In the two years since COVID-19 began ravaging the United States, virtually every aspect of the pandemic has been politicized, often to the detriment of efforts to bring the disease under control and to treat its victims. Now, though, members of Congress are taking the first steps toward a bipartisan effort to understand the pandemic’s origins and to assess the federal government’s response.

The two most senior members of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions have begun circulating a proposal to create a 12-member commission of private citizens with broad authority to investigate the origins of the disease – and how the Trump and Biden administrations responded to it. The initiative appears to have broad support among members of both parties.

The two lawmakers, Health Committee Chair Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington, and the committee’s senior Republican, Richard Burr of North Carolina, have modeled the effort on the commission that was created to investigate the origins of the 9/11 terrorist attacks of 2001. That body won bipartisan praise for its exhaustive analysis of the events leading up to the attacks.

The proposal is part of a larger piece of legislation called the “Prepare for and Respond to Existing Viruses, Emerging New Threats, and Pandemics Act,” or the “PREVENT Pandemics Act,” for short. In addition to creating the task force, the bill would expand the capacity of public health agencies to respond to disease outbreaks, boost research and development, and strengthen the supply chain for medical products.

National task force

The panel proposed in the bill would be known as the “National Task Force on the Response of the United States to the COVID-19 Pandemic,” and would have the authority to issue subpoenas to compel testimony and the disclosure of records as necessary for the investigation.

Kristin Urquiza, one of the co-founders of an advocacy group for families affected by the pandemic known as Marked by COVID, told VOA she was encouraged by Murray and Burr’s proposal, calling it the best version of a framework for an investigative panel she has seen so far.

“Marked by COVID has been calling for a commission or a task force for well over a year,” Urquiza said. “It’s a top priority for our families to really ensure that we have an accurate record of what happened and why. Not only so we can have answers as to why our loved ones were lost, but so we can pass on learnings to ourselves and future generations for any mistakes that were made, and so that we can do better next time that there’s a public health crisis.”

Political minefield

So far, discussion of the pandemic’s origins and the federal response have tended to be highly politicized. In the earliest days of the pandemic, then-President Donald Trump was eager to downplay the severity of the crisis, a stance many of his political supporters adopted.

This helped create a sharp divide in how Republicans and Democrats across the country viewed the federal response to the pandemic.

As COVID-19 deaths in America grew from the thousands to the tens of thousands, Trump made a very public effort to blame China, the country where the disease was first identified, for the global health crisis. Arguments over the degree of China’s responsibility for the spread of the virus have also taken on a sharply partisan tone.

Efforts to blame China

Many Republicans in Congress have thrown their support behind the theory that the virus that causes COVID-19 escaped from a laboratory in China, where the coronavirus was being studied. This theory is supported by the fact that there is a major infectious disease research facility located near the city of Wuhan, where the virus was first detected.

Democrats, on the whole, have been more inclined to back the view put forward by the World Health Organization (WHO), which suggested that the virus migrated into the human population through close contact with wild animals – probably bats – that were already infected with a version of it.

The WHO, however, has sent mixed signals about the origins of the virus. A report issued by the body last year argued that it was extremely unlikely that the virus reached the human population through a laboratory leak. However, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director, said that China refused to share important data from early cases of COVID-19, hampering the ability of the WHO’s investigators to complete a thorough analysis.

In a series of congressional hearings, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the chief medical adviser to President Biden, has been aggressively questioned by Republican members of Congress who have accused him of withholding information about research at the Wuhan institute of Virology that was partially funded by the U.S. government.

For his part, Fauci has publicly supported calls for an investigation into the origin of the virus.

Hope for a balanced inquiry

In the earlier stages of the pandemic, Republicans were suspicious of any commission tasked with investigating the pandemic, out of concern that its findings would be used as a cudgel against the Trump administration.

Urquiza, of Marked by COVID, said that the passage of time has made it less likely that the findings of a committee will be seen as politicized, because both parties can be seen as having some successes and some failures in the COVID-19 response.

“Our worry from day one was that a commission would turn into a witch hunt for either China or President Trump,” she said. “Part of what we’ve seen now, over the course of the last year, is that the Biden administration now has a pandemic track record, and that has opened up the field to allow for both praise and criticism of what has happened.” 

 
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The oceans got even warmer last year than the year before, supercharging already extreme weather patterns worldwide, according to a recent report published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences.

Twenty-three international scientists analyzed thousands of ocean temperature measurements. Since 2018, when the group first began publishing their findings, they have found that ocean temperatures are rising each year.

But the warming isn’t consistent around the planet.

In 2021, the researchers discovered that because of wind patterns and currents, some parts of the Atlantic, Indian and northern Pacific oceans warmed more quickly.

“The motion of water in the world’s oceans distributes the heat in a nonuniform way, so some areas get more heat and others less, meaning certain parts of the oceans warm faster than others,” said John Abraham, a co-author of the study and climate scientist at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.

Increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases from human activities are making the oceans too hot, Abraham told VOA.

“Last year, the oceans absorbed heat the equivalent of seven Hiroshima bombs being detonated in the ocean every second of every day, 365 days each year,” he said.

But even a slight rise in the temperature can be devastating.

“Last year, the surface temperatures of the oceans increased about 1 degree Celsius,” said Michael Mann, professor of atmospheric science at Pennsylvania State University and a contributor to the report. “And while that might sound like a small amount of warming, even modest changes in temperature can have a huge impact on the climate system, which can cause fish populations to decline and ice sheets to collapse in Antarctica.”

Only a small amount of heat from greenhouse gases actually gets trapped in the atmosphere. Most of it gets absorbed by the oceans.

“The oceans store 90% of global warming heat and are a robust indicator of climate change. Now, our oceans are warming at an exceptional rate that has serious consequences,” said Lijing Cheng, lead author of the study and an associate professor with the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

“Sea level rise makes coastal communities more susceptible to storm surges that threaten coastal infrastructure,” Cheng told VOA.

Warming oceans are creating havoc on the Earth’s weather systems.

“The oceans drive the weather,” Abraham said. “Warmer oceans are making our weather wilder — going from one extreme to another more rapidly,” he said. “The oceans are heating and moistening the atmosphere, which is creating more intense storms.”

Tornadoes, hurricanes, floods and even snowstorms “are all connected to warming oceans,” said Alexey Mishonov, another co-author and an associate research scientist at the University of Maryland’s Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center.

Mann said greenhouse gases need to be significantly curbed soon or the environmental consequences will become even worse.

“We’ve got to bring carbon emissions down by 50% within this decade,” he said. “We need governments to provide incentives to move the energy and transportation industries away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy.” 

 
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The Philippines has suspended a heavily criticized policy banning the unvaccinated from public transportation in Metro Manila as a COVID-19 surge, caused by omicron variant, has subsided.

Daily cases in the Philippines rose from 400 in December to more than 39,000 in just a matter of days. The positivity rate, or percentage of positive cases out of those tested, peaked at more than 47%, as the country’s testing capacity remained low.

Hospitals were quickly overwhelmed after a brief holiday lull, but the Health Department said 85% of those admitted to intensive care units had not been vaccinated. Health care workers are exhausted, and many of those testing positive for the virus had to return to work immediately after recovering. Despite the record-breaking COVID-19 cases, the government did not impose a lockdown.

The Transportation Department implemented the “no vaccination, no ride” policy in Metro Manila, covering anyone taking public transportation starting Jan. 17, after President Rodrigo Duterte himself ordered the arrest of unvaccinated individuals who leave their homes.

Under the policy, unvaccinated or partially vaccinated individuals are barred from buses, jeepneys, trains and taxis, although unvaccinated people traveling for medical reasons, such as getting vaccinated, are exempt if they can show proof.

“Because it is a national emergency, it is my position that we can restrain [unvaccinated individuals],” Duterte said in a televised speech Jan. 6.

On the first day of the policy’s implementation, Jan. 17, police and transport officials apprehended hundreds of unvaccinated passengers and prevented them from riding buses, jeepneys and trains.

A TV interview of a partially vaccinated woman who had been prevented from boarding a bus went viral and sparked criticism of the policy.

“I’m so tired. What the government is doing is making me tired. I’m partially vaccinated. It’s not my fault that my second dose is scheduled for February,” she said.

After a barrage of criticism, the government was forced to temporarily walk back the policy on the second day of implementation, introducing exemptions, including for unvaccinated essential workers and those leaving their homes for medical reasons.

Following a trend around the world, the surge quickly subsided in February, as predicted by government and private experts, but the country is still reporting nearly 10,000 cases per day.

As the number of daily reported cases in Metro Manila dropped, the Department of Transportation has now temporarily suspended the policy as of Feb. 1. However, the ban will be reinstated once the city breaches a higher caseload.

Human rights, labor and mobility advocates have called on the government to revoke the ban, saying it restricts the exercise of fundamental rights, and calling it unnecessary, discriminatory and anti-poor, as most of the city’s 14 million people are commuters and cannot afford cars.

“Restricting mobility is not the answer to the gaps in the vaccination campaign, regardless of whether that’s availability or accessibility to vaccines, or for a mere addressing of the continued misinformation about vaccination,” Ira Cruz, director of AltMobility PH, a group advocating sustainable transport, told VOA.

There are more than 50 million fully vaccinated people in the Philippines, according to the government, but the country failed to meet its vaccination target last year.

Like many countries, the Philippines is battling vaccine misinformation, but resistance to vaccination is waning. The most recent poll showed that of Filipinos surveyed in December, only 8% are unwilling to be vaccinated, down from 18% in September 2021.

“Why people don’t want to get vaccinated, that remains to be the responsibility of the government to address. What this is sounding like is that the government is giving up on addressing the gaps of a vaccination campaign and closing its doors to certain people,” Cruz said.

He said it would be more useful for the government to provide a steady supply of buses, trains and jeepneys so there’s enough room to follow public health protocols, including physical distancing.

“We call on the government to revoke the ban altogether regardless of the number of cases in the country,” Cruz said.  

 
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When it comes to measuring global warming, humidity, not just heat, matters in generating dangerous climate extremes, a new study finds. 

Researchers say temperature by itself isn’t the best way to measure climate change’s weird weather and downplays impacts in the tropics. But factoring in air moisture along with heat shows that climate change since 1980 is nearly twice as bad as previously calculated, according to their study in Monday’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

The energy generated in extreme weather, such as storms, floods and rainfall, is related to the amount of water in the air. So, a team of scientists in the United States and China decided to use an obscure weather measurement called equivalent potential temperature — or theta-e — that reflects “the moisture energy of the atmosphere,” said study co-author V. “Ram” Ramanathan, a climate scientist at the University of California San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and Cornell University. It’s expressed in degrees, like temperature. 

“There are two drivers of climate change: temperature and humidity,” Ramanathan said. “And so far, we measured global warming just in terms of temperature.” 

But by adding the energy from humidity, “the extremes — heat waves, rainfall and other measures of extremes — correlate much better,” he said. 

That’s because as the world warms, the air holds more moisture, nearly 4% for every degree Fahrenheit (7% for every degree Celsius). When that moisture condenses, it releases heat or energy, “that’s why when it rains, now it pours,” Ramanathan said. 

In addition, water vapor is a potent heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere that increases climate change, he said. 

From 1980 to 2019, the world warmed about 0.79 degrees Celsius (1.42 degrees Fahrenheit). But taking energy from humidity into account, the world has warmed and moistened 1.48 degrees Celsius (2.66 degrees Fahrenheit), the study said. And in the tropics, the warming was as much as 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit). 

When judging by temperature alone, it looks like warming is most pronounced in North America, mid-latitudes and especially the poles — and less so in the tropics, Ramanathan said.

But that’s not the case, he said, because the high humidity in the tropics juices up storm activity, from regular storms to tropical cyclones and monsoons. 

“This increase in latent energy is released in the air, which leads to weather extremes: floods, storms and droughts,” Ramanathan said. 

University of Illinois climate scientist Donald Wuebbles, who wasn’t part of the study, said it makes sense because water vapor is key in extreme rainfall. “Both heat and humidity are important,” Wuebbles said. 

Environmental scientist Katharine Mach of the University of Miami, who wasn’t part of the study, said “humidity is key in shaping the impacts of heat on human health and well-being, at present and into the future.” 
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A group of pharmaceutical companies and distributors agreed to pay $590 million to settle lawsuits connected to opioid addiction among Native American tribes, according to a U.S. court filing released Tuesday. 

The agreement is the latest amid a deluge of litigation spawned by the U.S. opioid crisis, which has claimed more than 500,000 lives over the past 20 years and ensnared some of the largest firms in American medicine. 

The companies involved in the latest agreement include Johnson & Johnson (J&J) and McKesson, according to a filing in an Ohio federal court by a committee of plaintiffs in the case. 

Native Americans have “suffered some of the worst consequences of the opioid epidemic of any population in the United States,” including the highest per-capita rate of opioid overdoses compared with other racial groups, according to the filing from the tribal leadership committee. 

“The burden of paying these increased costs has diverted scarce funds from other needs and has imposed severe financial burdens on the tribal plaintiffs.” 

J&J, McKesson and the other two companies in the accord – AmerisourceBergen and Cardinal Health – previously agreed to a $26 billion global settlement on opioid cases. 

J&J said Tuesday the $150 million it agreed to pay in the Native American case has been deducted from what it owes in the global settlement. 

“This settlement is not an admission of any liability or wrongdoing and the company will continue to defend against any litigation that the final agreement does not resolve,” the company said.

It was unclear if the other companies would take their portion under the latest agreement from the global settlement. 

‘Measure of justice’ 

Robins Kaplan, a law firm negotiating on the behalf of the plaintiffs, said the agreement still must be approved by the Native American tribes. 

“This initial settlement for tribes in the national opioid litigation is a crucial first step in delivering some measure of justice to the tribes and reservation communities across the United States that have been ground zero for the opioid epidemic,” Tara Sutton, an attorney at the firm, said in a statement. 

Douglas Yankton, chairman of the North Dakota-based Spirit Lake Nation, said the money from the settlement would “help fund crucial, on-reservation, culturally appropriate opioid treatment services.” 

Steven Skikos, an attorney representing the tribes, told AFP they are pursuing claims against other drugmakers. 

“This is hopefully the first two of many other settlements,” he said. 

All tribes recognized by the U.S. government, 574 in all, will be able to participate in the agreement, even if they have not filed lawsuits. 

The settlement is separate from a prior agreement that resulted in $75 million in payments to the Cherokee Nation from three distribution companies, including McKesson. 

Many of the lawsuits regarding the opioid crisis have centered on Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin, a highly addictive prescription painkiller blamed for causing a spike in addiction. 

A judge in December overturned the company’s bankruptcy plan because it provided some immunity for the owners of the company in exchange for a $4.5 billion payout to victims of the opioid crisis. 

The litigation wave also has swamped pharmacies owned by Walmart, Walgreens and CVS, which a jury found in November bear responsibility for the opioid crisis in two counties in Ohio. 

 
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A single lightning bolt that leapt across three U.S. states has been identified as the longest ever, the U.N. weather agency said Tuesday. Dubbed a megaflash, the rare low-rate horizontal discharge covered 768 kilometers (477 miles) between clouds in Texas and Mississippi in April 2020.

It was detected by scientists using satellite technology and its distance – beating the previous record by 60 kilometer – confirmed by a World Meteorological Organization committee.

“That trip by air[plane] would take a couple of hours and in this case the distance was covered in a matter of seconds,” WMO spokesperson Clare Nullis said.

Another megaflash that occurred above Uruguay and Argentina in June 2020 also set a record, as the longest-lasting at 17.1 seconds, the WMO said.

While these two newly cataloged megaflashes never touched the ground, they serve as a reminder of the dangers of a weather phenomenon that kill hundreds of people a year.

“We reiterate our message: when thunder roars, when you see lightning — go indoors. Don’t seek shelter in a beach hut, don’t stand under a tree,” Nullis said. 
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The World Health Organization warns of health care risks posed by discarded COVID-19 equipment and is calling on nations to better manage their systems for disposing of the used gear.

Tackling the COVID-19 pandemic requires the use of huge quantities of personal protective equipment or PPE and the use of needles and syringes to administer vaccines, among other essential products.

A new World Health Organization global analysis finds the quantities of health care waste generated by the goods are enormous and potentially dangerous. Maggie Montgomery is the technical officer for water, sanitation and health in the WHO Department of Environment.

She says COVID-19 has increased health care risks in facilities at up to 10 times previous volumes.

“If you consider that two in three health care facilities in the least developed countries did not have systems to segregate or safely treat waste before this pandemic, you can just imagine how much burden this extra waste load has put on health care workers, on communities, especially where waste is burned,” Montgomery said.

The report finds the hazardous disposal of COVID-19 waste potentially exposes health workers to needle stick injuries, burns and pathogenic microorganisms, air pollution and many dangers associated with living near poorly managed landfills and waste disposal sites.

WHO experts analyzed approximately 87,000 tons of PPE that were shipped to needy countries between March 2020 and November 2021 through a joint U.N. emergency initiative. Most of the equipment, they say, was expected to end up as waste.

The report provides an initial indication of the scale of the COVID-19 waste problem that exists only within the health sector, which is enormous. Montgomery says it does not look at the volumes of waste being generated in the wider community.

“In terms of the waste generated by the public, in particular masks. For example, in 2020, there were 4.5 trillion additional disposable masks thrown away by the public, which led to six million tons of additional waste,” Montgomery said. “So, certainly, the public is generating the most. At the same time, we feel that the health sector has a really important role and there are many concrete things that can be done to reduce, unnecessary use of PPE.”

WHO recommendations for safer and more environmentally sustainable waste practices include using eco-friendly packaging and shipping, safe and reusable gloves and medical masks, and investing in non-burn waste treatment technologies.
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