Fauci predicts vaccine ‘open season’ by April

The caller was 17, female and speaking barely above a whisper.

“Lately I’ve been mad all day,” she said on a Friday night in late November. “Mad for no reason. Little things make me mad. I’m angry for no reason. I don’t know if it’s covid . . .”

In a bedroom on the other side of the country a long-haired 16-year-old volunteer for a teen crisis hotline listened through headphones and nodded. “That must be such a strange feeling,” she said.

“I cut myself once,” the caller continued. “Four days ago, maybe. Just to feel something different.”

The pandemic has punished people of all ages, overwhelming parents, isolating grandparents, shortchanging kids. But the emotional fallout for teenagers has been uniquely brutal. At just the age when they are biologically predisposed to seek independence from their families, teens have been trapped at home.

Los Angeles temporarily closed five of its inoculation sites, including Dodger Stadium, one of the country’s largest sites, because of supply shortages.

Mayor Eric Garcetti (D) announced Thursday that the locations would close the next day until at least Saturday, but the city ran out of doses and shut down early, the Los Angeles Times reported. In a televised briefing, Garcetti called the federal vaccine supply uneven, unpredictable and inequitable, and he expressed concern about the recent, reduced shipment that officials received in the past week. The federal government delivered about 16,000 doses — what the city typically distributes in a day — for the week, which was less than what smaller neighboring cities had received, he said.

“This is not where I want to be,” Garcetti said. “It’s not what we deserve.”

Garcetti acknowledged reports that the country’s immunization effort has been hampered by “kinks in the supply chain,” as the Biden administration inherited a host of logistical challenges and a limited reserve of doses.

Yet the available supply nationally has also increased, Garcetti said. The Biden administration boosted weekly allocations to states by nearly 30 percent, The Washington Post reported.

California has received more than 7.8 million doses and administered 5.1 million, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Garcetti said that if given the supply, his city could complete 5 million vaccinations by July. He argued that increasing the supply to other jurisdictions so they can open more inoculation sites should not come at the expense of cities like his, which have the existing infrastructure to vaccinate their residents.

“We’re vaccinating people faster than new vials are arriving here in Los Angeles,” Garcetti said, “and I’m very concerned right now.”

The desperate words of Thalita Rocha went viral on Jan. 14. “We are in a deplorable situation,” she said in a video posted to Instagram. “Whoever has oxygen availability, bring it here to the polyclinic. Many people are dying.” Rocha’s mother-in-law, who had tested positive for the coronavirus, was hospitalized in Manaus, the isolated city in the Brazilian Amazon, when the oxygen supplies ran out that day.

When Rocha learned of the shortage, she asked when the hospital would get more oxygen, only to hear that the director didn’t know.

She watched as some patients were resuscitated in the hallways and others suffocated to death. She saw doctors cry. She dropped to her knees and prayed. “It looked like the end of the world.”

On Jan. 14 and 15, dozens of Brazilians asphyxiated as authorities scrambled to get more oxygen to Manaus. Rocha’s mother-in-law was one of them.

When the pandemic upended their wedding plans in June, Kristine Vejar and Adrienne Rodriguez moved everything online: dress shopping, cake-cutting, even the vows.

“We decided, what is there to lose? Let’s get married and we can have a big party next year,” said Vejar, 43, who co-owns a yarn shop and natural dye studio in Oakland with Rodriguez. The shift not only allowed them to share their special day with 150 friends and family, but it also “means we’re not $10,000 in debt right now.”

While the pandemic has led to a flurry of engagements, it also has put in limbo much of the wedding industry — a $73 billion market, according to data research firm IBISWorld. Most couples — about 80 percent of them — postponed or canceled their ceremonies after the U.S. outbreak began nearly a year ago, said David Wood, president of the Association of Bridal Consultants.

Airlines are starting to promote a new perk to bring passengers back nearly a year after the pandemic started: vaccinated pilots and flight attendants.

On Wednesday, Etihad Airways announced it was “the first airline in the world with 100% vaccinated crew on board.” Not to be outdone, Singapore Airlines Group said its three carriers — Singapore Airlines, SilkAir and Scoot — on Thursday would be among the first airlines in the world to operate flights with all pilots and cabin crew vaccinated.

The CEO of United Airlines said last month that he wants to make the vaccine mandatory for employees, which the airline is still considering. Airline and aviation workers in the United States have asked to be given priority for vaccinations, according to news reports.

The moves come as airlines try to recover from the worst year on record for air travel demand. The International Air Transport Association said demand fell by nearly 66 percent in 2020 compared with the previous year.

The Biden administration on Thursday purchased another 200 million doses of the two coronavirus vaccines authorized for emergency use in the United States, securing sufficient shots by the end of July to cover everyone currently eligible for inoculation.

President Biden, in remarks capping an afternoon tour of the National Institute of Health, announced the deals for 100 million more doses from Pfizer and German company BioNTech and 100 million more from Moderna. The expectation, Biden said, is that the additional doses will be delivered by the end of July.

The purchases increase available supply by 50 percent, bringing the total to 600 million doses. Because both products are two-dose regimens, that would be enough to fully vaccinate 300 million people. An estimated 260 million people in the United States are currently considered eligible to receive a coronavirus vaccine, though trials involving children as young as 12 could widen the pool.

One of Joe Biden’s central campaign promises sounded simple: reopen most schools within his first 100 days in office. The politics and the logistics have proved far more complicated.

The outcome is significant for Biden, with much of the country eager for schools to reopen. But politically, it’s dicey, as he is forced to balance the interests and wishes of many parents and children against the fears of teachers and their unions.

Many parents, including those in politically crucial suburbs, crave the normalcy that will come with the reopening of classrooms, which have been closed for nearly a year in much of the country. But few groups did more to push Biden’s candidacy than teachers unions, which have resisted returning to school buildings in communities across the country.

PARIS — When a coronavirus variant forced Britain into lockdown in December, it triggered alarm across Europe. Within hours, France, Germany and other countries shut their borders or imposed restrictions, leaving thousands of travelers and lorry drivers stranded.

But almost two months on, the European Union’s two most populous nations are increasingly divided over how to confront more highly transmissible variants, including the ones first discovered in Britain and South Africa, that account for a growing number of infections.

Despite a drop in total recent coronavirus cases, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and state leaders extended the country’s lockdown for an additional month on Wednesday, with Merkel warning that the variants have significantly moved the goal posts.

But after arguing for weeks that France was likely also headed into another lockdown, French officials abruptly changed course this week, offering a far more optimistic assessment.