Thailand has begun human trials with two of four homegrown vaccine candidates local scientists are developing against COVID-19, as the country scrambles to secure shots from abroad amid its worst wave of infections since the pandemic began.The homegrown vaccines will not be ready for mass production in time to help Thailand fight off the latest wave. Officials and developers are hoping, though, that they will arrive in time to give Thailand — and maybe its neighbors — booster shots tailored to the main variants of the novel coronavirus by next year.“The vaccine will be against the variants like the South African variant and the Indian variant and others, so that will be our strategy,” said Kiat Ruxrungtham, who is spearheading development of one of the most anticipated candidates at Chulalongkorn University’s Vaccine Research Center in Bangkok.A shot in the armFor now, Thailand is relying on a mix of vaccines from foreign drugmakers to reach herd immunity by the end of the year.Having kept infection rates low through 2020 with tight border controls and strict social distancing, Thailand secured relatively few doses early in the pandemic. It bought a few million shots from China’s Sinovac for the most vulnerable and struck a deal with AstraZeneca that lets local drugmaker SiamBioscience manufacture its COVID-19 vaccine in the country.Then came the third wave in April, sending death and infection rates to record highs, and authorities on a vaccine shopping spree, striking deals with Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and Sinopharm. The government says it has now locked in 105.5 million doses, enough to cover over 70% of Thailand’s 69 million people, and is looking for more.Thai authorities and developers, though, still see a crucial role for the homegrown vaccines.Tanarak Plipat, deputy director-general of disease control at the Public Health Ministry, said the new vaccines will help keep Thailand safe once the effects of the first full round of doses start wearing off.“There [is] growing evidence that very soon we may need the booster dose of the vaccine, I mean the third or the fourth or the fifth. We don’t exactly know about that, and we don’t know how frequent we need to boost the antibodies,” he said.“So in the long run, I think we are going to need a constant supply,” he said.He said some of the vaccines Thailand is developing may also prove better at fending off infection from some of the more contagious variants sweeping the globe. The alpha variant, first identified in Britain, is already the dominant strain in Thailand. The Health Ministry’s medical sciences department recently warned that the even more contagious delta variant, first found in India, could soon take over.Self-relianceTanarak said the difficulties most countries have had securing not just vaccines, but masks and ventilators as well, have taught Thailand that it still needs to try to rely on itself for what it needs when it needs it.“To secure [the] health for our people, we need to be able to rely on ourselves in the time of [the] pandemic,” he said. “No matter how much money you have, we are not going to get the most important supplies of medical device or medicine or vaccines if you are not being able to produce it yourself.”If all goes well, he said Thai laboratories could be producing tens of millions of doses of the country’s own COVID-19 vaccines by around the middle of next year.The Government Pharmaceutical Organization, a state drugmaker, started Phase 1 human trials in March of its candidate using an inactive Newcastle disease virus, which mainly infects birds, and has moved on to Phase 2 with more volunteers.Chulalongkorn’s Vaccine Research Center started Phase 1 human trials on Monday with what could be the first vaccine against COVID-19 developed in Southeast Asia using messenger RNA, the same technique pioneered by U.S. drugmakers Pfizer and Moderna.BioNet-Asia, an established local drugmaker, and Baiya Phytopharm, a startup, have yet to begin human trials with their own vaccine candidates.The Vaccine Research Center had been hoping to start human trials in late 2020. Instead, it says, it had to wait for slots to open at the U.S. labs making their vaccine for the trials, and that government funding — while generous — took longer to arrive than expected.With human trials of their first-generation vaccine now under way, Kiat and his team are already making plans to do the same in a few months with a second-generation candidate targeting the virus’s variants, a relatively simpler feat with the mRNA technique than with others.“The same technology, the same formulation, you just change the [gene] sequence,” he said. “If you have more data [from] the first generation, you can use that data to support your second generation. So, second generation we don’t have to [try] too many doses because we learn from the first generation what dose will be the best.”In the neighborhoodIf and when approved, Kiat said BioNet-Asia was lined up to start making 50 million to 80 million shots per year.Beyond targeting the dominant global variants of the novel coronavirus, mastering the mRNA technique could also let Thailand quickly tailor vaccines to strains, or combinations of strains, specific to the region or the country, said Lorenz von Seidlein, a vaccine expert at Thailand’s Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit.“So, if there’s a combination of strains which is particular to Thailand, there would be probably a niche then for them to say, this new variant — which we don’t know yet but may pop up next year — we quickly can address this in combination with the variants that were here before,” he said.The benefits could spill over to Thailand’s neighbors, some of which are also battling their worst waves of infection since the start of the pandemic, including Malaysia, Cambodia and Vietnam.Kiat said a few other Southeast Asian countries have expressed interest in joining late-stage Phase 2 human trials of his team’s vaccines if the results from Phase 1 are promising. He said they were especially interested in the second-generation vaccines they are working on and may consider placing orders.“Our intention is that if we have efficient production and good-quality vaccine … we should be able to supply neighborhood countries either through COVAX or whatever,” he said, referring to an international plan for supplying poorer countries with free or subsidized COVID-19 shots.
…

A prominent Namibian traditional leader, Vekuii Rukoro, the paramount chief of the OvaHererero people who led international legal battles to bring Germany to pay reparations for its genocide in the southern African country, has died of COVID-19.Rukoro died early Friday, secretary-general of the Ovaherero/OvaMbanderu and Nama Council, Mutjinde Katjiua, told The Associated Press.Rukoro, who was elected Paramount Chief of the OvaHerero in 2014, represented both ethnic groups in the international legal cases.Rukoro and other traditional chiefs have accepted Germany’s offer of compensation but said it should be improved through further negotiations, while some other traditional leaders have rejected it.Last month the German government apologized for the colonial-era massacres and agreed to pay 1.1 billion euros ($1.3 billion) to Namibia over a 30-year period.In what is now acknowledged to be the first genocide of the 20th century, the mass killings of the OvaHerero and Nama people were perpetrated by German colonial forces between 1904 and 1908.Namibia is currently experiencing a surge of COVID-19. The country’s seven-day rolling average of daily new cases has more than doubled over the past two weeks from 17.31 new cases per 100,000 people on June 3 to 49.13 new cases per 100,000 people on June 17, according to Johns Hopkins University.Namibia, a country of 2.5 million people, has a cumulative total of just over 70,000 confirmed cases, including 112 deaths, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The current surge has brought the government to restrict movement into and out of the capital, Windhoek, as well as restrict public gatherings to 10 people.Six tourists from South Africa recently died of COVID-19 while on a bus tour of Namibia in which 37 of the 40 people on the tour became ill with the disease. 
…

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron urged European Union countries Friday to be vigilant against the spread of new coronavirus variants and called for the bloc to coordinate its COVID-19 border reopening policies.”Caution is still necessary so that we have a summer of many freedoms, if not all freedoms,” Merkel told a joint news conference in Berlin before the two leaders held a working dinner.”Some countries have reopened their borders earlier for tourist industry reasons, but we must be careful not to reimport new variants,” Macron said.Macron noted the situation in Britain while Merkel pointed to Portugal to show how things can quickly change.Britain this week delayed a relaxation of pandemic restrictions because of the prevalence of the delta variant, which was first identified in India, while Portuguese authorities on Thursday banned travel in and out of the capital, Lisbon, because of the variant.FILE – A Sri Lankan man rests in a vegetable market closed to curb the spread of the coronavirus in Colombo, Sri Lanka, June 16, 2021.In other developments Friday:— The delta variant was detected in Sri Lanka, a neighbor to India.”It is the worst we could have imagined at such a time,” Dr. Chandima Jeewandara, director of the Allergy, Immunity and Cell Biology Unit at Sri Jayewardenepura University, told The Hindu newspaper. “We are already dealing with a spike in cases with the alpha variant. Delta poses a greater risk because our vaccine coverage is low, and among those who are vaccinated a majority have got only one dose.”According to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center, Sri Lanka, a nation of about 22 million people, has more than 235,000 COVID-19 cases.— Israel’s new government, sworn in Sunday, said it would transfer up to 1.4 million doses of soon-to-expire Pfizer coronavirus vaccine to the Palestinian Authority in exchange for about the same number of doses the authority expects to receive later this year. The Palestinian Authority canceled the deal later, however. PA Health Minister Mai Alkaila told reporters that the expiration date for the vaccine was in June, which would not give the Palestinian government enough time to use the doses.Israel has been criticized for not sharing vaccine with the more than 4 million Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.FILE – Bottles of hand sanitizer are displayed for use at a park in Goyang, South Korea, June 15, 2021. The banner reads “Must wear masks.”— In South Korea, a delay in the delivery of COVID-19 vaccines has pushed the government to offer its residents mixed doses. People who received the AstraZeneca vaccine as a first dose will now be offered the Pfizer vaccine for the second.— A panel of health care experts said India would likely experience a third surge of coronavirus cases in October. “It will be more controlled” than previous surges because some people have been inoculated, said Dr. Randeep Guleria, director of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences.India reported more than 62,000 new COVID-19 cases in the previous 24-hour period. The nation also reported 1,587 COVID-19 deaths, the country’s lowest death toll in 60 days.FILE – A woman receives a coronavirus vaccination at the Kololo airstrip in Kampala, Uganda, May 31, 2021.— Uganda’s government announced that it was tightening lockdown measures to stop a rise in coronavirus cases. Public and private vehicles are banned on roads except for those vehicles carrying cargo, essential workers or the sick.— In the United States, President Joe Biden announced that 300 million COVID-19 vaccine doses had been administered in the United States since he took office January 20.But Biden’s plan to have 70% of Americans at least partially vaccinated by Independence Day, July 4, may fall short because of a sharp decline in the number of vaccinations that began about two months ago.Vice President Kamala Harris visited the southeastern city of Atlanta, Georgia, to encourage people to get vaccinated against the coronavirus.About 36% of Georgians have been vaccinated, a rate lower than those of most other U.S. states.— Canada’s government announced that border restrictions on nonessential travel with the United States would be extended until July 21.By late Friday evening EDT, Johns Hopkins had recorded 177.8 million global COVID-19 cases. The U.S. led the world in the number of cases, with 33.5 million, followed by India with 29.8 million and Brazil with 17.8 million.Worldwide deaths from the disease have  topped 3.8 million, Johns Hopkins said, and 2.5 billion vaccine doses have been administered.
…

President Joe Biden announced Friday that 300 million COVID-19 vaccine doses had been administered in the United States since he took office January 20.But Biden’s plan to have 70% of Americans at least partially vaccinated by July 4 may fall short because of a sharp decline in the number of vaccinations that began about two months ago.As of early Friday, according to the website of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 377.9 million vaccine doses had been distributed in the U.S. and 316.0 million had been administered.The site said 176.3 million people, or 53.1 percent of the total U.S. population, had received at least one dose of the vaccine and 148.5 million, or 44.7 percent, had been fully vaccinated. COVID cases, hospitalizations and deaths have fallen to their lowest levels in more than a year, but the vaccination drive has flagged because of a lack of urgency on the part of some people to get the shots, especially in the South and Midwest.On Friday, Vice President Kamala Harris encouraged people to get vaccinated as she took a tour of a pop-up COVID-19 vaccination site at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, where Martin Luther King Jr. served as pastor until his 1968 assassination.
…

The U.S. Supreme Court for the third time on Thursday upheld the legality of the country’s chief health insurance law that provides millions of Americans with coverage to help pay their medical costs. The court, in a 7-to-2 decision, rejected a bid by 18 Republican-led states and the administration of former President Donald Trump to upend the 2010 Affordable Care Act. It was the signature legislative achievement of former President Barack Obama, Trump’s immediate predecessor, and is popularly known in the U.S. as Obamacare. The country’s highest court had also rejected legal challenges in 2012 and 2015, with all three decisions keeping in place such politically popular provisions as allowing young adults to remain on their parents’ insurance policies until they turn 26 and ensuring coverage for patients with preexisting health conditions. As originally approved by Congress, the law required people to pay a penalty if they chose to not buy health insurance. But Congress in 2017 set that penalty — the so-called individual mandate — at zero. Republican state attorneys general, and the Trump administration, contended that removing the penalty provision made the whole law unconstitutional. The court did not consider the validity of the claims made against the law but ruled that the states opposed to it did not have legal standing to make the challenge. The majority decision was written by liberal Justice Stephen Breyer, and joined by two of the three conservative justices appointed to the court by Trump, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. The third Trump appointee, Neil Gorsuch, joined Justice Samuel Alito in dissent. President Joe Biden has said he will attempt to add on provisions to the Affordable Care Act, which was approved when he was Obama’s vice president. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra praised the Supreme Court decision, saying it was “a victory for all Americans, especially people with a pre-existing condition or anyone who was worried they could be forced to choose between their health and making ends meet. Health care should be a right — not a privilege — just for the healthy and wealthy.” 
…

The United Nations warns accelerating climate change is causing a dramatic intensification of global drought disasters, which are threatening agricultural production, the world’s safe water supply and other essential aspects of human development.   The U.N. Office for Disaster Risk Reduction has launched a “Special Report on Drought 2021.”  U.N. researchers say drought has affected more people around the world in the past four decades than any other natural disaster.  The U.N. report warns the impact of the climate-driven drought emergency on the lives and livelihoods of people across the planet will worsen in the coming years.  The U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction Mami Mizutori says drought has directly affected 1.5 billion people so far this century.  She says most of the world will be living with water stress in the next few years as drought disasters grow.  She says drought is a major factor in land degradation and is responsible for declining yields of major crops.  She adds shifting rainfall patterns and variability pose a risk to the 70 percent of global agriculture that is rainfall-dependent.”A warming planet threatens to multiply the number of people without access to safe water and sanitation, thereby seriously increasing the spread of diseases, the risk of displacement and the potential even for conflict over scarce water resources,” Mizutori said. G-7 Ministers Discuss COVID Vaccines, Climate ChangeForeign ministers of world’s wealthiest democracies are meeting ahead of a summit of the group’s heads of state next month  While droughts always have been part of the human experience, the damage and costs resulting from them are seriously underestimated.  The report estimates the global economic costs arising from drought from 1998 to 2017 of at least $124 billion.The World Health Organization considers drought to be the most serious hazard to livestock and crops in nearly every part of the world.  It says water scarcity impacts 40 percent of the world’s population.  WHO projects as many as 700 million people are at risk of being displaced by 2030 because of drought.Leading co-author of the report Roger Pulwarty agrees the data contained within the report is grim but does not see an apocalyptic picture ahead.  “I do not think that there is in fact this issue surrounding the collapse of civilizations…We are not seeing truly an increase in the frequency of drought,” Pulwarty said. “But we are seeing that where they occur in the different regions in which they do exist, an increase in intensification when they occur and the rapid onset of drought.”   Over the millennia, Pulwarty notes people have found ways to adapt to risks from drought and other natural disasters.  He says lessons learned from over 20 cases around the world – including the Horn of Africa and the Euphrates and Tigris River system in Western Asia  – have been incorporated in the report. However, he says tried and true drought management measures taken in the past must be adapted to meet the challenges of today’s changing nature of drought risk.
…

Adding a crew to China’s new orbiting space station is another major advance for the burgeoning space power.  
Here’s a look at key developments:  What’s The Mission’s Purpose?  
The three-member crew is due to stay for three months in the station’s main living module, named Tianhe, or Heavenly Harmony. They will be carrying out science experiments and maintenance, space walks and preparing the facility to receive two additional modules next year.
 
While China concedes it arrived late at the space station game, it says its facility is cutting-edge. It could also outlast the International Space Station, which is nearing the end of its functional lifespan.  
The launch Thursday  also revives China’s crewed space program after a five-year hiatus. With Thursday’s launch, China has now sent 14 astronauts into space since it first achieved the feat in 2003, becoming the third country after the former Soviet Union and the U.S. to do so.  Chinese astronauts, from left, Tang Hongbo, Nie Haisheng, and Liu Boming listen to a journalist’s question during a press conference at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center ahead of the Shenzhou-12 launch from Jiuquan in northwestern China.Why Is China Building The Station?  
As the Chinese economy was beginning to gather steam in the early 1990s, China formulated a plan for space exploration, which it has carried out at a steady, cautious cadence. While China has been barred from participation in the International Space Station, mainly over U.S. objections to the Chinese program’s secretive nature and close military connections, it’s likely the country would have built its own station anyway as it sought the status of a great space power.  
At a news conference Wednesday, China Manned Space Agency Assistant Director Ji Qiming told reporters at the Jiuquan launch center that the construction and operation of the space station will raise China’s technologies and “accumulate experience for all the people.”  
The space program is part of an overall drive to put China on track for even more ambitious missions and provide opportunities for cooperation with Russia and other, mostly European, countries along with the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs.  Politics And Security  
China’s space program has been a massive source of national pride, embodying its rise from poverty to the world’s second-largest economy over the past four decades. That has helped shore up the power of the Communist Party, whose authoritarian rule and strict limits on political activity have been tolerated by most Chinese as long as the economy is growing.
 
President and head of the party Xi Jinping has associated himself closely with that success, and Ji in his remarks cited Xi as setting the updated agenda for China’s rise to prominence in space. The first mission to the station also coincides with the celebration of the party centenary next month, an important political milestone.  
At the same time, China is modernizing its military at a rapid pace, raising concerns from neighbors, the U.S. and its NATO allies. While China espouses the peaceful development of space on the basis of equality and mutual respect, many recall that China in January 2007 sent a ballistic missile into space to destroy an inactive weather satellite, creating a debris field that continues to be a threat.  Who Are The Astronauts?
Mission commander Nie Haisheng, 56, and fellow astronauts Liu Boming, 54, and Tang Hongbo, 45, are former People’s Liberation Army Air Force pilots with graduate degrees and strong scientific backgrounds. All Chinese astronauts so far have been recruited from the military, underscoring its close ties to the space program.  
For Nie, it is his third trip to space, and for Liu, his second following a mission in 2008 that included China’s first space walk. Tang, who was recruited as one of the second batch of candidates in 2010, is flying in space for the first time.  
Future missions to the station will include women, according to officials, with stays extended to as long as six months and as many as six astronauts on the station at a time during crew changeovers. With China stepping up international cooperation and exchanges, it’s only a matter of time before foreign astronauts join the Chinese colleagues on missions to the station, Ji told reporters Wednesday.  What Else Is China Doing in Space?  
Along with its crewed space program, China has been moving boldly into exploration of the solar system with robotic space ships. It landed a probe on Mars last month that carried a rover, the Zhurong, which is conducting a range of surveys, looking particularly for frozen water that could provide clues as to whether the red plant once supported life.  
Earlier, China landed a probe and rover on the moon’s less explored far side, joining the Yutu, or Jade Rabbit, rover that was part of an earlier lunar exploration mission. China also brought back the first lunar samples by any country’s space program since the 1970s and officials say they want to send Chinese astronauts to the moon and eventually build a research base there.
…

The first manned crew of China’s new permanent space station docked with the outpost Thursday evening.The Shenzhou-12 spacecraft carrying veteran space travelers Nie Haisheng and Liu Boming and rookie Tang Hongbo rendezvoused with the Tianhe module six hours after blasting off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China.The trio will spend the next three months aboard the module, whose name translates to “Heavenly Harmony,” outfitting it with equipment and testing its various components.This mission is China’s first manned space flight in five years, and the third of 11 needed to add more elements to the space station before it becomes fully operational next year. The new station is expected to remain operational for 10 years.The station could outlast the U.S.-led International Space Station, which may be decommissioned after its funding expires in 2024. China has never sent astronauts to the ISS due to a U.S. law that effectively bars the space agency NASA from collaborating with China.China is aggressively building up its space program as an example of its rising global stature and technological might. It became the third country to send a human into space in 2003, behind the United States and Russia, and has already operated two temporary experimental space stations with manned crews.Just this year, it sent an unmanned probe into orbit around Mars, while another probe brought back the first samples from the moon in more than 40 years. 
…

For some people, COVID has led to changes in lifestyle, or even a new job.  That’s the case of a cyclist in Los Angeles, California, who ended up opening several bicycle shops to meet a growing demand by people wanting to get exercise while exploring their city. Mike O’Sullivan has more.
Camera: Mike O’Sullivan and Roy Kim 
…

China launched the first crew of its new permanent space station into orbit Thursday morning.Veteran astronauts Nie Haisheng and Liu Boming and rookie Tang Hongbo blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China aboard the Shenzhou-12 spacecraft.A crowd of well-wishers bid the three astronauts farewell in an elaborate ceremony before they boarded a van to take them to the launch pad to board their spacecraft.  The mission is China’s first manned space flight in five years.The trio is expected to reach the first module of the station, dubbed Tianhe, or “Heavenly Harmony,” by Thursday evening, where they will spend the next three months outfitting the module with equipment and testing its various components.This mission is the third of 11 needed to add more elements to the space station before it becomes fully operational next year. The new station is expected to remain operational for 10 years.The station could outlast the U.S.-led International Space Station, which may be decommissioned after its funding expires in 2024. China has never sent astronauts to the ISS due to a U.S. law that effectively bars the space agency NASA from collaborating with China.China is aggressively building up its space program as an example of its rising global stature and technological might. It became the third country to send a human into space in 2003, behind the United States and Russia, and has already operated two temporary experimental space stations with manned crews.Just this year, it sent an unmanned probe into orbit around Mars, while another probe brought back the first samples from the moon in more than 40 years.
…

The U.S.-based biotech firm Moderna said Wednesday the U.S. government has purchased another 200 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine, bringing the total number of Moderna doses it has committed to 500 million.
 
In a release Wednesday, the Massachusetts-based company said the U.S. government orders include 110 million doses expected to be delivered in the fourth quarter of 2021 and 90 million expected to be delivered in the first quarter of 2022. As of Monday, the company says it has supplied 217 million doses of the vaccine to the U.S. government.
 
In the statement, Moderna Chief Executive Officer Stéphane Bancel said the company appreciates the collaboration with the U.S. government on the additional doses, adding that it could be used for the continuing primary vaccination program or for children or perhaps as a booster down the road.
 
Last month, the company announced its vaccine was safe and effective for people age  12 to 17 and applied for U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for its use in that group.
 
The doses could also be part of U.S. President Joe Biden’s commitment to supply the World Health Organization-administered global vaccine cooperative, known as COVAX, with vaccine for the world’s lower-income nations.
 
During a summit with the European Union Tuesday, Biden committed to continue supporting the COVAX facility and urged the world’s donors to supply it with at least two billion doses of vaccine by the end of the year.
…

The current rate of forest fires burning through the Rocky Mountains in the United States is the highest it’s been in the past 2,000 years, University of Montana professor Philip Higuera, right, and his team collect lake sediment from Chickaree Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park, used to reconstruct fire and vegetation history. (Grace Carter photo; image courtesy of Philip Higuera)“The 2020 fire season was record-setting across the West [of the United States],” said Philip Higuera, a fire ecologist at the University of Montana and lead author of the study. “Colorado broke the previous record for largest fires in the state three times last year.”At the forest’s high elevations, the environment normally keeps the trees cool and wet relative to forests at lower elevations. Naturally occurring forest fires may burn every few hundred years, but even then, fires need unusually warm, dry weather to first dry out the vegetation to serve as fuel.’Sentinels’ of climate changeThe areas known as subalpine forests are also less sensitive to fire suppression and less impacted by past land management than lower-elevation forests, Higuera said. “They’re better sentinels of climate change.”Ecologists wondered if the fires of 2020 were unprecedented, even relative to the forests’ history of fires stretching back over millennia. They studied historical records to understand if the recent fires were an anomaly and published their results June 14 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.Modern human records of forest fires go back only a few decades. The study authors used government satellite records to track fires and how far they spread from 1984 to 2020. For fires before 1984, they relied on records of fires that had been preserved by nature.Tree rings and their fire scars or charcoal deposited and preserved in lake sediments, for example, are like signatures left by past fires. Each layer of lake sediment, deposited at a certain time in history, provides information about conditions during that time.  Similarly, a tree’s rings, which correspond to its age in years, can retain marks that act as a time stamp for past fires.The Calwood Fire erupts west of Boulder Colo., Oct. 17, 2020, contributing to a record-setting fire season in the central Rocky Mountains. (Bryan Shuman)To see if the pace of forest fires had recently changed, the authors estimated how long it would take to burn all of Colorado’s subalpine forests at the rate they burned in a given era. Accounting for fires over the past two millennia, that number was about 204 years or more. Fires from 2000 to 2020 cut that time almost in half, to 117 years.“It puts into perspective how far of an anomaly the 2020 fire season was,” said Julie Korb, a forest and fire ecologist at Fort Lewis College in Colorado, who was not involved in the study. “In these high-elevation forests, up until this point, we thought they were kind of protected from the changes that we’ve been seeing in the climate.”Weather heightened dangerAccording to the study, warmer, drier weather made the trees more prone to burning.Although the results showed that climate change has pushed the Rocky Mountain forest systems into uncharted territory with respect to historical wildfires, Higuera said it was important to keep in mind that the specific conditions of these high-elevation forests shouldn’t be generalized across all forests.“Forest fires are not necessarily all negative,” said Larissa Yocom, a fire ecologist at Utah State University, who also was not involved in the study.University of Montana researchers examine lake sediment cores from subalpine forests in the Rocky Mountains. Each core is sliced into sections, and variation in charcoal within the core is used to reconstruct past wildfires. (University of Montana)Wildfires, which burn outside human control, are often naturally part of the long-term life cycle of environments such as forests or grasslands.Studies have shown that many lower-elevation forests on the West Coast of the United States were experiencing a “deficit” in fire activity compared with historical patterns, partly because of the suppression of fires through human intervention. At the same time, those land management practices likely helped accumulate fuel for even more intense wildfires, such as the ones that occurred in 2020.When fires occur repeatedly or too severely, forests can have trouble recovering to healthy states, Yocom said. The resulting smoke can also impact human communities and cause health issues like lung damage.“This really emphasizes that we can’t rely on what we’ve seen in the past as a good strategy for what to expect and what to plan for,” said Kyra Wolf, a fire ecologist at the University of Montana and co-author of the study. “We need to rethink or reimagine what it looks like to live in these fire-prone areas in the West.”Scientists expect more extreme weather and human intervention will continue to change the planet’s environment.“It’s no longer a projection. It shows that change is already occurring. We’re living in the middle of it,” Yocom said of the study.
 
…

A new study in the United States reveals that nearly 25% of COVID-19 patients experienced new health problems well after their initial diagnosis.The non-profit group FAIR Health analyzed the health insurance claims of nearly two million people between February 2020 and February of this year. The study found the most common new conditions among so-called “Long COVID” patients included pain, breathing difficulties, high blood pressure, high levels of cholesterol and fatigue. The new ailments affected patients of all ages, including children, and even included patients who were asymptomatic, or experienced no symptoms whatsoever. The study found 19% of asymptomatic COVID-19 patients came down with Long COVID symptoms, increasing to 27% who had mild or moderate symptoms but were not hospitalized, and 50% of those who were hospitalized.Other ailments revealed in the study included intestinal symptoms, heart disorders and mental health issues such as depression and anxiety.  A health worker in protective suit collects nasal swab sample of a traveler to test for COVID-19 outside a train station in Bengaluru, India, June 16, 2021.The CDC says the Delta variant accounts for nearly 10% of all new cases in the United States as of June 5, and experts are concerned it could lead to a surge of new infections due to the slowing rate of COVID-19 vaccinations. A new study published this week in The Lancet medical journal says two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer is 79% effective against the Delta variant, compared to 60% effectiveness after both doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine.  The World Health Organization classified Delta as a variant of concern last month.US Surpasses 600,000 Deaths from COVID, Leading the World An AP analysis of CDC data estimates that Native Americans, Hispanics and Blacks in the US are two to three times more likely than whites to die of the disease As the United States passed 600,000 COVID-19 related deaths, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, two of its most populous states, New York and California, are celebrating significant milestones in the long fight against the pandemic.  Fireworks lit up the skies over New York City’s iconic New York Harbor Tuesday night hours after Governor Andrew Cuomo eliminated nearly all COVID-19 restrictions on businesses and social gatherings, with 70% of all adults across the state having received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.  Cuomo’s California counterpart, Gavin Newsom, used a flashy movie-themed event at the Universal Studios amusement park in Hollywood to announce the official end of most of his state’s coronavirus restrictions, including limits on indoor social gatherings and dropping facemask requirements.
…