Delta pounds rural communities
COVID-19 is moving to the country. While cases were highest in urban areas as the pandemic began, the pattern flipped as summer drew to a close, according to a new report from the Rural Policy Research Institute. Now rural case rates outnumber those in cities, and rural dwellers are at more than twice the risk of death as urbanites.
The Soboba Foundation, in collaboration with Soboba Casino Resort, is getting ready for its annual Soboba Gives Back! Toy Drive event. Each year, toys are collected by volunteers who sort and count them for distribution to organizations that request help for community children in need.
The forever war between America’s pharmaceutical industry and America’s public interest is approaching a climactic moment. At stake is whether Big Pharma and its allies will keep drug prices zooming upward, or whether the federal government can slow that rise by negotiating prices for some expensive drugs taken by Medicare beneficiaries. The U.S. House of Representatives is poised to vote on legislation requiring such negotiations in the next few days as a crucial element of the $3.5 trillion budget plan, and the drug industry is in overdrive to make sure that doesn’t happen.
Faced with criticism from many Californians thrown out of work during the COVID-19 pandemic, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday gave his approval to a package of bills aimed at reducing delays and fraud in the state’s beleaguered unemployment benefits system.
At a school in San Francisco, Governor Newsom announced plans to add the COVID-19 vaccine to the list of vaccinations required to attend school in-person when the vaccine receives full approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for middle and high school grades, making California the first state in the nation to announce such a measure. Following the other first-in-the-nation school masking and staff vaccination measures, Governor Newsom announced the COVID-19 vaccine will be required for in-person school attendance—just like vaccines for measles, mumps, rubella and more.