U.S. keeps ban on nonessential border crossings
Restrictions are latest effort to slow covid-19 transmission
WASHINGTON — The U.S. government extended Friday a ban on nonessential travel along the borders with Canada and Mexico to slow the spread of covid-19 despite increasing pressure to lift the restriction.
U.S. border communities that are dependent on shoppers from Mexico and Canada and their political representatives have urged the Biden administration to lift the ban. In addition, Canada recently began letting fully vaccinated U.S. citizens enter the country.
But the Department of Homeland Security said Friday that the restrictions on nonessential travel were still needed to minimize the spread of covid-19 and the delta variant. It extended the ban until at least Sept. 21.
The agency announced it is working with public health and medical experts to determine how to “safely and sustainably resume normal travel.”
The restrictions have been in place since early in the pandemic in March 2020 and repeatedly extended while allowing commercial traffic and essential crossings to continue.
PATRICK PLACES BLAME
When Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick was asked about the surge in coronavirus cases during a Thursday night appearance on Fox News, the Republican said “African Americans who have not been vaccinated” are “the biggest group in most states” contributing to the spike.
Laura Ingraham had asked Patrick to respond to criticism from Democrats that covid-19 cases and deaths were on the rise in Texas because of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s policies.
Patrick acknowledged that “covid is spreading” and that infections are largely among people who have not gotten the vaccine.
“Democrats like to blame Republicans on that,” Patrick said. “Well, the biggest group in most states are African Americans who have not been vaccinated. The last time I checked, over 90% of them vote for Democrats in their major cities and major counties.”
Patrick’s comments — one video clip of which had been viewed more than 845,000 times on Twitter as of Friday morning — drew immediate criticism, with some calling the lieutenant governor’s assertion unfounded.
The latest data from the Texas Department of State Health Services shows that the African American population there is not driving the increase in cases.
Black residents in Texas accounted for 16.4% of the state’s cases and 10.2% of deaths as of Aug. 13. While vaccination rates are low among Black Texans, the highest coronavirus case rates are among whites and Hispanics, who make up 34.9% and 35.8% of the state’s cases, respectively, according to the latest data.
“Making a statement that casts blame on a racial or ethnic minority for the spread of disease is a well-known racist trope that predates most of us,” Jorge Caballero, a former instructor at Stanford University School of Medicine now working as a health data scientist, told The Washington Post. “People are already getting hurt by this virus, and it makes absolutely no sense for us to add insult to injury.”
Caballero cast doubt on Patrick’s claims on Twitter, referencing U.S. Census Bureau data collected in July and August that suggests unvaccinated white Texans outnumber unvaccinated Black Texans roughly three to one.
REMARKS DENOUNCED
At a sunny anti-vaccine protest in front of the State House in Augusta, Maine, a Republican lawmaker compared the Democratic governor’s new immunization requirement for health care workers to the medical experiments performed by Nazis during World War II.
“Do I need to remind you of the late 1930s and into the ’40s in Germany and the experiments with Josef Mengele?” state Rep. Heidi Sampson said Tuesday, referring to a Nazi figure who became known as the “Angel of Death” for the often-fatal medical experiments he forced on people imprisoned at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Sampson suggested the mandate for health care workers was a gambit to test an “experimental” vaccine, despite scientific studies that show the safety and efficacy of the vaccines and ongoing oversight by the Food and Drug Administration.
She claimed that Gov. Janet Mills’ vaccine mandate amounted to a violation of the Nuremberg Code. She also compared vaccine mandates with the Tuskegee Syphilis Study that subjected Black men to medical research under false pretenses.
Sampson also falsely said that those implementing vaccine mandates could be executed.
“Informed consent is at the top [of the code] and violating that is punishable by death,” Sampson said, echoing a debunked claim that has circulated among anti-vaccine activists on social media.
Sampson’s speech, along with the comments of several other Republicans who attended the rally, were swiftly condemned. Democratic state Rep. Sam Zager told the Maine Beacon that he “fundamentally rejected” Sampson’s claims.
“Vaccination is not an affront to individual liberty,” Zager, a family physician, told the newspaper. “Recognizing people’s inherent right to liberty does not invalidate other people’s right to their wellness and physical security.”
DETERRING DELTA
The rise of the delta variant has upended optimistic projections of herd immunity and a return to normal life, with many health experts believing mask mandates and tougher vaccine requirements will be needed in the coming months to avoid more serious surges.
The rapid spread of delta among the unvaccinated — and the still relatively small number of breakthrough cases among the vaccinated — shows that significant increases in inoculations will help stop the spread.
Still, “the vaccines themselves are not going to likely be sufficient. And during times of increased transmission, we’ll need other tools available to protect all of us — and particularly those who, at this time, can’t be vaccinated, like our children,” University of California at San Francisco epidemiologist Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo said.
“There will be a time when we have our masks off again as transmission goes back down. But I think we’re going to have to be prepared that if we’re in an environment when there’s more virus around, that it is sensible that we have another layer of protection — and that will be masks,” Bibbins-Domingo said. “And I don’t think we’re going to be totally throwing our masks away anytime soon, frankly.”
Policies like mandatory masking and requiring vaccines or regular testing in workplaces “are going to be very important if we are ever going to get over this pandemic,” said Dr. Robert Kim-Farley, a medical epidemiologist and infectious-diseases expert at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.