New top story from Time: In a Break with Washington’s Usual Posture, the CDC Director Makes an Emotional Plea

https://ift.tt/39vQIX0

This article is part of the The DC Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox every weekday.

It’s sometimes easy to forget that the leaders who guide this country through its toughest moments aren’t steely caricatures. We take comfort in the hardened hagiography of FDR responding to Pearl Harbor, Ronald Reagan’s reflection on the Challenger’s crew that “slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God,” or George W. Bush’s return to the White House after a harrowing day of cat-and-mouse on Sept. 11, 2001.

So it was a bit of a jolt when Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, experienced an emotional hiccup at a press briefing yesterday when she warned the public that COVID-19 still presents a real danger. We are approaching 10 weeks of Joe Biden’s team laying out facts and science to the public about the COVID-19 pandemic and his Administration’s response. Biden will occasionally comment on the situation, but unlike his predecessor, Biden knows his training is in law and senatorial politics, not virology or public health. Biden doesn’t need the spotlight the way Donald Trump did and does, and his team’s regular updates have been crucial in spreading information.

But Walensky took about a minute of personal privilege to break from the charts and studies to offer up a warning. The former head of infectious diseases at Mass General and one of the country’s best experts on HIV/AIDS, Walensky understands both personally and professionally what everyone around her is going through more than a year into the pandemic. And she’s not exempt from the emotional toll, either. When she made her first comments after Biden appointed her, she showed a spot of emotion. When she got her vaccine, the same, as Vogue noted in its excellent profile of the former Harvard professor.

But it was her impromptu remarks yesterday that sent the warning like a rocket around Washington.

“I’m going to pause here, I’m going to lose the script and I’m going to reflect on the recurring feeling I have of impending doom,” Walensky said. “We have so much to look forward to. So much promise and potential of where we are and so much reason for hope. But right now I’m scared.”

For one of the most powerful doctors in the world to say such a chilling truth should leave us all thinking twice about if that trip to the corner store can’t wait. The U.S. is seeing an uptick in new cases, up 14% over the last two weeks. We’re still in far better shape than we were right after the December holidays. But news of a raft of vaccines is giving Americans a potentially false sense that we’ve rounded the bend, according to Walensky.

It was the way she said it that made her warning especially stark. “Doom” is one of those words with clear emotional connotation. It’s a corresponding emotion to how we scroll through terrible news on our phones right now. It’s only a degree between doomed and damned. And here was one of the smartest people working on coronavirus telling us doom is at our door.

“I’m speaking today not necessarily as your CDC director, and not only as your CDC director, but as a wife, as a mother, as a daughter, to ask you to just please hold on a little while longer,” she said. “I so badly want to be done, I know you all so badly want to be done, we’re just almost there. But not quite yet. And so, I’m asking you to just hold on a little longer, to get vaccinated when you can, so that all of those people that we all love will still be here when this pandemic ends.”

In a turn that few Americans can deploy with such effect, Walensky spoke of her own commute to Mass General. “I know what it’s like to pull up to your hospital every day and see the extra morgue sitting outside,” she said.

I will leave it to others to address how vulnerability is seen as strength when men find it and as weakness when women show it. Right-wing media are accusing Walensky of hyping fear and misstating science, but perhaps this is a moment when we should be celebrating the fact that at least the CDC head isn’t being subjected to the sexist attacks that have dogged female experts for decades.

The warning came as plainly as it could have. Doom is at the doorstep and it’s on us to keep it from coming inside. The fact the voice rendering the warning belonged to a woman, or carried emotion, does not change the velocity with which this pandemic could be ricocheting around our communities again. The fact temporary morgues have parking permits at hospitals alone should be sufficient.

Make sense of what matters in Washington. Sign up for the daily D.C. Brief newsletter.

Comments

New top story from Time: All 53 People Aboard Indonesia Submarine Declared Dead After Vessel’s Wreckage Found

https://ift.tt/3ezrzg5 ANYUWANGI, Indonesia — Indonesia’s military on Sunday officially said all 53 crew members from a submarine that sank and broke apart last week are dead, and that search teams had located the vessel’s wreckage on the ocean floor. The grim announcement comes a day after Indonesia said the submarine was considered sunk, not merely missing , but did not explicitly say whether the crew was dead. Officials had also said the KRI Nanggala 402’s oxygen supply would have run out early Saturday, three days after vessel went missing off the resort island of Bali. “We received underwater pictures that are confirmed as the parts of the submarine, including its rear vertical rudder, anchors, outer pressure body, embossed dive rudder and other ship parts,” military chief Hadi Tjahjanto told reporters in Bali on Sunday. “With this authentic evidence, we can declare that KRI Nanggala 402 has sunk and all the crew members are dead,” Tjahjanto said. An underwater ro...

CBSE very likely to announce Class 10, Class 12 exam schedule tomorrow https://ift.tt/34zqEYO

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is very likely to announce the board exam schedule for Class 10 and Class 12 on Tuesday, official sources have said. The CBSE Class 10 and 12 exams are scheduled to be conducted next year through the paper-pen mode and an announcement regarding the examination dates is expected by Union Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, who will interact with teachers across the country tomorrow.

New top story from Time: An Innovative Washington Law Aims to Get Foreign-Trained Doctors Back in Hospitals

https://ift.tt/3v0a9kk Growing up in Somalia’s capital of Mogadishu, where people sometimes die of preventable or treatable illnesses like diarrhea, typhoid and malaria, taught Abdifitah Mohamed a painful lesson: adequate health care is indispensable. In 1996, Mohamed’s mother died of septicemia after spending nine months hospitalized for a gunshot wound. Her death, Mohamed says, inspired him to go to medical school, and for about four years he worked to treat the sick and injured in Somalia, Sudan and Kenya. But Mohamed hasn’t been able to work as a doctor since 2015, when he left for the United States, where his wife emigrated in 2007. Before moving, Mohamed believed that being allowed to practice in the U.S. was a simple matter of passing the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE)—a three-step exam for receiving a U.S. medical license that tests medical knowledge, principles and skills—and then completing a medical residency. However, he didn’t expect that af...

New top story from Time: 11 Moments From Asian American History That You Should Know

https://ift.tt/330kaRq More than 30 years after President George H.W. Bush signed a law that designated May 1990 as the first Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month , much of Asian American history remains unknown to many Americans—including many Asian Americans themselves. Often the Asian-American history taught in classrooms is limited to a few milestones like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the incarceration of people of Japanese descent during World War II, and that abridged version rarely includes the nearly 50 other ethnic groups that make up the fastest-growing racial and ethnic group in the U.S. in the first two decades of the 21st century . To many, the resulting lack of awareness was highlighted after the March 16 Atlanta spa shootings that left six women of Asian descent dead. The killings fit into a larger trend of violence against Asians failing to be seen or charged as a hate crime , even as leaders lamented that “racist attacks [are]… no...

New top story from Time: U.S. Officials Link Iran to Emails Meant to Intimidate Voters Into Supporting Trump

https://ift.tt/3m9aDyR (WASHINGTON) — U.S. officials accused Iran on Wednesday of being behind a flurry of emails sent to Democratic voters in multiple battleground states that appeared to be aimed at intimidating them into voting for President Donald Trump. The announcement at a rare, hastily called news conference just two weeks before the election underscored the concern within the U.S. government about efforts by foreign countries to spread false information meant to suppress voter turnout and undermine American confidence in the vote. The activities attributed to Iran would mark a significant escalation for a nation that some cybersecurity experts regard as a second-rate player in online espionage, with the announcement coming as most public discussion surrounding election interference has centered on Russia, which hacked Democratic emails during the 2016 election, and China, a Trump administration adversary. “These actions are desperate attempts by desperate adver...

New top story from Time: Over 550,000 U.S. Borrowers Could Be Newly Eligible for Student Debt Relief

https://ift.tt/3lf52cK The Biden administration is temporarily relaxing the rules for a student loan forgiveness program that has been criticized for its notoriously complex requirements—a change that could offer debt relief to thousands of teachers, social workers, military members and other public servants. The Education Department said Wednesday it will drop some of the toughest requirements around Public Service Loan Forgiveness, a program that was launched in 2007 to steer more college graduates into public service but, since then, has helped just 5,500 borrowers get their loans erased. Congress created the program as a reward for college students who go into public service. As long as they made 10 years of payments on their federal student loans, the program promised to erase the remainder. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] But more than 90% of applicants have been rejected. After making a decade of payments, many borrowers have found that they have the wrong type of...

New top story from Time: This Is Who Will Replace Simone Biles in the Olympic Gymnastics All-Around Final

https://ift.tt/3zENvyY When Simone Biles withdrew from the gymnastics team event at the Tokyo Summer Olympic Games on July 27, her teammates and coaches scrambled to fill in for her on the spot, since Biles made the sudden decision after the competition had started. Sunisa Lee and Jordan Chiles stepped in and both pulled off impressive routines with little notice — and no warm up time — to help the US women earn silver . Biles announced a day later that she is also withdrawing from the all-around event, the marquee competition for women’s gymnastics. Biles is the reigning Olympic all-around champion, but won’t be defending her title after admitting to struggling mentally with the pressures of competing in Tokyo. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Who will replace her? It’s not just a matter of swapping in a teammate. Biles was the top qualifier, and only the gymnasts with the top 24 scores from the qualifying round are eligible for the all-around. In addition, in order to g...

New top story from Time: Hurricane Ida Winds Hit 150 MPH Ahead of Louisiana Strike

https://ift.tt/3jmdoyl NEW ORLEANS — Hurricane Ida rapidly grew in strength early Sunday, becoming a dangerous Category 4 hurricane just hours before hitting the Louisiana coast while emergency officials in the region grappled with opening shelters for displaced evacuees despite the risks of spreading the coronavirus. As Ida moved through some of the warmest ocean water in the world in the northern Gulf of Mexico, its top winds grew by 45 mph (72 kph) to 150 mph (230 kph) in five hours. The system was expected to make landfall Sunday afternoon, set to arrive on the exact date Hurricane Katrina ravaged Louisiana and Mississippi 16 years earlier. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The hurricane center said Ida is forecast to hit at 155 mph (250 kph), just 1 mph shy of a Category 5 hurricane. Only four Category 5 hurricanes have made landfall in the United States: Michael in 2018, Andrew in 1992, Camille in 1969 and the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935. Both Michael and Andrew were u...

New top story from Time: ‘What Will Happen When the World Looks Away?’ An Afghan Teacher on How the World Can Protect Girls From the Taliban

https://ift.tt/3sQiXrP Pashtana Durrani knows that she is on the Taliban’s radar. The 23-year-old teacher has been fiercely advocating for girls’ education since the group started making advances in Afghanistan after the U.S. announced it would withdraw troops from the country by Aug. 31 . But despite being told that she is not safe, Durrani is staying put. “I didn’t leave because I just felt like it’s my responsibility to do right by my people,” she says. “This is not just about me. This is about the girls of Afghanistan.” On Aug. 15, the Taliban took control of Afghanistan’s capital 20 years after being ousted from power, triggering a chaotic rush to the Kabul airport as foreign citizens and many Afghans tried to flee the country. Even though the Taliban has promised to respect the rights of women and religious minorities this time, many remain skeptical given its brutal history of oppression. According to Human Rights Watch, schools have been shut down and women have ...

New top story from Time: Bomb at Seminary in Pakistan Kills 7 Children and Wounds 70

https://ift.tt/3kL67GR PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — A powerful bomb blast ripped through an Islamic seminary on the outskirts of the northwest Pakistani city of Peshawar on Tuesday morning, killing at least seven students and wounding 70 others, police and a hospital spokesman said. The bombing happened as a prominent religious scholar during a special class was delivering a lecture about the teachings of Islam at the main hall of the Jamia Zubairia madrassa, said police officer Waqar Azim. He said initial investigations suggest the bomb went off minutes after someone left a bag at the madrassa. TV footage showed damaged main hall of the seminary, where the bombing took place. Several of the wounded students were in critical condition, and hospital authorities feared the death toll could climb further. Authorities said some seminary teachers and employees were also wounded in the bombing. Shortly after the attack, residents rushed to the seminary to check up on their sons...

My precise view

Search This Blog