Received by NSD/FARA Registration Unit 08/05/2021 10:33:19 AM 08/04/21 Wednesday This material is distributed by Ghebi LLC on behalf of Federal State Unitary Enterprise Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency, and additional information is on file with the Department of Justice, Washington, District of Columbia. White House Says WHO's Call to Prioritize Vaccination Over Booster Shots is 'False Choice' by Morgan Artvukhina The White House dismissed suggestions by the World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday that it's more important to get basic COVID-19 vaccination to more people than to focus on delivering third booster shots to those who've already been vaccinated. According to Press Secretary Jen Psaki, the US can "do both." Earlier on Wednesday, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebrevesus advised "a moratorium on boosters until at least the end of September to enable at least 10% of the population of every country to be vaccinated," as data published bv Pfizer last week suggested a third dose of its two-shot SARS-CoV-2 vaccine could provide additional protection against "breakthrough" cases of the Delta variant of COVID-19. "We definitely feel that it's a false choice and we can do both," Psaki told reporters at the White House on Wednesday. "Also in this country [we] have enough supply to ensure that every American has access to a vaccine," she added. "We will have enough supply to ensure if the FDA [Food and Drug Administration] decides that boosters are recommended for a portion of the population to provide those as well. We believe we can do both and we don't need to make that choice." While the US is capable of delivering a third vaccine dose to its citizens in the administration's estimation, Psaki cautioned that is not presently part of the plan. “What we’ve been conveying to officials around the country who have implemented” giving third booster shots "in some places is that this is not in alignment with the guidance of public health officials, whether that is the CDC or the FDA, and we are certainly in touch with local officials on the matter and conveying exactly that," Psaki said Wednesday. "We also at the same time are prepared if the FDA decides that they are going to recommend a booster. That is why we ordered the number of doses we did order several months ago." Earlier this week, Germany and the United Kingdom both announced they would begin giving selected, vulnerable groups booster shots to better guard against the Delta variant. The US government has bought a total of 1.5 billion shots from a variety of vaccine manufacturers, enough to give 750 million people a two-dose SARS-CoV-2 vaccination course. The US population is just 330 million. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 401 million shots have been delivered to pharmacies and medical institutions across the country and 347 million of them have been administered; in other words, 192 million Americans have gotten one dose of the vaccine and 165 million have gotten both shots or the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine. However, the US' pace of vaccination is ahead of most of the world. While just under 50% of the US population is vaccinated against COVID-19, on the continent of Africa that number is barely 1.6%. Ghebreyesus noted on Wednesday that 80% of the 4 billion doses administered globally Received by NSD/FARA Registration Unit 08/05/2021 10:33:19 AM Received by NSD/FARA Registration Unit 08/05/2021 10:33:19 AM "have gone to high- and upper-middle income countries, even though they account for less than half of the world’s population." The WHO chief warned last month that the growing disparity was leading to a "two-track pandemic - the haves are opening up, while the have-nots are locking down." While the US has since announced a decision to buy 500 million Pfizer vaccines and donate them to poorer nations through next year, it was heavily criticized earlier this year for "hoarding" by nations like China, which has donated or sold abroad almost as many vaccines as it has delivered to its own citizens. Other First World nations, such as the UK and Israel, have similarly bought many times their population's worth of vaccines. This material is distributed by Ghebi LLC on behalf of Federal State Unitary Enterprise Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency, and additional information is on file with the Department of Justice, Washington, District of Columbia. It’s Not Enough to Restore Eviction Protections, Biden Must Cancel Unpaid Pandemic Rents, Too by Morgan Artvukhina On Tuesday, popular pressure won out over threats by the US Supreme Court and the Biden administration re-imposed a moratorium on evictions for another 60 days, protecting many Americans behind on rent from losing their homes until October 3. However, the Court is sure to act quickly against this defiance. With a new wave of COVID-19 cases rapidly increasing in the US, this victory, while for the moment averting disaster for millions of poor Americans, is ephemeral at best. If we are to truly protect Americans from a tsunami of evictions caused by pandemic-related lockdowns, US President Joe Biden must also cancel the rents. The White House initially waffled on the issue of extending the moratorium, having been told by Associate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in a late June ruling that he would oppose any further extension of the ban if done by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), providing a crucial fifth vote to strike down the order. However, with Congress heading into a seven-week summer recess having never attempted to pass such a law, activists and local residents joined Rep. Cori Bush’s (D-MO) occupation-style protest outside the Capitol building to demand the ban be extended past July 31. Although it drew many opportunistic Democratic lawmakers previously unmotivated to lift a finger for indebted lessees, it also grabbed the attention of some of the nation's greatest civil rights leaders, including Revs. Jesse Jackson and William Barber, and succeeded in its goal, convincing Biden to reverse course on August 3. Meanwhile, police forces across the country made preparations for removing families from their homes as soon as possible. In the Atlanta metro area alone, landlords had filed for 75,000 evictions between the spring of 2020 and spring of 2021; in South Carolina. 7.000 were filed in roughly the same time period; in Phoenix. 30,000: in North Carolina. 87,000. You get the picture. In St. Louis, Missouri, where no state ban gave renters any further protection, the sheriffs office said it had already laid out plans for executing nine evictions per day beginning on August 9. Received by NSD/FARA Registration Unit 08/05/2021 10:33:19 AM Received by NSD/FARA Registration Unit 08/05/2021 10:33:19 AM The ban prevented these and many more from going forward, but only on the narrow basis that making people homeless during a pandemic increases the risks of infection and transmission - the CDC didn’t ban evictions on the grounds that eviction is inherently wrong and a violation of Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which affirms: “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.” The ban is “targeted.” confined by an agency definition of "substantial" or "high" rates of community transmission levels of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the deadly COVID-19 illness. In other words, as cases decline, these protections could disappear well before the October 3 deadline - and that’s assuming the order survives the Supreme Court, which, judging by White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki’s comments Wednesday, the administration has no more confidence in now than it did when it said two days aaoit had no legal path forward. Instead, I propose the poisonous weed of evictions be dug up by the root: cancel the rent debts altogether. Like student loan forgiveness, this task could be a simple executive order, justified by the extraordinary crisis created by the COVID-19 pandemic. Up to 11 million Americans are threatened with eviction at present, and with many deeply in debt and the $46 billion in federal aid set aside for them being disbursed as a pace that would make a snail blush, it seems unlikely a substantial number of those people will be in changed circumstances come October. However, cancelling the rents isn’t a new idea: since the lockdowns began in March 2020, activists across the country recognized the catastrophe in the making and elevated demands for rent cancellation for the duration of the pandemic. Bereft of jobs, renters struck, refusing to pay landlords with money they didn’t have. Many state and local governments implemented equivalent programs for businesses and homeowners, recognizing that their mass collapse would be a social disaster. Yet renters, who make up 34.7% of homes, were given no such life raft, just their eviction being forestalled until after the outbreak was contained and months of unpayable debt had piled up. The National Apartment Association landlord advocacy group lamented last week that with the eviction ban in place, they had been “left to shoulder” an estimated $73 billion in rent debt.