Gabriel Boric has won the Chile election, seeing off far-right anti-LGBT+ rival José Antonio Kast.
At just 35 years old, Gabriel Boric was elected Chile’s youngest-ever president on Sunday (19 December).
His far-right rival, Kast, conceded with 97 per cent of the vote counted, Boric having gained a 12 point lead with 55.8 per cent of the tallied votes.
The left-wing former student leader won the presidency after a fraught election which the LGBT+ community feared could turn the clock back on equality.
Same-sex marriage was finally legalised in Chile this month, and while Boric is committed to improving reproductive and LGBT+ rights as well as gender equality, Kast had decried the “gay lobby” and is viciously opposed to marriage equality and abortion.
Sunday’s (19 December) run-off came after an initial round of voting on 21 November saw Kast receiving 28 per cent of the vote and Boric receiving 26, with neither earning the 50 per cent required to win.
According to The Guardian, Gabriel Boric told a crowd of revellers after his win: “We are a generation that emerged in public life demanding our rights be respected as rights and not treated like consumer goods or a business.
“We no longer will permit that the poor keep paying the price of Chile’s inequality… The times ahead will not be easy.
“Only with social cohesion, re-finding ourselves and sharing common ground will we be able to advance towards truly sustainable development – which reaches every Chilean.”
Boric has vowed to transform Chile through higher taxes, increased public spending, and the dismantling of controversial private pension schemes. He is also determined to block mining initiatives that risk “destroying” the environment, and wants to empower women, indigenous communities, young people and other marginalised groups.
He will be sworn in on 11 March, 2022.
Chile’s outgoing president signed same-sex marriage into law on his way out
With just four months left of his presidency, Chile’s current leader signed same-sex marriage into law as one of his final acts.
The bill had been stuck in congress for four years, despite same-sex civil unions having been legalised in Chile in 2015, but earlier this year Piñera expedited it.
According to Reuters, Piñera said at the time: “All couples who so wish, regardless of their sexual orientation, will be able to live love, marry and form a family with all the dignity and legal protection they need and deserve.”
Transgender people in Thailand have no route to legal recognition of their gender identity, making them vulnerable to various forms of discrimination, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today with the Thai Transgender Alliance.
The 60-page report, “‘People Can’t Be Fit Into Boxes’: Thailand’s Need for Legal Gender Recognition,”found that the absence of legal gender recognition, coupled with insufficient legal protections and pervasive social stigma, limits transgender people’s access to vital services, and exposes them to daily indignities. Thai transgender people said they were routinely denied access to education, health care, and employment. Thailand has a reputation as an international hub for gender-affirming surgery and transgender health care. But this global reputation obscures Thailand’s severely limited legal mechanisms to protect transgender people at home.
“Transgender people in Thailand constantly face harassment and discrimination, and are often excluded from education and employment,” said Kyle Knight, senior LGBT rights researcher at Human Rights Watch and co-author of the report. “The Thai government needs to step in and make legal gender recognition a reality in Thailand.”
Human Rights Watch conducted the research for this report between January and May 2020 with individuals in four locations in Thailand: Bangkok, Trang, Chiang Mai, and Ubon. Researchers conducted in-depth interviews with 62 transgender people, as well as interviews with social workers, scholars, and employees at advocacy and service provision organizations.
Thailand has limited legal provisions that offer some security to transgender people, but they fall far short of comprehensive protections, Human Rights Watch found. In 2007, Thailand’s legislature passed the Persons’ Name Act, which allows transgender people to apply to change their name. The act, however, did not give people the option to apply to change their legal gender. Name change requests are approved at the discretion of individual administrators.
Under the 2015 Gender Equality Act, which prohibits discrimination against people on the basis of gender expression, the legislature attempted to address some forms of discrimination experienced by transgender people. Yet the government has failed to adequately implement the law. The Committee on Determination of Unfair Gender Discrimination, which has the authority to enforce the law, heard 27 cases of alleged discrimination against transgender people between 2016 and 2019. Many of these cases took more than three months to adjudicate, and none of the eight parties found responsible received punishment.
The absence of legal gender recognition in Thailand means that all transgender people carry documents with a gender different from their identity and expression. When transgender people are asked for this documentation, they can feel humiliated. In some instances, transgender people reported that government employees harassed them based on the mismatch.
A 27-year-old transgender man in Bangkok described his humiliation when he tried to replace a lost identification card: “The officials asked how did I get my penis … and whether it’s really possible to become a trans man.” The officials proceeded to compare him with his past photos. “I felt like a caricature for these government officials,” he said.
Many schools have gender-specific dress codes or facilities, and do not allow students to attend school if they dress in ways deemed inconsistent with their legal gender, violating their right to education. The rigid application of gender-specific regulations, including uniforms and sex-segregated facilities, exacerbate bullying of transgender students by classmates and teachers.
“When I started wearing makeup and lipstick to school, my teacher would scold me – call me ‘tud’ [a derogatory Thai term, roughly translated as ‘faggot’],” said a 25-year-old transgender woman who grew up in Ang Thong province in central Thailand. She believed they singled her out because she had started to grow her hair long as well. “I was also beaten at school by teachers, and teachers would instruct the boy classmates to tease me,” she said.
Transgender people also face obstacles in accessing appropriate health care. A 30-year-old transgender woman said that when she was 20, she was hospitalized for appendicitis and needed urgent surgery. “I was placed in the male ward,” she said. “All the bad things like this happen to me because of a single word on my document – my gender marker.”
Many transgender people interviewed said discrimination in medical settings deterred them from seeking care altogether, threatening their mental and physical well-being.
The lack of legal gender recognition also hampers transgender people’s ability to get jobs, often resulting in automatic rejections. Some employers said that transgender people would only be hired if they dressed according to their sex assigned at birth, not their gender identity. Other employers explicitly stated in job applications that transgender applicants would not be considered. Many people interviewed said they feel restricted to niche employment, such as the beauty industry or sex work.
In recent years, the Thai government has begun to engage with civil society organizations and United Nations agencies to develop a legal gender recognition procedure. The process has stalled and needs urgent attention, Human Rights Watch said.
The Thai government has an important opportunity to match its positive global reputation on LGBT issues with its obligations under international human rights law by developing a rights-based procedure for legal gender recognition. This law should enable transgender people to be recognized according to their gender identity and change their legal name and gender without any medical requirements.
“Ensuring transgender people’s rights to nondiscrimination, education, health care, and employment is paramount to any vision of equality,” Knight said. “While legal gender recognition will not ease all the hardships transgender people in Thailand face, it is a crucial step toward equality and nondiscrimination.”
A COVID-19 outbreak in Australia has left the queer community reeling as more than 700 patrons of two Melbourne nightclubs have been forced into quarantine.
The Star-Observer reports that health officials in the nation have ordered partygoers of Peel Hotel and Sircuit Bar–two popular LGBTQ nightlife hotspots–into mandatory quarantine. A fellow clubgoer tested positive for the Omicron variant of COVID earlier this week, and confessed to visiting both Peel and Sircuit Bar on Monday (December 10).
“Anyone who attended the Sircuit Bar from 9pm to midnight and the Peel Hotel from 11.30pm to 3am on Friday 10 December needs to quarantine and get tested. The period of quarantine begins from their time of exposure at the venues,” the Victorian Department of Health said in a statement.
“Other patrons who entered Sircuit on 10 December between 6pm and 9pm are being contacted by the Department of Health and asked to self-identify if they were present beyond 9pm. They are also strongly advised to get a standard PCR test and isolate until they get a negative result,” the DoH added.
The Department of Health further stated that vaccinated patrons are only required to quarantine for seven days, as opposed to the standard 14 days for unvaccinated visitors. Anyone who attended should receive a negative PCR test at the end of their quarantine periods before returning to public life.
The Department of Health also stated that neither business has violated any kind of statute or COVID-19 guideline. Still, for Tom McFeely, owner of the Peel hotel, the negative publicity–and mandatory quarantine–present an unneeded headache.
“I can’t understand why my staff and my customers have to go into isolation when every single one of us is double vaxxed,” McFeely told Star Observer. “We were supposed to be living with this thing. There’s nothing anyone could do apart from being double vaxxed. I thought that was the be all and end all and everyone gets to go back and we should be fine. Now there is fear. Does this mean we are going to shut down every time there is a case? They might not use the terminology shut down or closed, but if you don’t have any staff or security, you cannot open.”
McFeely added that the Peel Hotel will reopen this Friday, regardless of the number of staff in quarantine.
The news of the nightclub quarantines in Australia comes amid concerns over the Omicron variant of COVID-19, and if existing vaccines offer adequate protection against it. In the United States, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci has recommended vaccines and booster shots as optimal protection against the variant.
France’s parliament voted on Tuesday to ban so-called conversion therapy, joining a handful of countries that have taken steps to outlaw practices that seek to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
Under the French legislation, people offering LGBT+ conversion therapy could be jailed for up to two years and fined 30,000 euros ($33,810), with even tougher sentences if under-18s or vulnerable adults were involved.
The bill, which must be signed by French President Emmanuel Macron before becoming law, was passed days after a similar ban was signed into law in Canada.
Brazil, Ecuador, Malta, Albania and Germany have also passed legislation that either partially or fully outlaws the practice, which has been condemned by medical professionals.
“Very happy with this agreement,” French Equalities Minister Elisabeth Moreno said on Twitter. “No, being yourself is not a crime.”
European Affairs Minister Clement Beaune, who is gay, tweeted that he was “proud of this agreement”.
From injections to electric shocks, prayer to rape, the myriad methods used to try to change or suppress the sexual desire or gender identity of LGBT+ people have been condemned as harmful and ineffective by numerous medical groups globally.
Bans on conversion therapy have been proposed in at least another 11 countries, according to Thomson Reuters Foundation research, including New Zealand, Mexico, Spain and Britain. ($1 = 0.8873 euros)
A swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania is the latest target in the culture-war debate over whether transgender girls and women should be allowed to participate on female sports teams.
Lia Thomas, who came out as trans in 2019, set three school records and two national records at a meet this month.
Since then, Thomas has faced criticism and verbal attacks from anti-trans groups, conservative media and, reportedly, even two teammates.
Lia Thomas.Penn Athletics
Some of the headlines about Thomas’ wins said she “smashed” the records and continued her “dominant” season alongside pre-transition photos of her and using her previous name and male pronouns — practices known as deadnaming and misgendering.
Transgender advocates have condemned that coverage and some of the conversation about Thomas as transphobic. They said it mischaracterizes her victories to make it appear that transgender women are cheating just by being trans and implies that one trans woman winning means trans women generally are dominating women’s sports. They note that Thomas is competing within guidance issued by the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
Thomas’ critics have varying views. Some have used explicitly anti-transgender language and argue that trans women should be completely banned from women’s sports, while others argue that the NCAA’s policy regarding trans athletes’ participation isn’t strict enough.
Thomas declined an interview with NBC News and has done only one recent interview, with the podcast SwimSwam. In that interview, she said she and her coaches expected that there would be “some measure of pushback” in response to her competing, but not “quite to the extent that it has blown up.”
“I just don’t engage with it,” she said, regarding the criticism. “It’s not healthy for me to read it and engage with it at all, and so I don’t, and that’s all I’ll say on that.”
Swimming as her ‘authentic self’
Thomas swam on the men’s team for her first three years at Penn, and for part of that time, she said she was transitioning. She started her medical transition in May 2019 and began gender-affirming hormones, also known as hormone replacement therapy, which for her included testosterone blockers and estrogen. She said she decided to swim out the 2018-19 season on the men’s team without coming out, which “caused a lot of distress for me,” she told SwimSwam.
“I was struggling,” she said. “My mental health was not very good. There was a lot of unease about basically just feeling trapped in my body, like it didn’t align.”
She came out to her coaches and teammates in the fall of 2019, and swam the rest of her junior year, the 2019-20 season, on the men’s team as well — a time she described as “an uncomfortable experience.”
By the summer of 2020, she had been on testosterone suppressants for a full year, meeting a guideline set by the NCAA in 2011. Its handbook for transgender athletes states: “A trans female treated with testosterone suppression medication may continue to compete on a men’s team but may not compete on a women’s team without changing it to a mixed team status until completing one year of testosterone suppression treatment.” She said she submitted medical information that included blood tests of her hormone levels. The NCAA approved her request and cleared her to compete on the women’s team that fall.
But then Covid-19 led to nationwide lockdowns, and the Ivy League canceled its swimming season. Thomas said she decided to take the year off to save her eligibility, “given how important it is to me to be able to compete and swim as my authentic self.”
She began competing on the women’s team in November, at the start of the 2021-22 season, and said she has been on hormone therapy for just over two and a half years.
Thomas has performed well at nearly every meet so far this season, but the media firestorm began after her performance at the Zippy Invitational at the University of Akron in Ohio, where she won three events and set three program, meet and pool records, along with two national records. In the 1,650-yard freestyle in particular, she was 38 seconds ahead of teammate Anna Kalandadze, who finished second. Right-wing media outlets have shared video of Thomas winning the race on social media.
Since then, she’s received international media attention, and two of her teammates, speaking anonymously, reportedly told the sports website OutKick that they disagree with her participation, viewing it as unfair. NBC News has been unable to verify these reports. University of Pennsylvania Athletics and several members of the women’s swim team have not responded to requests for comment.
‘Meaningful competition’
Some critics have argued that Thomas’ performance is evidence that she has inherent physical advantages from going through male puberty and having higher testosterone levels. As a result, they argue that the NCAA should bar trans women from female sports teams or change its policy, saying that requiring one year of testosterone suppressants for trans women isn’t enough.
“While the NCAA’s rules demand the use of testosterone suppressants for a specific duration, the current requirements are not rigid enough and do not produce an authentic competitive atmosphere,” John Lohn, editor-in-chief of Swimming World magazine, wrote in an op-ed. “It is obvious that one year is not a sufficient timeframe to offer up a level playing field. Athletes transitioning from male to female possess the inherent advantage of years of testosterone production and muscle-building.”
Some researchers and advocates disagree, including at least one researcher who supports what is widely considered a more middle-of-the-road approach.
Joanna Harper, visiting fellow for transgender athletic performance at England’s Loughborough University, published the first performance analysis of transgender athletes in 2015. Harper, a trans runner who has master’s degrees in physics and medical physics, evaluated the race times of eight trans women distance runners after they transitioned and found that they were no more competitive in the female division than they had been in the male division.
She noted that it was a small study and that it doesn’t apply to any sport other than distance running, but that it was and still is the only published data on transgender athletes. She is currently conducting three studies of how hormone therapy affects transgender athletes, though she said she is still gathering data, which could take years.
In addition to her research, one oft-cited study published last year in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that transgender women in the Air Force performed better on fitness tests after one year of hormone therapy when compared to cisgender women. After two years, their performance was “fairly equivalent” to cisgender women, the study’s author, Dr. Timothy Roberts, told NBC News this year.
Harper said she’s been following the news about Thomas closely and believes it’s true that trans women will maintain some advantages even after hormone therapy. But she said Thomas — who is swimming slower now than she did pre-transition — is just one person, and she doesn’t represent all trans athletes.
“I have seen trans athletes who undergo transition — and either because they don’t adapt well to the change in their testosterone levels, or they had trouble with the medication, or perhaps their life focus changes somewhat — who are not nearly as successful after transition as they were before,” Harper said. “And we’re never going to hear in the media of those trans women who are less successful after transition than they were before because they’re not successful.”
She said she believes that the NCAA’s guideline of requiring one year of hormone therapy is “perfectly reasonable,” and that it “will result in meaningful competition between trans women and cis women,” or women who are not trans.
She added that the NCAA’s rule has been in place for 10 years, and that trans women “aren’t taking over NCAA sports and are still underrepresented.” She noted that there are more than 200,000 women who compete in the NCAA every year, and that trans people make up about 1 percent of the population. If they were proportionally represented in the NCAA, there should be about 2,000 trans women competing, but she estimates there are less than 100 each year.
“We’ve never seen a transgender NCAA champion, and Lia is not likely to do it either,” Harper said. “But even if she did win an NCAA championship, we should see a few trans women each and every year winning NCAA Division 1 championships. So at some point it has to happen, and this idea that it’s some horrible miscarriage of justice that Lia is successful just doesn’t add up.”
Is the NCAA policy working?
The NCAA’s policy regarding trans women athletes is considered among the strictest of sports governing bodies, especially after the International Olympic Committee nixed testosterone testing and limits for trans women athletes in a new set of guidance released in November.
Anne Lieberman, director of policy for Athlete Ally, a group that advocates for LGBTQ-inclusive sports policies, said that part of the conversation about Thomas has been focused on whether the NCAA policy is “working.”
“What do we mean by ‘working’? So for many people, working means that it will prevent trans athletes from either succeeding or even participating in college athletics — and I think that that’s an important distinction,” said Lieberman, who uses gender-neutral pronouns. “Trans athletes — Lia, in particular — deserve love, support, care, access to be able to swim. And Lia, like any other athlete, should be able to win and lose.”
Lieberman said they don’t think the conversation about Thomas is just about sports, because, they noted, there hasn’t been an issue with the NCAA policy in the last 10 years. Rather, they said the conversation about Thomas and trans athletes generally is part of the “fuel for the political fire that is absolutely ravaging trans rights in this country.”
Ten states — nine this year — have passed laws that ban trans girls and women from playing on female sports teams. More than 20 additional states considered similar bills. Over two dozen states also weighed legislation that would ban trans minors from accessing gender-affirming medical care such as hormones and puberty blockers. Governors in two states — Arkansas and Tennessee — signed such legislation into law, though a judge blocked Arkansas’ law from taking effect in July.
“While people might think more broadly that this is just about sports, this is really about the broader conversation about the humanity of trans folks and whether or not we deserve to participate in all aspects of life in society, and that includes college sports,” they said.
Gillian Branstetter, press secretary for the National Women’s Law Center, added that there are real needs that female athletes have, including equity in funding, safety from harassment, mental health support and making sure they have equitable facilities.
“I don’t know that if you were to poll female athletes the participation of people like Lia Thomas would come up very much,” she said. “There are much bigger issues at hand for female athletes, and people who think that they’re saving women’s sports by putting forward their transphobia have never expressed a single piece of interest in saving women’s sports before.”
The Food and Drug Administration has approved the first long-acting injectable medication for use as pre-exposure prevention, or PrEP, against HIV, the agency announced Monday.
Apretude, the new drug, is an injectable given every two months as an alternative to HIV prevention pills, like Truvada and Descovy, which have been shown to reduce the risk of HIV by 99 percent when taken daily.
Two FDA trials analyzing the safety and efficacy of the novel drug found that Apretude was more likely to reduce HIV than the daily oral medications — by 69 percent for cisgender men and transgender women who have sex with men and by 90 percent for cisgender women. Apretude’s superior efficacy was apparently driven by the greater ease with which study participants adhered to the every-other-month regimen compared with taking a pill every day.
“Today’s approval adds an important tool in the effort to end the HIV epidemic by providing the first option to prevent HIV that does not involve taking a daily pill,” Dr. Debra Birnkrant, the director of antivirals division at the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in a statement. “This injection, given every two months, will be critical to addressing the HIV epidemic in the U.S., including helping high-risk individuals and certain groups where adherence to daily medication has been a major challenge or not a realistic option.”
While gains have been made in PrEP use over the past several years, only 25 percent of the 1.2 million people for whom PrEP is recommended were prescribed the treatment last year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC estimates that as of 2019, there were approximately 285,000 people using PrEP, the vast majority of them gay and bisexual men.
The hope is that the newly approved, long-acting injectable — made by ViiV Healthcare, which is majority owned by GlaxoSmithKline — will make adherence easier, help increase PrEP usage and drive down the national HIV rate.
“People who are vulnerable to acquiring HIV, especially those in Black and Latinx communities who are disproportionately impacted in the US, may want options beyond daily oral pills,” Deborah Waterhouse, ViiV Healthcare’s CEO, said in a statement, adding that “Apretude was studied in one of the most diverse and comprehensive HIV prevention trial programs to date, which also included some of the largest numbers of transgender women and Black men who have sex with men ever enrolled in an HIV prevention trial.”
Men who have sex with men accounted for 66 percent of all new HIV diagnoses in the U.S. in 2019, according to the CDC. When the numbers are broken down by race, Black Americans accounted for the highest percentage, representing 42 percent of all new diagnoses that year.
In July, the federal government announced that almost all insurers must cover the two approved forms of PrEP pills, Truvada and Descovy, as well as the lab tests and clinic visits required to maintain such prescriptions — and to do so with no cost sharing. As it stands, insurers will not be required to cover all costs for the new injectable version of PrEP, which has a list price of $3,700 per dose and is slated to begin shipping to wholesalers and specialty distributors in the U.S. in early 2022.
Kenyon Farrow, the managing director of PrEP4All, an advocacy group that fights to increase access to HIV prevention and treatment, said his organization is “definitely happy to see the FDA approval of another option for people who want to use PrEP.”
However, he said he fears that the “implementation of this option will likely take years to make it real for most people.”
“Due to COVID, public health systems are already overburdened and much of the workforce needed to implement this large scale are leaving the field due to burnout,” he said in an email. “Because it will need to be administered in clinical settings, it won’t be treated as a pharmacy benefit by payers, but instead as a clinical benefit, which will take time to implement the proper coding for billing, as well as education and training for nurses who will likely bear the brunt of the work to implement.”
With officials Sunday painting a grim picture of a winter in which the omicron variant spreads with devastating speed, California hospitals are trying to do what they can to prepare for the weeks and months ahead.
Public health officials are expecting some kind of wave of new infections to sweep through during the winter, and depending on how large it is, that could tax the hospital system in a way not seen since the summer delta surge.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical advisor on the pandemic, said Sunday the nation should be prepared for big spikes in hospitalizations and deaths, especially in areas with low vaccination rates, because of the remarkable spread of omicron.
“We are going to see a significant stress in some regions of the country on the hospital system, particularly in those areas where you have a low level of vaccination,” he told CNN.
People who are vaccinated and have received booster shots are still expected to be well protected against hospitalization and death, even against omicron. But Fauci and others say with omicron’s spread, they expect more breakthrough infections among vaccinated people — meaning they are at higher risk for coming down with mild symptoms and being contagious.
Those who are unvaccinated will be at the highest risk in a winter surge, experts say, and there are still many of them. In addition, vaccinated people who haven’t gotten their booster shot will likely be at greater risk with omicron of a breakthrough infection than with previous variants.
The limiting factor for many hospitals will not be beds, but people to staff them, said Dr. Nancy Gin, regional medical director of quality for Kaiser Permanente Southern California.
“What is going to be a concern for the entire medical community this year is that ‘Great Resignation’ that we’ve been hearing about with regard to healthcare personnel,” she said.
Besides omicron, Gin said that Kaiser Permanente Southern California has been eyeing the effects of the seasonal flu, which was squelched last year by the precautions that people were taking to prevent COVID-19 — and could reemerge as a serious threat as people have let down their guard about masking, hand-washing and social distancing
She urged people to get the flu vaccines, as well as COVID-19 shots and boosters, to give themselves more protection and help ease the strain on healthcare workers.
At hospitals, “people are tired. We have been at this for nearly two years,” Gin said. And “the emergence of omicron has renewed concerns about surges and a difficult winter.”
Kaiser Permanente Southern California, which has 4.8 million members across Southern California, the Inland Empire and nearby areas, believes it is “well positioned to be able to absorb the volume at this time,” Gin said.
As it stands, “we’re only using about 15% of all of our ventilator capacity for Southern California,” Gin said — far lower than last winter, when some of its medical centers were at 60% or more of their ventilator capacity.
Some doctors are concerned that people are so fed up with the pandemic that they won’t wear masks at a time when transmission is expected to climb.
“My concern — and the concern across the country — is the fatigue with regard to mask wearing and social distancing” as the more transmissible omicron variant spreads, said Dr. Stephanie Hall, chief medical officer for Keck Medicine of USC and USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. “People are tired. And they’re not sticking with it.”
Hall urged people who are planning to gather with loved ones for the holidays to get tested for the coronavirus and isolate if they are positive, to avoid travel if possible, and to keep wearing masks in public spaces, washing their hands and adhering to social distancing.
At L.A. County’s massive public hospital system, COVID-19 hospitalizations “have remained steady over the last two months,” Health Services Director Dr. Christina Ghaly said in a statement.
“We are not seeing a rapid increase and we credit so far lower COVID-19 numbers this December to everyone who has gotten vaccinated, including getting the booster shot if eligible,” Ghaly said. “However, we recognize that other hospitals across L.A. County have begun to see some increases in inpatient volume and that other regions in the United States are experiencing a surge in patients.
“As we continue to manage this evolving pandemic, including the danger presented by a virus that continues to mutate, we cannot emphasize enough how critical it is for everyone 5 and older to get vaccinated and for those 16 years and over to get the booster shot if they are 6 months or more past their last dose,” Ghaly said. “We also encourage everyone to maintain vigilance over the holidays — for example, by limiting attendance at large gatherings and wearing a mask when in indoor public spaces.”
When he wasn’t working his day job as a medical technician, Suraj Mahadeva helped people in need.
The 26-year-old taught kids with autism how to swim and helped young Chicagoans experiencing homelessness, his sister Althea Mahadeva said. He was also an active member of Chicago’s LGTBQIA community, always spreading awareness about pride events.
“He liked everything and everyone, and what he loved the most was helping people,” Althea Mahadeva said.
Suraj Mahadeva was killed in a shooting in Palmer Square over the weekend, just a few days before he was supposed to go on a family trip, according to his sister and police.
His grief-stricken family and friends are in disbelief over his murder, which they believe could’ve been a random act of violence. They’re urging anyone with information about the shooting to come forward as the police investigation continues.
“This has hit very hard for us because we don’t know what the reasons were. We don’t know who did it,” Althea Mahadeva said. “The best way to be safe is to catch the person who did this and to stop people from being able to do something like this again.”
The fatal shooting happened around 3:25 a.m. Saturday in the 2100 block of North Albany Avenue, police said.
Suraj Mahadeva was standing on his friend’s porch waiting to be let inside when someone shot him in the head, police and family said. Suraj Mahadeva’s friend heard loud gunfire and came outside to help.
Suraj Mahadeva was rushed to Mt. Sinai Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, according to police.
“I feel so bad for his friend because he had to be there as he passed,” Althea Mahadeva said.
Police would not say whether the shot was fired by someone on foot or in a passing vehicle, and had no suspect description or further information available. No one is in custody, they said.
Althea Mahadeva said her brother was shot in the back of the head, but neither police nor the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office could confirm that, saying that reports only listed a gunshot wound to the head as a cause of death.
“Only a coward could do something like that from behind,” Althea Mahadeva said. “If you saw him from the front, saw his smile, it was so infectious.”
Suraj Mahadeva grew up in Michigan in a Filipino and Sri Lankan household. After graduating from Michigan State University in 2018, he moved to Chicago, a place where he felt a strong sense of belonging, his sister said. He lived in the Palmer Square area.
“While he was still in school, he would come out to Chicago for pride events. The LGTBQIA community in Chicago, as well as his friends from high school, is why he moved to Chicago,” Althea Mahadeva said.
Althea Mahadeva described her brother as a compassionate young man who lived a life of service.
“His love languages were acts of service and quality time and touch. He gave the best hugs in the whole word,” she said through tears. “He was so sensitive and such a good listener and such a fierce protector of anyone who he felt needed help. He was there to help them.”
In his last Instagram story before he died, Suraj Mahadeva wore a Mahatma Gandhi T-shirt with the phrase, “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of them,” Althea Mahadeva said.
“In a way, that was the best shirt he could’ve worn because it gave me one last bit of advice,” she said.
Suraj Mahadeva is survived by his sister, mother and father. His funeral is Wednesday in Michigan, where his family resides.
Friends are holding a vigil for Suraj Mahadeva at the LGTBQ community hub Center on Halsted, 3656 N. Halsted St., Thursday evening.
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South Africa’s trans and non-binary community is facing a worrying shortage of testosterone, leaving many at serious risk.
The shortage is down to manufacturer Pfizer restricting its production of its Depo-Testosterone, a prescription hormone replacement therapy that helps many transmasc people, in favour of producing COVID-19 vaccines.
Dr Anastacia Tomson told IOL that the current shortage is “serious” as the “communication from the company anticipates stock to be restored only in or after the second quarter of 2022”.
As such, Dr Tomson warned that many trans, non-binary and gender non-conforming patients could be without the “essential and often life-saving” treatment potentially for months.
She added that she believed the shortage resulted in “extreme demand” and that “any stock that is still usable has been bought up”.
This is not the first time that South Africa has experienced a shortage of testosterone and other vital treatments. According to New Frame, there was a short-term shortage of Pfizer’s Depo-Testosterone in 2019. The company said at the time the interruption in supply was due to circumstances outside its control.
Nino Maphosa, a trans activist, told New Frame that he had used his last shot of testosterone at the end of September and hadn’t been able to find any more since then. He said he had been “trying to research how to navigate” this shortage.
“It’s frustrating,” Maphosa explained. “Now my sex levels are low and you keep asking: ‘What the hell is wrong with me?’”
He described how he was “able to gain more muscles” while he was able to access the gender-affirming medicine. But he feared that his progress “will reverse” now that he isn’t able to take testosterone.
Maphosa said: “I can’t believe that my whole life is in that little bottle … When I don’t take it, I’m grumpy, I’m depressed, I’m snappy, I’m irritable.
“I can’t even look at myself. I keep fearing that I will go back.
“I was so excited that my moustache was growing, now I fear that it will go back.”
Savuka Matyila, a spokesperson for the NGO Gender Dynamix, told IOL it had received several queries about the shortage from trans and gender non-conforming people in South Africa.
Matyila said the organisation had heard reports of some people being “offered testosterone through the private sector” that was potentially “expired and which might have adverse effects on their health”.
“These medicines would be entertained by community members who were left wanting,” Matyila added.
Maphosa told New Frame that he had heard of people being offered testosterone on the “black market” and even said he would consider buying it. However, he said he would “do my research” and “won’t just do a stupid thing without speaking to my doctor”.
But he told IOL that he was worried that others within the trans community might be so desperate that they might take the “black market” medication without thinking about the risks.
“People don’t think about the risk, they only think about the progress that they have achieved and don’t want to reverse that,” Maphosa said.
A Kansas City-area school district must pay a transgender student $4 million after it refused to let him use the boys’ restrooms or locker rooms, a Jackson County jury decided.
The jury on Monday found the Blue Springs school district had discriminated against the student, NBC affiliate KSHB-TV reported.
The school district said in a statement that it disagreed with the verdict and would be “seeking appropriate relief from the trial court and court of appeals if necessary.”
Delta Woods Middle School in Lee’s Summit, Mo.Google Maps
The student had legally changed his name in 2010 and amended his birth certificate to reflect his new name and gender in 2014, according to the lawsuit. He filed the lawsuit in 2015.
Although the state recognized him as a boy, the district denied the student access to the boys’ restrooms and locker rooms at Delta Woods Middle School and the Freshman Center, the lawsuit said.
The student participated in boy’s physical education and athletics in middle schools but was required to use a single person bathroom outside the boys’ locker room, according to court documents.
He did not participate in fall sports at the Freshman Center because he could not use the boys’ locker room or restrooms.
