adplus-dvertising
Connect with us

Ethnic minorities less likely to take COVID jab, U.K. survey says – CTV News

Published

 on


LONDON —
People from ethnic minority backgrounds or with lower incomes are less likely to take the coronavirus vaccine being rolled out in Britain, research suggested Wednesday, raising concerns about whether the jab would reach the communities that have been hit disproportionately hard by the pandemic.

A survey by Britain’s Royal Society for Public Health said that while three-quarters of those polled would take a COVID-19 vaccine if advised to do so by a doctor, that figure fell to 57 per cent among Black people and those from Asian and ethnic minority backgrounds.

The body also said the survey “revealed significantly more hesitancy among lower income groups” — with 70 per cent of lowest earners likely to agree to the jab, compared to 84 per cent of highest earners.

300x250x1

Public health experts and doctors say the findings are concerning, but unsurprising. They align with consistently lower uptake rates of other vaccines, like the measles and flu jabs, among ethnic minority communities and in poorer neighbourhoods, they say.

That reluctance — a result of factors like public health messaging not reaching the communities and mistrust of authority based on past experiences — has been exacerbated by misinformation and anti-vaccination campaigns on social media.

“We have known for years that different communities have different levels of satisfaction in the National Health Service,” said Christina Marriott, chief executive of the Royal Society for Public Health. “More recently we have seen anti-vaccination messages have been specifically targeted at different groups, including different ethnic or religious communities.”

Britain on Dec. 8 became the first country in the world to roll out the coronavirus vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, which has an efficacy rate of around 95 per cent. The government is first targeting people over 80 and nursing home workers. About 138,000 people have received the first of two required jabs to date.

Studies in the U.K. and elsewhere have shown that Black people and ethnic minorities are more at risk of contracting and dying from COVID-19, as a result of genetic conditions such as diabetes as well as socio-economic circumstances such as living conditions and occupation. A report by Public Health England also said that structural racism and poor experiences of public healthcare made it less likely for some groups to seek care when needed.

Officials have not said they would prioritize Black or ethnic minority communities during the coronavirus vaccine rollout. Dr. Salman Waqar, general secretary of the British Islamic Medical Association, said it has been left up to individual health trusts to decide whether or not to vaccinate Black or minority health workers first.

“Effort should be put in to make sure these communities are vaccinated,” he said. “(Officials) have left it for providers to make the decision on the ground, but it doesn’t appear to show strong leadership from the authorities if they’ve left it open to interpretation.”

Dr. Kiran Rahim, a pediatrician based in a poorer area of London with a high rate of vaccine refusal, said health officials need to do much more to engage and reach out to marginalized and minority communities.

She said that in the case of the children’s nasal flu vaccine — which many Muslims refuse because it contains porcine gelatine — uptake significantly improved once authorities made an alternative option available.

“Many of us have lobbied for many years for a vegetarian version to be available, we were constantly met with resistance,” she said. “When it comes down to public health, with a mass vaccination campaign going, you do have to engage with all parties.”

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

728x90x4

Source link

Continue Reading

Art

Trump’s use of blood as image has deep Christian roots – The Washington Post

Published

 on


LOS ANGELES — In March 2021, the art collective MSCHF and rapper Lil Nas X dropped a limited-edition set of sneakers called Satan Shoes. The modified Nike Air Max 97s included a bronze pentagram and were produced to coincide with the release of “Montero (Call Me by Your Name),” which included a video in which the singer gave the Devil a lap dance before usurping his crown.

End of carousel

The ensuing controversy was probably amplified by a curious addition to the shoes, the soles of which included a single drop of human blood, according to the artists. One of the 666 pairs of diabolical footware is now on view, along with its Satanic-themed presentation box, in a J. Paul Getty Museum exhibition called “Blood: Medieval/Modern,” which documents the symbolic power and meaning of blood from the Middle Ages to the current moment.

The Satan Shoes are not the oddest thing on view in this fascinating show, not even close. But they speak to the persistence of blood as a multipurpose and explosive symbol. The exhibition, which opened in late February, doesn’t take up the proliferating use of blood as political metaphor in the rhetoric of Donald Trump, but it explores the deep historical reservoirs of meaning that make the former president’s invocation of blood so disturbing.

300x250x1

Inspiration for the exhibition, curator Larisa Grollemond says, came in part from the response to an online article she wrote about menstruation in the Middle Ages. But ideas about blood were fundamental to almost every aspect of medieval life, from the Christian sacrament of the Eucharist, in which wine was transformed into the blood of Jesus, to medicine, in which blood (along with black and yellow bile and phlegm) was one of the four fundamental humors of the body. Political power was based on bloodlines, or consanguinity, and the definition of power was essentially the right to spill blood, or enlist others to spill it for you.

Christianity was a particularly blood-obsessed religion, with the Nile transformed to a river of blood in the Old Testament plagues of Egypt, and blood flowing freely from Jesus’ body during the flagellation and crucifixion of the New Testament. By the late Middle Ages, the wounds of Jesus took on an iconic power that floated free of the crucifixion narrative and became detached from his body. And so we see his body soaked in blood in an image from a 16th-century prayer book by the Flemish artist Simon Bening, and an even more disturbing image of the side wound of Jesus, from the late 15th century, in which the wound is presented disembodied, a kite- or vulvic-shaped object presented as if on a platter, with a text that confirms it is life-size: “This is the measure of the wound of our Lord, Jesus Christ.”

Throughout the exhibition, blood is a marker of authenticity and something that is both life affirming and disgusting. The corpse of someone who died by violence was thought to bleed in the presence of his or her killer, a kind of supernatural proof of crime. Saint Catherine, who fasted almost unto death, was said to be revived after drinking blood from the side wound of Jesus. “And there she slaked her thirst,” according to an early biography.

Yet women, because they bled during menstruation, were also thought to be fundamentally flawed, with an excess of blood that needed purging. “If they are constantly expelling blood,” Grollemond says, “then there must be something fundamentally wrong with them.” Moral stigma was attached to women’s blood, which was rarely represented. Images of childbirth, especially those associated with the fundamental figures of Christianity, including the Virgin Mary, were generally sanitized.

So, Christianity was a blood-soaked, even blood-obsessed, religion and may have become even more so during the late Middle Ages because of crises across Europe that made death terribly familiar, including plagues, religious and political strife, and even changes to the climate.

The resurgence of blood as political metaphor in the United States draws upon these deep wells of symbolic power, copiously though not consistently. When Trump in interviews and rallies last fall began saying that immigrants were “poisoning the blood” of the country, his remarks were compared to the frequent use of blood as a metaphor for race, nationality and disease in Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.” But Trump, like Hitler before him, was animating toxic ideas far older than 20th-century fascism.

And this wasn’t his first foray into blood discourse. During his 2015 run for president, he seemed to reference menstruation after being pointedly questioned by Megyn Kelly during the first debate of the Republican primaries: She had “blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.” In a 2017 tweet, he suggested that he was disgusted by Mika Brzezinski because “she was bleeding badly from a face-lift.” Women and blood were a recurring theme to his speeches during the 2020 campaign, when he mocked Sen. Elizabeth Warren for claiming Native American ancestry — or blood — an idea he returned to obsessively, and usually without segue or logical connection to anything else in his speech.

Trump is a rhetorical opportunist who uses imagery reflexively (patriots are always “red-blooded” and sacrifice “blood, sweat and tears”) and for its pure volatility rather than its cultural nuance or historic pedigree. And blood, as demonstrated by the explosive reaction to Lil Nas X’s Satan Shoes, remains one of the most potent ideas in the Western arsenal of meaning.

In a paper discussed at a symposium held at the Getty in early March, Heather Blurton, a professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara, asked: “How did [blood] come to be … a metaphor for familiar, ethnic and racial affiliation?” And she turned to an idea by French historian Michel Foucault, who argued that the fundamental social organizing idea of the medieval period covered in this exhibition was “a symbolics of blood.”

Whether or not Trump intended to suggest a literal “bloodbath” when he threatened economic chaos if he isn’t reelected, the reference to blood was part of a more thoroughgoing effort to tap into the violent energies of the pre-scientific and pre-modern symbolics of blood that is evident throughout this show. He is disgusted by women’s blood; he has good genes or blood running through his veins; he is defending the “blood” of pure Americans against infection and immigration; and the power he seeks is deeply connected to blood and violence. His inaugural address is remembered for a particularly blood-soaked image, American carnage, which is etymologically derived from butchery, flesh and slaughter. All of this gives some of his Christian supporters permission to reembrace the darkest aspects of the symbolics of blood that saturated their religion for centuries.

These are old ideas. They are deeply and historically Christian ideas. And they are terrifying. To see them coursing again is even more surreal and bizarre than a pair of sneakers with a drop of blood in them.

Blood: Medieval/Modern is on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles through May 19. www.getty.edu.

Adblock test (Why?)

728x90x4

Source link

Continue Reading

Sports

Cult of Hockey Player Grades: Strong 4-1 Edmonton Oilers win over L.A in possible 1st round preview – Edmonton Journal

Published

 on


Article content

The Edmonton Oilers won a big divisional battle on Thursday, a 4-1 victory over the Kings creating a 5-point spread between Edmonton and L.A. in the Pacific. Vegas slides into 3rd place but is 4 back of the Oil.

300x250x1

Edmonton won both ends of the specialty teams battle (PP ½, PK 2/2) and the goaltending showdown (Skinner over Talbot).

Article content

L.A. had 33 shots on net…but they are volume shooters. Overall, a sound defensive performance by the home club.

Advertisement 2

Article content

Here is the tale of the tape…

Edmonton Oilers Player Grades

STUART SKINNER. 8. Steady 1st from Skinner but without a lot of serious work. But he had to be very sharp early in the 2nd as the Kings pressed with 7 unanswered shots, making solid saves off Moore (2-on-1) and Lewis. Stuffed Kempe a few shifts later. With the game still 1-0 Skinner stoned Kempe and then Kopitar in tight. Those were tide-turning saves as just shifts later his mates scored the 2-0. Precious little chance on the 3-1, it was a bang-bang play after a turnover. Big glove save off a Roy point shot. Then helped close it out late in the 3rd with big stops on Dubois and a 1-timer off Kempe’s stick. Stopped 32 of 33. Named the game’s 2nd Star. Looked to be in playoff form.

CONNOR McDAVID. 9. Hit the 120-point mark for the 3rd consecutive season with the 1-0 in the first, knocking down a Mattias Ekholm point shot then back-handing it home for a 4v4 goal. Levelled a hard check on Lizotte late in the 1st frame. No call from the Zebras when he was dropped while cutting hard across the slot. Wins the faceoff after a bad icing by L.A. and ends up with the secondary assist on the 2-0. Earned the primary assist on Bouchard’s 3-0 goal with a pass from behind the goal line. A rare turnover in his zone with possession and the net empty at the other end but eventually cleared the zone on that series. Fought relentlessly through the Kings withering trap. Ended up +3. Named 1st Star.

Article content

Advertisement 3

Article content

RYAN NUGENT-HOPKINS. 6. Fine defensive performance. An excellent clear on the 1st Period PK. Blocked shot and then a steal and clear on the same 3rd Period PK. Hard battle and clear of his own zone in the 3rd. Superb back-check forced an L.A. off-side.

ZACH HYMAN. 6. Good backhand chance from a 3-way passing play with Bouchard and McDavid. Could not convert a sneaky inside pass from Ekholm late in the 1st. Called for a 3rd Period Interference infraction. But then drew a slashing call leading to the 3-0. 5 shots.

DARNELL NURSE. 7. A tower of strength. High Dangers 6-2 5v5 on Darnell Nurse’s stingy watch. Delivered 7 hits to lead the squad. His elite-level speed was a definite edge over a team like the Kings with average boots by comparison. Both sides of this 1st pairing (tonight) were excellent.

CODY CECI. 7. His best effort in a long time. Ceci got a shot on net off a lovely Draisaitl pass in the 1st. The two teamed up in a similar fashion early in the 2nd. Showed particularly good patience deep in his own end and the net empty, found a lane, and drained a 193-foot shot right up the gut for the 4-1. High Dangers 5v5 5-2.

Advertisement 4

Article content

LEON DRAISAITL. 8. Smart stick to end an L.A. sortie early in the 1st. Erased a pending Oilers PP with the tiniest slash on an L.A. player but it was ‘right’ in front of the referee. Just missed potting a bounce off the back boards on a shot-pass by Bouchard. Thumped Roy with hard hit mid-way through the 1st. A terrific pass to Ceci for a chance. Found Ceci again in the 2nd for a point-bank chance. Dangerous shot through a screen. A hard, power move behind the net leads to a pass throw at Henrique in front for the 2-0. Won the faceoff on the 3-0 and ultimately earned the secondary assist. Hard backcheck on Kempe. A spectacular backhand pass set up Henrique in the high slot. Had a rough night in the faceoff circle until it really mattered. Then, won 3 D-zine faceoffs with the Kings net empty, earning a primary assist on the 4-1 with his 3rd win. 3 assists, +3. 3rd Star.

ADAAM HENRIQUE. 7. “Go to the net, kids”. Henrique was rewarded for doing just that, on the ice with sparse seconds remaining in the 2nd after a bad Kings icing. A Draisaitl pass deflected off Henrique’s shoulder right at the top of the crease and in, sending dejected L.A. to the room with a 2-0 deficit after 2. Could not drain a hi-light reel pass from Draisaitl in front. 6 hits.

Advertisement 5

Article content

WARREN FOEGELE. 5. Hard 2nd Period hit on Doughty. Worked hard on the fore check, responsible without the puck. Just did not have a lot of numbers to illustrate a good effort.

MATTIAS EKHOLM. 5. Earned the primary assist on the 1-0 with a point shot that McDavid converted. A fine pass up the middle for Hyman late in the 1st. A glaring giveaway behind his own goal line, leading to the 3-1. A rare night on the bad end of High Dangers 5v5 (4-6).

EVAN BOUCHARD. 8. He was excellent. Secondary assist on the 1-0. Sifted a hard pass off the back wall which Draisaitl nearly swept home for the 2-0. Excellent stick check of Kempe in front. A sweet pass up the middle to spring McDavid and Hyman on a break. Played a 2nd Period 2-on-1 expertly. Part of the sequence on the 2-0. Hammered home the 3-0, a one-timer high glove off a McDavid feed. It was his first since a goal versus L.A. back on February 26th. Involved in the 3-1 against but I had no problem with Bouchard’s decision to pinch in the neutral zone.

RYAN McLEOD. 5. Fine pass by Ryan McLeod led to a break between Kane and Perry. But his best work was without the puck. Very responsible. Sawed off in 5v5 CF. His speed in between Kane and Perry seems to work well.

Advertisement 6

Article content

EVANDER KANE. 6. Set the tone for the game by thumping Drew Doughty with a heavy check in the first, whistled for a questionable trip on the play. Delivered another heavy hit on Englund when he returned. Crisp pass across to perry on a good chance on a 2-on-1. Kane finished up with 6 hits and a string North-South game.

COREY PERRY. 5. Career NHL game number 1,300. Good feed to McLeod in the 2nd who must missed. Tried to deke Talbot 5-hole on a 2-on-1 with Kane. 3rd Period blocked shot.

BRETT KULAK. 5. The far superior member of the Oilers 3rd pairing tonight. Bailed out his D-partner on a bad pinch as Kulak swept the puck away from the gaping Edmonton net. Sawed off on High Dangers 5v5.

VINCENT DESHARNAIS. 3. Struggled. Drew a 2nd Period slash. 2nd Period turnover with a soft pass behind his own net, a harbinger of bad things to come. Yet another giveaway led to point-blank shots by Kempe and Kopitar. Ill-timed pinch led directly to a Grade A chance against.

DEREK RYAN. 5. This line decidedly lost the shot-shares battle but all 3 were so solid defensively they still receiving passing grades. Good anticipation for an interception high in his own zone in the 2nd.

Advertisement 7

Article content

MATTIAS JANMARK. 5. Hard play along the wall to earn a zone clear on the PK in the 1st. Clever deflection on a 3rd Period shorthanded chance. 4 hits. Coach trusted him out on the ice late to protect the lead.

CONNOR BROWN. 5. Nice zone clear on a 1st Period PK. Set up Janmark for a dangerous chance shorthanded.

Edmonton’s record now sits at 44-23-4, 92 points. They remain 2nd in the Pacific, opening up a 5-point gap between them and L.A., 4 points up on Vegas. And the Oilers have 2 games on hand on the Golden Knights, 1 on the Kings.

Prior to the game, Official Kyle Rehman was recognized for his 1,000th NHL game. We do not pull punches here when it comes to officiating. We also recognize meaningful accomplishments.

Find me on Threads @kleavins, on Instagram at LeavinsOnHockey, Mastodon at KurtLeavins@mstdn.social, and X @KurtLeavins.

Recently, at The Cult…

McCURDY: Are the Edmonton Oilers better or worse since the trading deadline?

STAPLES: Oilers show their grit in 4-3 win over Winnipeg Jets

LEAVINS: Oilers loss to Leafs begs important questions.

Article content

Comments

Join the Conversation

This Week in Flyers

Adblock test (Why?)

728x90x4

Source link

Continue Reading

Tech

Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) New iPad Pro and iPad Air to Hit Markets Soon – TipRanks.com – TipRanks

Published

 on


Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) is likely to introduce its new iPad Pro and iPad Air as soon as May. The much-anticipated product launch will come just ahead of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June.

End to a Long Wait

As the much-awaited moment draws near, Bloomberg reports that the tech giant’s suppliers have already ramped up production of the devices. For Apple’s devout customers, the introduction of the revamped iPads marks the end of a nearly 18-month drought of major new releases from the company. The iPads are expected to boast features such as new OLED displays for the Pro model and an option for a 12.9-inch screen for the Air model.

Revamped iPads Unleashed

The long wait for new iPad models has resulted in sluggish tablet sales for Apple in recent times. Consequently, the company will likely look to the revamped versions to boost demand. Additionally, Apple is introducing more processing power to the new versions. The Pro models will feature a new M3 chip. Similarly, the iPad Air is also receiving an upgrade with a new processor, moving from its last version’s M1 chip to the latest technology.

300x250x1

What to Expect in June

Importantly, the product launches are scheduled just before Apple’s highly anticipated annual Worldwide Developers Conference. This event is slated for June 10. The iPhone maker is widely expected to unveil its AI strategy as well as software updates for its range of products at the event. 

Is Apple a Buy, Sell, or a Hold?

Apple’s share price has corrected by nearly 11% year-to-date. The Street has a cautiously optimistic stance on the stock with a Moderate Buy consensus rating. Furthermore, the average AAPL price target of $203.40 points to an 18.6% potential upside in the company’s share price.

Read full Disclosure

Adblock test (Why?)

728x90x4

Source link

Continue Reading

Trending