Tag: pandemic

Ticketmaster Reportedly Planning Mandatory COVID-19 Vaccine, Testing Policy For Concert Attendance

Earlier this week reports emerged detailing Pfizer and BioNTech‘s ongoing efforts to create a legitimate COVID-19 vaccine in record time, and the two drug developers have even seen 90% effectiveness in some cases following initial testing on humans.

While it’s not yet clear when the vaccine would be ready to be used on the global population en masse – or how various governments will even be able to distribute the vaccine to every man, woman, and child – leading concert promoters in the live events industry are preparing realistic policies for how they can responsibly begin to welcome fans back inside venues without fear of viral spread or legal consequences.

A report shared by Billboard on Wednesday details that Ticketmaster (the ticketing arm of concert production giant Live Nation) is working to develop multi-step guidelines for how fans can purchase tickets when concerts and festivals return, possibly as soon as summer and fall 2021.

The current plan – which the report details is still in a development phase and not yet an official company policy – would be comprised of three stages. First, any fan who purchases a ticket to an event would have to prove they have received the COVID-19 vaccine or show a negative test. Depending on the COVID-19 health regulations and testing capabilities in their specific region or state, fans would likely be able to get tested the day prior, or even the day of the event at a sanctioned lab or health clinic.

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Biden’s first move as president-elect? Mask mandate for all. Here’s how he plans on doing it.

One of Joe Biden’s first priorities as president-elect will be implementing mask mandates nationwide by working with governors. The future 46th president, however, says if they refuse then he will go to mayors and county executives and get local masking requirements in place.

Fox News medical contributor Dr. Marc Siegel believes that while masks are “the icing on the physical distancing cake” and should be worn properly both indoors and outdoors, especially when people are too close together, a more punitive approach to mask wearing may have the opposite impact of what the administration intends. 

“I think masks are quite useful, but they have a place and they’re not the be all and end all,” Siegel said. “I’m worried that mandating this with fines and such may actually lead to more of a rebellion against it.”

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Biden’s Pick for Coronavirus Task Force: ‘Living Too Long Is Also a Loss’

This morning, President-elect Biden announced that his coronavirus task force would include Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania.

In a 2014 essay in The Atlantic, Emanuel, explained why he hoped to die at age 75, and why he finds the idea of living past that date to be morally problematic:

Here is a simple truth that many of us seem to resist: living too long is also a loss. It renders many of us, if not disabled, then faltering and declining, a state that may not be worse than death but is nonetheless deprived. It robs us of our creativity and ability to contribute to work, society, the world. It transforms how people experience us, relate to us, and, most important, remember us. We are no longer remembered as vibrant and engaged but as feeble, ineffectual, even pathetic.

By the time I reach 75, I will have lived a complete life. I will have loved and been loved. My children will be grown and in the midst of their own rich lives. I will have seen my grandchildren born and beginning their lives. I will have pursued my life’s projects and made whatever contributions, important or not, I am going to make. And hopefully, I will not have too many mental and physical limitations. Dying at 75 will not be a tragedy.

Once I have lived to 75, my approach to my health care will completely change. I won’t actively end my life. But I won’t try to prolong it, either. Today, when the doctor recommends a test or treatment, especially one that will extend our lives, it becomes incumbent upon us to give a good reason why we don’t want it. The momentum of medicine and family means we will almost invariably get it…

But 75 defines a clear point in time: for me, 2032. It removes the fuzziness of trying to live as long as possible. Its specificity forces us to think about the end of our lives and engage with the deepest existential questions and ponder what we want to leave our children and grandchildren, our community, our fellow Americans, the world. The deadline also forces each of us to ask whether our consumption is worth our contribution.

This is the man who Joe Biden has selected to help save the country from a virus that is particularly dangerous to the elderly.

In other news, Joe Biden turns 78 on November 20.

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Delta adds 460 people to no-fly list for refusing to wear masks

Usually reserved for suspected terrorists, Delta Airlines has added the names of 460 people to its no-fly lists for refusing to comply with a requirement to wear masks during flights, according to a memo to employees from the company’s CEO.

Delta CEO Ed Bastian revealed the number in an internal memo about breast cancer awareness month. He encouraged employees to participate in helping to raise money to fight the disease.

“Throughout the pandemic, we have focused our efforts on protecting our people, our customers and our communities,” Bastian wrote in the memo sent to employees on Thursday and obtained by ABC News.

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State Bar Passes Mandatory COVID-19 Vaccination Recommendation

The New York State Bar Association on Saturday passed a resolution urging the state to consider making it mandatory for all New Yorkers to undergo COVID-19 vaccination when a vaccine becomes available, even if people object to it for “religious, philosophical or personal reasons.”

The resolution, which was passed by a majority of the bar association’s 277-member House of Delegates, includes conditions limiting its scope. Those include that the state government should only consider making vaccinations mandatory if voluntary COVID-19 vaccinations fall short of producing needed levels of population immunity; that an assessment of the health threat to various communities be made so that perhaps the mandate can be targeted; and that a mandate only be considered after there is expert consensus about the vaccine’s safety and efficacy.

In a statement Saturday afternoon, Mary Beth Morrissey, chair of the bar association’s Health Law Section’s Task Force on COVID-19, which in May released a controversial report that had first proposed the idea of a vaccine mandate, said, “The authority of the state to respond to a public health crisis is well-established in constitutional law,”

“In balancing the protection of the public’s health and civil liberties, the Public Health Law recognizes that a person’s health can and does affect others,” said Morrisey, a lawyer who also holds a doctorate degree in gerontological social work research.

The Health Law Section’s May report generated an uproar online, over the spring and summer, among anti-vaccine groups and lawyers who represent people injured by vaccines. But the relevant part of the 83-page report proposing a vaccine mandate was broader in scope, and more direct, than the resolution passed by the bar association Saturday. And most of the conditions contained in the resolution had not been contained in the report.

The report had recommended that it should be mandatory for all Americans to undergo COVID-19 vaccination, despite people’s objections, with the one exception being doctor-ordered medical reasons. There had been no language about a mandate being limited to New York state residents, and no language saying a public recommendation made to the state government should only be for it to “consider” a mandate.

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CDC Report: Officials Knew Coronavirus Test Was Flawed But Released It Anyway

On Feb. 6, a scientist in a small infectious disease lab on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention campus in Atlanta was putting a coronavirus test kit through its final paces. The lab designed and built the diagnostic test in record time, and the little vials that contained necessary reagents to identify the virus were boxed up and ready to go. But NPR has learned the results of that final quality control test suggested something troubling — it said the kit could fail 33% of the time.

Under normal circumstances, that kind of result would stop a test in its tracks, half a dozen public and private lab officials told NPR. But an internal CDC review obtained by NPR confirms that lab officials decided to release the kit anyway. The revelation comes from a CDC internal review, known as a “root-cause analysis,” which the agency conducted to understand why an early coronavirus test didn’t work properly and wound up costing scientists precious weeks in the early days of a pandemic.

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