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US anti-vaxxers in the real world of work

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nutcases
Part of a global series of anti-vax protests in late August and early September. Photo by GoToVan.

Half of unvaccinated workers say they’d rather quit than get a shot — but real-world data suggest few follow through

by Jack J. Barry, University of Florida; Ann Christiano, University of Florida, and Annie Neimand, University of Florida

Are workplace vaccine mandates prompting some employees to quit rather than get a shot?
 
A hospital in Lowville, New York, for example, had to shut down its maternity ward when dozens of staffers left their jobs rather than get vaccinated. At least 125 employees at Indiana University Health resigned after refusing to take the vaccine.

And several surveys have shown that as many as half of unvaccinated workers insist they would leave their jobs if forced to get the shot, which has raised alarms among some that more mandates could lead to an exodus of workers in many industries.

But how many will actually follow through?

Strong words

In June 2021, we conducted a nationwide survey, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, that gave us a sample of 1,036 people who mirrored the diverse makeup of the United States. We plan to publish the survey in October.

We asked respondents to tell us what they would do if “vaccines were required” by their employer. We prompted them with several possible actions, and they could check as many as they liked.

We found that 16% of employed respondents would quit, start looking for other employment or both if their employer instituted a mandate. Among those who said they were “vaccine hesitant” – almost a quarter of respondents – we found that 48% would quit or look for another job.

Other polls have shown similar results. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey put the share of workers who would quit at 50%.

Separately, we found in our survey that 63% of all workers said a vaccine mandate would make them feel safer.

Quieter actions

But while it is easy and cost-free to tell a pollster you’ll quit your job, actually doing so when it means losing a paycheck you and your family may depend upon is another matter.

And based on a sample of companies that already have vaccine mandates in place, the actual number who do resign rather than get the vaccine is much smaller than the survey data suggest.

Houston Methodist Hospital, for example, required its 25,000 workers to get a vaccine by June 7. Before the mandate, about 15% of its employees were unvaccinated. By mid-June, that percentage had dropped to 3% and hit 2% by late July. A total of 153 workers were fired or resigned, while another 285 were granted medical or religious exemptions and 332 were allowed to defer it.

At Jewish Home Family in Rockleigh, New Jersey, only five of its 527 workers quit following its vaccine mandate. Two out of 250 workers left Westminster Village in Bloomington, Illinois, and even in deeply conservative rural Alabama, a state with one of the lowest vaccine uptake rates, Hanceville Nursing & Rehab Center lost only six of its 260 employees.

Delta Airlines didn’t mandate a shot, but in August it did subject unvaccinated workers to a US$200 per month health insurance surcharge. Yet the airline said fewer than 2% of employees have quit over the policy.

And at Indiana University Health, the 125 workers who quit are out of 35,800 total employees, or 0.3%.

Making it easy

Past vaccine mandates, such as for the flu, have led to similar outcomes: Few people actually quit their jobs over them.

And our research suggests in public communications there are a few things employers can do to minimize the number of workers who quit over the policy.

It starts with building trust with employees. Companies should also make it as easy as possible to get vaccinated – such as by providing on-site vaccine drives, paid time off to get the shot and deal with side effects, and support for child care or transportation.

Finally, research shows it helps if companies engage trusted messengers including doctors, colleagues and family to share information on the vaccine.

In other words, vaccine mandates are unlikely to result in a wave of resignations – but they are likely to lead to a boost in vaccination rates.

 

Jack J. Barry, Postdoctoral Research Associate in Public Interest Communications, University of Florida; Ann Christiano, Director, Center for Public Interest Communications, University of Florida, and Annie Neimand, Research Director and Digital Strategist for frank, College of Journalism and Communications, University of Florida

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

 

 

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¿Wappin? Soul show…

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What would The Church Lady say?
Panama’s Luci & the Soul Brokers, a few years ago in Italy.
Luci & the Soul Brokers de Panamá, desde hasta unos pocos años en Italia.

It translates to “alma” but everyone knows soul
Se traduce como “alma”, pero todos conocen soul

Mama Saturn’s Virtual Concert
https://youtu.be/i2XUrySbdUE

Temptations – Just My Imagination
https://youtu.be/M5Z9-QCmZyw

Luci & The Soul Brokers – Surprise
https://youtu.be/baDYjoCQ-Ek

Lila Iké – Tiny Desk (Home) Concert
https://youtu.be/mbPa0QH_zxA

Four Tops – Are You Man Enough?
https://youtu.be/faaxsHyyIzY

Adele Live Full Concert 2020
https://youtu.be/fSOT7mYZ6Cs

The Soul Fantastics – Ven a mi
https://youtu.be/Z4hNSO_8f_w

Chaka Khan at Pori Jazz 2002
https://youtu.be/JmyR84zqb0o

Joan Osborne – What Becomes of the Broken Hearted
https://youtu.be/gA0GcXV2njY

Celeste & Paul Weller – You Do Something To Me
https://youtu.be/lUPsKZfuXi8

Stevie Wonder at Glastonbury 2010
https://youtu.be/Dl5j18zyVTM

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Dinero

Cortizo at the UN / Cortizo en la ONU

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Summary in English and full text in Spanish below.
Resumen en inglés y texto completo en español a continuación.

Summary by the UN General Assembly

LAURENTINO CORTIZO COHEN, President of Panama, said the pandemic has struck all nations equally, revealing deeply rooted inequalities. The path forward must be guided by solidarity. “Our decisions today matter,” he insisted. For its part, Panama is working to build an inclusive and sustainable future. He drew attention to his call for a national dialogue, with a view to taking wise decisions that would outlast any Government. Titled “The Bicentennial Pact: Closing Gaps”, it acknowledges that all must contribute to creating a country that is more inclusive and united. Former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet called it “a great opportunity”.

Acting with foresight, Panama procured safe vaccines for the entire population, he continued, and is now only weeks away from achieving collective immunity. However, the goal must be global immunity. The Government has prioritized delivery of food and basic inputs to those who lost their income due to the pandemic, and coordinated a plan which transferred funds to those in need either through digital vouchers or the distribution of food to those in hard‑to‑reach areas. Since March 2020, it has evolved into a social relief plan with shared responsibility, he said, noting that the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) cites Panama as one of two countries which reduced extreme poverty indices in 2020.

He pointed to irregular migration as another challenge, stressing that more than 80,000 irregular migrants crossed into his country in 2021. It received 800 migrants in January, a figure that increased to 30,000 in August, with most of them from the Caribbean and Africa. Providing them temporary shelter, medical assistance and food, Panama dedicates a large part of its limited resources to these tasks. He called on the international community to act quickly, in a coordinated manner and with requisite resources to anticipate a humanitarian crisis of grave proportions. “This is the responsibility of all of us,” he emphasized. “And it must happen now.”

On climate change, he said it is time to dispense with disbelief. “What more do global leaders need to understand this very tragic reality?”, he asked. Noting that Panama is one of three countries classified as carbon neutral, he said it also has the best maritime and air connections in Latin America, and understands that “what is good for the planet, is good for the economy”. It is a global blue leader, participating in an effort to protect 30 per cent of the world’s oceans, a goal it achieved nine years before 2030. In closing, he championed a road map marked by solidarity and human rights, and “broad and honest dialogue” in efforts to bring about peace, provide vaccines to all nations and preserve health. “Enough with our promises,” he said. “The time has come for truth, […] action. Panama is doing its part.

 

Discurso del Presidente a la ONU

texto completo por la Presidencia

Panamá saluda la celebración de esta septuagésima sexta Asamblea General de las Naciones Unidas, en tiempos de grandes desafíos para la humanidad.

El año pasado, durante mi intervención en la Asamblea General, mencioné que la ruta hacia la construcción de un mundo distinto en la etapa post pandemia, era anticipar acciones que nos permitieran sentar las bases de transformaciones estructurales profundas.

La pandemia nos azotó a todos por igual y a su paso nos ha revelado en toda su crudeza, las profundas desigualdades de nuestras sociedades, no solo a nivel regional, sino también global.

Frente a esta realidad, podemos optar por la alternativa que nos lleva a la división, el conflicto, la indiferencia, o tomar el camino de la unidad y la solidaridad. La pandemia ha puesto en evidencia que en el mundo interconectado de hoy, el único camino para la supervivencia de la humanidad debe ser guiado por la solidaridad.

Nuestras decisiones de hoy importan; tendrán consecuencias buenas, o consecuencias malas, hoy, mañana y a largo plazo.

Panamá, apostó a construir un futuro sostenible e inclusivo, y para ello, aún en medio de la pandemia, convocamos a un diálogo nacional con el propósito de tomar decisiones acertadas que perduren más allá de un periodo de gobierno.

Ese diálogo que hemos denominado Pacto del Bicentenario: Cerrando Brechas, se construyó mediante una amplia consulta, con el apoyo de Naciones Unidas, reconociendo que todos los ciudadanos deben proponer y aportar para sentar las bases de un Panamá más justo, inclusivo y solidario.

A propósito del Pacto del Bicentenario, la Alta Comisionada para los Derechos Humanos de la Organización de las Naciones Unidas, Michelle

Bachelet, expresó lo siguiente, y cito: “Lo que están haciendo en Panamá puede considerarse un ejemplo para muchas otras naciones… Tienen ustedes en sus manos una gran oportunidad”.

La pandemia sometió a las naciones del mundo a desafíos monumentales.

Uno de esos retos es la vacunación, y en el caso de Panamá, nuestro país, actuando con previsión, pudo contratar suficientes vacunas seguras y eficaces para toda su población.

Gracias a ello, estamos a solo semanas de llegar a una inmunidad colectiva. Sin embargo, la meta no puede ser que algunos países lleguemos a la inmunidad de rebaño, cuando el objetivo debe ser que alcancemos una inmunidad global.

Otro gran desafío que enfrenta nuestra región es entregar la ayuda necesaria a la población, en medio de las duras circunstancias impuestas por la pandemia, contribuyendo así a mantener las condiciones de vida y la paz social.

Desde el inicio de la pandemia, nuestro gobierno dio prioridad a la entrega de alimentos e insumos básicos a quienes perdieron sus fuentes de ingreso, especialmente en los segmentos de población más vulnerables. Para ello articulamos un plan con dos iniciativas: una de ellas transfiere fondos a los más afectados a través de vales digitales, y la otra distribuye bolsas de alimentos e insumos a quienes habitan en regiones alejadas de difícil acceso.

Este plan, vigente desde marzo de 2020, ha evolucionado de acuerdo a la dinámica de la pandemia, y en la nueva etapa sus beneficiarios deben escoger entre prestar un servicio social comunitario o capacitarse para el trabajo, mediante cursos ofrecidos por el gobierno. Ahora es un plan de alivio social con responsabilidad compartida.

La efectividad de este programa tuvo el reconocimiento de la Organización de Estados Americanos (OEA) y del Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo (BID). Por otro lado, según la Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), Panamá es uno de los dos países de América Latina que lograron disminuir los índices de pobreza extrema en 2020, durante la pandemia.

Otro de los retos que enfrentamos muchas naciones es la migración irregular, un fenómeno histórico y constante ante el cual no se puede ser indiferente.

En lo que va del 2021, más de 80,000 migrantes irregulares han atravesado por el territorio panameño. Esta cifra lleva un crecimiento exponencial. Para entender lo dramático de la situación, Panamá, pasó de recibir 800 migrantes en enero de este año, a 30,000 el mes pasado.

La mayoría de estos migrantes, provenientes del Caribe y África, vienen de recorrer varios países en condiciones difíciles. Nuestro país, de manera responsable, respetuoso de los derechos humanos, brinda un trato digno a estos migrantes y les ofrece, por primera vez en su travesía, albergue temporal, asistencia médica y alimentación. A estas tareas dedicamos una parte importante de nuestros limitados recursos.

Panamá, hace su parte. Apelamos a la comunidad internacional para hacer, lo más pronto posible, un esfuerzo conjunto, con estrategias coordinadas y recursos para anticipar una crisis humanitaria regional de graves proporciones. Esto es una responsabilidad de todos.

El desafío más grande que nos queda por enfrentar, después de la pandemia, es el cambio climático.

La incredulidad existente sobre el cambio climático y sus efectos debe ser historia. Todos los grandes problemas que afronta nuestro planeta están relacionados con el cambio climático.

¿Qué más necesitan los dirigentes del mundo para entender esta dramática realidad?

También en este tema, Panamá, está haciendo su parte. Somos uno de los tres países del mundo clasificado como “carbono negativo”, repito, uno de los tres países carbono negativo, del mundo.

En Panamá, el país con la mejor conectividad marítima y aérea de América Latina y el Caribe, en este país de tránsito con vocación logística, hemos entendido que lo que es bueno para el planeta es bueno para la economía.

Los panameños, hemos asumido la responsabilidad de haber sido bendecidos con una de las mayores biodiversidades del mundo. Panamá, es Líder Mundial Azul, cumpliendo con la Iniciativa 30×30 de proteger el 30% de nuestros océanos, meta que alcanzamos 9 años antes de la fecha fijada para el 2030.

Panamá, se ofrece una vez más como puente para aproximar a las naciones, buscar soluciones comunes a los problemas y enfrentar los desafíos regionales y globales. Podemos hacerlo, con una hoja de ruta marcada por la solidaridad y el respeto por los derechos humanos.

Podemos hacerlo, a través del diálogo amplio y honesto, enfocando el esfuerzo internacional en mantener la paz social, en dotar de las vacunas necesarias a todos los países, para salvar vidas, preservar la salud y encaminarnos todos, lo más pronto posible, a la recuperación económica global. Para todos estos grandes retos, el futuro es ahora.

Panamá está haciendo su parte.

 

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Dinero

Political manipulation by social media algorithms

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Facebook has known that its algorithms enable trolls to spread propoganda. STR/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Facebook’s algorithms fueled massive foreign propaganda campaigns
during the 2020 election – here’s how algorithms can manipulate you

by Filippo Menczer, Indiana University

An internal Facebook report found that the social media platform’s algorithms – the rules its computers follow in deciding the content that you see – enabled disinformation campaigns based in Eastern Europe to reach nearly half of all Americans in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, according to a report in Technology Review.

The campaigns produced the most popular pages for Christian and Black American content, and overall reached 140 million US users per month. Seventy-five percent of the people exposed to the content hadn’t followed any of the pages. People saw the content because Facebook’s content-recommendation system put it into their news feeds.

Social media platforms rely heavily on people’s behavior to decide on the content that you see. In particular, they watch for content that people respond to or “engage” with by liking, commenting and sharing. Troll farms, organizations that spread provocative content, exploit this by copying high-engagement content and posting it as their own.

As a computer scientist who studies the ways large numbers of people interact using technology, I understand the logic of using the wisdom of the crowds in these algorithms. I also see substantial pitfalls in how the social media companies do so in practice.

From lions on the savanna to likes on Facebook

The concept of the wisdom of crowds assumes that using signals from others’ actions, opinions and preferences as a guide will lead to sound decisions. For example, collective predictions are normally more accurate than individual ones. Collective intelligence is used to predict financial markets, sports, elections and even disease outbreaks.

Throughout millions of years of evolution, these principles have been coded into the human brain in the form of cognitive biases that come with names like familiarity, mere exposure and bandwagon effect. If everyone starts running, you should also start running; maybe someone saw a lion coming and running could save your life. You may not know why, but it’s wiser to ask questions later.

Your brain picks up clues from the environment – including your peers – and uses simple rules to quickly translate those signals into decisions: Go with the winner, follow the majority, copy your neighbor. These rules work remarkably well in typical situations because they are based on sound assumptions. For example, they assume that people often act rationally, it is unlikely that many are wrong, the past predicts the future, and so on.

Technology allows people to access signals from much larger numbers of other people, most of whom they do not know. Artificial intelligence applications make heavy use of these popularity or “engagement” signals, from selecting search engine results to recommending music and videos, and from suggesting friends to ranking posts on news feeds.

Not everything viral deserves to be

Our research shows that virtually all web technology platforms, such as social media and news recommendation systems, have a strong popularity bias. When applications are driven by cues like engagement rather than explicit search engine queries, popularity bias can lead to harmful unintended consequences.

Social media like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok rely heavily on AI algorithms to rank and recommend content. These algorithms take as input what you like, comment on and share – in other words, content you engage with. The goal of the algorithms is to maximize engagement by finding out what people like and ranking it at the top of their feeds.

A primer on the Facebook algorithm.

On the surface this seems reasonable. If people like credible news, expert opinions and fun videos, these algorithms should identify such high-quality content. But the wisdom of the crowds makes a key assumption here: that recommending what is popular will help high-quality content “bubble up.”

We tested this assumption by studying an algorithm that ranks items using a mix of quality and popularity. We found that in general, popularity bias is more likely to lower the overall quality of content. The reason is that engagement is not a reliable indicator of quality when few people have been exposed to an item. In these cases, engagement generates a noisy signal, and the algorithm is likely to amplify this initial noise. Once the popularity of a low-quality item is large enough, it will keep getting amplified.

Algorithms aren’t the only thing affected by engagement bias – it can affect people too. Evidence shows that information is transmitted via “complex contagion,” meaning the more times people are exposed to an idea online, the more likely they are to adopt and reshare it. When social media tells people an item is going viral, their cognitive biases kick in and translate into the irresistible urge to pay attention to it and share it.

Not-so-wise crowds

We recently ran an experiment using a news literacy app called Fakey. It is a game developed by our lab, which simulates a news feed like those of Facebook and Twitter. Players see a mix of current articles from fake news, junk science, hyperpartisan and conspiratorial sources, as well as mainstream sources. They get points for sharing or liking news from reliable sources and for flagging low-credibility articles for fact-checking.

We found that players are more likely to like or share and less likely to flag articles from low-credibility sources when players can see that many other users have engaged with those articles. Exposure to the engagement metrics thus creates a vulnerability.

The wisdom of the crowds fails because it is built on the false assumption that the crowd is made up of diverse, independent sources. There may be several reasons this is not the case.

First, because of people’s tendency to associate with similar people, their online neighborhoods are not very diverse. The ease with which social media users can unfriend those with whom they disagree pushes people into homogeneous communities, often referred to as echo chambers.

Second, because many people’s friends are friends of one another, they influence one another. A famous experiment demonstrated that knowing what music your friends like affects your own stated preferences. Your social desire to conform distorts your independent judgment.

Third, popularity signals can be gamed. Over the years, search engines have developed sophisticated techniques to counter so-called “link farms” and other schemes to manipulate search algorithms. Social media platforms, on the other hand, are just beginning to learn about their own vulnerabilities.

People aiming to manipulate the information market have created fake accounts, like trolls and social bots, and organized fake networks. They have flooded the network to create the appearance that a conspiracy theory or a political candidate is popular, tricking both platform algorithms and people’s cognitive biases at once. They have even altered the structure of social networks to create illusions about majority opinions.

Dialing down engagement

What to do? Technology platforms are currently on the defensive. They are becoming more aggressive during elections in taking down fake accounts and harmful misinformation. But these efforts can be akin to a game of whack-a-mole.

A different, preventive approach would be to add friction. In other words, to slow down the process of spreading information. High-frequency behaviors such as automated liking and sharing could be inhibited by CAPTCHA tests or fees. Not only would this decrease opportunities for manipulation, but with less information people would be able to pay more attention to what they see. It would leave less room for engagement bias to affect people’s decisions.

It would also help if social media companies adjusted their algorithms to rely less on engagement to determine the content they serve you. Perhaps the revelations of Facebook’s knowledge of troll farms exploiting engagement will provide the necessary impetus.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on Sept. 10, 2021.The Conversation

Filippo Menczer, Luddy Distinguished Professor of Informatics and Computer Science, Indiana University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

 

 

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Biden, Address to the UN General Assembly

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traducción en español: 

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Dinero

Editorials: The protests; and Justice under international law for 9/11

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us
Part of the September 14 crowd of protesters in front of the legislature. Photo from the Panameñistas’ Twitter feed.

Discount these people if you wish…

There are factions of the labor movement and of the left who stayed away. But many people who dislike some of those who backed this protest still agree on the specific issues that the protesters raised. Yes, there are folks on the political patronage gravy trains who agree with the protesters in their hearts but won’t say so because they may end up not knowing from whence comes their next meal.

The mathematics and intricacies of political maneuvering fly right over the heads of a great many Panamanians, even of those so engaged that they showed up at this protest. But what they do see of the political caste’s performance, they don’t like.

Call the discontented whatever names. Assign to them whatever motives. Discredit them by whatever associations you might want to make. They more or less represent most of Panama in their discontent.

Replace that with which they are disenchanted with what? A good question, and now is a good time to raise it, so long before the next scheduled elections. We the people, with all of our differences, need to talk about that.

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Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a mug shot taken shortly after his capture.

Slice through legal Gordian Knots

Refugee resettlement isn’t the only pending task facing the United States in the wake of the long Afghanistan War debacle. There are accountings to be given to the people of the United States and of the world. There are laws to uphold, in circumstances where systematic violation of the law make any proper legal process difficult to impossible. There are prisoners still held, a few of whom should be considered so dangerous that the world runs a great risk if it lets them walk away.

Consider the case of one Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, arrested in 2003 in Pakistan and reasonably thought to be the operational mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. He’s still held in Guantanamo, charged with many things and facing a trial before a US military commission and potential death penalty. “KSM,” as this defendant’s name gets abbreviated, did not start his career in crimes against civil aviation with these spectacular attacks. A bomb placed on a Filipino airliner in a “test” he allegedly ordered some years before killed a Japanese passenger.

Do we say that it’s an American thing, thus the USA is the place where jurisdiction must lie? People of many nationalities lost their lives on the four hijacked and crashed airliners, and in the World Trade Center and in the Pentagon when those planes hit. Some 3,000 people died in those attacks, a little fewer if you consider immediate deaths, perhaps more if you consider those who died later from things like exposure to toxic dust in the clearance of the rubble. Among those immediately killed were 372 citizens of countries other than the United States, 61 countries in all. There were 105 citizens of Latin American nations killed. There were innocent people from five Muslim-majority countries killed, and other Muslims from countries where they were members of religious minorities. If the United States, due to the misconduct of its government, is precluded from doing justice in this case, wouldn’t dozens of other countries have standing to try the alleged perpetrators?

By US law, much or all of the evidence against KSM is inadmissible. The man was tortured. From Pakistan he was sent to a US facility in Afghanistan, where among the indignities to which he was subjected he was repeatedly sodomized with a water hose. Then he was sent to a secret CIA torture chamber in Poland, where he was waterboarded 183 times. The abuse continued at another secret prison in Romania, until his 2006 transfer to Guantanamo. Any confession obtained under torture is clearly inadmissible if there is any US concept of due process of law. But not only that. Information obtained indirectly, by investigations following up leads gleaned under torture, is the “fruit of a poisoned tree” and is also inadmissible.

While KSM was still on the lam, at US behest his two sons were arrested by Pakistanis and tortured. They were aged six and eight years old at the time. Food and water deprivation, and putting stinging ants on their bodies, were the tactics used to get them to give information that might lead to their father’s arrest. Perhaps, pursuant to US law, all evidence seized as part of that series of arrest was based at least in part on the torture of children and is also the fruit of a poisoned tree.

All this, without even getting to the matter of whether trial by a US institution could ever be impartial.

There is, however, an International Criminal Court in The Hague. The United States, in part out of fear of Americans being tried for torture and other war crimes before it, does not recognize this court. As a matter of practical politics it would take a two-thirds vote of the US Senate to ratify the treaty, and that’s not going to happen because by and large the Republicans oppose international law other than that which protects US companies’ overseas investments.

Let’s step back and look at the whole of international law. There are treaties made and ratified, but that is not its only pillar. Another pillar of International law is the writings of legal scholars, which include the decisions of tribunals in cases brought under treaties and otherwise, as well as treatises and declarations. Then the third main pillar is customary international law. A maritime nation like Panama would have some familiarity with customary laws like universal jurisdiction against sea pirates, and the law of general average to sort out the losses when part of a ship’s cargo is lost. Customary international law is not only recognized by US courts, but it has been applied to people, institutions and nations that don’t recognize the applicable treaties — things long codified in treaties like the Geneva Conventions are imposed on those who reject them as customary law. With the United States having failed to ratify the UN Law of the Sea Convention, it has nevertheless declared it customary international law.

We can look at alternative bodies of law to also determine what is customary. That might sound arcane, but with respect to jihadi groups it’s absolutely relevant. Islam’s Prophet Muhammad bin Abdullah was, later in his life, a head of state and wartime king. Before that he was a merchant engaged in international trade. International law is and always has been part of the Muslim Sharia law. Attacking and killing non-combatant civilians was forbidden by Muhammad and it’s a war crime against the Sharia in our time.

The way out of a legal conundrum, and a stride toward US legal respectability, would be to hand Khalid Sheikh Mohammed over to the International Criminal Court. It would be a prudent exercise in customary international law. Would the United States, as a non-signatory of the treaty creating that court, lack standing? Many of the 61 other countries whose citizens were killed would not face such an issue.

Uphold and extend the rule of law. Bring KSM to trial for what’s arguably The Crime of this Century – a fair trial before an impartial tribunal. Send him to The Hague.

 

3

            Men who are in earnest are not afraid of consequences.

Marcus Garvey            

Bear in mind…

Introverts live in two worlds: We visit the world of people, but solitude and the inner world will always be our home.

Jenn Granneman

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.

Virginia Woolf

Happiness exists on earth, and it is won through prudent exercise of reason, knowledge of the harmony of the universe, and constant practice of generosity.

José Martí

 

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Jecker, Are COVID vaccine boosters ethical?

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shots
People wait in line to receive a vaccine shot against COVID-19 in Belgrade, Serbia, Aug. 17, 2021. Serbia and other countries have started administering booster doses. Meanwhile, more than half the world’s population has not had a first dose. AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic

Are COVID-19 boosters ethical, with half the world
waiting for a first shot? A bioethicist weighs in

by Nancy S. Jecker, University of Washington

Should countries that can afford COVID-19 booster vaccines offer them to residents if scientists recommend them?

The director-general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has made his position clear, calling for countries to impose a moratorium on boosters until 10% of people in every country are vaccinated. His plea comes amid mounting concerns about the slow progress getting COVID-19 vaccines to people in low-income countries.

Like the WHO, some ethicists, including me, have argued that the world must stand together in solidarity to end the pandemic.

Yet as of Sept. 14, of the 5.76 billion doses of vaccine that have been administered globally, only 1.9% went to people in low-income countries.

Meanwhile, many wealthy countries have begun offering COVID-19 boosters to fully vaccinated, healthy adults.

Early evidence on the benefit of COVID-19 boosters to protect against severe disease and death cuts both ways. Some experts tout their benefits, while others argue against them for now.

As a philosopher who studies justice and global bioethics, I believe everyone needs to wrestle with another question: the ethics of whether to offer boosters while people in poor countries go without.

A dangerous gap

The WHO’s call for a moratorium on boosters is an appeal to fairness: the idea that it’s unfair for richer countries to use up more of the global vaccine supply while 58% of people in the world have not received their first shots.

In some countries, such as Tanzania, Chad and Haiti, fewer than 1% of people have received a vaccine. Meanwhile, in wealthy nations, most citizens are fully vaccinated – 79% of people in the United Arab Emirates, 76% in Spain, 65% in the U.K., and 53% in the U.S.

In the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended boosters for moderately to severely immunocompromised people. President Biden has publicly endorsed offering boosters to all Americans eight months after they complete their second shots, pending Food and Drug Administration approval. Yet on Sept. 17, the FDA’s advisory panel recommended against a third dose of the Pfizer vaccine for most Americans, though they did endorse boosters for people over age 65 or at higher risk.

On Aug. 11, before the CDC had authorized boosters for anyone – including immunocompromised people – it estimated that 1 million Americans had decided not to wait and got a third vaccine. It is unclear whether some of them were advised by doctors to seek a booster shot based on, for example, age or compromised immunity. Some healthy Americans have reportedly lied to gain access to unauthorized shots, telling pharmacists – falsely – that this is their first shot.

In addition to raising concerns about fairness, gross disparities between vaccine haves and have-nots violate an ethical principle of health equity. This principle holds that the world ought to help those who are most in need – people in low-income countries who cannot access a single dose.

There’s also a purely utilitarian case to be made for delaying boosters. Even if boosters save lives and prevent severe disease, they benefit people far less than first shots, a notion known as diminishing marginal utility.

For example, the original laboratory studies of the Pfizer vaccine showed more than 90% protection for most people against severe disease and death after the primary, two-dose series. Booster shots, even if they boost immunity, give much less protection: perhaps less than 10% protection, according to a preliminary study.

As a recent article in a leading medical journal, The Lancet, points out, “Even if boosting were eventually shown to decrease the medium-term risk of serious disease, current vaccine supplies could save more lives if used in previously unvaccinated populations than if used as boosters in vaccinated populations.”

Moreover, when scarce vaccines are used as boosters, rather than as first shots for the unvaccinated, that allows the virus to replicate and mutate, potentially creating variants of concern that undercut vaccine protection.

Medical staff prepare a vial of the Pfizer/BioNTech Comirnaty vaccine against COVID-19 in Erfurt, Germany, on Sept. 15.Booster vaccinations are underway across Germany for elderly patients, who were among the first to receive shots in the initial vaccine rollout. Many countries have started administering boosters, though half the world is still waiting for a first shot. Jens Schlueter/Getty Images News via Getty Images

Buy it, use it?

While the ethical argument for delaying boosters is strong, critics think it is not strong enough to override every nation’s duty to protect its own people. According to one interpretation of this view, countries should adopt an “influenza standard.” In other words, governments are justified in prioritizing their own residents until the risks of COVID-19 are similar to the flu season’s. At that point, governments should send vaccine supplies to countries with greater needs.

One could argue that since rich countries have bought millions of doses, they are the rightful owners of those vaccines and are ethically free to do as they wish.

Yet critics argue that vaccines are not owned by anyone, even by the pharmaceutical companies that develop them. Instead, they represent the final part of product development that is years in the making and the result of many people’s labors. Moreover, most COVID-19 vaccines were publicly funded, principally by governments using taxpayer dollars.

Since 1995, the World Trade Organization has required its member states to enforce intellectual property rights, including patents for vaccines. Currently, however, the trade organization’s members are debating proposals to temporarily waive patents on COVID-19-related products during the pandemic.

Some commentators suggest that the whole debate over boosters is overblown and not really about ethics at all. They propose simply calling boosters something else: “final doses.”

But regardless of what we call boosters, the ethical question the WHO’s director-general raised remains: Is giving these shots a fair and equitable way to distribute a lifesaving vaccine?The Conversation

Nancy S. Jecker, Professor of Bioethics and Humanities, School of Medicine, University of Washington

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Panama News blog links, September 19, 2021

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The Panama News blog links

a Panama-centric selection of other people’s work
una selección Panamá-céntrica de las obras de otras personas

Canal, Maritime & Transportation / Canal, Marítima & Transporte

Mundo Marítimo, Canadian Pacific cierra acuerdo para adquirir Kansas City Southern

gCaptain, Maersk’s bleak outlook on supply chain chaos

La Estrella, Piden igualdad de oportunidades para la limpieza en Tocumen

La Prensa, Unión Europa permite uso de certificado de vacunación digital de Panamá

Seatrade, Shipping needs to face social inequality challenge

1

Economy / Economía

CBC, Teetering developer Evergrande sparks contagion fears for China’s economy

de León, Latin America’s post-pandemic energy transition

Skidelsky, Where has all the money gone?

Science & Technology / Ciencia & Teconología

Scientific American, Masks protect schoolkids from COVID

The New York Times, The scientist and the AI-assisted, remote-control killing machine

Aviacionline, Exitoso primer vuelo del avión eléctrico de Rolls-Royce

MIT Technology Review, Troll farms on Facebook before 2020 election

2
https://twitter.com/i/status/1439232237845766149

News / Noticias

FOCO, Manifestación contundente en la Asamblea Nacional

TVN, Cortizo preocupado por las reformas del TE al Código Electoral

La Estrella, Fuerza de Tarea Conjunta EEUU-RP con sede en Amador

IFLScience, The bizarre story of the Bitcoin Bros and their doomed floating utopia

AFP, Bukele cierra la puerta a aborto y matrimonio igualitario

El País, Colombia: the deadliest country for environmentalists in 2020

AP: In edgy Washington, police outnumber J6 protesters

The New Yorker, The Forever Trial at Guantanamo

Raw Story, Eric Trump’s getting ‘subpoena after subpoena after subpoena’

2a

Opinion / Opiniones

Allen, Can Francis and ‘Super Mario’ position Europe between AUKUS and China?

Hindustan Times, Facebook’s broken policies, tech, and management

Shaw, Top five lessons of Newsom’s big win

Proiettis, La letra escarlata del senderismo

Rozén, Aquel Septiembre

El-Sayed, Muslim Americans 20 years later

Sáez Llorens, La mentalidad antivacunas

López, ¿Hacia dónde encaminan el proceso electoral?

Carles: Marcha, manifestación, vigilia y desahogo

Turner, Hacia un nuevo sistema electoral

3
https://www.tvn-2.com/nacionales/politica/Cortizo-adversarios-politicos-pesimismo-conviene-video_0_5947655209.html

Culture / Cultura

Smithsonian, Josephine Baker to be buried at Paris’s Pantheon

TVN: Ailín Solís, del patinaje al realce de la cultura guna

BBC, Singularidades del mapudungún, la lengua mapuche

Wigger, Underneath all the makeup, who was the real Tammy Faye?

4
 

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MIRE, Foreign Minister Mouynes at the CELAC summit

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Mouynes
Foreign Minister Erika Mouynes. Photo by the Ministry of Foreign Relations (MIRE).

Erika Mouynes advocates more women decision-makers at the CELAC summit

by the Ministsry of Foreign Relations – Mexico, September 18, 2021

As one of the only two women with government representation at the VI Summit of Heads of Government and State of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), the minister of foreign affairs of Panama today pointed out to the audience the importance to resume progress to achieve fair gender equity, with equal pay and access to economic and educational empowerment for women in the region.

“There are more women at this table,” she emphasized during her speech, after noting that only the Foreign Minister of Jamaica, Kamina Johnston, and the executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Alicia Bárcenas, accompanied her in the plenary debate.

“All of our speeches support the political empowerment of women. Very well. Where are those women? Excellencies, we are just three women sitting at this table. More women are missing here. And there are. And they are prepared. Let’s make sure together to create spaces so that real and effective opportunities are given to the women of our peoples,” urged the head of Panamanian diplomacy, who attended the meeting on behalf of President Laurentino Cortizo Cohen.

In her proposal, she also indicated the need to strengthen spaces for dialogue such as CELAC to address the common problems that the current pandemic has placed on the agenda of all the countries convened. Among these she mentioned the effects of climate change in the region — “the new world crisis” — and growing irregular migration.

On the latter point, she highlighted the serious impact that this social phenomenon is having on the countries from whence people embark on this difficult route. “Excellencies, we can only address this phenomenon regionally. With just co-responsibility and among all. United.” She assured that Panama does its part and is the first country to provide temporary shelter, food and free medical assistance to migrants who cross its border after a long and complicated journey.

Foreign Minister Mouynes added that, as a carbon negative country – one of only three in the world – Panama has shown that it can achieve goals and fulfill commitments, such as protecting 30 percent of marine areas before the year 2030.

“With this degree of protection, 30 percent of our oceans, we favor the creation of an underwater corridor [in the American tropical Pacific] for biodiversity as a significant contribution to mitigate the effects of climate change. This positive impact can grow exponentially if it is acted upon regionally; so we support Ecuador, Colombia and Costa Rica to join forces and to give an example of the extraordinary scope and contribution to the world that we can achieve when we unite and align objectives,” the Panamanian representative declared.

The region, Minister Mouynes added, has not done well in this pandemic. “The virus hit us hard and claimed many lives. Let’s focus on our strengths to overcome our weaknesses. Another crisis like this cannot find us divided. Solidarity must be at the top of our common agenda,” she concluded.

The CELAC summit, held this Saturday in Mexico, concluded with the definitive constitution of the Latin American and Caribbean Space Agency, the adoption of a Health Self-Sufficiency Plan – the first of its kind in the region – and the creation of the Fund against Disasters and Effects of Climate Change in Latin America and the Caribbean, which during the hours of the summit, raised more than $15 million.

 

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¿Wappin? Going feline / Volviendo felina

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meowist
Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen and first cat Ah Tsai catch a baseball game on TV. Presidential Office photo.
La presidenta de Taiwán, Tsai Ing-wen, y el primer gato, Ah Tsai, ven un partido de béisbol en la televisión.

Cats / Gatos

Al Stewart – Year of the Cat
https://youtu.be/Ak_MTXQALa0

Lebo Sekgobela – Lion of Judah
https://youtu.be/cgaSnTnWOOE

Los Secretos – Ojos de Gata
https://youtu.be/rUYf7cGv-6g

Lee Eye – Gata
https://youtu.be/_3DpzF2pIbI

Clinton Fearon – Sleepin Lion
https://youtu.be/pbsKDxCsZx4

Lord Kitty – El Tigre de Santa Isabel
https://youtu.be/QYUVAAP1aqc

Samantha Fish & Sadie Johnson – Black Cat Bone
https://youtu.be/Y2Xyk12nhLo

Skip Marley – Lions
https://youtu.be/L3A4QJfn4pw

Sue Thompson – Paper Tiger
https://youtu.be/U74TlBCC6Zs

Jefferson Starship – Ride the Tiger
https://youtu.be/KwrnQxZQAAs

Cheo Feliciano & Jorge Santana – El Ratón
https://youtu.be/ygC21anaSwA

Janet Jackson – Black Cat
https://youtu.be/qH-rPt1ftSo

Gato Barbieri – The Third World (1969 Album)
https://youtu.be/trldFf0ri-w

Contact us by email at / Contáctanos por correo electrónico a fund4thepanamanews@gmail.com

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