Hi friends,
There has been an uptick of the percentage of Americans with Long Covid from 5.3 percent in October 2023 to 6.8 percent now. This means that about 17.5 million Americans are living with a range of symptoms that, in most cases, “limits their day-to-day activity,” and in one of five cases, constitute “debilitating illness.”
While some people are convinced the pandemic is behind us, we saw
the second-biggest surge of infections across the US this winter, as measured by available wastewater data.
I had Covid in December, as did my partner. His symptoms lingered for weeks and finally went away. His mom has it now. And that’s just our family.
Higher infection rates increase the number of people with Long Covid. If you have the booster, you also decrease the risk of a more severe case.
A paltry 13 percent of Brooklynites have gotten the bivalent Covid booster; among people over 65, fewer than 1 in 4 are boosted. Queens is a little better, with 31 percent of seniors boosted. Both Staten Island and the Bronx have 28 percent uptake among seniors, but just 10 percent overall. Manhattan has the strongest vax rate of any borough, and fewer than 1 in 5 residents have received the booster.
For information on obtaining Covid vaccines and boosters in NYC, go here.
The cases were from 2022, when the petitioners attended school board meetings with mask requirements.
The court added: “Skeptics are free to — and did — voice their opposition through multiple means, but disobeying a masking requirement is not one of them.”
There are almost no mask requirements left anywhere (except the Park Slope Food Coop, on Wednesdays and Thursdays). I’m frequently one of the only people masked in indoor public spaces, and while I don’t enjoy masking, I believe I dodged a new Covid infection last week because of my vigilance.
Avoiding infection is especially important for folks with Long Covid.
Take care and continue to mask. Here are the latest guidelines for Covid and other respiratory infections.
The demands of caring for sick or disabled family members increase when chronic illness and long-term disabilities increase.
Call on your NYS representative to expand New York’s Paid Medical Leave program. This quick action is from Moms Rising.
Children are starving to death in Gaza. World Central Kitchen’s first delivery using a sea route via Cyprus, landed on Thursday and was distributed.
Donations to World Central Kitchen during Ramadan are being doubled by a matching grant.
Like a good teacher, I’m repeating myself. This is especially important on Mondays.
A series of primary votes, beginning in Michigan, has shown the strength of the movement to end US military support for Israel and demand a ceasefire. Organizers urged voters to vote uncommitted.
In Michigan, 13 percent of Democratic voters chose ‘uncommitted’, far exceeding the organizers’ expectations. The movement spread to other states. With minimal organizing, 29 percent of Dems in Hawaii voted uncommitted.
Uncommitted now has delegates who will go to the Democratic national convention – delegates who could use the organizing experience they gained so quickly to make their voices heard among their party, hopefully influencing the candidate’s platform on Gaza. Minnesota won 11 delegates, Hawaii got seven and Michigan has two.
In Georgia, without an uncommitted option, 6,500 voters answered the call to submit blank ballots. We also lack an uncommitted option, so we have the Leave It Blank NY campaign.
Since only 1% of ballots are typically submitted blank in New York elections and the presidency is the only elected office on the ballot April 2nd, submitting blank ballots is a powerful way to make visible the thousands of New Yorkers who want Biden [to] invest our hard earned tax dollars into our communities, not in sending more bombs [to kill Palestinians].
This won’t affect the number of delegates that Biden receives in our state. It will send a message.
Take the pledge to leave your ballot blank; tell friends to leave it blank; and on April 2, leave it blank.
And we won’t stop sending messages directly to the president.
Call on the president (again!) to stop supplying Israel with weapons.
The voter turnout gap is growing in the US. According to a new study by the Brennan Center, the gap between white voters and black voters is most evident
in jurisdictions that were stripped of a federal civil rights-era voting protection a decade ago.
The protections in Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act required some states and localities with a history of voting discrimination to obtain federal approval before they could make any changes to their voting laws or procedures.
If there’s any doubt that the Supreme Court is on the ballot in 2024, the disastrous Shelby County decision from 2013, which gutted Section 5’s pre-clearance protections, would be reason enough.
[T]he effect of the Shelby County decision continues to widen the turnout gap. The turnout gap between formerly covered and noncovered areas was larger in 2022 than in any election since the ruling, researchers said.
There were hundreds of thousands of voters affected by new voter suppression legislation that Section 5 protections would have blocked throughout
Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia, as well as certain parts of California, Florida, Michigan, New York, North Carolina and South Dakota.
The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would update the standards of pre-clearance; this is essential, because the Court blocked pre-clearance with the spurious claim that the protections were no longer necessary.
There is ample evidence that they are quite necessary. Fighting against violations after discriminatory measures are already in place is much more difficult and may take several election cycles. A 2021 Supreme Court ruling made those cases harder to win.
Voting is still the mother of all rights.
Tell your Congressional delegation that we need to pass the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
with love,
L