Spacewalking astronauts had to take extra safety precautions Saturday after ridding their suits of any toxic ammonia from the International Space Station’s external cooling system.Victor Glover and Mike Hopkins had no trouble removing and venting a couple of old cables to clear any ammonia lingering in the lines. But so much ammonia spewed out of the first hose that Mission Control worried some of the frozen white flakes might have gotten on their suits.Hopkins was surprised at the amount of ammonia unleashed into the vacuum of space.”Oh, yeah, look at that go. Did you see that?” he asked flight controllers. “There’s more than I thought.”Even though the stream of ammonia was directed away from the astronauts and the space station, Hopkins said some icy crystals may have come in contact with his helmet. As a result, Mission Control said it was going to be conservative and require inspections.The astronauts’ first suit check found nothing amiss. “Looks clean,” Hopkins called down.NASA did not want any ammonia getting inside the space station and contaminating the cabin atmosphere. The astronauts used long tools to vent the hoses and stayed clear of the nozzles, to reduce the risk of ammonia contact.Once the ammonia hoses were emptied, the astronauts moved one of them to a more central location near the NASA hatch, in case it’s needed on the opposite end of the station. The ammonia cables were added years ago following a cooling system leak.No apparent residue leftAs the nearly seven-hour spacewalk ended, Mission Control said the astronauts had spent enough time in the sunlight to bake off any ammonia residue from their suits. Indeed, once Glover and Hopkins were back inside, their crewmates said they could smell no ammonia but still wore gloves while handling the suits.The hose work should have been completed during a spacewalk a week ago but was put off along with other odd jobs when power upgrades took longer than expected.Saturday’s other chores included: replacing an antenna for helmet cameras, rerouting ethernet cables, tightening connections on a European experiment platform, and installing a metal ring on the hatch thermal cover.Eager to get these station improvements done before the astronauts head home this spring, Mission Control ordered up the bonus spacewalk for Glover and Hopkins, who launched last November on SpaceX. They teamed up for back-to-back spacewalks 1½ months ago and were happy to chalk up another.”It was a good day,” Glover said once back inside.Although most of their efforts paid off, there were a few snags.The spacewalk got started nearly an hour late, so the men could replace the communication caps beneath their helmets in order to hear properly. A few hours later, Glover’s right eye started watering. The irritation soon passed, but later affected his left eye.Then as Glover wrapped up his work, a bolt came apart and floated away along with the washers, becoming the latest pieces of space junk.”Sorry about that,” Glover said. “No, no, it’s not your fault,” Mission Control assured him.It was the sixth spacewalk — and, barring an emergency, the last — for this U.S.-Russian-Japanese crew of seven. All but one was led by NASA.
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Day: March 13, 2021
A year into the coronavirus pandemic that is disproportionately ravaging African American lives both physically and economically, efforts are underway to target racism as a public health crisis that shortens lives and costs millions of dollars.“Systemic racism defines the Black experience in our nation,” said Virginia Democratic State Delegate Lashrecse Aird, who co-sponsored a resolution approved by lawmakers in February that makes Virginia the first state in the South to declare racism a public health crisis.“It provides the framework for all of us to formally and finally reckon with those injustices so we can build a more equitable and just society for all,” Aird said in a statement to VOA.The Virginia resolution cites more than 100 studies that link racism to negative health outcomes. The research indicates the cumulative experience of racism throughout a person’s life can induce chronic stress and health conditions that may lead to otherwise preventable deaths. Overall life expectancy for African Americans is nearly 3 ½ years shorter than for white people.“Virginians of color, especially Black Virginians, deserve no further delay of the Commonwealth’s public recognition of this centuries-old crisis,” Robert Barnette Jr., president of the Virginia State Conference of the NAACP, told VOA in a virtual news conference.“We know systemic racism manifests itself as a determinant to public health through persistent racial disparities in all areas of our lives,” he said.The Virginia resolution would create a watchdog agency to promote policies that address systemic racism and its impact on public health. It requires state elected officials, their staff, and state employees to undergo training to recognize racism. Community engagement throughout the state will also be promoted to detect racism.The legislation is a big step for lawmakers in Richmond, the former capital of the Confederacy, and a state with a checkered history of racially discriminatory and segregationist activities. Gov. Ralph Northam is expected to approve the declaration soon.Health inequalityVirginia joins Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin and dozens of municipalities that have issued similar nonbinding resolutions in the last year. However, some communities are hoping to use the measures to direct additional funding for research and grants to support intervention programs.While some communities addressed racism as a public health emergency before the coronavirus pandemic, COVID-19 has underlined the health disparities among communities of color.FILE – Melissa Brooks, from left, Jordan Brown, Jazmine Brooks, Shari Moore and and Laila Brooks, all of Baltimore, study photographs of Black people killed by police that cover a fence near the White House, Washington, Aug. 25, 2020.“Racism is literally killing Black and brown people. It’s a public health crisis, and it’s beyond time to treat it as such,” said Mayor Pro Tem Natasha Harper-Madison of Austin, Texas, which declared racism a public health crisis in July 2020.“The inequities are countless, and they aren’t because African Americans are inherently inferior. They are the fruits of generations’ worth of explicitly discriminatory and racist policies,” Harper-Madison said.A nationwide poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 70% of African Americans believe people are treated unfairly based on race or ethnicity when they seek medical care. Additionally, 50% of Black people said they do not trust the U.S. health care system.“It’s hard day-to-day when you’re constantly being denied or overlooked. It has an effect on your mental health,” said Janette Boyd Martin, president of the NAACP in Charlottesville, Virginia.According to the American Psychiatric Association, half of African Americans do not seek help for mental health issues, often because they fear the stigma some associate with it. Overall, only one in three Black adults who need mental health care ultimately receives it.Legacy of mistrustHistorically, racism in the U.S. health care system has long left African Americans burdened by chronic illness, reduced access to healthy foods and preventative treatment. As a result, Black people suffer more frequently than white people from diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, maternal mortality and infant mortality.African Americans have also been the subjects of unethical medical research programs.FILE – People wait in line for the COVID-19 vaccine in Paterson, N.J., Jan. 21, 2021.In 1932, the U.S. government launched a medical experiment on the progression of syphilis, studying nearly 400 Black men who suffered from the disease. At the time of the study, there was no known cure for syphilis. The men never gave informed consent or received proper treatment. Even when penicillin was used to treat syphilis in 1947, researchers did not offer it to them. The study ended after 40 years when the research became public and caused a national outcry.Another case involved Henrietta Lacks, a poor Black woman from Baltimore, Maryland, who in 1951 was diagnosed with terminal cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins University. Her unique cells, collected without her consent, were patented by medical researchers who reaped millions of dollars. Called “HeLa” cells, they continue to be used in medical research around the world.Changing the course of historyIn January, U.S. President Joe Biden launched a task force to examine ways to reverse persistent racial and ethnic disparities in health care.“What’s needed to ensure equity in the recovery is not limited to health and health care,” said Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, chairwoman of the COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force.“We have to have conversations about housing stability and food security and educational equity, and pathways to economic opportunities and promise,” she said.The task force plans to target at-risk locations and provide medical resources to vulnerable communities struggling with social and economic inequalities.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said Blacks, Latinos and Native Americans are three times more likely to die from COVID-19. In addition, people of color are infected with the disease and hospitalized at higher rates than the white population. Despite the high rates of infection, Black people are being vaccinated at half the rate of white Americans, according to the CDC.In Utah, where racial disparities persist, an effort to declare racism a public health crisis was postponed. State Representative Sandra Hollins withdrew her sponsored resolution at the conclusion of this year’s legislation session.Some Utah lawmakers questioned the policy implications and said they did not understand the link between race and health care.“People don’t know what racism is,” Hollins, the only African American in the state Legislature, said recently in a televised interview.She said she will reintroduce the measure in 2022.“My definition of what racism is as a Black woman who grew up in the South may be different than people who may have grown up in Utah. The definitions are different, and that’s part of the conversation we need to have,” she said.
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The United States and other wealthy countries are standing in the way of low- and middle-income countries seeking better access to COVID-19 vaccines, health-equity advocates say.South Africa and India have led an effort at the World Trade Organization (WTO) to waive drug companies’ exclusive rights to manufacture their vaccines during the coronavirus pandemic.Countries with major pharmaceutical industries, including the United States, several European countries and Japan, have opposed the waiver. WTO, the global trade regulating body, operates by consensus, so the proposal fails without unanimous support.“It is shameful that U.S. policy is prioritizing profits over life, and doing so in the name of the American people,” Emily Sanderson, senior grassroots advocacy coordinator for the activist group Health GAP, said in a statement.The pharmaceutical industry says patents are not the biggest barriers, however. Supplies and expertise are the major limitations, executives say. But the industry says novel partnerships already in place will meet the demand for vaccines.Vaccine rollout has been highly unequal so far. While deliveries are accelerating in many higher-income countries, “there’s over 100 countries where not a single (dose of) vaccine has been delivered,” said Matthew Kavanagh, director of the Georgetown University Global Health Policy & Politics Initiative.U.S. President Joe Biden announced plans Thursday to vaccinate enough Americans by July 4 to get life nearly back to normal.Meanwhile, A healthcare worker receives a dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine against the COVID-19 coronavirus as South Africa proceeds with its inoculation campaign at the Klerksdorp Hospital on Feb. 18, 2021.Manufacturers in waitingAdvocates say more people would get vaccinated if drug companies would relinquish control of their products.“We know that in India, in South Africa, in Senegal, in Thailand, there are producers that within six months could start making vaccines if the information about how to do so was shared with them,” Kavanagh said.Plus, he added, the vaccines were developed in a large part with public funding from taxpayers in the United States and Europe, which should limit drug companies’ rights to them.The conflict has echoes of the fight over HIV/AIDS drugs two decades ago. Over the vigorous opposition of drug companies and their host governments, several developing countries broke patents to produce lifesaving antiretroviral medications at much lower cost than the companies were charging.It ultimately opened the door for developing-world manufacturers to produce low-cost generic drugs that have helped control HIV/AIDS.Many say those lessons should be applied to COVID-19.“If a temporary waiver to patents cannot be issued now, during these unprecedented times, when will be the right time?” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on Twitter earlier this month.We need equal access to life-saving tools everywhere, if we are to end the #COVID19 pandemic. If a temporary waiver to patents cannot be issued now, during these unprecedented times, when will be the right time? Solidarity is the only way out. #VaccinEquityhttps://t.co/VTSholGOpZ— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) March 4, 2021Supply bottlenecksBut the pharmaceutical industry says revoking intellectual property will not get more shots in arms.“The bottlenecks are the capacity, the scarcity of raw materials, scarcity of ingredients, and it is about the know-how,” Thomas Cueni, head of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA), told Reuters.“A better approach is to continue the intense collaboration already taking place between companies, governments and other partners around the world,” Megan Van Etten, senior public affairs director at the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), an industry trade group, said in a statement.Rival companies have teamed up to increase supplies of COVID-19 vaccines.Earlier this month, Merck announced it would help to manufacture Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine in a deal brokered by the Biden administration. Sanofi is producing shots for Pfizer-BioNTech after its own vaccine suffered a setback. And AstraZeneca partnered with the Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine maker, to boost supplies of its vaccine.All told, the industry plans to manufacture 10 billion doses of vaccine this year, which would in theory be about enough to immunize the world’s entire adult population.Pharmaceutical companies say intellectual property protections were how the industry was able to produce safe and effective vaccines against a novel virus in less than a year.“Undermining the very policies that have helped research companies move so quickly against the pandemic won’t provide relief for people and will leave us all less prepared to confront future public health threats,” PhRMA’s Van Etten said.
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