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We need to talk about Midazolam…

<p><strong>There’s a point to this article so stick with it until the very end – we need to talk about midazolam…</strong></p>
<p>Midazolam is a commonly used drug in palliative care and is considered one of the four essential drugs needed for the promotion of quality care in dying patients in the United Kingdom. Think of it as diazepam on steroids.</p>
<p>Midazolam is also a drug that has been used in executions by lethal injection in the USA, combined with two other drugs. Midazolam acts as a sedative to make the prisoner unconscious. The other drugs then stop the lungs and heart working. However it has been the source of controversy as several prisoners took a long while to die and appeared to be in pain when midazolam was used.</p>
<p>Condemned inmate <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_of_Clayton_Lockett">Clayton Lockett</a> apparently regained consciousness and started speaking midway through his 2014 execution when the state of Oklahoma attempted to execute him with an untested three-drug lethal injection combination using 100 mg of midazolam.</p>
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<figure class="aligncenter is-resized"><img alt="Midazolam benzodiazepine drug - Stock Image - C047/1006 - Science Photo Library" data-recalc-dims="1" height="400" loading="lazy" src="https://i2.wp.com/media.sciencephoto.com/c0/47/10/06/c0471006-800px-wm.jpg?resize=600%2C400&ssl=1" width="600" /></figure>
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<p>Midazolam can also cause serious or life-threatening breathing problems such as shallow, slowed, or temporarily stopped breathing that may lead to permanent brain injury or death.</p>
<p>UK regulators state that you should only receive midazolam in a hospital or doctor’s office that has the equipment that is needed to monitor your heart and lungs and to provide life-saving medical treatment quickly if your breathing slows or stops.</p>
<p>A doctor or nurse should watch you closely after you receive this medication to make sure that you are breathing properly because midazolam induces significant depression of respiration. Your doctor should also be made aware if you have a severe infection or if you have or have ever had any lung, airway, or breathing problems or heart disease.</p>
<p>Midazolam is also used before medical procedures and surgery to cause drowsiness, relieve anxiety, and prevent any memory of the event. It is also sometimes given as part of the anesthesia during surgery to produce a loss of consciousness.</p>
<p>Midazolam is also used to cause a state of decreased consciousness in seriously ill people in intensive care units who are breathing with the help of a machine.</p>
<p>Midazolam should be used with extreme caution in patients who have chronic renal failure, impaired hepatic function, or impaired cardiac function. It should also be used with extreme caution in obese patients, or elderly patients.</p>
<p>What are some of the most important points you should take from this?</p>
<ul>
<li>Midazolam induces significant depression of respiration</li>
<li>UK regulators insist midazolam should only be administered in a hospital or doctor’s office under the supervision of a doctor or nurse to monitor the breathing of the patient in order to provide life saving treatment to the patient if breathing slows or stops.</li>
<li>Midazolam should be used with extreme caution in elderly patients.</li>
</ul>
<p>Considering all of the above, how would you feel if we told you we have the evidence to show midazolam may have been used to prematurely end the lives of thousands upon thousands of people, and you were told that they died of Covid-19?</p>
<p>Please help to get #WeNeedToTalkAboutMidazolam trending on Twitter and share this article on all social media platforms.</p>
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<h3 class="jp-relatedposts-headline"><em>Related</em></h3>
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source <a href="https://dailyexpose.co.uk/2021/06/03/we-need-to-talk-about-midazolam/">https://dailyexpose.co.uk/2021/06/03/we-need-to-talk-about-midazolam/</a>

revolution We need to talk about Midazolam…

There’s a point to this article so stick with it until the very end – we need to talk about midazolam… Midazolam is a commonly used drug in...

The far right is weaponizing climate change to argue against immigration

<p>As the impacts of human-induced climate change become harder and harder to ignore, some on the right have moved away from denying it exists and toward a new strategy: blaming immigrants for contributing to the problem.</p>
<p>An April 12 <a href="https://www.azag.gov/sites/default/files/docs/press-releases/2021/complaints/NEPA_As_Filed_Complaint.pdf">lawsuit</a> brought by Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich against the Department of Homeland Security alleges that the Biden administration’s policies on immigration have impacted the state’s environment by increasing demand for “housing, infrastructure, hospitals, and schools.”</p>
<p>The lawsuit alleges that immigrants “drive cars, purchase goods, and use public parks and other facilities. Their actions also directly result in the release of pollutants, carbon dioxide, and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, which directly affects air quality.”</p>
<p>Some <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/20/environment-migrants-population-us-right-trump">advocates are worried</a> that the Arizona case, which uses climate change as a weapon against immigrants, communities of color, and poor people, could become a more common means of attack for the right.</p>
<p>This idea has deep roots in right-wing environmentalism. But it also has disturbing echoes of a far-right ideology known as “ecofascism.”</p>
<p>Ecofascism refers to “groups and ideologies that offer authoritarian, hierarchical, and racist analyses and solutions to environmental problems,” Blair Taylor, program director at the Institute for Social Ecology, told me.</p>
<p>The solution to those problems, ecofascists believe, is “the same as the right’s answers to many other issues: more walls, more borders, more exclusion, and more justification of hierarchy and elite rule,” said Taylor, author of “<a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781351104043-16/alt-right-ecology-blair-taylor">Alt-Right Ecology: Ecofascism and far-right environmentalism in the United States</a>.”</p>
<p>Two mass shootings brought ecofascism into the mainstream. In March 2019, an <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2019/3/14/18266624/christchurch-mosque-shooting-new-zealand-gunman-what-we-know">assailant targeted two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand</a>, leaving more than 50 Muslim worshippers dead and at least another 50 injured. The shooter left behind a nearly <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/3/18/18267682/new-zealand-christchurch-shooter-manifesto-online-extremism">80-page manifesto</a> detailing a white nationalist ideology and blaming immigrants and overpopulation for environmental problems.</p>
<p>Then in August of that year, a shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/8/6/20756750/el-paso-shooter-targeted-latinx-walmart">left 23 dead</a>. The shooter told reporters that he intentionally targeted Hispanics in the attack and made a statement <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/two-mass-murders-a-world-apart-share-a-common-theme-ecofascism/2019/08/18/0079a676-bec4-11e9-b873-63ace636af08_story.html">blaming them for plastic and water pollution</a>.</p>
<figure class="e-image"><span class="e-image__inner"><span class="e-image__image" data-original="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22626057/GettyImages_1263521164_copy.jpg"><picture class="c-picture" data-cid="site/picture_element-1622769279_4110_139350" data-cdata='{"asset_id":22626057,"ratio":"*"}'><source srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Fe6pgtAmTm9hTg4morKy4Pumq5Y=/0x0:3000x1790/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x1790):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22626057/GettyImages_1263521164_copy.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/kZOdj44zUWHNcjZ-1Y9QDTPoEYE=/0x0:3000x1790/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x1790):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22626057/GettyImages_1263521164_copy.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/NRDdoSrSfLMPUi5yHsa0kRsxsm0=/0x0:3000x1790/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x1790):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22626057/GettyImages_1263521164_copy.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/I6k8rUjfHdKb20NBlubTKRANi9c=/0x0:3000x1790/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x1790):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22626057/GettyImages_1263521164_copy.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/GeJdt9MEkVFD3ngNCxJ8gRl3grg=/0x0:3000x1790/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x1790):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22626057/GettyImages_1263521164_copy.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/SaFctR8WWVZmfuxqgRdn3NzWTsQ=/0x0:3000x1790/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x1790):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22626057/GettyImages_1263521164_copy.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/LnFjLj_09X-vJ5D_V7q_7-U9VYg=/0x0:3000x1790/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x1790):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22626057/GettyImages_1263521164_copy.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/U-WMVizlIHXiKsZKEgel-Yxi0Us=/0x0:3000x1790/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x1790):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22626057/GettyImages_1263521164_copy.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/tvhTplXHfiqyOGHs-ZmbUObVp28=/0x0:3000x1790/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x1790):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22626057/GettyImages_1263521164_copy.jpg 1920w" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" type="image/webp" /> <img alt="" data-upload-width="3000" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/2cjEw8M1P1X91Tro_uFY2xGm0pE=/0x0:3000x1790/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x1790):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22626057/GettyImages_1263521164_copy.jpg" srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/0S4WHbR-ipZ0Zhf4-s8U3pOu_WE=/0x0:3000x1790/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x1790):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22626057/GettyImages_1263521164_copy.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/CKLiBoPW4GD1sMO1QHdcUB_Qcr8=/0x0:3000x1790/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x1790):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22626057/GettyImages_1263521164_copy.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/lBRBmmyGiY3zDxlWsKbVm0I1CmA=/0x0:3000x1790/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x1790):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22626057/GettyImages_1263521164_copy.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Jb6ZRBuk6W2dvHHUiiVxRDUGY8w=/0x0:3000x1790/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x1790):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22626057/GettyImages_1263521164_copy.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/MidlAgYGofQb8mVHRf-VHyojuy8=/0x0:3000x1790/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x1790):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22626057/GettyImages_1263521164_copy.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/M7pLFPcP6YEfnuxmXpYJ8IyKOUA=/0x0:3000x1790/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x1790):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22626057/GettyImages_1263521164_copy.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/lkPY42SGpK2VRjr5GSGRGc85vzs=/0x0:3000x1790/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x1790):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22626057/GettyImages_1263521164_copy.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/mOUpTBzBbmcIg533gVFf3ONIpbM=/0x0:3000x1790/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x1790):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22626057/GettyImages_1263521164_copy.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Z333ftIg_aKM2q0cPthC2fF0Oes=/0x0:3000x1790/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x1790):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22626057/GettyImages_1263521164_copy.jpg 1920w" /></picture></span></span>
<figcaption><span class="e-image__meta">On August 2, 2020, people embrace at a one-year commemoration of the victims of the 2019 Walmart shooting that left 23 people dead in a racist attack targeting Latinos in El Paso, Texas.</span></figcaption>
<span class="e-image__meta"><cite>Mario Tama/Getty Images</cite></span></figure>
<p>But although these far-right environmentalists blame immigrants for environmental problems, the science indicates otherwise. It’s the world’s richest who are driving the climate emergency.</p>
<p>A September 2020 <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com/?id=66960X1516588&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.oxfam.org%2Fen%2Fpress-releases%2Fcarbon-emissions-richest-1-percent-more-double-emissions-poorest-half-humanity&referrer=vox.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vox.com%2F22456663%2Farizona-environment-immigration-climate-change-right-wing" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank" has-subtag="true" data-cdata='{"rewritten_url":"https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1516588\u0026xs=1\u0026url=https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/carbon-emissions-richest-1-percent-more-double-emissions-poorest-half-humanity\u0026referrer=vox.com\u0026sref=https://www.vox.com/22456663/arizona-environment-immigration-climate-change-right-wing\u0026xcust=___vx__p_22220704__m_m-placeholder__s_s-placeholder__t_w__c_c-placeholder__r_r-placeholder__d_d-placeholder","subtag_max_length":50,"subtag_delim_length":3,"subtag_key":"xcust","subtag_data":{"id":"66960X1516588","xs":"1","url":"https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/carbon-emissions-richest-1-percent-more-double-emissions-poorest-half-humanity","referrer":"vox.com","sref":"https://www.vox.com/22456663/arizona-environment-immigration-climate-change-right-wing","xcust":"___vx__p_22220704__m_m-placeholder__s_s-placeholder__t_w__c_c-placeholder__r_r-placeholder__d_d-placeholder"},"encode_subtag":false}'>report</a> by Oxfam found that from 1990 to 2015 — a critical 25-year period during which humans doubled the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — the wealthiest 1 percent of the world’s population accounted for more than twice as much carbon pollution as the 3.1 billion people who made up the poorest half of humanity.</p>
<p>To find out more about the roots of right-wing environmentalism and ecofascism, I called Blair Taylor. He explained why the motivation behind the Arizona case fits more closely with right-wing environmentalism than it does with ecofascist ideology.</p>
<p>Our conversation, edited for length and clarity, is below.</p>
<h4>Jariel Arvin</h4>
<p>How can readers identify ecofascism?</p>
<h4>Blair Taylor</h4>
<p>A basic definition is the groups and ideologies that offer authoritarian, hierarchical, and racist analyses and solutions to environmental problems. Ecofascists think modern life is too complicated and declining culturally, environmentally, intellectually. So they argue for a big reset. “We need to reject modernity,” as one of their slogans goes.</p>
<h4>Jariel Arvin</h4>
<p>What do ecofascists hope to achieve through the return to nature?</p>
<h4>Blair Taylor</h4>
<p>Many ecofascists are preparing for a violent collapse and arguing for a kind of racialized tribalism in what they view as an effort to restore the natural balance. This imminent collapse is nature “getting revenge” for human hubris, essentially weeding out the weak. Ecofascists want this all to happen in line with the current rules of the game, meaning the poor and people of color will suffer while the wealthy are far better positioned to survive.</p>
<p>When ecofascism takes an explicitly racialized form, it overlaps with the general far-right discourse of the <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2017/8/15/16141456/renaud-camus-the-great-replacement-you-will-not-replace-us-charlottesville-white">“Great Replacement”</a> or white genocide. According to this thinking, white people are a persecuted minority that’s on its way out unless they defend themselves. They use the view of whites as an endangered species to justify the need for separate communities.</p>
<p>For ecofascists, the answer to environmental problems is the same as the right’s answers to many other issues: more walls, more borders, more exclusion, and more justification of hierarchy and elite rule.</p>
<h4>Jariel Arvin</h4>
<p>Was the media correct in linking the 2019 Christchurch shooting to ecofascism?</p>
<h4>Blair Taylor</h4>
<p>Absolutely. The Christchurch shooting was a mobilizing and popularizing force for ecofascist ideology. It then inspired the El Paso shooting. Although the former targeted Muslims and the latter targeted Latinos, both the Christchurch and El Paso shooters provided very similar arguments for what they did: white replacement theory.</p>
<p>It’s tough to identify the danger level or how much of a threat it is because right-wing environmentalism is primarily a set of ideas rather than a set of organizations. Organizations might get infiltrated and taken down, but the ideas are still out there.</p>
<p>When events like the Christchurch or El Paso shootings happen, they bring right-wing ideas out of the ether. This reflects the decentralized nature of social movements where now it’s a hashtag. It’s a few websites. It’s a Signal chat. It’s very decentralized, so it’s hard to cut off the head.</p>
<p>The right can’t deny environmental problems as quickly as they once could. And you have a younger generation who’s grown up in a world that takes environmentalism for granted, so they have to give that a right-wing slant or analysis. The other factor that they like is the environmental movement is very white and historically has been. It’s starting to change now.</p>
<h4>Jariel Arvin</h4>
<p>How big of a threat would you say ecofascism is? Is there any way of knowing how widespread the movement is or whether it’s currently gaining momentum?</p>
<h4>Blair Taylor</h4>
<p>It’s hard to say because, especially now, I think a lot of this far-right activism has gone underground. The glory days of the alt-right — the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2017/8/12/16138246/charlottesville-nazi-rally-right-uva">Charlottesville</a> event — caused much internal strife and fractionalization and the fallout over Trump. Then now, with the pandemic especially, it’s been tough to track.</p>
<p>The danger is that their views of modern life as alienating or stressful have a critical orientation that in many ways can be true. But the answers ecofascists offer — a simplistic “great reset” — overlook the complexity of the problems to blame humanity or people of color instead of looking at more targeted, reasonable explanations for those problems.</p>
<h4>Jariel Arvin</h4>
<p>That makes me think of the case where the state of Arizona is suing the Department of Homeland Security and other US government entities, blaming climate change on immigrants. A few media reports have suggested that the case has echoes of ecofascism. Is it ecofascist?</p>
<h4>Blair Taylor</h4>
<p>I wouldn’t say this is an ecofascist case, partly because I don’t think these people care about the environment. It seems pretty clear that it’s an anti-immigrant argument justified in environmental terms. I would say this is a case of right-wing environmentalism.</p>
<p>They want to offer “environmental solutions” that are right-wing answers to environmental problems. The science shows that immigration is not driving environmental degradation and is not driving climate change. So these aren’t very scientifically serious arguments, but they can have a popular allure.</p>
<p>That’s the perennial allure of overpopulation — it obliterates all the social issues and makes everything a pure numbers game. It’s a convenient way to let wealthy, primarily white people off the hook and redirect blame.</p>
<p>This issue has not just been restricted to the right either. Much of the older guard of environmentalism tended not to be humanists. They were naturalists, and they were scientists. They were very concerned with preserving capital in nature but they created a strong dichotomy between nature and humanity. They tended to view humanity not as a part of nature — it was a threat to nature.</p>
<p>When we created some of the amazing national parks we have in the United States, we kicked out the Indigenous inhabitants seen as a threat. That’s a dynamic that we’ve seen over and over in environmental movements, pitting humanity and nature against one another.</p>
<h4>Jariel Arvin</h4>
<p>So how did the far right become associated with environmentalism? It’s not the first association that I think comes to mind for most people.</p>
<h4>Blair Taylor</h4>
<p>A colleague of mine, Peter Staudenmaier, co-wrote a book with Janet Biehl called <em>Ecofascism: Lessons from the German Experience.</em> It described the very strong ecological dimension to National Socialism previously unknown by many people outside of Germany.</p>
<p>Ernst Haeckel, a German naturalist, coined the word “ecology” itself. Haeckel was also a nationalist cited as a precursor to National Socialism. The idea of nature as a hierarchical place bound by natural laws, and which therefore must be protected, has a long history. And the right has a reasonably strong claim to this history. It wasn’t until the 1960s and ’70s that environmentalism became understood as an issue of the left.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/environmentalisms-racist-history">classic conservation movement</a> was a very patrician movement of mostly upper-class white European and American males who wanted to defend their hunting lands and their pristine landscapes from all kinds of things. In many cases, this was very explicitly worded to protect the wild from the poor, migrants, or the “savages” who were not properly utilizing it. So it is a very recent and modern development to think of environmentalism as a left or liberal issue.</p>
<p>Murray Bookchin was central to helping that change come about. He wrote a piece called <em>Ecology and Revolutionary Thought</em> in 1964, one of the first texts arguing that left-wing politics should incorporate ecology. It just took time for the ideas to take root.</p>
<h4>Jariel Arvin</h4>
<p>Do you think there are any traces of environmentalism in Donald Trump’s politics?</p>
<h4>Blair Taylor</h4>
<p>No. That’s precisely one of those lines between Trump and far-right environmentalists — these far-right actors do actually believe in protecting the environment. But they have a very racist, authoritarian, hierarchical analysis of the nature of those environmental problems. In contrast, Trump strikes me as an old-school plutocrat. The goal is to get his <a href="https://www.citizen.org/news/trump-administrations-extensive-and-personal-oil-ties-propel-corporate-bailouts/">buddies in the oil and other industries rich</a>.</p>
<h4>Jariel Arvin</h4>
<p>What does ecofascism look like in Europe versus in the United States?</p>
<h4>Blair Taylor</h4>
<p>In Europe, you see examples like France’s Marine Le Pen of the National Rally, starting to have this almost <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/16/world/europe/france-le-pen-election.html">blood and soil ideology</a>, the idea of “France for the French” and that white French people are custodians of nature.</p>
<p>In general, <a href="https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/the-european-far-rights-environmental-turn">European political parties</a> have taken on more of the ecofascist discourse. It might be because, in Europe, there’s been perhaps more openness to climate change as a reality rather than climate denialism. Although that’s changing on the American right, too, partly just because of demographic factors and because it’s just increasingly impossible to ignore that climate change is happening.</p>
<p>So rather than deny it (which many still do), the American right seeks to blame the usual enemies: immigrants, people of color, and the poor.</p>
<h4>Jariel Arvin</h4>
<p>So how do you think the openness to accepting climate change in Europe as opposed to denialism that we see in America creates more favorable conditions for ecofascism?</p>
<h4>Blair Taylor</h4>
<p>On the one hand, the openness of the parliamentary political systems allows more entry to fringe groups. On the other, there’s arguably also less of an anti-science perspective. There seems to be more of a general acceptance that climate change is happening in Europe, so they’re able to channel that into a kind of right-wing worldview. This Arizona bill shows that this is happening in the US, but they’ve been doing similar things more successfully in Europe for 10 to 15 years.</p>
<h4>Jariel Arvin</h4>
<p>So what’s the solution? How do we counter ecofascist thinking and ideology? Is the Justice Department responsible for monitoring ecofascism? Who’s responsible?</p>
<h4>Blair Taylor</h4>
<p>There’s a joke inside the far right that if you swing a cat, you’ll hit an undercover FBI agent. So the FBI, finally, after years of ignoring it and focusing on left-wing and Muslim domestic terrorism, they’re taking far-right terrorism seriously. So, the FBI is paying attention. I’m sure the Justice Department is as well.</p>
<p>Then, of course, there’s a network of far-right monitoring groups from the Anti-Defamation League to the Western States’ center with Eric Ward. There’s a network of anti-fascist researchers, people like Spencer Sunshine and Shane Burley, and others closely monitoring these groups.</p>
<p>And, of course, the rise of antifa is another thing. People focus on antifa as a street organization that’s countering far-right movements in the streets. But much of it is behind-the-scenes research work <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/antifa-proud-boys-militia-trump-insurrection-1121933/">where they infiltrate their local Proud Boys</a> and identify which Proud Boys are police or army or teachers. This is all happening. The state is usually behind the curve and forced to intervene by events. In contrast, these monitoring groups often are equally embedded and typically have a better analysis.</p>
<p>To recognize [and counter] ecofascism requires understanding the tropes and the longer history of environmentalism’s racist, classist, and sexist components. The environmental movement must offer an articulation of environmental concerns that is emancipatory and social and doesn’t fall into the traps it has fallen into in the past. Avoiding those mistakes means having a bit of sensitivity and understanding that ideas can point us in better and worse directions politically.</p>
<p>This is why I’ve argued for a social ecology — not just looking at numbers and population growth but looking at how different groups and systems are disproportionately to blame and face disproportionate impacts. This is largely the kind of work we do at the Institute for Social Ecology, offering democratic and emancipatory answers to environmental and social problems.</p>
<br />
<br />
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/22456663/arizona-environment-immigration-climate-change-right-wing">https://www.vox.com/22456663/arizona-environment-immigration-climate-change-right-wing</a>

vox The far right is weaponizing climate change to argue against immigration

As the impacts of human-induced climate change become harder and harder to ignore, some on the right have moved away from denying it exists ...

Is United’s green supersonic jet too good to be true?

<p>On Thursday, United Airlines announced it was purchasing a fleet of 15 planes that can travel faster than the speed of sound. With a cost per jet of $200 million, the deal <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-03/united-bets-on-supersonic-future-with-3-billion-boom-jet-order?sref=Wg6QzS2e">is worth $3 billion</a>. If the order goes through, this would be the first fleet of supersonic passenger aircraft since the Concorde.</p>
<p>United says that the planes, which are being purchased from the Denver-based supersonic flight startup Boom, are designed to go at speeds twice as fast as a typical flight. That would be fast enough to get someone from Newark to London in <a href="https://boom-press-assets.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/United+Adding+Supersonic+Speeds+with+New+Agreement+to+Buy+Aircraft+from+Boom+Supersonic.pdf">just three and a half hours</a>. The first of these flights is scheduled for 2026, and the company plans to start carrying passengers by 2029. If all works out, United has the option to buy at least 35 more planes from the startup, which is one of several focused on making supersonic flight work for the 21st century.</p>
<p>But there’s another twist. United and Boom also want to make these flights environmentally friendly, promising that these flights will be “net-zero carbon from day one,” and rely completely on sustainable aviation fuel, which is repurposed from waste or organic sources.</p>
<p>United and Boom’s announcement comes as the high <a href="https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/1/11/18177118/airlines-climate-change-emissions-travel">environmental costs of flying face growing scrutiny</a>. The movement to <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-13/france-short-haul-flight-ban-points-way-toward-cleaner-aviation?sref=Wg6QzS2e">more stringently regulate</a> airplane emissions is now worldwide, and airlines have increasingly advertised plans to reduce their impact on the environment. Activists like Greta Thunberg <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/7/25/8881364/greta-thunberg-climate-change-flying-airline">have been pushing the idea that people should give up flying</a> entirely.</p>
<p>At the same time, the idea of supersonic flight is appealing because it’s extremely fast and would shave hours off of transoceanic flights. That’s not to mention that it would be pretty cool to travel faster than the speed of sound.</p>
<p>But as the Concorde, <a href="https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2016/11/2/13409324/supersonic-flight-concorde">the world’s first and last supersonic commercial passenger jet</a>, showed years ago, the prospect of an environmentally friendly supersonic flight is not just a highly ambitious (and potentially impossible) goal. It’s also one that comes with its own set of challenges, from regulatory hurdles to solving noise pollution. Making supersonic flight economically feasible amid concerns over climate change is <a href="https://qz.com/1728390/supersonic-flight-may-be-back-but-the-environment-isnt-ready-for-it/">a difficult feat</a>. Some experts say that the idea of green supersonic flight is almost self-contradictory. The Concorde, they note, was pretty terrible in terms of emissions.</p>
<p>“One of the big problems with the Concorde was it was considered very bad for the environment,” Janet Bednarek, a <a href="https://udayton.edu/directory/artssciences/history/bednarek_janet.php">University of Dayton professor</a> who studies aviation history, told Recode. “It burned a lot of fuel, but it also polluted at the upper levels of the atmosphere.”</p>
<p>The history of supersonic passenger planes actually dates back decades. Operated by British Airways and Air France, the Concorde was capable of flying just over twice the speed of sound: <a href="https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/this-aviation-start-up-is-the-answer-to-your-travel-prayers.html">Mach 2.01</a>. The jet famously helped Phil Collins <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tykdly0PLow">perform concerts in London and Philadelphia (via New York)</a> in the same day. But despite its impressive speed, the Concorde had big problems. Supersonic flight requires an enormous amount of jet fuel, and the engines are <a href="https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/concorde-flying-what-was-it-like/index.html">notoriously loud</a> inside the cabin. The flights also historically extremely expensive: A roundtrip ticket on the Concorde for the <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com/?id=66960X1516588&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.britishairways.com%2Fen-us%2Finformation%2Fabout-ba%2Fhistory-and-heritage%2Fcelebrating-concorde&referrer=vox.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vox.com%2Frecode%2F22508975%2Funited-supersonic-plane-concorde-boom-hermeus-virgin-nasa" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank" has-subtag="true" data-cdata='{"rewritten_url":"https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1516588\u0026xs=1\u0026url=https://www.britishairways.com/en-us/information/about-ba/history-and-heritage/celebrating-concorde\u0026referrer=vox.com\u0026sref=https://www.vox.com/recode/22508975/united-supersonic-plane-concorde-boom-hermeus-virgin-nasa\u0026xcust=___vx__p_22273016__m_m-placeholder__s_s-placeholder__t_w__c_c-placeholder__r_r-placeholder__d_d-placeholder","subtag_max_length":50,"subtag_delim_length":3,"subtag_key":"xcust","subtag_data":{"id":"66960X1516588","xs":"1","url":"https://www.britishairways.com/en-us/information/about-ba/history-and-heritage/celebrating-concorde","referrer":"vox.com","sref":"https://www.vox.com/recode/22508975/united-supersonic-plane-concorde-boom-hermeus-virgin-nasa","xcust":"___vx__p_22273016__m_m-placeholder__s_s-placeholder__t_w__c_c-placeholder__r_r-placeholder__d_d-placeholder"},"encode_subtag":false}'>three-and-a-half-hour flight</a> between New York and London could cost about <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB93448318529849573">$10,000</a>. After a crash in 2000 that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2000/07/26/world/the-concorde-crash-the-overview-113-die-in-first-crash-of-a-concorde.html">killed more than 100 people</a> and increasingly insurmountable <a href="https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2016/11/2/13409324/supersonic-flight-concorde">economic problems</a>, the final commercial flight of the Concorde was in 2003.</p>
<p>In recent years, a slew of startups has been working to make supersonic flight happen again. At the forefront is Boom, which has at least <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/06/faa-issues-rules-for-supersonic-jet-flight-testing-in-the-u-s/">$250 million in funding</a> and <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/07/heres-your-first-look-at-boom-supersonics-faster-than-sound-xb-1-demonstrator-aircraft/">revealed a prototype jet last October</a>. Atlanta-based <a href="https://angel.co/today/stories/supersonic-aircraft-startup-hermeus-raises-16-million-series-a-31929">Hermeus</a> and <a href="https://www.virgingalactic.com/articles/virgin-galactic-unveils-mach-3-aircraft-design-for-high-speed-travel-and-signs-memorandum-of-understanding-with-rolls-royce/">Virgin Galactic</a> are developing their own designs for a supersonic jet. Just last month, however, one of the leading companies trying to build supersonic planes, Aerion Supersonic, announced that it would shut down, citing a “hugely <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/supersonic-airliners-hit-turbulence-jet-developer-shuts-rcna1044">challenging</a>” economy that would delay production of its first jet.</p>
<figure class="e-image"><span class="e-image__inner"><span class="e-image__image" data-original="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22622428/Hangar_4320x4320.jpg"><picture class="c-picture" data-cid="site/picture_element-1622768101_6042_128506" data-cdata='{"asset_id":22622428,"ratio":"*"}'><source srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/cTB_XIIC_TcS51loMoOByhigX3I=/0x0:4320x2880/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:4320x2880):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22622428/Hangar_4320x4320.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/VwUPNHaTdwbw1qmMIepNBN4fYu8=/0x0:4320x2880/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:4320x2880):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22622428/Hangar_4320x4320.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/hRJHAH7L82S2hz-pjEcClxUZBhM=/0x0:4320x2880/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:4320x2880):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22622428/Hangar_4320x4320.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/sH7kMNhkcCFSiJKtGRC1GNHHd-k=/0x0:4320x2880/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:4320x2880):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22622428/Hangar_4320x4320.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/XwO2ZSfYC2hCvyK35l5ogk3y9Oo=/0x0:4320x2880/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:4320x2880):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22622428/Hangar_4320x4320.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/qhzi8Epihdwmrjr1nLhcGmOKSgU=/0x0:4320x2880/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:4320x2880):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22622428/Hangar_4320x4320.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/PTF86mg3i4C0nSwA9hBjZRnvZSE=/0x0:4320x2880/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:4320x2880):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22622428/Hangar_4320x4320.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/RFXxcRKQF9rNkjW3IhHvGjJX0DU=/0x0:4320x2880/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:4320x2880):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22622428/Hangar_4320x4320.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/HGEQ9WkqxJjPMao6BBptAMWyKDY=/0x0:4320x2880/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:4320x2880):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22622428/Hangar_4320x4320.jpg 1920w" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" type="image/webp" /> <img alt="A rendering of what the United-Boom jet could look like." data-upload-width="4320" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/KsigIPHavCtEeMhWtAd5wM3evGM=/0x0:4320x2880/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:4320x2880):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22622428/Hangar_4320x4320.jpg" srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Ao5PXQmcQNAWgnqHkqzLJvb9Ccs=/0x0:4320x2880/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:4320x2880):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22622428/Hangar_4320x4320.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/KOIDGoMQCSxytYzAqgpNllCn28c=/0x0:4320x2880/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:4320x2880):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22622428/Hangar_4320x4320.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/4lYMgDtdR14-TOIj7HYGL8pbl58=/0x0:4320x2880/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:4320x2880):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22622428/Hangar_4320x4320.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/GohNVoj5Cjr4D877KynjaqKKieI=/0x0:4320x2880/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:4320x2880):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22622428/Hangar_4320x4320.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/unXzaks-lLU3Xos0nuo355yJcAQ=/0x0:4320x2880/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:4320x2880):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22622428/Hangar_4320x4320.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ovTtRGHJ83TFz2P79k3nHcd89o0=/0x0:4320x2880/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:4320x2880):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22622428/Hangar_4320x4320.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/BZQpaiwkMw0rOIR3z38I9UIUqU0=/0x0:4320x2880/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:4320x2880):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22622428/Hangar_4320x4320.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/EHRhnMuZGavYB9KTJDlOyuRqNvw=/0x0:4320x2880/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:4320x2880):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22622428/Hangar_4320x4320.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/1ScF1LV3rvbFGOQAT_4gXGMj2Dw=/0x0:4320x2880/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:4320x2880):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22622428/Hangar_4320x4320.jpg 1920w" /></picture></span></span>
<figcaption><span class="e-image__meta">A rendering of what the United-Boom jet could look like.</span></figcaption>
<span class="e-image__meta"><cite>Boom</cite></span></figure>
<p>There’s also growing work on solving <a href="https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2016/11/2/13409324/supersonic-flight-concorde">the sonic boom</a>, the startling sound supersonic aircraft produce when they break the sound barrier. NASA is working with Lockheed Martin on a supersonic research aircraft, and the agency told Vox back in 2016 that a “<a href="https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2016/11/2/13409324/supersonic-flight-concorde">quiet supersonic airplane</a>” could be possible, potentially resolving a major hurdle for these high-speed flights. In January, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced final rules for testing supersonic aircraft, <a href="https://www.faa.gov/news/press_releases/news_story.cfm?newsId=25581">creating a framework</a> for these startups to move forward with flight testing.</p>
<p>To reduce environmental impact, United says Boom planes will use sustainable aviation fuels, but the limited supply of that might be better used on other planes. <a href="https://twitter.com/rutherdan/status/1378039826600009730?s=21">Research suggests</a> that supersonic planes would require multiple times more fuel per passenger than a typical plane trip, according to <a href="https://theicct.org/daniel-rutherford">Dan Rutherford</a>, director of the International Council on Clean Transportation’s aviation program.</p>
<p>“These would be alternatives to fossil jet fuel, and that fuel is extremely rare today — and it’s also extremely expensive,” Rutherford said. “It’s a super small market already, and trying to combine that with an aircraft that we know will burn a lot of fuel seems really dicey to me.”</p>
<p>A Boom spokesperson told Recode it was working with United to avoid adversely impacting the supply of sustainable jet fuel available to other aircraft.</p>
<p>There are other challenges ahead that make United’s goals questionable. For one thing, it’s not clear how much more passengers would be willing to pay just to save a few hours. While United has not said how much tickets on its supersonic jets would eventually cost, they would likely be more expensive than a typical flight. There’s also the sonic boom challenge and the prospect of noise pollution around airports.</p>
<figure class="e-image"><span class="e-image__inner"><span class="e-image__image" data-original="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22626047/GettyImages_623554294.jpg"><picture class="c-picture" data-cid="site/picture_element-1622768101_4186_128507" data-cdata='{"asset_id":22626047,"ratio":"*"}'><source srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/qR3Wfgh23lSWwzCbGCXvvtqZvu4=/0x0:7360x4912/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:7360x4912):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22626047/GettyImages_623554294.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Ob7COG6LFqBXtXmTHOsJt5FZXzs=/0x0:7360x4912/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:7360x4912):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22626047/GettyImages_623554294.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Fiq1JaBq6ECagTLyrBK90MEn2uU=/0x0:7360x4912/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:7360x4912):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22626047/GettyImages_623554294.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Vyvdwi4zhMWNd9xT6Zfcly4nm1I=/0x0:7360x4912/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:7360x4912):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22626047/GettyImages_623554294.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/xEyNdUSWnXZ17dxLaG856ZPzLHs=/0x0:7360x4912/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:7360x4912):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22626047/GettyImages_623554294.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/BXyArOZc_VSv6BmF5LzarPPYATg=/0x0:7360x4912/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:7360x4912):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22626047/GettyImages_623554294.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/_zwLaBWpDCucSRkwO9Be1RRgSPo=/0x0:7360x4912/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:7360x4912):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22626047/GettyImages_623554294.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/tZNkyYF-4PgrhjPZkZOocP2i1mA=/0x0:7360x4912/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:7360x4912):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22626047/GettyImages_623554294.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Uv044VxZZsIk8j-rG7jiDaldxzE=/0x0:7360x4912/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:7360x4912):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22626047/GettyImages_623554294.jpg 1920w" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" type="image/webp" /> <img alt="" data-upload-width="7360" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/PxZRK_wm7nU_BKvNsh-kU89Yj6k=/0x0:7360x4912/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:7360x4912):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22626047/GettyImages_623554294.jpg" srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/5IWAxwfCOfDmFnuOWs44w0XlfNU=/0x0:7360x4912/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:7360x4912):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22626047/GettyImages_623554294.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/EQOmOx6w_f18gLcGF24UkmOMalk=/0x0:7360x4912/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:7360x4912):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22626047/GettyImages_623554294.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/CFjJ6yg8wYsLe-QwkhI6Rlqgnug=/0x0:7360x4912/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:7360x4912):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22626047/GettyImages_623554294.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/0g3rKEh7RavkvvjFVDHTIumQvrc=/0x0:7360x4912/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:7360x4912):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22626047/GettyImages_623554294.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/zutfv2Yt_HsRXNkrDUBWViVGyA4=/0x0:7360x4912/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:7360x4912):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22626047/GettyImages_623554294.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/YvQg202PsMCKmxCvwz6fbkOUCuA=/0x0:7360x4912/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:7360x4912):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22626047/GettyImages_623554294.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/wjM09hZz-wd9yHC6YCq0qKGCZDY=/0x0:7360x4912/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:7360x4912):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22626047/GettyImages_623554294.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/AlGZqPMzdc4yW_4tG2B_iKg7UA0=/0x0:7360x4912/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:7360x4912):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22626047/GettyImages_623554294.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/qXNvjfkzEY1npoyAVSpLA31p5mA=/0x0:7360x4912/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:7360x4912):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22626047/GettyImages_623554294.jpg 1920w" /></picture></span></span>
<figcaption><span class="e-image__meta">Boom’s XB-1 Supersonic Demonstrator aircraft sits in the company’s hangar at Boom headquarters in Denver, Colorado.</span></figcaption>
<span class="e-image__meta"><cite>Tom Cooper/Getty Images for Boom Technology</cite></span></figure>
<p>Others are more optimistic, saying improvements in technology that didn’t exist during the age of the Concorde could make supersonic flight a success, despite faltering in earlier decades.</p>
<p>“Supersonics could connect major cities as never before, vastly extend global business networks, boost American competitiveness, and enliven an industry that has been stagnating for decades,” Bloomberg’s <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-03-30/the-faa-should-let-supersonic-jets-soar-once-again?utm_content=view&utm_medium=social&cmpid%3D=socialflow-twitter-view&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&sref=Wg6QzS2e">editorial board wrote in March</a>. “Down the road, ultrafast travel for the masses isn’t implausible.”</p>
<p>The impact on the environment, the editorial board added, needs to be studied, and supersonic flights should meet international rules about carbon offsets — which are controversial, as Vox’s <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/2/27/20994118/carbon-offset-climate-change-net-zero-neutral-emissions">Umair Irfan has explained</a>.</p>
<p>According to Bednarek, the airline historian, the future of flight needs to be focused on being energy efficient and less damaging to the environment, not on speed or size.</p>
<p>“If they do it — God bless them — they’ve really accomplished something,” Bednarek said. “It’s going to prove to be a lot more challenging than some of the celebratory advertising that’s coming out right now would seem to suggest.”</p>
<br />
<br />
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22508975/united-supersonic-plane-concorde-boom-hermeus-virgin-nasa">https://www.vox.com/recode/22508975/united-supersonic-plane-concorde-boom-hermeus-virgin-nasa</a>

vox Is United’s green supersonic jet too good to be true?

On Thursday, United Airlines announced it was purchasing a fleet of 15 planes that can travel faster than the speed of sound. With a cost pe...

Menopause is having a moment

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<p>Nobody tells you about menopause.</p>
<p>Sure, you hear about hot flashes from time to time, maybe from a relative or in a joke on a TV show. But the sex-ed classes that teach tweens and teens about periods rarely mention the day those periods will end. Even doctors rarely bring up menopause with their patients, and too often <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/25/opinion/feminist-menopause.html">dismiss the symptoms when they occur</a>.</p>
<p>“We get the puberty talk, but we don’t get the menopause talk,” Pauline Maki, a professor of psychiatry, psychology, and obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, told Vox.</p>
<p>But now, the American population is getting older: By 2030, <a href="https://blog.femalefoundersfund.com/suffering-in-silence-the-biases-and-data-gaps-of-menopause-e5f131b4b581">the median age in America</a> will rise to 40, up from 37 today. And millennials, a generation beloved by marketers, have started entering their 40s, a decade when menopause symptoms can begin.</p>
<p>That means menopause is becoming a moneymaking opportunity, with companies <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90625360/the-10-billion-business-of-perimenopause">starting to offer everything</a> from telehealth consultations to supplements to a special ultrasound device to treat vaginal dryness (the latter is still in the testing phase).</p>
<p>But what people going through menopause need isn’t necessarily more ads on their social media feeds. Instead, experts say, they need an end to the stigma around this very normal phase of life, and the kind of real talk they didn’t get when they were younger.</p>
<p>Menopause “needs to not be a thing of shame,” Jen Gunter, an OB-GYN and the author of the recent book <em>The Menopause Manifesto: Own Your Health with Facts and Feminism</em>, told Vox. “We just have to figure out how to change the conversation.”</p>
<p>Menopause is <a href="https://www.uclahealth.org/obgyn/menopause#:~:text=Menopause%20is%20defined%20as%20the,menses%20for%2012%20consecutive%20months.">technically defined</a> as the end of menstruation and is officially diagnosed when someone has gone 12 months without a period. That happens at an average age of 51. But symptoms can start long before that, in the mid-40s or even earlier (this symptomatic period is known as perimenopause). The most common, and perhaps the best known, are <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/hot-flashes/symptoms-causes/syc-20352790#:~:text=A%20hot%20flash%20is%20the,you%20might%20feel%20chilled%20afterward.">hot flashes</a>, in which the upper body suddenly becomes warm and sometimes flushed.</p>
<p>But there are many other possible symptoms — <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90625360/the-10-billion-business-of-perimenopause">34</a>, by some counts — and some can have serious consequences for people’s health and well-being. For example, the hormonal shifts around menopause can cause changes to the vagina, including dryness and a loss of elasticity, which can lead to painful sex or urinary tract infections. Some people experience <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/brain-fog-menopause-memory-loss/2021/05/14/0600c088-aea6-11eb-ab4c-986555a1c511_story.html">“brain fog”</a> or problems with memory. And the transition to menopause can also trigger depression and anxiety: Among those who have previously been diagnosed with depression, more than half will experience an episode during the transition to menopause, Maki said.</p>
<p>But often, doctors don’t really talk to patients about any of this. In <a href="https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(18)30701-8/abstract">one recent survey</a>, just 7 percent of medical residents felt prepared to treat menopause symptoms in patients.</p>
<p>Part of the reason has to do with the history of menopause treatment. Beginning in the 1940s, <a href="https://www.aarp.org/health/conditions-treatments/info-2018/menopause-symptoms-treatment-estrogen-hrt.html">doctors began prescribing estrogen</a> to counteract menopause symptoms. The treatment became popular, especially in the 1980s and 1990s, but in 2002, a large, high-profile study reported that estrogen therapy increased patients’ risk of breast cancer, heart attacks, and blood clots.</p>
<p>As a result, doctors generally stopped prescribing estrogen — but didn’t replace it with anything else. “Training in menopause medicine essentially went away,” Maki said. “We lost a couple of generations of providers.”</p>
<p>Now, <a href="https://www.aarp.org/health/conditions-treatments/info-2018/menopause-symptoms-treatment-estrogen-hrt.html">experts say</a> estrogen therapy actually is often safe, as long as it’s used by patients under 60 and for a limited period of time. For those patients, “the benefits typically outweigh the risks of hormone therapy,” Stephanie Faubion, director of the Center for Women’s Health at the Mayo Clinic and medical director of the North American Menopause Society, told Vox. Those benefits include around a 90 to 95 percent reduction in hot flashes and night sweats, along with a reduction in bone loss and cardiovascular risk while patients are on the medication.</p>
<p>Moreover, for people whose main symptoms are vaginal, more localized forms of the hormone, like vaginal rings, are now available and may not carry the same risks as oral medication.</p>
<p>Still, many doctors aren’t giving their patients the latest information — or much information at all. “I hear so many stories from women who’ve been dismissed by doctors,” Gunter said.</p>
<p>The result is that menopausal people often suffer in silence — and the stigma can affect every aspect of their lives. “You hear from women that they’re going to leave the workforce because they can’t handle their menopausal symptoms,” Gunter said. Indeed, in <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378512213002235">one 2013 survey</a> conducted in the UK, nearly 40 percent of women said menopause symptoms had negatively affected their work, but a majority had never discussed the symptoms with their manager, often because they were embarrassed or because their manager was a man.</p>
<p>“You’re this person who has been incredibly productive and contributed your whole life. And now,” Gunter said, “because of this, you’re sidelined.”</p>
<p>Even though medical care may be lagging behind, brands are starting to capitalize on menopause. It’s a natural outgrowth of the way women’s health has taken off as a business opportunity in recent years, with companies like Maven Clinic and Nurx springing up to offer services like telehealth maternity care and online birth control prescriptions, respectively. These companies aimed to fill a void left by a medical establishment that too often dismisses women’s concerns, making reproductive and sexual health care unpleasant, embarrassing, or even dehumanizing.</p>
<p>And now, startups and venture capitalists are turning their attention beyond the child-bearing years, to the growing market of women in their 40s and 50s. After all, by 2030 there will be more women between 40 and 64 in the US than girls under 18, according to <a href="https://blog.femalefoundersfund.com/suffering-in-silence-the-biases-and-data-gaps-of-menopause-e5f131b4b581">a report released last October</a> by Female Founders Fund, a venture firm that funds companies founded by women. Selling to people in menopause could be a business opportunity worth $600 billion — or more.</p>
<p>“This has been ignored in a lot of senses, especially as it relates to medical research and solutions,” Adrianna Samaniego, an investor with Female Founders Fund, told Vox. “Yet it’s a huge industry.”</p>
<p>Recent entries to the field include Kindra, a startup that <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90625360/the-10-billion-business-of-perimenopause">sells estrogen-free supplements</a> to treat vaginal dryness, hot flashes, and sleep problems. There are also several companies that offer telehealth appointments with doctors trained in menopause management, like <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com/?id=66960X1516588&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fgennev.com%2Fabout-us&referrer=vox.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vox.com%2F22462996%2Fmenopause-symptoms-hot-flashes-supplements-40-50" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank" has-subtag="true" data-cdata='{"rewritten_url":"https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1516588\u0026xs=1\u0026url=https://gennev.com/about-us\u0026referrer=vox.com\u0026sref=https://www.vox.com/22462996/menopause-symptoms-hot-flashes-supplements-40-50\u0026xcust=___vx__p_22227037__m_m-placeholder__s_s-placeholder__t_w__c_c-placeholder__r_r-placeholder__d_d-placeholder","subtag_max_length":50,"subtag_delim_length":3,"subtag_key":"xcust","subtag_data":{"id":"66960X1516588","xs":"1","url":"https://gennev.com/about-us","referrer":"vox.com","sref":"https://www.vox.com/22462996/menopause-symptoms-hot-flashes-supplements-40-50","xcust":"___vx__p_22227037__m_m-placeholder__s_s-placeholder__t_w__c_c-placeholder__r_r-placeholder__d_d-placeholder"},"encode_subtag":false}'>Gennev</a>, which offers both OB-GYN appointments and life coaching to deal with body image, anxiety, and other issues. And other companies are expanding into the menopause space, with Roman, a startup that <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/31/roman-startup/">first got attention</a> for offering online prescriptions for erectile dysfunction medication, now offering telehealth visits for menopause concerns, according to <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90625360/the-10-billion-business-of-perimenopause">Fast Company</a>.</p>
<p>The companies are responding to a real need among people who aren’t being served by their doctors — or by a culture that often prefers to pretend that women over 40 <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/02/akiko-busch-mrs-dalloway-shows-aging-has-benefits/583480/">just don’t exist</a>. In addition to relief from symptoms, many people are looking for a community of people with whom to share their experiences, Samaniego said — a feature some of the startups in the space provide.</p>
<p>However, some of the products being marketed to menopausal people may not actually help them much. For example, a number of companies now sell tests to tell people if they are in menopause, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/25/opinion/feminist-menopause.html">Gunter wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed</a>. But these tests actually have no medical use because they do nothing to predict whether someone will actually experience symptoms. Nor can they accurately determine how close someone is to having a final period — and because hormones are fluctuating so much during this time, a person could have a test indicating menopause one month and a normal test the next. “There’s no guideline that recommends testing hormones to see where you are in menopause,” Gunter told Vox.</p>
<p>Supplements can also be problematic. Some companies are merely taking basic, widely available compounds and marketing them as menopause aids, Samaniego said. “There’s a lot of people who are kind of just repackaging the same ingredients.”</p>
<p>And despite the wide variety of supplements on the market, many have little research to back them up. For example, no non-hormonal supplement has been proven to reduce hot flashes, Faubion said. And because supplements <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/25/opinion/feminist-menopause.html">aren’t rigorously tested for safety</a>, they could contain ingredients that are harmful.</p>
<p>Non-hormonal treatments may be marketed as better because they are “natural” — but, Gunter said, “natural has nothing to do with safe.”</p>
<p>What people going through menopause really need, many say, is to eliminate the stigma around this stage of life so that the symptoms can be discussed openly and taken seriously.</p>
<p>Take, for example, vaginal dryness. It’s not talked about much — in part because the whole idea of older women having sex is considered taboo, Maki says. But treatment is crucial to help patients lead healthy, pain-free lives, including having sex, regardless of their age. “I see this as a woman’s right,” Maki said.</p>
<p>Hot flashes, meanwhile, are often treated as a mere annoyance. But emerging research shows they disrupt people’s sleep, which can increase the risk of cognitive impairment and even Alzheimer’s disease, Maki said. “We need to have enough education for women about what safe treatment options they have.”</p>
<p>Luckily, some of that education is already happening — often driven by menopausal people themselves. Gunter decided to write her book after hearing repeated questions about menopause and is open about her own experiences. She’s gotten hot flashes in the operating room while wearing a lead shield, and “when I take my clothes off, I’m literally soaked in sweat from my neck to my knees, like literally drenched. And I’m embarrassed about that,” she told Vox. But, “why should I be embarrassed?”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, health educators and advocates are increasingly speaking up about what happens to people’s bodies across their reproductive lives. Omisade Burney-Scott, for example, started the podcast <a href="https://blackgirlsguidetosurvivingmenopause.com/#Home"><em>Black Girl’s Guide to Surviving Menopause</em></a> in 2019 out of a desire to “talk to other Black women who are older around navigating life and this stage of life,” she told Vox. “What are you learning? What does love look like? What does rage look like?”</p>
<p>Today, she also hosts storytelling events, and highlights the stories of Black women, femmes, and nonbinary and trans people, including those who are going through menopause in their 30s or younger due to medical conditions or taking testosterone. “People who are experiencing menopause, no matter their age, no matter their identity or status in this community or society — they need to be heard,” she said.</p>
<p>And more and more, they’re speaking out. “Women are driving the conversation” around menopause, demanding treatment options and refusing to be defined by the status of their reproductive organs, Faubion said. “Women are not willing to experience their mothers’ menopause.”</p>
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source <a href="https://www.vox.com/22462996/menopause-symptoms-hot-flashes-supplements-40-50">https://www.vox.com/22462996/menopause-symptoms-hot-flashes-supplements-40-50</a>

vox Menopause is having a moment

Nobody tells you about menopause. Sure, you hear about hot flashes from time to time, maybe from a relative or in a joke on a TV show. But...

California mandated masks. Florida opened its restaurants. Did any of it matter?

<div><img class="ff-og-image-inserted" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/XyQecQaOYnTW_NbJvDb4WHskLKc=/0x0:5122x2682/fit-in/1200x630/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22554859/GettyImages_1268610256.jpg" /></div>
<p>After <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/5/18/21262528/coronavirus-us-state-lockdown-stay-at-home-orders-study">a partial lockdown</a> in the spring of 2020, <a href="https://www.vox.com/covid-19-coronavirus-us-response-trump/2020/4/18/21226238/florida-beaches-minnesota-outdoor-texas-coronavirus-reopen">Florida</a> and <a href="https://www.vox.com/covid-19-coronavirus-us-response-trump/21326204/texas-coronavirus-rio-grande-houston">Texas</a> were among the states that most aggressively reopened their economies. Most businesses were <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zu9qEWI8PsOI_i8nI_S29HDGHlIp2lfVMsGxpQ5tvAQ/edit#gid=973655443">allowed to resume operations</a> in May or June of last year. Florida never instituted a public mask mandate; Texas was the first state to revoke its mask mandate this spring.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/7/6/21308351/california-coronavirus-pandemic-covid-outbreak">California</a> and <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/21401242/andrew-cuomo-coronavirus-covid-pandemic-new-york">New York</a>, on the other hand, have been more cautious. They didn’t let some businesses, like movie theaters and gyms, reopen until months after their more conservative counterparts had already done so. Their state mask mandates are still at least partially in effect.</p>
<p>And yet, looking at the case and death numbers since the coronavirus pandemic began, it’s not obvious which states were cautious and which were not. New York, the original epicenter of the outbreak, has endured <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html">the second most deaths per capita</a> behind New Jersey (271 per 100,000). Florida and Texas, despite much criticism of their laissez-faire approaches, rank right in the middle among states (26th and 24th, respectively) in the number of deaths per 100,000 people. California fared only marginally better, sitting at 30th.</p>
<p>After a year of debates over <a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/21546014/mask-mandates-coronavirus-covid-19">mask mandates</a>, <a href="https://www.vox.com/22180261/covid-19-coronavirus-social-distancing-lockdowns-flatten-the-curve">lockdowns</a>, and <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/7/18/21324068/covid-schools-reopening-open-science-coronavirus-pandemic">school closures</a>, that mixed evidence might suggest a certain fatalism: Did none of these state policies really matter? Or was the virus going to spread no matter what states did? Was it all for nothing?</p>
<p>Which interventions actually work is one of the most important lessons the US could learn from the Covid-19 pandemic. There will be more outbreaks in the future and, after the <a href="https://www.vox.com/22409749/us-covid-19-coronavirus-pandemic-response-lessons-learned">current response was marked by indecision and inconsistency</a>, this is an opportunity to separate what policies and interventions are most effective from those that are a waste of time.</p>
<p>But it’s also a maddeningly difficult question to answer.</p>
<p>“State policies mattered,” Jen Kates, director of global health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told me. “But it is hard to know and we may never know whether policies made at the state level were able to overcome all the other challenges of this pandemic.”</p>
<p>Once the US lost control of the virus, mitigation was the only realistic path forward; fully eradicating Covid-19 was out of the question. According to the available research and interviews with experts, one policy, the requirement to wear masks indoors, appears to have successfully slowed transmission. But others, namely school closures, don’t appear to have had nearly as much of an effect on case rates.</p>
<p>The pandemic was constantly evolving, which adds to the difficulty in figuring out which policies worked and which didn’t. And while early on, some lockdown measures — especially stay-at-home orders and closing restaurants and bars — seemed to limit Covid-19’s spread, they may have become less effective over time, in part because states abandoned them and in part because Americans’ behavior had become more politically polarized and some people stopped following those rules.</p>
<p>For all of these reasons and more — the unpredictable nature of the virus’s spread, the structural differences between states, and the American tradition of federalism that delegated most policy decisions to state governments — the nation’s response was a policy morass.</p>
<p>Still, the variation has one potential upside: With the benefit of hindsight, experts told me we can begin to deduce whether certain interventions were more effective than others. It’s a start.</p>
<p>If you look at <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html">a list of states</a> by their number of Covid-19 deaths per capita, it’s hard to discern much of a pattern. States in the Northeast, where the virus first arrived and where states were most aggressive in restricting people’s activities, rank at the top: New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island go first, second, third, and fourth.</p>
<p>But after that, the picture becomes more confused: Mississippi, Arizona, Alabama, and South Dakota — where the virus didn’t land until later and which were some of the most relaxed states in their policy responses — are also in the top 10.</p>
<p>The coronavirus arrived in different places at different times. The first wave of cases in New York peaked in mid-April. California and Florida didn’t see their first peak until the back half of July. States also have immutable characteristics — climate, population density, population health, and so on — that affected their experiences during the pandemic.</p>
<p>“A surface-level analysis of Covid-19 outcomes and state-level policies misses many other factors that differed across boundaries and over time that also had an influence,” Joshua Michaud, associate director of global health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, said. “It’s so hard to disentangle effects. We’re often left trying to draw firm conclusions about whether certain policies worked or not from data that can’t tell us that.”</p>
<p>The different timelines are one of the biggest reasons it’s hard to decipher which policies were effective.</p>
<p>Most of the country locked down in March and April 2020; 40 states issued stay-at-home orders in those first two months. But while Covid-19 was raging in New York at the time, it had hardly touched the Midwest or the South.</p>
<p>That gave those regions a false sense of security. Many states lifted their stay-at-home orders and other business restrictions starting in April, before their own outbreaks really got going — and some of them never reestablished those policies once cases did take off.</p>
<p>Florida, for example, rescinded its stay-at-home order and reopened most businesses starting on May 18. When cases started to accelerate there in late June, Gov. Ron DeSantis closed bars specifically but otherwise declined to put any restrictions back in place.</p>
<p>Most states had also implemented a whole slate of closures and restrictions at the same time during the initial lockdown period, making it even harder to isolate the effect of a single policy. How do you distinguish whether it was school closures, restaurant closures, both, or neither affecting caseloads if they were all enacted at once?</p>
<p>“Given that most states enacted multiple policies to encourage social distancing over a short time period, it is not possible to estimate the independent effects of individual policies,” the authors wrote in <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-23404-5#Fig1">a study published this month in <em>Nature</em></a>, which did conclude that social distancing policies collectively reduced spread.</p>
<p>Complicating matters further, different places within a state may have implemented different strategies if the local governments were more aggressive than the state. (And then some states, including Florida and Texas, sought to block those local restrictions. The policy landscape was a mess.)</p>
<p>Compliance with mandates and restrictions also waned. From the beginning, there was <a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/2004.04544.pdf">some geographic variation</a> in how much people’s behavior (as measured by mobility data) changed after state stay-at-home orders. And over time, the response to the pandemic became even more politically polarized. In spring 2020, Democrats and Republicans were about equally likely to say that the coronavirus was a serious threat. But by late summer, opinions had <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/2021/03/05/a-year-of-u-s-public-opinion-on-the-coronavirus-pandemic/">diverged sharply</a>. That same polarization showed up in polls about wearing masks and, eventually, in a person’s willingness to take the Covid-19 vaccines.</p>
<p>Policy doesn’t matter as much if people don’t adhere to the government’s requirements.</p>
<p>The evidence on lockdowns may be dicey, but the science on masks is clear: <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/21299527/masks-coronavirus-covid-19-studies-research-evidence">They work</a>. Even experts I spoke with who think harsh lockdowns may have been counterproductive say indoor mask mandates were clearly effective.</p>
<p>“Indoor masking guidance was proven to be effective,” Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at the John Hopkins Center for Health Security, told me. “When you look at it all, I think that is probably going to be the one that shows the most effect. ... Most things can be done safely if people socially distance and wear a mask indoors in an unvaccinated setting.”</p>
<p>The available research supports that conclusion. In <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7010e3.htm">a study published in March 2021</a>, CDC researchers examined case and death rates at the county level after mask mandates were put into place and found the mandates were associated with slower transmission.</p>
<p>“Mandating masks was associated with a decrease in daily Covid-19 case and death growth rates within 20 days of implementation,” they concluded, and the effect grew the longer the mandates were in place.</p>
<p>An earlier study, <a href="https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2020.00818">published in June 2020 in <em>Health Affairs</em></a>, had reached the same conclusion. Its authors estimated that mask mandates had averted some 200,000 Covid-19 cases by mid-May; at the time, the US had counted less than 2 million cases, indicating that the mask mandates had a meaningful effect in slowing the virus down early in the pandemic.</p>
<p>Some commentators have questioned why dire warnings about what would happen when Texas lifted its mask mandate for good in March 2021 <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2021/04/14/texas-coronavirus-mask-order-abbott/">never materialized</a>. But the mandate’s rollback took place in a very different context from the spring of 2020.</p>
<p>For one, many more people now have protection from the virus, between vaccinations and prior infections. More widespread immunity was already an obstacle for the virus.</p>
<p>But on top of that, because the pandemic has become so politicized, people have already sorted themselves into their different camps, experts indicated — and so a state mandate might not have changed behavior. By now, you are already either a mask-wearer or you’re not. A government mandate probably isn’t going to affect someone’s behavior in June 2021 as much as it would have a year ago, especially after enforcement has been nonexistent.</p>
<p>The Texas story is a good example of one clear takeaway on state policies: Early interventions did help slow down Covid-19, but the longer the pandemic dragged on, the less effective they were.</p>
<p>Some states were victims of bad timing, with the virus spreading rapidly before any of these policies could have an effect; I would put New York and New Jersey in that bucket. But other states that would also eventually see among the most cases and deaths per capita — some of those Southern and Midwestern states — may have suffered because compliance fell off, a pattern potentially driven by their states’ lax policies as well as their political makeup.</p>
<p>Researchers have been trying to figure out for a year whether the lockdowns actually worked. Aaron Yelowitz, a University of Kentucky economist, and his colleagues were some of the first to publish such a study in <a href="https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/pdf/10.1377/hlthaff.2020.00608">the July 2020 edition of <em>Health Affairs</em></a>. They concluded that stay-at-home orders and closing bars and restaurants did slow down Covid-19’s spread. The data on school closures and bans on large gatherings was less convincing.</p>
<p>I asked Yelowitz whether he thought that conclusion still held up. He told me he believed it did — but that the value of those mitigation measures had started to deteriorate in the later stages of the pandemic.</p>
<p>“During the initial phase of the pandemic ... there was large overall compliance and buy-in with public health initiatives,” he said. “Mobility fell dramatically, and that slowed the spread of the virus.”</p>
<p>But then states relaxed their policies, and local outbreaks spiraled from there. Almost every state relaxed some restrictions by May or June 2020; the differences were a matter of degree. Republican-led states tended to drop all or most of their policies; Democratic-led states were more gradual. But the true lockdown period in the US was actually quite brief, and as states were reopening in the summer, the virus had more opportunities to spread.</p>
<p>At the same time, Donald Trump was casting doubt on the seriousness of the situation and the summer protests were driving controversy about whether the lockdown measures were being fairly applied. Some public officials were also discovered to not be living by the same rules they were setting for everyone else.</p>
<p>Public support weakened, and in many places, the restrictions of the spring never came back. Even if they had, they might not have been as effective as they were at first. Policies lose their power when a lot of people won’t abide by them.</p>
<p>“During the remainder of 2020, had such measures remained in place, they would have impacted the spread of Covid-19,” Yelowitz said. “But not nearly as much due to lower ‘buy-in’ from the public and increased polarization.”</p>
<p>More recent analysis, notably <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-23404-5#Fig1">the new study in <em>Nature</em></a> from researchers at Google and Boston University, also supports the conclusion that social distancing measures did affect Covid-19’s spread early on.</p>
<p>States started to see an effect when they declared a state of emergency; the amount of time people spent away from home dropped by nearly 10 percent. That effect grew with one additional social distancing policy or more (another 25 percent drop in mobility) and a shelter-in-place or stay-at-home order (a 30 percent decline).</p>
<p>Less mobility correlated with fewer Covid-19 cases, the authors wrote: “A 10% reduction in mobility was associated with a 17.5% reduction in case growth two weeks later.”</p>
<p>They cautioned about the difficulty in deducing which specific policies had the most impact, given that most places implemented multiple restrictions at once. However, they made an attempt by focusing on states that initially put only one social distancing measure into place.</p>
<p>That secondary analysis indicated closing bars and restaurants was more effective than school closures or bans on large gatherings. Yelowitz and his colleagues had reached the same conclusion a year earlier. <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0033354920976575?casa_token=sp9lJ0TIPggAAAAA%3Ag1LXZwSUUHbXzIEHhH4JxhOH5rf2Lp8WLacvNumn_sc6DShbQRU4h8k13ql0Z7ZKpH9jJPnScAb3&">A third study</a> published in January 2021 had similar findings. There is a growing body of evidence supporting certain interventions more than others.</p>
<p>But slowing transmission through (partial) lockdowns only goes so far — and the US didn’t take advantage of the time it had bought.</p>
<p>All of this comes with a catch: Certain restrictions may have been effective in limiting Covid-19’s spread initially, but there was likely no policy that would have eradicated the virus entirely. The virus spread too widely, too quickly.</p>
<p>On top of that, America did not actually lock down very hard or for very long. The US version of “tight” Covid-19 restrictions was not the same as lockdowns in some European and Asian countries. Even progressive US states were relaxed by comparison.</p>
<p>People continued meeting in private settings, even if the gatherings were technically limited to 10 people or fewer. And all of these policies were more voluntary than mandatory; the US did not charge exorbitant fines for breaking lockdowns the way some other countries did.</p>
<p>“The pandemic would have sustained itself no matter what,” Adalja said. “This is a highly transmissible respiratory virus. It’s not something that could be eradicated or eliminated.”</p>
<p>There is an alternative timeline where the guidance focused on masks and other harm reduction techniques, he argued, instead of punitive and indiscriminate lockdowns that laid the seeds for their own backlash.</p>
<p>“We went into this abstinence-only mode, which we don’t do with any other infectious disease because it’s been discredited,” Adalja told me, “And I think that’s what caused this backlash and all of the acrimony over masks and whatever it might be.”</p>
<p>Making matters worse, the United States didn’t actually take advantage of the opportunity it had created for itself through the lockdowns.</p>
<p>Even if eradication was out of the question, America could have conceivably set up a system for testing, tracing, and isolating Covid-19 contacts that would have prevented small clusters of cases from spiraling out of control. That was the approach taken in global Covid-19 success stories like <a href="https://www.vox.com/22380161/south-korea-covid-19-coronavirus-pandemic-contact-tracing-testing">South Korea</a>. A test-trace-isolate program is easier to set up when cases are still limited, as they were during the lockdown period of spring.</p>
<p>Instead, the US government <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/7/29/21345590/covid-19-coronavirus-us-testing-contact-tracing-jobs">failed to scale up its testing or contact tracing capabilities</a>. As states relaxed their policies and the virus started spreading again, America was ill-suited to track it. The window that these early lockdowns had briefly opened was closed.</p>
<br />
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source <a href="https://www.vox.com/coronavirus-covid19/22456544/covid-19-mask-mandates-lockdown-debate-evidence">https://www.vox.com/coronavirus-covid19/22456544/covid-19-mask-mandates-lockdown-debate-evidence</a>

vox California mandated masks. Florida opened its restaurants. Did any of it matter?

After a partial lockdown in the spring of 2020, Florida and Texas were among the states that most aggressively reopened their economies....

Good internet service is still a luxury in the US

<p>Home broadband is more important than ever. It’s also seemingly a luxury good.</p>
<p>Just over half of Americans making less than $30,000 a year have home broadband, a service that’s increasingly important for numerous aspects of life, from school to work to socializing. A much higher 92 percent of households bringing in $75,000 or more per year have home broadband, according to a new survey by <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/">Pew Research Center</a>.</p>
<p>“That gap has been persistent even as the number of people who live in poor households has gone up over the years,” according to Lee Rainie, director of internet and technology research at Pew, which has been surveying broadband access for two decades.</p>
<p>Broadband access varies by other demographic factors as well. People without college degrees were less likely to have broadband than people with more education. Black and Hispanic people were less likely to have it than their white counterparts. But income was one of the most important determinators as to whether or not people had broadband.</p>
<figure class="e-image"><span class="e-image__inner"><span class="e-image__image" data-original="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22552701/4WuM8_share_of_us_adults_with_home_broadband.png"><picture class="c-picture" data-cid="site/picture_element-1622770115_6765_9771" data-cdata='{"asset_id":22552701,"ratio":"*"}'><source srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/my3oUS-xqh-eHfi3ldqFFNlgBQA=/0x0:1860x1860/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:1860x1860):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22552701/4WuM8_share_of_us_adults_with_home_broadband.png 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/aCz8dfGEXh2RUp3tYfzJekxmm4A=/0x0:1860x1860/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:1860x1860):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22552701/4WuM8_share_of_us_adults_with_home_broadband.png 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/2zMr3i3IwI-sA33xXwF64gbh2pM=/0x0:1860x1860/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:1860x1860):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22552701/4WuM8_share_of_us_adults_with_home_broadband.png 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/EjP-Yj6aG2oQo_S-v98XRTpyOV0=/0x0:1860x1860/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:1860x1860):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22552701/4WuM8_share_of_us_adults_with_home_broadband.png 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/mlu7W6UFUyH9Xuu8c4fcu_z9pFY=/0x0:1860x1860/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:1860x1860):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22552701/4WuM8_share_of_us_adults_with_home_broadband.png 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/d0VpABkOu-_ER5DhcQ97xp2ZDiQ=/0x0:1860x1860/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:1860x1860):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22552701/4WuM8_share_of_us_adults_with_home_broadband.png 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/85YZQvifCXn3LhD7RHHPo4PS9lQ=/0x0:1860x1860/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:1860x1860):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22552701/4WuM8_share_of_us_adults_with_home_broadband.png 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/mpZG4heT6_l7eZ9_LpHS44ztoJA=/0x0:1860x1860/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:1860x1860):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22552701/4WuM8_share_of_us_adults_with_home_broadband.png 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/jMf1NcfMXOukYEiCYCWDZxxBt7k=/0x0:1860x1860/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:1860x1860):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22552701/4WuM8_share_of_us_adults_with_home_broadband.png 1920w" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" type="image/webp" /> <img alt="Share of US adults with home broadband, by demographic&nbsp;" data-upload-width="1860" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/o9jBJ5rBoq8JBuv28--SyeZjxYM=/0x0:1860x1860/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:1860x1860):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22552701/4WuM8_share_of_us_adults_with_home_broadband.png" srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/2AmWD59PpIGynhxOcYX5yI_yAcw=/0x0:1860x1860/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:1860x1860):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22552701/4WuM8_share_of_us_adults_with_home_broadband.png 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/C3UsAd3y35snPJLHsz5XvxzkT84=/0x0:1860x1860/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:1860x1860):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22552701/4WuM8_share_of_us_adults_with_home_broadband.png 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/kUI2lcYfWCLd-fITdZaKdX29CrY=/0x0:1860x1860/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:1860x1860):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22552701/4WuM8_share_of_us_adults_with_home_broadband.png 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/brQHRwd6C6-45JuHYo_f8NuLsUk=/0x0:1860x1860/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:1860x1860):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22552701/4WuM8_share_of_us_adults_with_home_broadband.png 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/k2HIeadpBXMJiGI35Vr2jXT1MtI=/0x0:1860x1860/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:1860x1860):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22552701/4WuM8_share_of_us_adults_with_home_broadband.png 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/STTvwXqvN9bcQApGATfDF5X5yD4=/0x0:1860x1860/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:1860x1860):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22552701/4WuM8_share_of_us_adults_with_home_broadband.png 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/0gSJJXfw7V1cU0TTralprb6OI_c=/0x0:1860x1860/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:1860x1860):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22552701/4WuM8_share_of_us_adults_with_home_broadband.png 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/4cav8O-NUrGlsmqrQfSX7bh4Avo=/0x0:1860x1860/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:1860x1860):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22552701/4WuM8_share_of_us_adults_with_home_broadband.png 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/zjwNgI8z5-8A--hsGOJKooab2tY=/0x0:1860x1860/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:1860x1860):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22552701/4WuM8_share_of_us_adults_with_home_broadband.png 1920w" /></picture></span></span></figure>
<p>That’s due to the high cost of internet in the United States — about $60 a month — which is more than many Americans can afford. Nearly half of those without broadband don’t have it because they say it’s too expensive, according to the survey. Broadband in the US is <a href="https://www.newamerica.org/oti/reports/cost-connectivity-2020/global-findings/">more expensive</a> than in many other developed nations.</p>
<p>The crux of the issue is that the US is very large and building out internet infrastructure is expensive, so internet companies are more likely to do so in areas where there are lots of paying customers: wealthier and populous areas. Since internet companies are not regulated like utilities, they have little economic incentive to build out internet to isolated or poorer areas, where there are fewer customers or at least fewer customers who can afford it. The result is a digital divide in which many poorer and more rural Americans lack access to broadband internet.</p>
<p>The issue is not new, and there have been numerous <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/9/10/21426810/internet-access-covid-19-chattanooga-municipal-broadband-fcc">efforts to ameliorate the situation</a> from a policy standpoint, including subsidizing broadband, making broadband a utility, and going forward with <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22458200/biden-infrastructure-plan-broadband-internet">Biden’s infrastructure plan</a>, which includes investing billions in publicly funded internet. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which had in the prior administration pushed to <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/21557495/biden-fcc-digital-divide-net-neutrality-section-230">deregulate the internet industry</a>, has even awarded <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22431261/starlink-spacex-elon-musk-fcc-satellite-internet">Elon Musk’s SpaceX</a> lots of money in the hope its satellites can help close the digital divide.</p>
<p>Of course, there’s a lot of distance between good intentions and cheaper internet.</p>
<p>In the meantime, about half of those without broadband say they can do everything they need to do online with their smartphone. Some 15 percent of Americans own a smartphone but don’t have a broadband connection, and this group has lower income and less education than people who aren’t dependent on smartphones for internet. Lower-income Americans are more likely to have a smartphone than home broadband (76 percent compared with 57 percent, but they’re still less likely than higher-income people, 96 percent, to own one).</p>
<p>People can do plenty of things perfectly fine on a smartphone, but there is an upper limit (try writing and sending a cover letter, toggling through different tabs and apps for work, or even being able to get the same options on your bank’s mobile website as its regular website).</p>
<p>“In most cases, it’s easier to use a bigger screen with a connected computer than it is to use a smartphone. If you don’t have [a computer with broadband], you’re not really plugged into the modern economy,” Rainie said, pointing to how important having a computer with broadband is for things like applying for a job. “The data shows you’re not capable of being the kind of social, political, and economic actor that people who have broadband are able to be,” he added.</p>
<p>Many smartphone plans also have limited data, and even unlimited plans are throttled after a point, meaning you can’t browse or download as much as you could over a broadband connection.</p>
<p>The deficits became particularly apparent during the pandemic, when many of the things we used to do in person had to be done online, and when video capabilities — which require a lot of bandwidth — became exceedingly important. Indeed, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/05/17/americans-see-broad-responsibilities-for-government-little-change-since-2019/">another Pew study</a> found that the share of Americans who consider access to high-speed internet to be the government’s responsibility jumped 15 percentage points — by far more than any other topic — compared to before the pandemic.</p>
<p>And the necessity of home broadband will remain elevated after the pandemic is over, as many of those activities — work, education, doctors’ appointments — could move online permanently, at least some of the time. And as they do so, the necessity of having home broadband will become more obvious.</p>
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source <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22463131/pew-broadband-internet-income-inequality">https://www.vox.com/recode/22463131/pew-broadband-internet-income-inequality</a>

vox Good internet service is still a luxury in the US

Home broadband is more important than ever. It’s also seemingly a luxury good. Just over half of Americans making less than $30,000 a year ...