Federal vaccine mandate for health-care workers starts to take effect

About 14.5 million Americans have signed up to get health coverage this year through Affordable Care Act insurance marketplaces, eclipsing the previous record enrollment by nearly 2 million.

The popularity of ACA health plans is a substantial slice of good news for President Biden, who has made expanding access to affordable health insurance one of his principal domestic policy aims, while some approaches he favors to achieve that goal have stalled on Capitol Hill.

The enrollment figure is the heart of a report to be released Thursday by the Department of Health and Human Services. The White House rushed out a statement from the president in advance, in which Biden said he was proud that the sign-ups are “the highest numbers ever produced in an open enrollment period.” The tally is not quite final, so it probably will be higher in the end.

The Department of Health and Human Services repeatedly ignored recommendations to improve its pandemic response and is at “high risk” of mismanaging a future crisis, a government watchdog warned on Thursday.

Investigators “found persistent deficiencies” in how the agency has led the response to the coronavirus pandemic and past public health emergencies dating to 2007, the Government Accountability Office concluded, citing continued problems coordinating among public health agencies, collecting infectious-disease surveillance data and securing appropriate testing and medical supplies, among areas it said are unresolved.

“The department’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted longstanding concerns we have raised about its ability to execute its role leading federal public health and medical preparedness for, and response to, such public health emergencies,” the GAO wrote in its report, which was shared with nine congressional committees.

LONDON — After the death of a close friend, Kieron McArdle was struggling, and three friends came over to help him celebrate his 50th birthday in his backyard in Coleshill, a town in Warwickshire, England. Less than an hour later, the police were banging on the front door.

McArdle was fined $134, which he said he was content to pay, as he understood he had violated the ban on social gatherings in place at the time, in March of last year. But he’s incredulous about the scandal of a string of parties — including a birthday celebration — at the British prime minister’s Downing Street office and residence over the past two years.

“It’s galling to watch. It’s one rule for them, one for us,” said McArdle, a company director. “What they did was exactly the same as what I did,” he said, only “I was happy to pay my fine. I broke the rules and accept responsibility. Why don’t they?”

Britain is awaiting the findings of dual investigations into government parties — more than a dozen have emerged — that allegedly broke the government’s own coronavirus rules. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has apologized for three of the gatherings but stopped short of admitting any personal wrongdoing.

For people outside of government who have been punished for breaking covid-19 rules, it’s been infuriating to observe what they say are double standards. They say their trespasses look a lot like what the people at the center of power have been doing — and not once or twice but throughout the pandemic — without consequence.

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona on Thursday called on school leaders to bolster systems still reeling from the ongoing coronavirus pandemic — challenging them to “reimagine education” and to take advantage of existing federal aid.

Since covid-19 emerged, schools have been grappling with disruptions in learning and shortages of teachers, bus drivers and cafeteria workers. Heading into 2022, most of the country’s 51 million children were back in classrooms, but the highly contagious omicron variant has resulted in a slew of setbacks.

With a growing consensus that in-person learning must go on, Cardona urged schools to use the approximately $122 billion in American Rescue Plan funding that has already been distributed to states. The funds were originally allocated for safe school reopenings, but Cardona said schools should now turn their full focus toward helping students recover — asking them to “set a goal of giving every child that fell behind during the pandemic at least 30 minutes per day, three times a week, with a well-trained tutor.”

Cardona also said schools should aim to double the number of counselors, social workers and mental health workers in their buildings.

“Reopening schools and keeping them open, while critical, is insufficient,” Cardona said during his speech at the Department of Education. “Our hardest and most important work lies ahead. It’ll be what we are judged against.”

The doctor opens the front door. Never mind introductions. “I know who you are. Do you think these guys would let you get this close to me, if we didn’t know who you are?” Across the street is a security agent in Nikes, a badge on his belt. He’s not the only one watching.

“I mean, isn’t it amazing?” the doctor says. “Here I am, with cameras around my house.”

The house is modest for Washington: stucco and brick, cozy and cramped. No obvious tokens of celebrity or esteem. Icicles on the dormant hot tub out back. Bottles of red wine and olive oil on the kitchen counter.

“It’s messy because, as you know, in covid times, nobody comes over. So nobody cares.”

People are coming by outside, though. They are snapping photos. Thousands of marchers are descending on the capital to rally against vaccine mandates. Are some of them staking out Anthony Fauci’s home?

The security agents “usually leave at a certain time,” the doctor says. “But tonight they’re going to sleep in our guest room.”

Year 3 of covid times. Nearly 900,000 Americans are dead. An average of 2,000 (mostly unvaccinated) Americans are dying every day now, even though there is a simple measure to limit such suffering — made possible in large part by the Vaccine Research Center founded under Fauci. And yet many Americans would rather take their chances with a virus than a vaccine, because there’s more than just a virus going around. There’s something else in the air.

Symptoms include rage, delusion, opportunism and extreme behavior — like comparing Fauci to Nazi doctor Josef Mengele (as Lara Logan did on Fox News in November), or setting out for Washington with an AR-15 and a kill list of “evil” targets that included Fauci (as a California man did last month).

“Surrealistic,” the doctor says.

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, who is unvaccinated and revealed this week that she tested positive for coronavirus, dined again at a New York City restaurant Wednesday night, flouting local health and safety measures calling for positive cases to isolate.

Elio’s, an Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side, has faced blowback after Palin dined indoors at the establishment on Saturday, in violation of the city’s dining mandate for people to show proof of vaccination. The Manhattan judge in Palin’s defamation trial against the New York Times revealed Monday that the proceedings would be delayed because the Republican tested positive for the virus. It’s unclear when Palin first tested positive.

Even though local guidelines advise people who test positive to be in isolation for five days after their positive test, Palin returned to the restaurant on Wednesday night. In photos posted to Mediaite, the first to report the news, the former Republican vice-presidential nominee, who has said she would only get vaccinated against the coronavirus “over my dead body,” was seen dining at a heated outdoor area of the restaurant. The city’s vaccine requirement does not apply for outdoor dining.

Here’s what to know about the top coronavirus stories around the globe from news service reports.

• In Canada, truck drivers upset by a federal government vaccine mandate for cross-border drivers converged on the capital, Ottawa, on Thursday, to stage a protest. Industry officials say 90 percent of drivers traversing the U.S. frontier are vaccinated but a minority have refused, saying the mandate contravenes personal freedom.
• Sweden has decided against recommending coronavirus vaccines for children ages 5 to 11. “With the knowledge we have today, with a low risk for serious disease for kids, we don’t see any clear benefit with vaccinating them,” Health Agency official Britta Bjorkholm said at a news conference Thursday. She added that the decision could be revisited if the research changed or if a new variant altered the pandemic.
• The European Medicines Agency on Thursday gave the green light to the use of Pfizer’s antiviral covid-19 pill for treating adults at risk of severe illness, as the region scrambles to boost its arsenal to fight the omicron variant.
• In Germany, the number of new coronavirus infections exceeded 200,000 in a day for the first time on Thursday, hitting staffing at companies such as Lufthansa Cargo.

Google-owned YouTube said it had permanently banned prominent conservative media figure Don Bongino from its site after he repeatedly broke its rules on posting coronavirus misinformation.

Bongino, who hosts a show on Fox News in addition to talk radio shows and online broadcasts, had been given a strike and a week-long suspension from YouTube earlier in January for saying in one of his videos that masks were useless against the virus. He uploaded another video later in the month that also broke the platform’s rules on coronavirus misinformation. When he tried to upload a third video, the company banned him permanently.

YouTube has had rules against posting false or misleading information about the coronavirus and vaccines since the beginning of the pandemic, although critics have said the company enforces its rules unevenly. In September, it took down the accounts of several anti-vaccine influencers after years of research by misinformation researchers suggested the platform played a role in the growth of vaccine hesitancy.