TO FIGHT COVID-19 PROVED EFFECTIVE ONE-DOSE VACCINE€¦ · 30.01.2021 · picture on an online...
Transcript of TO FIGHT COVID-19 PROVED EFFECTIVE ONE-DOSE VACCINE€¦ · 30.01.2021 · picture on an online...
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DAN BALILTY FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
The pronouncements of Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, right, on the virus have disturbed many in his country, where experts say ultra-Orthodox Jews have hurt public health efforts. But the reality, including religion’s role in the crisis, is more complicated. Page A9.
Showdown Over Covid in Israel
A new president took office thismonth determined to fight climatechange. Wall Street investorsthink Tesla is worth more thanGeneral Motors, Toyota, Volks-wagen and Ford put together. AndChina, the world’s biggest carmarket, recently ordered thatmost new cars be powered byelectricity in just 15 years.
Those large forces help explainthe decision by G.M.’s chief execu-tive, Mary T. Barra, that the com-pany will aim to sell only zero-emission cars and trucks by 2035.
Her announcement, just a dayafter President Biden signed anexecutive order on climatechange, blindsided rivals whousually seek to present a unitedmessage on emissions and otherpolicy issues. But it was also yearsin the making. G.M. has had alove-hate relationship with elec-tric cars going back decades, butunder Ms. Barra, who took over in2014, it has inched its way towarda full embrace of the technology.
She has also shown a penchantfor making big moves that herpredecessors might have consid-ered brash or impulsive given thecompany’s reputation for deliber-ate — or plodding, to some — deci-sion making. When Donald J.Trump became president, she
pushed him to relax Obama-erafuel economy standards that G.M.had endorsed when they were putin place. Then, after Mr. Trumplost his re-election bid in Novem-ber, Ms. Barra withdrew from alawsuit seeking to prevent Califor-nia from maintaining its own highfuel standards.
Now, others are searching forthe right response to Ms. Barra’slatest tack. The reaction from au-tomakers and oil and gas compa-nies has so far been muted. ButWashington is abuzz with corpo-rate lobbyists complaining in pri-vate about what they saw as a cal-culated move to burnish G.M.’sand Ms. Barra’s reputations evenas the industry negotiates a newfuel-economy deal with the Biden
G.M. DecisionTo Go ElectricRocks Industry
A Move Into the FutureBlindsides Rivals
By NEAL E. BOUDETTEand CORAL DAVENPORT
Under Mary T. Barra, G.M. hasinched toward electric cars.
MIKE BLAKE/REUTERS
Continued on Page A21
Johnson & Johnson, the onlymajor drug maker developing asingle-dose vaccine for Covid, an-nounced on Friday that its shotprovided strong protectionagainst Covid-19, potentially offer-ing another powerful tool in a des-perate race against a worldwiderise in virus mutations.
But the results came with a sig-nificant cautionary note: The vac-cine’s efficacy rate dropped from72 percent in the United States to57 percent in South Africa, wherea highly contagious variant isdriving most cases.
Studies suggest that this vari-ant also blunts the effectiveness ofCovid vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and No-vavax. The variant has spread toat least 31 countries, including theUnited States, where two caseswere documented this week.
With these results, Johnson &Johnson became the fifth com-pany supported by the U.S. gov-ernment to develop an effectiveCovid vaccine in less than a year,and the only one that doesn’t needtwo doses — a big advantagewhen most countries are strug-gling to get shots in arms morequickly.
The Johnson & Johnson vaccinewas extremely effective in pre-venting severe cases of Covid —including serious illness causedby the variant, the company said.Though less effective than theModerna and Pfizer vaccines nowauthorized in the United States,Johnson & Johnson’s is still con-sidered a strong vaccine by scien-tists. Annual flu vaccines, for ex-ample, are typically 40 to 60 per-cent effective.
“This is a really great result,”said Akiko Iwasaki, immunologistat Yale University. “I hope thisvaccine gets approved as soon aspossible to reduce disease burdenaround the world.”
Johnson & Johnson said that itplanned to apply for emergencyauthorization of the vaccine fromthe Food and Drug Administra-tion as soon as next week, puttingit on track to receive clearance lat-er in February.
“This is the pandemic vaccinethat can make a difference with asingle dose,” said Dr. Paul Stoffels,the chief scientific officer of John-son & Johnson.
The company’s announcementcomes as the Biden administra-tion is pushing to immunize Amer-icans faster even with a tight vac-cine supply. White House officialshave been counting on Johnson &Johnson’s vaccine to ease theshortfall. But the company mayonly have about seven milliondoses ready when the F.D.A. de-cides whether to authorize it, ac-cording to federal health officialsfamiliar with its production, andabout 30 million doses by earlyApril.
The variant from South Africa,
ONE-DOSE VACCINEPROVED EFFECTIVETO FIGHT COVID-19
RED FLAGS ON VARIANTS
Johnson & Johnson SaysShot Adds Protection
in Most Cases
This article is by Carl Zimmer, NoahWeiland and Sharon LaFraniere.
Continued on Page A6
The detection in South Carolina of theSouth African mutation of the coronavi-rus has raised the stakes for gettingresidents vaccinated quickly. PAGE A4
TRACKING AN OUTBREAK A4-8
Variant Puts State on NoticePresident Biden signed an executiveorder that ended what abortion rightsadvocates called the most concertedassault on women’s reproductive healthin the developing world. PAGE A10
INTERNATIONAL A9-12
Reversing Abortion Policy
Cicely Tyson dared to declare herself amoral progenitor, taking on roles thatreflected the dignity of Black women.An appraisal by Wesley Morris. PAGE C1
ARTS C1-6
Defying the Mold With PoiseIn cheering the GameStop trading, ElonMusk created yet another online spec-tacle and tweaked a nemesis. PAGE B1
BUSINESS B1-6
The World’s Richest Troll There are signs that some people, onceimmersed in conspiracy theories, are nolonger believers. PAGE A13
Losing Faith in QAnon
With her book “La Familia Grande,”Camille Kouchner, the French scholar,has pushed her country to a painfulreckoning with incest, and with the eliteswho excuse one another’s sins. PAGE A11
Shedding Shame and Silence
The Chinese telecommunications giantused fake social media accounts tosway policy in its favor. PAGE B1
Huawei’s Influence Campaign
Restaurants in New York City will beallowed to seat customers at 25 percentcapacity starting Feb. 14. PAGE A8
Dining to Come in From Cold
Baseball celebrated the hiring of GeneralManager Kim Ng as a sign of progress ondiversity. But she stands alone. PAGE B7
SPORTSSATURDAY B7-9
A Trailblazer’s Lonely Perch
Jamelle Bouie PAGE A22
EDITORIAL, OP-ED A22-23 With over 500 wins, John Chaney tookthe university to 17 N.C.A.A. basketballtournaments. He was 89. PAGE B11
OBITUARIES B10-12
Temple Hall of Fame Coach
WASHINGTON — MarjorieTaylor Greene had just finishedquestioning whether a plane re-ally flew into the Pentagon onSept. 11, 2001, and flatly statingthat President Barack Obama wassecretly Muslim when she pausedto offer an aside implicating an-other former president in a crime.
“That’s another one of thoseClinton murders,” Ms. Greenesaid, referring to John F. KennedyJr.’s death in a 1999 plane crash,suggesting that he had been as-sassinated because he was a po-tential rival to Hillary Clinton for aNew York Senate seat.
Ms. Greene casually unfurledthe cascade of dangerous and pa-
tently untrue conspiracy theoriesin a previously unreported 40-minute video that was originallyposted to YouTube in 2018. It pro-vides a window into the warpedworldview amplified by the fresh-man Republican congresswomanfrom Georgia, who in the threemonths since she was elected hascreated a national brand for her-self as a conservative provocateurwho has proudly brought thehard-right fringe to the Capitol.
In the process, Ms. Greene, 46,has also created a dilemma for Re-publican leaders, who for monthshave been unwilling to publicly re-buke or punish her in any way for
G.O.P. in a Bind as Hate SpeechAnd Smears Find a House Seat
By CATIE EDMONDSON
Continued on Page A15
President Biden’s proposed $1.9trillion pandemic rescue packageincludes money for many goals:expediting the rollout of coronavi-rus vaccines; reopening schools;expanding unemployment bene-fits; sending more cash paymentsto most Americans.
But when you skip the line-by-line details and look at the overallnumbers, something striking be-comes evident. The administra-tion’s proposal, when combinedwith the $900 billion in pandemicaid agreed to in December, wouldamount to a bigger surge ofspending, both in absolute termsand relative to the depth of the na-tion’s economic hole, than hasbeen attempted in modern Ameri-can history.
Mr. Biden’s proposal — or evenmore limited versions of it that ap-pear to have a better shot of win-ning congressional approval —would pump enough money intothe economy to, in effect, inten-tionally overheat it. Or at min-imum it would push the limits ofhow fast the American economycan rev.
Supporters of aggressive stim-ulus aid view that as a positivething, a means to finally correctthe mistakes of the last recessionand achieve a boom-time econ-omy quickly, rather than muddle
The Stimulus: Right on TimeOr Too Much?
By NEIL IRWIN
Continued on Page A16
In mid-2019, a Reddit user —known as Roaring Kitty on somesocial media accounts — posted apicture on an online forum depict-ing a single $53,000 investment inGameStop, the video-game re-tailer.
The post attracted little atten-tion, except from a few people who
mocked the bet on the strugglingcompany. “This dude should sellnow,” a Reddit user named cm-cewen wrote at the time.
But Roaring Kitty was not de-terred. Over the next year, he be-gan tweeting frequently aboutGameStop and making YouTubeand TikTok videos about his in-vestment. He also started live-streaming his financial ideas.Other Reddit users with monikerslike Ackilles and Bowlerguy92 be-
gan following his every move andpiling into GameStop.
“IF HE IS IN WE ARE IN,” oneuser wrote on a Reddit boardcalled WallStreetBets on Tuesday.
Roaring Kitty — who is Keith
Gill, 34, a former financial educa-tor for an insurance firm in Mass-achusetts — has now become acentral figure in this week’s stockmarket frenzy. Inspired by himand a small crew of individual in-vestors who gathered around him,hordes of young online traderstook GameStop’s stock on a wildride, pitting themselves againstsophisticated hedge funds and up-ending Wall Street’s norms in the
How a Guy in His Basement Helped Fuel the GameStop FrenzyBy NATHANIEL POPPERand KELLEN BROWNING
Beating Hedge Fundsat Their Own Game
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LONDON — When the pizza-size boxes of the Pfizer vaccine ar-rived midday Thursday, an hourbehind schedule, it set off a raceagainst the clock at the Blooms-bury Surgery, a medical clinic inLondon’s Camden district that hasbeen transformed during the pan-demic into a humming vaccina-tion center.
Because the vaccine could onlybe refrigerated for three daysonce it reached the clinic, healthcare workers knew they had to in-ject 400 doses a day by Sunday touse up the supply. There was al-ready a line of people waiting for“jabs,” so doctors swiftly diluted
the vaccine, put the vials on traysand handed them out to a team ofassistants.
This is the front line in what hasbecome the most ambitiouspeacetime mass mobilization inmodern British history. Britainhas set up dozens of vaccinationcenters in sports stadiums,churches, mosques, even an open-air museum in the Midlands, fa-miliar to television views as theset for the popular crime series
“Peaky Blinders.”With nearly eight million peo-
ple, or 11.7 percent of the popula-tion, having already gotten theirfirst shot, Britain’s pace of vacci-nation is the fastest of any largenation in the world. Only Israeland the United Arab Emirates aremoving faster.
The rapid rollout is a rare suc-cess for a country whose responseto the coronavirus has otherwisebeen bungled — plagued by de-lays, reversals and mixed mes-sages. All of which have contribut-ed to a death toll that recentlysurged past 100,000 and cementedBritain’s status as the worst-hitcountry in Europe.
Success has brought its ownheadaches: Doctors now worry
Rare Pandemic Win as Britons Line Up for ‘Jabs’By MARK LANDLER
and BENJAMIN MUELLERNational Health Service
Inoculates 11.7% ofthe Population
A 79-year-old received the Pfizer vaccine at the Bloomsbury Surgery in London as his daughterlooked on. The rapid vaccine rollout is a rare success in the country’s fight against the virus.
ANDREW TESTA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Continued on Page A7
To keep the West Wing healthy, theBiden administration has traded Zoomfor crowded meetings and kept doorsclosed for working lunches. PAGE A17
NATIONAL A13-21
Emptier Corridors of Power
Late Edition
VOL. CLXX . . . . No. 58,954 © 2021 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JANUARY 30, 2021
Today, sunny and cold, less windy,high 29. Tonight, clear to partlycloudy, low 17. Tomorrow, increas-ingly cloudy, cold again, high 28.Weather map appears on Page A20.
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