Pfizer approval brings call for government mandates

The Food and Drug Administration’s full approval of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for people 16 and older should spur federal, state and local governments to impose widespread vaccine mandates.

Health officials expect that full approval of the Moderna vaccine, which relies on similar technology, will come within the next few weeks.

All workers at government, hospitals, schools and long-term care facilities should be required to be vaccinated. So should students, faculty and staff at public colleges and universities. And that’s just for starters. Counties and cities should follow New York City’s lead and mandate proof of vaccination for access to most indoor activities, including dining, gyms and entertainment shows. Counties and cities throughout the country should do the same.

For weeks we have watched as coronavirus cases rise at an alarming rate among those who are not vaccinated, largely because of a lack of political will and personal responsibility. During the spring it appeared that the virus was rapidly declining. But the United States is now averaging about 150,000 new COVID-19 cases and 1,000 deaths a day. More than 90,000 adults are hospitalized, and 95% of those entering the hospital are unvaccinated.

Mandates are lawful and ethical. They are a game-changer that provide the best means available to slow the spread of the Delta variant and end the deadly pandemic. They offer a needed incentive to help persuade the unvaccinated to get their shots. An estimated 25% of U.S. adults still have not received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. Roughly half of Californians have been fully vaccinated. A poll conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation revealed that three in 10 unvaccinated adults say they’d be more likely to get vaccinated if the vaccines received full approval from the FDA.

The FDA went to great lengths in its review for full approval. The agency studied 340,000 pages of data about the vaccine’s safety and efficacy. It also conducted repeated inspections of manufacturing plants .

Scientists analyzed clinical trial data from about 20,000 vaccine and 20,000 placebo recipients. The conclusion: The vaccine was 91% effective in preventing COVID-19 disease. The FDA said Monday that more than half of the clinical trial participants were followed for safety outcomes for at least four months after the second dose. Overall, approximately 12,000 recipients have been followed for at least six months.

Increasing the percentage of vaccinated people is an important step. But closer to home, it remains crucial that we follow Bay Area health officials requirement of indoor mask mandates, regardless of vaccination status, for Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Mateo, San Francisco, Santa Clara and Sonoma counties.

Scientists have known for months that the quickest way to beat COVID-19 was by vaccinating a high percentage of the population and taking safety precautions to guard against needless spread of the virus. Monday’s approval by the FDA offers federal, state and local governments the justification needed to impose widespread vaccination mandates.

John Eastman

Insightful new scholarship

According to recently published accounts, CU’S “visiting scholar in conservative thought and policy,” John Eastman, was the linchpin of Donald Trump’s Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol and his attempts to overturn the election results. Eastman, a lawyer, played the role of consigliere Tom Hagan to Donald Trump’s Don Corleone: In December, 2020, he went to the White

House and provided legal advice that suggested that Mike Pence had the discretion to refuse to certify the election results. He asserted that after the failure to certify the results, state legislatures controlled by Republicans could ignore the popular vote and cast their electoral votes for Trump. This was the reason why Trump would stop at nothing to convince Pence to refuse to certify the results.

When Pence would not do as he was told, Trump and his counsel, Eastman, addressed the crowd at the Capitol on the morning of Jan. 6. Eastman riled the Trump supporters when he falsely claimed that votes had been switched from Trump to Biden through the mechanism of a “secret folder” in electronic voting machines. Trump angrily told the crowd, “We’re going to have to fight much harder and Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us,” and he claimed that he would be by their side when the throng marched to the Capitol.

After the Capitol was overrun, Trump’s refusal to intervene to stop the riot makes sense now that we know he was executing Eastman’s strategy. He wanted the violent threats to force Pence to change his mind. The crowd chanted “Hang Mike Pence!” because persuading the vice president to refuse to certify the results was the key, first step in the strategy.

These accounts —- from Jane Mayer in the New Yorker and Michael Wolff in his book Landslide — make clear that the Jan. 6 insurrection was not a peaceful protest that got out of hand. It had a specific goal — to coerce Pence by any means necessary to get him to refuse to certify the vote — that would allow Eastman’s legal strategy to proceed to the next step, the overturning of the popular vote in the Republican state legislatures.

History will record that CU’S “visiting scholar in conservative thought and policy” provided appalling legal advice to an unhinged president, who relied on that advice to foment the first hostile takeover of the Capitol since the War of 1812. It is ironic and sad that the University of Colorado’s “visiting scholar” took time out from his academic duties in Boulder to play a leading role in a violent, attempted coup — one of the most shameful acts in U.S. history.

Child care

Not a personal issue

Too often, people think of child care as a “personal issue” — as in an individual personal problem to solve. But the pandemic has laid bare the truth we already knew: The crisis working families are facing is not due to personal failings, but is a larger, systemic problem that needs larger, systemic solutions and investments. Prioritizing child care can improve the well-being of our children, our own peace of mind and productivity at work, the care workforce, our communities, and honestly, our summer too.

The pandemic has shown how much our nation is really lagging on access to child care. It’s been heartbreaking to see how many families are struggling without child care and now with the delta variant things are just getting worse again.

Too many families can’t find or afford child care. And on top of it, the early educators caring for kids are being paid poverty-level wages and often struggling to support their own families.

It’s clear to me that it’s not enough to go back to what we used to have. We need our leaders to confront and commit to resolving the child care crisis and build a high-quality, affordable child care system that works for babies, kids, families, early educators, and our communities. Making a substantial and sustained investment in America’s child care system is a big step in the right direction and one that should be a top priority for each and every member of Congress.

Our elected leaders should do everything in their power to end America’s child care crisis once and for all.

Xcel

Weak on climate

The United Nations climate report headlined in Tuesday’s Aug. 10 Camera drives home the enormity of what we are facing. “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land,” say the world’s climate experts. And, if we think the heat, drought, and fires are bad now, “global surface temperature will continue to increase until at least the mid-century. Global warming of 1.5°C and 2°C will be exceeded during the 21st century unless deep reductions in carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gas emissions occur in the coming decades.”

U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres not only called the report a “Code Red” for humanity, he also concluded: “this report must sound a death knell for coal and fossil fuels, before they destroy our planet.”

This reinforces what the International Energy Agency says: the energy sector of advanced economies should achieve net zero emissions by 2035 (Overall net zero emissions electricity in advanced economies by 2035 — graph, page 25).

Yet Xcel Energy says its “aspiration” is to achieve net zero emissions in electricity by 2050 … 2050 is simply too late.

Neighboring Platte River Power Authority plans to get to net zero by 2030, as does Holy Cross Energy.

Boulder’s goal continues to be net zero emissions electricity by 2030. Xcel has had almost a year since becoming our electricity partner, yet Xcel has not given us a plan for how they are going to get us to our goal. What Xcel has done, is propose raising our rates.

Xcel: Show us your stuff. How fast can you get us on renewables and off coal and methane (a.k.a “natural gas”) for our electricity? It’s time to act.