U.S. aid en route to India as new cases continue to break records

After a year of battling the coronavirus on the front lines, health-care workers Charmaine Lamsin and Dennis Bowman were overdue for a vacation when they spotted a cheap flight to Las Vegas in March.

For just $33 per person, the husband and wife could fly from their Seattle home to the entertainment capital of the world, where hotel prices were as unbelievable as the airfare. They booked a reservation at ARIA Resort & Casino, a luxury property, for $85 a night.

“It was their premier suite. … It was facing the Strip, and we had a great view,” Lamsin says. “It was like the best Vegas vacation I’ve had actually.”

Lamsin and Bowman are not the only people returning to the city after a hiatus from travel. According to hotel and flight booking data from Priceline, Las Vegas has been one of 2021′s most popular domestic travel destinations. The number of visitors has been climbing consistently for months, along with the Strip’s gambling revenue.

A day after Gov. Larry Hogan (R) repealed Maryland’s universal outdoor masking order, some of the state’s biggest jurisdictions were grappling Thursday with what to do.

The repeal means many large gatherings may happen without face coverings: outdoor weddings, big neighborhood cookouts, festivals and parades — events at which federal health officials suggest everyone should still be masked.

And given that the state’s repeal order doesn’t distinguish between unvaccinated and vaccinated participants, some local governments that have the option of ignoring the repeal are trying to figure out how to send a stronger message that unvaccinated people should keep those masks on.

Virginia Tech cornerback Caleb Farley, widely considered a strong candidate to be selected Thursday in the first round of the NFL draft, announced Wednesday that he tested positive for the coronavirus.

Farley said in a video that he felt great and was asymptomatic, but he will not be able to attend the draft in person, as had been planned.

A first-team all-ACC honoree in 2019 who opted out of the 2020 season because of “deep concerns about staying healthy” amid the pandemic, Farley’s invitation to the draft reflected a consensus that he was likely to go early despite the layoff and questions about the health of his back.

In 1974, a Japanese soldier named Hiroo Onoda was persuaded to leave the jungle of Lubang Island in the Philippines, where he had been for 29 years believing that World War II was still underway. Only when his former commanding officer, by then a bookseller, was brought to him to reverse his orders did Onoda capitulate and leave the jungle.

After a year of trauma, shutdowns and treating most people like they’re made of fire, I find Onoda’s story very relatable.

Trust issues are a bear, and mine have grown like Jack’s beanstalk since the coronavirus pandemic began. I see people with no masks or ineptly worn masks, standards relaxing and even my most wonderfully uptight friends making travel plans while I peer out from the jungle in my head, conditioned for vigilance and not believing the war is over.

President Biden offered voters a singular promise when he campaigned for the White House: He would do a better job on the coronavirus pandemic than Donald Trump.

Accepting the Democratic presidential nomination in August, he pledged that “the first step I will take will be to get control of the virus that’s ruined so many lives.” Declaring victory three months later, he said, “I will spare no effort — or commitment — to turn this pandemic around.”

Now, 100 days into his presidency, Biden can point to a host of figures showing that he has kept his promise, from plunging death rates to soaring vaccination numbers. But the hard part may be just beginning, as the mission switches from churning out vaccines to getting people to actually get them — especially the reluctant, the remote and the disadvantaged.

Pfizer and its German partner, BioNTech, are preparing to halve the minimum order size of their coronavirus vaccine in the United States, a boon to smaller medical providers poised to play an increasingly important role in the inoculation of hesitant and hard-to-reach groups.

By the end of May, the companies will make it possible to order their vaccine in increments of 450 doses, instead of the current 1,170-dose configurations that have proved difficult to manage for some physician offices and pharmacies in rural areas.

“The number-one ask that we get is a smaller pack size,” Tanya Alcorn, Pfizer’s vice president for supply chain, said in an interview.

The two-dose regimen has been a workhorse of the immunization effort in the United States, accounting for more than half of the total doses administered. The new configuration will allow more primary care doctors, reluctant to accept doses that may go unused, to participate in vaccinations, said David Bazzo, president of the California Academy of Family Physicians. That, in turn, could help persuade reluctant people to get immunized.

“If you go into see your doctor and your doctor recommends you get the vaccine, that might convince a hesitant person,” he said.

The federal government is working through changes to the ancillary kits that accompany vaccine shipments to accommodate the change, according to a federal official familiar with the developments who was not authorized to discuss them.

The minimum order size for Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot vaccine is 100 doses. Moderna’s minimum has been 100 doses as well, but it is jumping to 140 as the company begins shipping vials containing 15 doses, rather than 10.

Pfizer started work on a smaller pack size earlier this year, Alcorn said, as part of an effort that involves ordering equipment, modifying production lines and performing tests. The new pack size will come in the same thermal shipping container housing the larger orders, with dry ice as well as GPS and a temperature tracker. The company anticipates distributing 4.5 million doses per week in the new pack size.

Pfizer and BioNTech are also examining ways to ease storage of the vaccine, including with ready-to-use vials already containing the diluent currently added at vaccination sites and a freeze-dried option that would come in a single-dose, powder-filled vial that could be kept at refrigerated conditions. The ready-to-use product could be available by the end of the year, Alcorn said, while the freeze-dried option is undergoing a trial and could be ready next year.

Comedian-turned-podcast host Joe Rogan offered his listeners a dubious bit of advice on Monday, don’t get vaccinated if you are young and healthy.

In a world where media confidence has consistently eroded over the past several decades, there is a large audience for those who purport to be making their own independent evaluations of situations.

People like reporters for The Washington Post are seen as hopelessly biased and pushing an agreed-upon narrative whereas people like Rogan or the anonymous “Q” are encouraging people to think for themselves — after a little push in a certain direction.

Skepticism is good and one should critically evaluate the information being received. But what often happens is that “thinking for oneself” becomes a proxy for “believing what I want to believe.” That, as it turns out, is a good way to generate attention and money.

After weeks of pushback from the cruise industry, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday detailed a pathway for U.S. cruising to resume by mid-July. And, as with most travel guidelines in the pandemic era, vaccinations will be key.

Notably, the CDC said, ships will be able to skip “simulated” test voyages — one of the requirements in the agency’s conditional sailing order (CSO) for trips to resume — if the cruise line can attest that at least 98 percent of the crew and 95 percent of passengers are fully vaccinated. That would allow cruise operators to bypass a time-consuming step on the way to returning to sea with paying passengers.

The public health agency’s new parameters came in a letter to industry executives that was obtained by The Washington Post. The letter followed twice-a-week meetings that officials from cruise lines and the CDC have been holding since April 12.