COVID-19

Alaska Governor Tries to Assist Opening Canadian Border by Offering Vaccines

Published

9 months ago

April 30, 2021

Team Terrell

Alaska, the friendly neighbor of Canada, is offering to help vaccinate its citizens in hopes that the U.S.-Canada border can reopen sooner. Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy wants to offer vaccinations to residents in Stewart, B.C. “We feel we have enough vaccines to go and vaccinate folks in Stewart that have not yet been vaccinated if they so choose,” said Gov. Dunleavy.

“We believe that we’re going to have enough vaccines for folks to come over from the Yukon…we do have a large supply of vaccines at this point. We’ll vaccinate anyone that comes into the state of Alaska” Dunleavy added in his discussion with Power & Politics host Vassy Kapelos.

Canada’s CBC News writes “travel restrictions implemented by the federal and provincial governments have made it very hard for residents in Hyder, Alaska to access essential services and supplies in neighboring Stewart.”

The vaccination rollout has been a substantially different scenario in Alaska versus B.C. In March, Alaska became one of the first states in the U.S. to offer the COVID-19 vaccine to anyone over the age of 16. In B.C., however, only 30 percent of those eligible for a vaccine have received at least one dose reports CBC.

A similar scenario to what Alaska Governor Dunleavy is offering has occurred elsewhere along the border. “Saskatchewan and Alberta, meanwhile, have reached an agreement with North Dakota to vaccinate truckers and energy workers crossing the Canada-U.S. border” reports the CBC.

Related Topics:Alaska Canada Featured Vaccine

1 Comment

Terri Bearden

April 30, 2021 at 2:54 pm

We need to help when we ca, now our southern border is a complete disaster!

Reply

COVID-19

Biden Says He Doesn’t Think COVID Is ‘Here To Stay’

Published

1 week ago

January 8, 2022

Team Terrell

On Friday, President Biden said he doesn’t think that COVID-19 is here to stay, but added that he does think the virus will remain around the world.

“No, I don’t think COVID is here to stay, but having COVID in the environment here and in the world is probably here to stay,” Biden told reporters at the White House.
“COVID as we’re dealing with it now is not here to stay, the normal doesn’t have to be. We have so many more tools we developed and we continue to develop that can contain COVID and other strains of COVID,” he added.

Biden’s comments come shortly after six of his former health advisers, who helped him with the COVID-19 pandemic during his presidential transition, published three opinion articles in the Journal of the American Medical Association urging Biden to change his strategy in responding to COVID-19 to one accepting that the virus was here to stay and learning how to live with it.

“They say the first thing the administration needs to do is take a broader vision, by recognizing that Covid-19 is here to stay. In one article, Dr. Emanuel and two co-authors — Michael T. Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota, and Dr. Celine Gounder, an infectious disease expert at New York University — pointedly note that in July, Mr. Biden proclaimed that ‘we’ve gained the upper hand against this virus,’ which in retrospect was clearly not the case,” The New York Times reported.

Biden’s comments suggest he has not yet listened to the advice of these experts, even as the COVID-19 pandemic has worsened to reaching over 1 million new daily cases.

COVID-19

Former COVID Advisory Board tells Biden corona now ‘one of several circulating respiratory virus’ like flu

Published

1 week ago

January 7, 2022

Team Terrell

Doctors who once advised President Biden on how to handle the coronavirus are now telling him to change his strategy via a series of published articles in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The six doctors, Drs. Ezekiel Emanuel, Michael Osterholm, Celine Gounder, David Michaels, Rick Bright and Luciana Borio were members of the advisory board that worked with Biden during his transition period before taking office.

“As the omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 demonstrates, COVID-19 is here to stay” and therefore Biden’s national strategy must be “updated.”

“The goal for the ‘new normal’ with COVID-19 does not include eradication or elimination, eg, the ‘zero COVID’ strategy. Neither COVID-19 vaccination nor infection appears to confer lifelong immunity,” they wrote.

“Current vaccines do not offer sterilizing immunity against SARS-CoV-2 infection. Infectious diseases cannot be eradicated when there is limited long-term immunity following infection or vaccination or nonhuman reservoirs of infection.”

The “new normal,” they explained, should be “recognizing that SARS-CoV-2 is but one of several circulating respiratory viruses that include influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and more.”

The doctors also pointed out there are many treatments with varying levels of effectiveness such as remdesevir and dexamethasone, monoclonal antibody treatment, and oral treatments like Molnupiravir and Paxlovid.

“Finally,” Fox News reports, they said it is imperative “to rebuild trust in public health institutions and a belief in collective action in service of public health.”