Good morning, it’s Thursday.
On this day in 1882, Dr. Robert Koch, German physician and microbiologist, announced his discovery of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacillus that causes tuberculosis (otherwise known as TB).
Hence, it’s World TB Day. This year’s theme is “Invest to End TB. Save Lives.”
Actually, Dr. Koch has a lot of infectious disease discoveries to his name, having also pinpointed the specific causative agents of cholera and anthrax. He is regarded as one of the main founders of modern bacteriology, but for our purposes here, we’re focusing just on TB.
TB is a highly infectious bacteria that mainly impacts the lungs. It is spread through tiny droplets that are released when a person who has TB coughs or sneezes.
It’s believed that TB has been around quite literally for millions of years, and has been plaguing humans and animals alike (yes, animals can get TB) for several centuries.
Throughout the 1600-1800s TB caused 25 percent of all deaths in Europe and the U.S.
In 1889, Dr. Hermann Biggs convinced the NYC Department of Health and Hygiene that doctors should report TB cases, leading to the first published report on the disease in 1893. The CDC, meanwhile, published nationwide TB data for the first time in 1953, reporting 84,304 cases of TB in the United States.
A total of 1 million people died of TB in the U.S. alone in 2020, and 10 million people around the globe were infected, according to the CDC. Worldwide, it is the 13th leading cause of death and the second leading infectious disease killer after COVID-19.
The biggest problem here is that multidrug-resistant TB is growing, though overall incidence is falling steadily. We have the means within our reach to end this epidemic, we need to diagnose and treat people early – that’s the key. With appropriate treatment, TB can almost always be cured.
We don’t generally vaccinate against TB in the U.S. largely because of the low risk of infection (and a few other reasons), though a lot of people who are born elsewhere are inoculated against it still.
A little historical note: Not only did New York City launch the first campaign in the entire U.S. to control TB, but there’s an upstate connection to the disease as well.
The North Country Village of Saranac Lake was once a destination for TB suffers who were seeking the curative powers of fresh mountain air. It was also the home of the first ever laboratory built for the study of TB in the U.S.
In the 1870s, Dr. Edward Livingston Trudeau was very sick with TB and came to the Saranac Lake area. He was surprised to see that his health improved, and so settled in the village and established the nation’s first successful sanatorium for the treatment of TB.
There will be light rain in the morning and temperatures won’t break 50 degrees today.
In the headlines…
The US government has formally declared that members of the Russian armed forces have committed war crimes in Ukraine, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.
Blinken repeatedly raised the brutality in the city of Mariupol, Ukraine and he compared it to similar Russian campaigns against Grozny in the Second Chechen War and Aleppo during the Syrian civil war.
A Russian official accused the United States of inciting “Russophobia” after the State Department declared President Vladimir Putin’s actions as war crimes.
Putin aide Anatoly Chubais resigned and left Russia because of the war and has no intention of returning.
Russia is moving to expel some American diplomats from the country after the U.S. removed 12 Russian diplomats late last month.
President Joe Biden has arrived in Europe for a four-day trip with the aim of keeping up pressure on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, amid sanctions fatigue and splits over energy sanctions among US allies.
Biden will not press his European counterparts to make that move when he meets with them during a special summit of the Group of 7 industrialized nations this afternoon, his top aides said.
NATO estimates that up to 40,000 Russian troops have been killed, injured, captured or gone missing during the first month of the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine.
Repeated attempts by the United States’ top defense and military leaders to speak with their Russian counterparts have been rejected by Moscow for the last month.
Nestlé SA plans to significantly scale back what it sells in Russia, suspending production of pet food, coffee and confectionery as the KitKat maker faces pressure from politicians, employees and consumers for its continuing presence in the country.
Biden has formally asked two Trump-appointed members of the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness & Nutrition to resign or be terminated: Herschel Walker and Mehmet Oz, now Republican Senate candidates in Georgia and Pennsylvania, respectively.
“It’s sad that he would politicize such an important issue like health. The doctor he should ask to resign is Dr. Fauci, for a multitude of obvious reasons,” Oz said.
Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama said Donald Trump had asked him to “rescind” the 2020 presidential election, “remove” Joe Biden from his office, “immediately put” Trump back in the White House and hold a new special presidential election.
“As a lawyer, I’ve repeatedly advised President Trump that January 6 was the final election contest verdict and neither the U.S. Constitution nor the U.S. Code permit what President Trump asks. Period,” Brooks said in a statement.
One of the senior Manhattan prosecutors who investigated Trump believed he was “guilty of numerous felony violations” and that it was “a grave failure of justice” not to hold him accountable, according to a copy of his resignation letter.
“His financial statements were false, and he has a long history of fabricating information relating to his personal finances and lying about his assets to banks, the national media, counterparties, and many others, including the American people,” Mark Pomerantz wrote in the letter.
Pomerantz said that while Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg had the authority to suspend the investigation, “a decision made in good faith may nevertheless be wrong.”
Biden’s public approval rating fell to a new low of 40% this week, a clear warning sign for his Democratic Party as it seeks to retain control of Congress in the Nov. 8 election, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll.
Democrats are barreling forward with Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court confirmation after she emerged from two days of high-profile questioning largely unscathed.
Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee pummeled the first Black woman nominated to the Supreme Court for a second day over her sentencing record on child sex crimes.
New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker cut through a tense third day of hearings on the Supreme Court nomination of Jackson with a speech on racial progress that drew tears from the nominee and held the rapt attention of colleagues.
Jackson grew increasingly frustrated with Republican senators questioning her sentences in a handful of child pornography cases during her Supreme Court confirmation hearing.
Jackson said she plans to recuse herself from a Harvard affirmative action case if she is confirmed to the high court. The court is set to consider whether Harvard’s use of race-conscious admissions policies violates federal civil-rights law.
Madeleine K. Albright, a child of Czech refugees who fled from Nazi invaders and Communist oppressors and then landed in the United States, where she flourished as a diplomat and the first woman to serve as secretary of state, died at the age of 84.
She died of cancer, her family said, adding that she was “surrounded by family and friends” at the time. “We have lost a loving mother, grandmother, sister, aunt and friend,” the statement said, as well as a “tireless champion of democracy and human rights.”
While Albright was the highest-ranking woman in the country at the time she served in the administration, she was not in the presidential line of succession because she was born in Czechoslovakia.
Omicron’s more contagious subvariant, BA.2, has more than doubled in prevalence over the past two weeks in the U.S. and now represents more than 34% of Covid-19 infections that have undergone genetic sequencing, according to data published by the CDC.
White House officials are again pleading with Congress for more emergency aid to buy coronavirus vaccines and therapeutics as a highly infectious Omicron subvariant spreads, though the director of the CDC sought to assuage concerns about it.
Whenever it arrives, the next surge could put the country’s tolerance for disease and death in full relief.
One of the enduring mysteries of the pandemic, a global health crisis that has led to over 6 million fatalities, is that children have been spared by the virus — for the most part — and have not experienced anywhere near the severity of illness that adults have.
Moderna will seek emergency authorization of its coronavirus vaccine for children younger than 6, after interim results from its clinical trial showed that age group had a similar immune response to young adults when given a dose one-fourth as strong.
The pharmaceutical company will submit a request to the Food and Drug Administration “in the coming weeks” for authorization for a two-dose, 25 microgram-each shot. That’s 25% of the first two doses adults received, the company said.
Steve Wilhite, the computer scientist who created the popular GIF file format in 1987, died in intensive care last Monday from complications of COVID-19. He was 74.
South Korea’s latest Covid-19 wave has pushed the country’s total infections past 10 million since the pandemic began, as funeral homes struggle to keep up with a sudden surge in deaths.
So-called “stealth” omicron variant BA.2 behind the latest COVID case uptick in the New York area, now accounts for 52% of the virus circulating in the region, establishing dominance within a week after owning a 39% case share in the CDC’s prior update.
Mayor Eric Adams reportedly plans to announce today that professional athletes and performers working in New York City will no longer be required to show proof of vaccination against Covid-19. The change will be effective immediately.
The move will cover Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, home to the Nets, as well as Yankee Stadium in The Bronx, the Mets’ Citi Field in Queens and Manhattan’s famed Madison Square Garden, home to both the Knicks and the Rangers.
That means Kyrie Irving and other unvaccinated athletes will be allowed to play professional sports in the five boroughs.
The decision comes just hours after Adams said that he would speak to the city’s lawyer about whether unvaccinated Nets superstar can continue practicing in the Big Apple under the city’s “indefinite” mandate for private-sector employees to get jabbed.
Adults in New York City have among the highest Covid vaccination rates in the country. But the rates for children are far lower, raising concerns as coronavirus cases creep back up.
A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers called for the passage of a bill that would mark March 25 as a day of remembrance for thousands of New York nursing home residents who died from complications related to COVID-19.
Republican members of Congress from New York are calling on Gov. Kathy Hochul to eliminate vaccine mandates for essential workers to prevent staff shortages and avoid unnecessary firings with the coronavirus pandemic in the rearview mirror.
Hochul is seeking to spend up to $5 million in taxpayer money to pay the legal bills of dozens of current and former state employees who got caught up in the sexual harassment scandal that forced ex-Gov Andrew Cuomo from office.
Hochul and LG Brian Benjamin penned a Daily News op-ed saying that to blame bail reform for the increase in violence isn’t fair or supported by the data, but also insisted the law as it “currently stands isn’t perfect, either.”
Hochul’s plan to roll back New York’s controversial bail-reform law hit a major roadblock when the leader of the state Senate, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, said Democratic lawmakers were “absolutely” opposed to the idea.
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, a staunch defender of the state’s current cashless bail system, warned that many lawmakers in his conference are wary of the tight timeframe and the politics surrounding the issue.
Heastie said he’s angered that opponents of bail reform say he and other lawmakers don’t care about public safety. “That’s all bulls**t,” he insisted. “We care about having safe communities. And I hate when people try to politicize these things.”
Studies by New York University’s Brennan Center and the New York City Comptroller Brad Lander did not find evidence that the bail reform changes are causing the crime wave.
Lander said he crunched the numbers from 2019 to 2021 during which time bail reform was implemented, and the data shows people who were released while awaiting trial did not commit more crimes after bail reform was implemented.
Lawmakers say reshaping New York’s ethics agency could still be done through the budget deal, though Hochul’s original proposal was a non-starter.
Hochul congratulated 227 new State Troopers as they graduated from the 210th session of the Basic School of the New York State Police Academy during a ceremony at the Empire Plaza Convention Center in Albany.
The New York State Police should increase the number of women serving in their ranks by 30% by the start of the next decade, Hochul said.
Adams called police brass on the carpet over the two dozen shooting incidents that took place this past weekend — sparking the NYPD to scramble to get more cops on the streets in a revival of some “broken windows” policies.
The NYPD, still reeling from a weekend of extraordinary gun violence and facing pressure from Adams to make the city safer, announced it will renew its focus on quality-of-life offenses.
Adams vowed to fix the bureaucratic nightmare that’s left 2,500 city-funded apartments for New York’s homeless empty as City Hall comes under pressure to make progress on its high-profile plans to tackle the Big Apple’s homelessness crisis.
Adams showed off his passion for fashion at the Museum of Modern Art. He stepped out for Ralph Lauren’s first in-person fashion show since the start of the pandemic in the Big Apple.
Adams showed off his eclectic style on Instagram, writing: “Strike a pose! Incredible night at the @themuseumofmodernart to celebrate the groundbreaking work of @RalphLauren and to send a clear message: #NYCisBack!”
New York will launch a citywide program to provide mothers with free access to doulas, Adams said, deploying a relatively small infantry of childbirth experts in high-need areas before expanding across the five boroughs.
Adams declined to weigh in on disgraced ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s potential comeback bid after he resigned last summer under threat of impeachment.
Adams’ jail chief has a solution to the problem of city correction officers who critics say exploit union rules by calling in sick: Hire more of them.
State tax authorities auctioned off the inventory of a Brooklyn restaurant tied to two convicted fraudsters close to Adams.
Richard A. Davey, a former Massachusetts transportation secretary, will be the first permanent president of New York City Transit since the start of the pandemic. He doesn’t own a car.
Roger Stone, the disgraced longtime adviser to Donald Trump, made a surprise appearance at NYPD headquarters to support a cop on departmental trial for working off-duty as Stone’s armed bodyguard.
Amazon over the next month will face union elections at separate warehouses in New York City, a union-friendly area that has challenged the e-commerce giant in the past.
Cresco Labs, a multi-state cannabis company that holds one of 10 licenses to operate as a medical marijuana provider in New York, announced it will acquire New York-based competitor Columbia Care following regulatory approvals.
Hundreds of advocates marched to the state Capitol yesterday, blocking roads along the way, as they pushed lawmakers to include $3 billion in the state budget to replenish the “excluded workers fund” for undocumented New Yorkers.
General Electric Co. is going to play a role in the construction of electric grid infrastructure for New York’s offshore wind farm projects.
Albany officials have launched a tip line for residents to report dirt bikes and ATVs being used illegally in the city.
Substantial population loss in some of the nation’s largest and most vibrant cities was the primary reason 2021 was the slowest year of population growth in U.S. history, new Census data shows.
Three top editors at BuzzFeed News said they are stepping down, after the digital media company announced plans to cut several jobs from its Pulitzer Prize-winning newsroom as it seeks to increase profitability.
