periods of extreme heat, increased precipitation and more intense storms, particularly if immediate actions aren’t taken to lessen the threat.

Virtually all aspects of life will be affected, ranging from the health of humans, plants and animals to farming operations, in a state that is both the nation’s fifth-largest agricultural producer and home to the third-largest city.
“This assessment reveals how critical the crisis has become,” said Michelle Carr, state director of The Nature Conservancy in Illinois. “Decisive action and policies can still prevent our state from being forever altered, if we act now.”
The report is unique in that it focuses specifically on local impacts to Illinois, unlike most climate reports targeted at the national or global level.
“It’s the first time we’ve seen how specific climate threats will affect each region of the state,” Carr said. “That means we can target solutions locally, so they’re more effective.”
The comprehensive report found that:

• The average daily temperature has increased by 1-2°F in most areas, and nighttime temperatures have risen about three times the rate of daytime temperatures over the past 120 years.
• Precipitation has increased 5% to 20%, varying across the state, and the number of days with at least 2 inches of rain has increased by 40% over the past 120 years.
• By the end of the century, unprecedented warming of 4°F to 14°F is likely, depending on the total emissions released into the atmosphere. That warming would be accompanied by large increases in extremely high temperatures, more intense storms and notably higher annual precipitation totals.
• By the end of the century, total annual precipitation is projected to increase by 2-10%.

“We set out to determine exactly what climate change has in store for the state of Illinois, and we found that important changes are likely to occur in our climate, with major impacts on the people of Illinois,” said Dr. Donald J. Wuebbles, professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Illinois, former White House expert on climate science and one of the lead authors of the assessment.

“These changes will affect all parts of Illinois, including our cities, our agricultural production, our water resources, and even the health of our people and the ecosystems in our state.”

The magnitude of climate change experienced in Illinois will depend on the amount of greenhouse gas emissions emitted globally. The assessment considered two scenarios to assess future climate impacts: 1) a lower scenario, which assumes rapid movement away from fossil fuels, and 2) a higher scenario, where emissions continue to rise throughout the century.
The assessment shows that actions to steeply reduce emissions are critical for averting the worst impacts of climate change.  

Other significant findings from the report include:

• Hotter summer temperatures will mean longer, more severe droughts.
• Flooding from streams and rivers has increased and likely will become more common, particularly on the Mississippi and Illinois rivers.
• Intense rains stress aging urban drainage systems, many of which are already prone to flooding and sewage leakage.
• Heat and water stress are likely to reduce corn yields by mid-century, depending on investments made today in agricultural technology and adaptive management, and livestock will face growing threats related to heat, reduced forage quality and increased disease.
• The risk of severe heat-related illness will increase as extreme heat becomes more frequent.
• An increase in flooding in Illinois will increase the risk of water-borne infectious diseases and mold exposure.
• Climate change will stress Illinois’ remaining natural areas, which are already suffering due to large-scale land conversion and fragmentation.
• Weeds, pests and diseases are expected to worsen because of warmer winters, increased spring precipitation and higher temperatures.

The assessment also reveals how climate challenges disproportionately affect low-income communities and communities of color, where environmental injustice and economic disparities have left more people vulnerable to health problems such as asthma, owing to higher air pollution rates, less access to parks and open spaces, and more. The findings highlight the importance of understanding the disparate impacts of climate change and developing equitable solutions.
“The challenges we expect Illinois to face from climate change underscore the importance of acting decisively to implement fair, ambitious solutions,” said Karen Petersen, climate change project manager at The Nature Conservancy. “There are so many steps we can take now to both drive down emissions and build resilience to climate change.”
For instance, flooding impacts can be lessened in a variety of ways. Increasing greenspace and decreasing impervious surfaces can help absorb additional water in cities, reducing runoff and flooding. In rural areas, land use planning can identify priority areas for floodplain reconnection and restoration to decrease flood risk.
Information on the impacts specific to Illinois can help local leaders develop just and effective approaches to climate change, ranging from transitioning to a clean energy economy to preparing the state for the impacts of a wetter, warmer climate.
While existing knowledge on the impacts of climate change in Illinois provides an excellent foundation and a clear call to action, additional research would further refine the projections:

• Improved climate modeling. Higher-resolution models would provide more robust simulations of heatwaves, severe thunderstorms and extreme precipitation.
• Water resources and flooding. Managing drinking and irrigation water supplies is critical in a changing climate, and large-scale water projects take a long time to build. Strategies to combine conventional infrastructure with green infrastructure could ease flooding risks.
• Agriculture. Research is needed to understand how plants will respond to new stresses, such as higher carbon dioxide levels and longer droughts, under different management practices. It also would be useful to explore the impact of climate change on insects, microorganisms and weeds, both helpful and harmful.
• Human health. Social science research is critical to improve understanding of the vulnerability of rural and urban communities; develop strategies to help people adapt to a changing climate; and improve adoption of health communication strategies. The relationship between climate change and mental health is a burgeoning field of research that needs continued support.
• Ecosystems. Research is needed on how plants and animals cope with heavier precipitation and higher temperatures, to inform natural resource management decisions. In particular, studies are needed to improve ecosystem restoration efforts, which can help lessen the effects of climate change.

In addition to Wuebbles and Petersen, the report was co-led by Dr. James Angel, the Illinois state climatologist for 34 years, and Dr. Maria Lemke, director of conservation science at The Nature Conservancy.
An additional 41 scientists co-authored the report, representing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Centers for Disease Control, the U.S. Forest Service; and academic institutions, including the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, The University of Edinburgh, University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health, North Carolina State University, Northwestern University and Emory University.
For more information or to read the full report, visit the Climate Assessment Report website.

The Nature Conservancy is a global conservation organization dedicated to conserving the lands and waters on which all life depends. Guided by science, we create innovative, on-the-ground solutions to our world's toughest challenges so that nature and people can thrive together. We are tackling climate change, conserving lands, waters and oceans at an unprecedented scale, providing food and water sustainably and helping make cities more sustainable. Working in 72 countries and territories: 38 by direct conservation impact and 34 through partners, we use a collaborative approach that engages local communities, governments, the private sector, and other partners. To learn more, visit www.nature.org or follow @nature_press on Twitter.

Above is from:  https://www.nature.org/en-us/newsroom/illinois-climate-assessment/?src=s_fbo.ch_il.x.x.&sf142474675=1&fbclid=IwAR1fxB8vdl16-PXvhYQs_J9BIo7RybD2xG69dulPlfmEKQko_w6_J6pMkLY

Rural Ambulance Crews Have Run Out of Money and Volunteers

Rural Ambulance Crews Have Run Out of Money and Volunteers

Strained by pandemic-era budget cuts, stress and a lack of revenue, at least 10 ambulance companies in Wyoming are in danger of shuttering — some imminently.

Stephanie Bartlett, left, and Cheryl Rixey pulling out a stretcher at a hospital in Sweetwater County, Wyo., for a patient transfer this month.Credit...Kim Raff for The New York Times

By Ali Watkins

Published April 25, 2021Updated April 27, 2021, 1:11 p.m. ET

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WORLAND, Wyo. — For three years, Luke Sypherd has run the small volunteer ambulance crew that services Washakie County, Wyo., caring for the county’s 7,800 residents and, when necessary, transporting them 162 miles north to the nearest major trauma center, in Billings, Mont.

In May, though, the volunteer Washakie County Ambulance Service will be no more.

“It’s just steadily going downhill,” Mr. Sypherd said. The work is hard, demanding and almost entirely volunteer-based, and the meager revenue from bringing patients in small cities like Worland to medical centers was steeply eroded during much of 2020 when all but the sickest coronavirus patients avoided hospitals.

Washakie County’s conundrum is reflective of a troubling trend in Wyoming and states like it: The ambulance crews that service much of rural America have run out of money and volunteers, a crisis exacerbated by the demands of the pandemic and a neglected, patchwork 911 system. The problem transcends geography: In rural, upstate New York, crews are struggling to pay bills. In Wisconsin, older volunteers are retiring, and no one is taking their place.

The situation is particularly acute in Wyoming, where nearly half of the population lives in territory so empty it is still considered the frontier. At least 10 localities in the state are in danger of losing ambulance service, some imminently, according to an analysis reviewed by The New York Times.

• Dig deeper into the moment.

Many of the disappearing ambulances are staffed by volunteers, and some are for-profit ambulance providers that say they are losing money. Still others are local contractors hired by municipalities that, strained by the budget crisis of the pandemic, can no longer afford to pay them. Thousands of Wyoming residents could soon be in a position where there is no one nearby to answer a call for help.

“Nobody can figure out a solution,” said Andy Gienapp, the recent administrator for emergency medical services at the Wyoming Department of Health. “Communities are faced with confronting the very real crisis of, ‘We don’t know how we’re going to do this tomorrow, because nobody’s doing it for free.’”

‘Nobody wants to pay for it’

About 230 miles southwest of Washakie County, Ron Gatti is preparing to close up Sweetwater Medics, a small ambulance provider in Sweetwater County, where 42,000 people are spread across 10,000 square miles. Facing a budget crisis, the county is expected to end its contract with Mr. Gatti’s ambulance service in June.

The situation is a direct result of the pandemic, Mr. Gatti and county officials said. Rock Springs, the town that Sweetwater Medics serves, was looking for budget cuts; the ambulance contract was one of them. Mr. Gatti’s company proposed transitioning to a public, tax-supported service, funded by the county, he said, but the money was not there.

“Everybody wants it and nobody wants to pay for it,” said Jeff Smith, a commissioner in Sweetwater County.

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Instead, after June 30, the regional hospital will have to respond on its own to emergency calls.

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Sweetwater County is expected to end its contract with Ron Gatti’s ambulance service, Sweetwater Medics, in June.Credit...Kim Raff for The New York Times

Mr. Sypherd, who is also president of the Wyoming E.M.S. Association, keeps a list in his head of ambulance companies, large and small, in imminent danger of closing. There is Sweetwater Medics, which could be gone by autumn. Sublette County’s service was recently saved after voters approved a small tax increase, which will fund a new hospital and the affiliated ambulance. Albin, near Cheyenne, no longer has enough volunteers to fill its crew.

“The ambulance at Albin is fiscally healthy. There’s just nobody to give it to,” said Carrie Deselms, who helps direct the program.

Fremont County, home to the state’s Wind River Indian Reservation, is set to lose its only ambulance service, American Medical Response, a national for-profit company that merged recently with the company that has handled the county’s ambulance service since 2016.

Now, American Medical Response says its profit margins cannot justify remaining there. The company has informed county officials that it will not rebid when its contract runs out this summer.

“The call volume in Fremont County plummeted, making it impossible to cover increasing operational costs without a subsidy” said Randy Lyman, the Northwest regional president for Global Medical Response, the parent company of American Medical Response. “The revenue alone simply wasn’t sufficient.”

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An unsustainable model, strained further

There is a misconception, fueled by stories of astronomical bills and post facto charges, that ambulance service is a sustainable — even lucrative — business model. The truth, medical professionals say, is that those bills are rarely paid in full, by Medicare, private insurance or otherwise. Even in New York City, which operates ambulance services alongside its Fire Department, ambulances do not make enough money on their own to survive.

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“Revenue does not come close to covering the full cost of operating E.M.S.,” said Frank Dwyer, a Fire Department spokesman.

For years, paramedics and emergency technicians have warned that these unreliable revenue streams put the country’s emergency medical systems in danger of collapse. The current crisis in rural service, experts say, was almost certain to arrive at some point, but the pandemic expedited it.

“It is a universal issue,” said Tristan North, a senior vice president with the American Ambulance Association, which represents crews in rural and urban areas. “If you have a pretty steady volume, then you can get some efficiencies of scale and have a better idea as far as budgeting, whereas in a rural area, it’s far less predictable because you have a smaller population.”

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Without Sweetwater Medics, county residents will have no E.M.S. services available when they call 911.Credit...Kim Raff for The New York Times

Critical to an ambulance’s survival is its ability to transport patients to hospitals, which allows it to bill for a transport. That limited revenue stream dried up during the pandemic, according to workers across the country, when crews were discouraged from transporting all but the sickest of patients.

Instead of transporting patients to hospitals, crews were being directed to provide care on scene, Mr. Gienapp, of the Wyoming health department, said. “E.M.S. doesn’t get paid for any of that,” he said.

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At the same time, many of the standard sorts of medical emergencies that helped keep ambulances afloat disappeared, either because people were moving around less, or were fearful of going to a hospital and exposing themselves to the coronavirus.

“There is not sufficient E.M.S. volume in this entire service area to make this a profitable, break-even venture,” Mr. Gatti, of Rock Springs, said. “This is an essential service that doesn’t pay for itself.”

In dense urban areas like New York or Los Angeles, there are enough people and everyday maladies that an ambulance service can come closer to sustaining itself, and enough of a tax base that cities can support it. But in places like Wyoming, the least populous state and one notoriously averse to tax increases, each missed transport in 2020 was critically lost revenue.

Unlike fire and police departments, many states do not consider ambulances to be “essential services.” Only a handful of states require local governments to provide them.

For most of the country, access to an ambulance is a lottery. Some municipalities provide them as a public service, funded by taxpayers, while some contract with for-profit ambulance companies. Most rely on the willingness of volunteer companies, like Mr. Sypherd’s in Washakie County, which are buoyed by a patchwork system of public and private funding streams.

But across the country, E.M.S. professionals say fewer and fewer people are willing to volunteer for the job, a phenomenon accelerated by the stress of the pandemic. Many municipalities expect volunteers to take time away from work, something few people can now afford to do.

“The donated labor is not there anymore,” Mr. Gienapp said.

Same job, new patch

On May 1, Mr. Sypherd will put on a new uniform.

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For more than a year, he had known Washakie County’s system was unsustainable. In an effort to ensure an ambulance remained in Worland, Mr. Sypherd reached out to Cody Regional Health, a hospital system based near Yellowstone National Park, and began exploring whether the agency would take over his ambulance company.

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Ms. Bartlett in the ambulance bay at the Sweetwater Medics station in Rock Springs.Credit...Kim Raff for The New York Times

It is a trend that is gaining traction in rural states like Wyoming: In the absence of volunteer ambulance crews or sustainable funding from local governments, some struggling ambulance services are accepting takeovers from local hospitals and health care systems.

The system is not ideal, experts acknowledge, and it could leave large swaths of rural America disconcertingly far from ambulance service. Still, faced with the alternative, many crews like Mr. Sypherd’s are grudgingly accepting the help. In May, Washakie County Ambulance Service will become a Cody Regional Health ambulance company, and will keep many of Mr. Sypherd’s original crew on staff.

“It’s the right thing to do,” said Phillip Franklin, the director of Cody Regional Health’s ambulance program.

So far, Mr. Franklin and his team have taken over two struggling ambulance companies in northwest Wyoming, and they are trying to help others with their workload.

The reality, he says, is that without help from systems like Cody’s, many of the ambulances in rural Wyoming will fail.

“Someone is always going to have to subsidize rural America,” he said.

Ali Watkins is a reporter on the Metro desk, covering crime and law enforcement in New York City. Previously, she covered national security in Washington for The Times, BuzzFeed and McClatchy Newspapers. @AliWatkins

Above is from:  https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/25/us/rural-ambulance-coronavirus.html?fbclid=IwAR0OuRjFlY2RM9--mpF3e8vuq1EMCJqXeKSCxH6uhKSE_taRtG4v-wbzv8g

April 26: 2137 New COVID 19 Cases in Illinois

Governor Rauner’s Actions in Markham struck down

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APRIL 23, 2021

COOK COUNTY, FEATURE

Appellate Court: Markham Mayor Agpawa Ineligible For Office; Governor Cannot Restore Rights Of Federal Felon -

BY JOHN KRAFT & KIRK ALLEN

ON APRIL 22, 2021

Markham, IL. (ECWd) -

Just as we predicted in our January article (here) the First District Appellate Court issued its Opinion that recently re-elected mayor of Markham, IL, Roger Agpawa, is deemed ineligible to hold any Illinois municipal office, due to a federal felony conviction, and that the Governor of the State of Illinois cannot restore rights to a federal felon.

According to the Southland Journal:

"Earlier this year, the City of Markham’s Electoral Board voted to allow Agpawa on the ballot due to a “Restoration of Rights” provided by former Governor Bruce Rauner. Agpawa had pled guilty to mail fraud in 1999.

Agpawa’s mail fraud conviction is a federal felony, which cannot be reversed, pardoned, or otherwise overlooked under a state Restoration of Rights letter.

Agpawa’s challenger in the recent April 6 Consolidated Elections, Jennifer Coles, won just over 18% of the votes, according to unofficial election results. Where this leaves the mayoral seat is in question."

Cook County Circuit Court agreed with the Electoral Board, the Appellate Court reversed.

From the Appellate Court's Opinion:

• In 2018, Agpawa was elected Mayor of the City of Markham, despite being ineligible to hold that office due to a 1999 federal felony conviction for mail fraud, an infamous crime. He was barred from taking the oath of office by a quo warranto judgment entered by the circuit court. On appeal, we affirmed (People ex rel Foxx v. Agpawa, 2018 IL (App) 1st 171976, ¶ 1), and filed our mandate in the circuit court on June 14, 2018.
• Subsequently, then-Governor Bruce Rauner issued a document purporting to restore Agpawa’s “rights.” See Infra ¶ 46. (The document has no title. Agpawa refers to the document as a “certificate of restoration of rights.” For convenience, we will refer to the document as “the Governor’s certificate.”) On September 25, 2018, Agpawa was sworn in as Mayor of the City of Markham.1 That same day, he filed an emergency motion to vacate the circuit court’s judgment barring him from taking the oath of office. 2 On September 28, 2018, the circuit court vacated its quo warranto judgment. Infra ¶ 47. In its written order, the circuit court found “that, by virtue of a Restoration of Rights issued by the Governor of the State of Illinois, *** Agpawa’s 1999 federal conviction for mail fraud no longer renders him ineligible to hold municipal office in Illinois.” No appeal was taken from the circuit court’s order vacating the earlier quo warranto judgment.
• In 2020, Agpawa filed nomination papers seeking reelection as mayor. Petitioners objected to Agpawa’s nomination papers on the grounds that Agpawa was not a duly qualified candidate pursuant to section 29-15 of the Illinois Election Code (10 ILCS 5/29-15 (West 2018)) and section 3.1-10-5(b) of the Illinois Municipal Code (65 ILCS 5/3.1-10-5(b) (West 2018)) due to his federal felony conviction for an infamous crime. They asserted that Agpawa had not received a pardon from the President of the United States and that the Governor of Illinois’s pardon power does not extend to pardoning federal convictions.
• Petitioners argue that the Governor has no authority to pardon a federal offense . . . his eligibility to seek and hold municipal could only be restored by a presidential pardon, as the Governor of Illinois’s pardon power cannot reach federal crimes
• Agpawa argues, however, that the Governor has the authority to restore state rights that are lost as a collateral consequence of a federal conviction.
• We agree with petitioners and disagree with Agpawa.
• The judgment of the circuit court that affirmed the Board’s decision is reversed, and the Board’s decision is also reversed.
• Roger Agpawa, having been convicted of the infamous crime of mail fraud in 1999, was not a duly qualified candidate for any statutorily created municipal office in Illinois, including the office of Mayor of the City of Markham, and is, therefore, ineligible to hold or to take the oath of office as Mayor of the City of Markham.

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April 22: 3170 New COVID 19 Cases in Illinois

US be concerned about India’s COVID 19 crisis

India's COVID tsunami is the worst in the world. Why that should concern Americans.

Andrew Romano

·West Coast Correspondent

Thu, April 22, 2021, 9:02 AM

In America, it’s easy to believe — and likely correct, given the country’s rapid pace of vaccination and high level of prior infection — that the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic is over.

But in India right now, every day is worse than the last.

“In the last 24 hours alone, [India has] had 300,000 cases, and that’s most certainly an undercount,” said Dr. Kavita Patel, a Yahoo News medical contributor. “In some parts of India, like Mumbai and New Delhi, as high as 1 in 3 or 1 in 4 people are testing positive, [and that’s] actually, again, an underestimate. As a result, India’s hospitals are completely full. There is now rationing of everything, including doctors, nurses, oxygen, beds, supplies.”

More than one year into the pandemic, the deepening disparities between two of the world’s largest countries should remind optimistic Americans that the light at the end of their own tunnel remains a long way off for most of the planet’s population — and that it’s probably time for the U.S. to start thinking about how it can help end the pandemic elsewhere too.

A woman in Ahmedabad, India, is consoled Tuesday after her husband died from COVID-19. (Amit Dave/Reuters)

At its peak this winter, the U.S. was recording an average of 260,000 new COVID-19 cases each day. Yet after skyrocketing 122 percent over the last 14 days, India’s daily case counts have already crossed that threshold twice this week. The curve is so steep, it’s almost vertical.

If the virus continues to spread at the same clip, according to Bhramar Mukherjee, a biostatistician at the University of Michigan, India could be averaging half a million new daily cases within the next month — a figure that no other country has ever come close to. Deaths are likely to follow: Over the past two weeks alone, they have soared 128 percent.

At this point, India accounts for about 1 in every 3 new cases globally. Its rate of spread is the fastest in the world. And the tsunami shows no sign of subsiding anytime soon.

But the bigger problem is that these terrible numbers tell only part of the story. For one thing, India is currently testing at a much lower rate (about 1 test per 1,000 residents per day) than the recent high-water marks in Western countries such as the U.S. (5.5), France (8) or the U.K. (21). Meanwhile, in Delhi, one of India’s hardest-hit areas, test positivity reached 30 percent this week, prompting a six-day lockdown. The combination of inadequate testing and high positivity suggests that hundreds of thousands of infections are going undetected each day.

A health worker tests a girl for COVID-19 in Srinagar, Indian-controlled Kashmir, on Wednesday. (Dar Yasin/AP)

Many — perhaps most — COVID-19 deaths are being missed as well. India is currently averaging more than 1,100 daily deaths, the second-highest level in the world after Brazil. But as Ramanan Laxminarayan, an economist and epidemiologist who is the founder and director of the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy, explained in a recent interview with the New Yorker, “We don’t know the cause of death for four out of five people in normal times” in India because “only one in five deaths is medically recorded” — and “that has continued during COVID.”

At the same time, Laxminarayan continued, “the levels of testing are so low that the people who didn’t get tested and then died of a stroke or a heart attack that was likely COVID-related would not be reported as a COVID death.”

The undercount, in other words, is probably huge.

Reports from the frontlines of India’s spiraling surge support this theory. According to a Reuters investigation published Monday, “Several major [Indian] cities are reporting far larger numbers of cremations and burials under coronavirus protocols than official COVID-19 death tolls, according to crematorium and cemetery workers, media and a review of government data.”

Relatives wearing personal protective equipment at the funeral of a man who died from COVID-19, at a New Delhi crematorium on Wednesday. (Adnan Abidi/Reuters)

In Surat, for instance, Reuters reported that over the last week, two facilities have cremated more than 100 bodies a day under COVID protocols — far in excess of the city’s official daily COVID death toll of around 25. At one of them, gas and firewood furnaces have been running so long without a break that “metal parts have begun to melt.”

In Lucknow, data from the largest COVID-only crematorium shows that the number of bodies that arrived on six different days in April was twice as high as the official number of deaths recorded across the entire city. Elsewhere, India Today reported that two Bhopal facilities alone cremated 187 bodies on days when the city’s official death toll stood at five, and in Ahmedabad last week, 63 bodies left a single COVID-only hospital for cremation on a day when the entire city recorded just 20 coronavirus deaths.

Hospitals, likewise, are on the brink of collapse. “There are two patients per bed in the big hospitals in New Delhi, and that’s if you can get into the hospital in the first place. There are literally lines of ambulances that are fifty or a hundred long,” Laxminarayan said. The result is a vicious cycle: the more patients have to compete for limited beds, oxygen and medicine, the more care suffers — and the more people die who could have been saved.

Ambulances carrying COVID patients at a dedicated COVID-19 government hospital in Ahmedabad, India, last week. (Ajit Solanki/AP)

“The huge pressure on hospitals and the health system right now will mean that a good number who would have recovered had they been able to access hospital services may die,” Gautam Menon, a professor at Ashoka University, told Reuters.

The point is not just that the situation is bad in India, and likely to deteriorate even further. The point is that India is not all that unique. Like many poorer countries across the developing world, it seemed to dodge a bullet during earlier stages of the pandemic, leaving most of its population untouched — and lacking any immunity.

Like many of those same countries, India was lulled into a false sense of security after a seemingly successful lockdown and a recent ebb in infections; less than two months ago, the country’s health minister announced that it had entered “the endgame” of the pandemic, and mass gatherings — cricket matches, large weddings, election rallies — promptly resumed. And as in nearly all other developing countries, barely anyone in India — just 8 percent of its vast population — has received at least one vaccine dose.

Hindu holy men, not following COVID-19 precautions, in the Ganges River earlier this month in a ritual called Shahi Snan, or royal bath. (Danish Siddiqui/Reuters)

To put that in perspective, 40 percent of Americans, 50 percent of Britons and 60 percent of Israelis have received at least one vaccine dose.

Yet globally, the U.S., the U.K. and Israel are outliers. So far, just 33 countries have administered one vaccine dose to at least 20 percent of their residents. The other 160 or so haven’t — and more than 100 of them are lagging even further behind than India.

Epidemiologists tend to tell Americans they should care about these inequities because they pose a direct risk to America’s progress against the pandemic in the form of variants, or mutant versions of the virus that can potentially dodge immunity, evade vaccines and/or transmit more efficiently from person to person. Why? Because dangerous variants are most likely to evolve in places where spread is high and lots of people are sick for long periods of time.

And it’s true, for what it’s worth, that India is now battling a concerning variant of its own. Called B.1.617, it is a “double mutant,” with a pair of protein-spike changes that may increase its transmissibility and help it partly resist immunity. Scientists are still trying to figure out what role, if any, B.1.617 is playing in India’s surge. To be safe, the U.K. on Monday banned travel from India, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson canceled his own trip there.

The bottom line, however, is that India — with its relative lack of prior immunity, its slow rate of vaccination, its mass gatherings and its close quarters — was vulnerable to a massive COVID-19 surge even without a new variant making matters worse. And so are most other countries around the world.

A notice about a COVID-19 vaccine shortage in Mumbai on April 8. (Francis Mascarenhas/Reuters)

By the same token, a country like the U.S. — home to just 4.3 percent of the world’s population but a full 23.9 percent of its vaccinations — is increasingly invulnerable. Even the risk of variants is likely overhyped in America: The existing vaccines still protect against them, and extra-effective booster shots are already in development.

So as U.S. supply starts to exceed demand — and as even the nation with the world’s largest vaccine maker struggles to vaccinate its own people — the question then becomes: What is America, with a population of 328 million, ultimately going to do with the rest of the 1.2 billion vaccine doses it has already secured?

“Now that we have experienced our own supply and it is sufficient for our entire population, [the United States] should shift gears to thinking about allocating any excess vaccines, as well as our own domestic manufacturing ability, to help other countries,” said Patel.

“That is something that we’re going to have to contend with as we are getting closer and closer to our own herd immunity … but other countries are significantly behind.”

Above is from:  https://www.yahoo.com/news/indias-covid-tsunami-is-the-worst-in-the-world-why-that-should-worry-americans-140203352.html

April 21: 2765 New COVID 19 Cases in Illinois