Referring to those who say the decision of whether or not to get a Covid-19 vaccine is tired to the person freedom, the US radio host said on his SirusXM program: “F–k their freedom. I want my freedom to live. I want to get out of the house. I want to go next door and play chess. I want to go take some pictures. This is bullshit. As I remember, when I went to school, you had to get a measles vaccine. You had to get a mumps vaccine.”Stern, 67, who called anti-vaxxers “imbeciles” and “nut jobs, also said: “The other thing I hate is that all these people with Covid who won’t get vaccinated are in the hospitals clogging it up.”He said people who had refused a Covid jab should be refused treatment once they are infected.“Go f–k yourself,” he said. “You had the cure, and you wouldn’t take it”.US TO FEDERAL WORKERS: GET VAXXED OR GET FIREDJoe Biden will require all of the roughly 2.1 million American federal workers to be vaccinated as part of a series of new mandates the US President will push in a major speech on the COVID pandemic.White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Thursday there will be limited exceptions but any federal employee who refuses the jab can be fired, US federal employees and contractors will have 75 days to get vaccinated. The White House says Mr Biden will lay out a “six-pronged” plan. One major part will be mandatory vaccinations for all federal employees and federal contractors, a source familiar with the plans, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP. Currently, government workers either need to have a vaccine or submit to regular testing.“The president has signed an Executive Order to take those actions a step further and require all federal executive branch workers to be vaccinated,” the source said.Ms Psaki, told CNN that Mr Biden will push to ramp up vaccines and testing across the board, although he has limited powers, and there is no plan for anything like a national vaccine passport.“That means reducing hospitalisations. That means putting in place more testing requirements and putting in place more protections in the form of boosters to make sure people have an even greater level of protection,” Ms Psaki said.The administration’s early success in rolling out vaccinations and promoting mask wearing gave Mr Biden a lift after taking office.After leading the world in coronavirus deaths under former president Donald Trump, the United States became a model for how to beat the pandemic.On July 4, Mr Biden even held a big White House BBQ to celebrate US Independence Day and freedom from lockdowns.But the emergence of the hard-to-stop Delta variant over the summer has sent cases back to crisis levels, with hospitals in some states once more overflowing with the sick and dying.Seeing his entire agenda on things like the economy or climate change overshadowed by the pandemic, Mr Biden badly needs to change its course or at least demonstrate he is in charge.The strategy will involve both the public and private sectors, said a White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.“As the president has said since day one, his administration will pull every lever to get the pandemic under control,” the official said.But much of the problem is beyond Mr Biden’s reach.The federal government has distributed free vaccine supplies across the country and also became the world’s largest donor to poorer nations.However, state governments, notably in Republican Texas and Florida, have actively resisted imposing mask mandates, while swathes of their populations refuse to get vaccinated — even as cases around them soar.Mr Biden and his supporters have taken to calling the current virus surge a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” Despite the role played by Republican leaders, Mr Biden, who is simultaneously taking a hit from the traumatic US exit from Afghanistan, is getting much of the blame.In the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll, 52 per cent approved of Mr Biden’s handling of the pandemic, down from 62 per cent of adults in June.Mr Biden’s overall approval average ratings are firmly below 50 per cent for the first time in his presidency.According to the Washington Post-ABC News survey, only 44 per cent approve of his performance, compared to 50 per cent in June.WHO CALLS FOR BOOSTER PAUSEThe World Health Organisation has called for countries to avoid giving out extra Covid jabs until year-end, pointing to the millions worldwide who have yet to receive a single dose.“I will not stay silent when the companies and countries that control the global supply of vaccines think the world’s poor should be satisfied with leftovers,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told journalists on Wednesday (local time).Speaking from WHO’s headquarters in Geneva, Mr Tedros urged wealthy countries and vaccine makers to prioritise getting the first jabs to health workers and vulnerable populations in poorer nations over boosters.“We do not want to see widespread use of boosters for healthy people who are fully vaccinated,” he said.The WHO called last month for a moratorium on Covid-19 vaccine booster shots until the end of September to address the drastic inequity in dose distribution between rich and poor nations.But Mr Tedros acknowledged Wednesday that there had “been little change in the global situations since then.“So today I am calling for an extension of the moratorium until at least the end of the year,” he said.High-income countries had promised to donate more than one billion vaccine doses to poorer countries, he said — “but less than 15 per cent of those doses have materialised.“We don’t want any more promises,” he said. “We just want the vaccines.” Washington pushed back against the call for the moratorium, saying President Joe Biden has “a responsibility to do everything we can to protect people in the United States.” “We are doing both, we think we can do both and we will continue to do both,” said White House press secretary Jen Psaki.Despite the call for a moratorium, some countries have been arguing for booster jabs not only for vulnerable people, but also for the wider population, citing signs of waning vaccine effectiveness against the highly transmissible Delta variant.The WHO has acknowledged that an additional dose could be needed for immunocompromised people, but stresses that, for healthy people, the vaccines still seem very effective, especially in preventing severe disease.“There is not a compelling case to move forward with a generalised recommendation for booster doses,” Kate O’Brien, the WHO’s vaccines chief, told the news conference.The UN health agency has set a global target of seeing every country vaccinate at least 10 per cent of its population by the end of this month, and at least 40 per cent by the end of this year.It wants to see at least 70 per cent of the world’s population vaccinated by the middle of next year.But Mr Tedros complained that while 90 per cent of wealthy countries have hit the 10-percent mark, and more than 70 per cent have already reached 40 per cent, “not a single low-income country has reached either target”.He expressed outrage at a statement by a pharmaceutical industry organisation that the world’s seven wealthiest nations, known as the G7, now had enough vaccines for all adults and teenagers — and to offer boosters to at-risk groups — and so the focus should shift to dose sharing.“When I read this, I was appalled,” he said.“In reality, manufacturers and high-income countries have long had the capacity to not only vaccinate their own priority groups, but to simultaneously support the vaccination of those same groups in all countries.”FEARS MU MORE CONTAGIOUS THAN DELTA The Mu variant of Covid – which scientists say has “greater transmissibility” than Delta – has now been detected in 49 US states and 42 countries, as health officials keep an eye on the strain to see if it becomes dominant. The strain, also known as B. 1.621, was first identified in Colombia in January and was added to the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) “variants of interest” list, however all but one US states and the District of Columbia have since detected the strain, with the exception of Nebraska, according to estimates compiled by Outbreak.info.Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s leading infectious disease expert, on Sunday said the delta variant accounts for more than 99 per cent of the cases. The Mu variant has mutations that “indicate that it might evade the protection from certain antibodies.”He said the Mu variant was “not an immediate threat.”States with a higher estimated prevalence of the variant include Alaska and Hawaii, though nationwide the variant has been detected in less than one per cent of samples.California logged the highest number of samples containing the Mu variant, with at least 384 cases, Newsweek reported, but the total translates to 0.2 per cent of the state’s sequenced samples. As of September 3, Los Angeles County health officials announced 167 Mu variant cases sequenced between June and August, with the bulk of cases sequenced in July. “The Mu variant is found to have key mutations linked to greater transmissibility and the potential to evade antibodies,” a statement from LA County Public Health reads. “More studies are needed to determine whether Mu variant is more contagious, more deadly or more resistant to vaccine and treatments than other Covid-19 strains.”“The identification of variants like Mu, and the spreading of variants across the globe, highlights the need for L.A. County residents to continue to take measures to protect themselves and others,” Dr Barbara Ferrer, director of LA County Public Health, added in the statement. “This is what makes getting vaccinated and layering protections so important. These are actions that break the chain of transmission and limits Covid-19 proliferation that allows for the virus to mutate into something that could be more dangerous.”NED-3952-Covid-19-VariantsBRITS WILL NEED UK VACCINE PASSPORTSMeanwhile, the UK’s vaccine minister has announced that Brits will soon need to show their vaccination passports to get into “large venues”.In Britain, the “green pass” is set to be made a mandatory entry requirement by the end of September. Here we look at where you’ll need one in the UK – from nightclubs to sports stadiums, in what could be a precursor for Australia.NIGHTCLUBSEarlier this year, the UK government made it mandatory that all revellers will need a vaccine passport to enter nightclubs from the end of September.Party-goers will have to produce the NHS app or a paper certificate at the door or face being barred entry under the highly controversial plans.During the week Downing Street confirmed that Prime Minister Boris Johnson has no intention of backing down from the proposals despite facing fury from backbench Tory MPs.SPORTS STADIUMSIt’s thought that fans attending stadiums with capacities over 20,000 will be required to show vaccine passports to cheer on their teams.Some teams have already had this in place throughout the northern hemisphere summer“If you look at what the FA (Football Association) have done, they’ve done so brilliantly in terms of checking vaccine status to reopen football,” British MP Nadhim Zahawi told Sky News.“That is the sort of right thing to do and we are absolutely on track to continue to make sure that we do that.”LARGE CONCERTSBritish music fans will need to be double jabbed to attended large gigs by the end of the month to prevent another UK winter lockdown.“We are looking at, by the end of September when everyone has had the opportunity to be fully vaccinated, for the large venues, venues that could end up causing a real spike in infections, where we need to use the certification process,” Mr Zahawi said.“There’s a reason for that … the reason being is that, I, as does the Prime Minister, want to make sure the whole economy remains open.“The worst thing we can do for those venues is to have a sort of open-shut-open-shut strategy because we see infection rates rise because of the close interaction of people.“That’s how the virus spreads, if people are in close spaces in large numbers we see spikes appearing.“The best thing to do then is to work with the industry to make sure that they can open safely and sustainably in the long term, and the best way to do that is to check vaccine status.”Mr Zahawi promised he would do “everything in my power” to avoid another lockdown and is focusing on rolling out a successful booster program.He told viewers he is keen to continue the transition of the virus “from pandemic to endemic status” so Brits can “get life back to as normal as we can make it, as quickly as possible”.NED-3589-Vaccine-Passports-graphic
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