Corky: Laguna Beach is a dream of a cool beach town

• September 6, 2024

For some unknown reason, well at least unknown to me, I had a dream last night about sitting on the beach at Oak Street in Laguna Beach.

It was a warm sunny summer day, and by the look of the people and surfboards it was sometime in the late ’60s.  I have no idea what I was doing there or pretty much anything that was going on, just that I woke up and had the image in my head.  It made me start thinking about how much I have always loved that town and brought back a ton of memories.

Laguna Beach, like most beach towns that have surf, has a rich history of legendary surfers who grew up there and pioneered the different surf spots.  My first memories of the area is doing surf checks at Brooks Street on the way south.

I lived in North O.C.  Normally the destination was San Onofre or one of the spots in that area.  But we always had to stop and check out Brooks Street.  Hobie Alter lived right there.  While checking the surf, it was also customary to point that out: “Yep, there’s Hobies’ house.”  Part of the deal.

The early surf heroes of the area, at least that I know of, would have included Hevs McClelland, Dick Metz, Dave Whitegon, Barney Wilks and Corky Smith.

Hevs became one of the all-time great surf contest announcers.  He was also one of the funniest dudes and best storytellers that I ever knew.  Dick Metz owned a bunch of Hobie surf shops, including the one in Honolulu.  He also started the Surfing Heritage and Culture Center in San Clemente.  The dude turns 95 this week and is still going strong.

I started hanging out in Laguna Beach during the early 1960s.  I had a girlfriend, Banzai Betty, who lived there and went to Laguna Beach High.  She lived across the street from the famous Calhoun girl surfing family.  Marge Calhoun had been one of the best women surfers in the world and her daughters, Candy and Robin, both surfed.  Candy was great, too, she won a number of events.  Great all-around water person, too.

Ron Sizemore won the United States Championship in Huntington Beach at the age of 16.  He entered the mens division, shot the pier standing backward, and became an overnight sensation.  He is part of the Sizemore surfing family, big time in Laguna Beach and also San Onofre.

There were a number of great surfers in town during the 1960s.  There was a dude, John Parlette, who could bodysurf feet first.  He was another great all-around water person, like Candy Calhoun.

There was also Pat Tobin.  Pat rode some radical speed-type shaped boards.  Narrow, pointy and with extreme “down” rails.  He wound up living on mainland Mexico and discovered and pioneered many surf spots that are well known today.  There is legend of him paddling 10 miles into a spot that had no roads.  He had a backpack with some supplies and would camp out for weeks surfing really extreme waves all by himself.  He became very well-known for his paintings.  Really good artist.

Probably the best surfer to ever come out of that town was Billy Hamilton.  Billy grew up in South Laguna, just above Thousand Steps Beach.  He was one of my best friends during high school.

He and I, along with Mark Martinson, went to most of the surfing contests together.  Billy had, I should say “has,” because he still does, one of the most beautiful and elegant surfing styles, ever.

Our surfing developed pretty opposite.  He got style and I had moves.

I think it was about the time we both hit 17 or 18 that the two met for both of us.  To this day I consider him one of the greatest surfers ever.

There was a younger kid who was called “Brother.”  Another infamous local surfing family.  He surfed like Billy Hamilton, super good style.  He got the name from his sister, who was a known surf girl in the area.

I got to briefly live in Laguna Beach twice.  Once in 1965 in South Laguna with Allan Seymour.  But they condemned our house so I had to move.  I then lived in Gaylord Vermelya’s kitchen for a few months, on Glenneyre Street, near Denny’s.   I had to sleep with my head out the window because the stove leaked gas and would almost asphyxiate me every night.

Lastly, that town has always produced some of the greatest musicians anywhere.  The HONK band is still to this day one of two fav bands, along with the Rolling Stones.  I could go on for days talking music stuff, but no space for that.

Needless to say.  I love Laguna Beach.

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​ Orange County Register 

Laguna Niguel’s Ziggurat auction at $156.6 million after flurry of minimum bids

• September 6, 2024

The online auction for the “Ziggurat” in Laguna Niguel is now in its fourth month, thanks to minimal bids made just before deadline.

On Friday, Sept. 6, the bidding reached $156.6 million for the pyramid-shaped Chet Holifield Federal Building, which sits on an 89-acre campus.

A bid $300,000 above the previous day’s last bid – the smallest increment permitted – landed just 36 minutes before the auction would have ended. It was quickly followed by another bid, upping the price by another $300,000.

These moves, essentially parroting the bidding pace of the seven previous bidding days, created a new auction deadline for Monday, Sept. 9, at 1:22 p.m.

You see, bids increasing the price by the minimum amount are this auction’s norm. My trusty spreadsheet found 78 of the 88 bids made were $300,000 above the previous price. Now $300,000 is real money, but in the scope of this auction it equals less than 0.2% of the latest price.

It’s all part of the gamesmanship of this GSA auction, which started June 5. At stake is a campus centered around a 53-year-old, seven-story, 1-million-square-foot office facility for which the government has no use.

Bidding was originally due to end July 31, but the auction rules say if the current high bid is topped on a deadline day, the auction remains open for another 24 hours. That extension requirement was met July 31, when four bids pushed the price up by $1.2 million to $136.8 million. Plus, this requirement to extend bidding has been met on all 26 business days since July 31.

The extra auctioneering has boosted the price by $19.8 million, so far. And it’s been somewhat dramatic: on 17 of these days, the auction was extended within one hour of the deadline.

The Ziggurat is a rare opportunity for large-scale real estate development in south Orange County. This is its second auction.

The first, which required the buyer to preserve the sprawling structure, drew no bids. This auction – without that restriction on development – will likely mean demolition of the structure designed by the late famed architect William Pereira.

Jonathan Lansner is the business columnist for the Southern California News Group. He can be reached at [email protected]

Ziggurat tales

3 months of bidding ups price by 123%
Last-minute bids keep Ziggurat auction going
The $150 million-plus bidding war
Ziggurat back up for auction, no preservation required
Feds get no interest in auction of iconic Ziggurat building
$70 million Ziggurat auction is wasted opportunity
Any interest in buying the iconic Ziggurat ?
 Ziggurat: How a white elephant became county landmark
Laguna Niguel’s landmark could be facing the wrecking ball
Ziggurat a touch of Babylon in Orange County

​ Orange County Register 

Havasu Lake residents boiling over water quality as EPA assumes oversight

• September 6, 2024

From his front porch, Havasu Lake resident Gary Chamberlain can see the shimmering Colorado River. He also can see the storage tanks of the Havasu Water Co., which is supposed to supply his community with clean and safe drinking water.

Although the privately owned, 64-year-old water company draws its water from Lake Havasu — itself a large reservoir formed by Parker Dam — its ability to provide potable water to its 361 customers in their sundrenched community has been a challenge for more than two years.

Since May 2022, the company has been slapped with multiple citations and violation notices from state and federal water regulators for operational deficiencies, faulty equipment and failing to provide potable water to its customers. The company has repeatedly issued water boil notices to its customers due to high levels of trihalomethanes — byproducts formed during the water treatment process — that exceed minimum federal safety drinking water standards.

An attorney representing the company said costly and ongoing litigation with the neighboring Chemehuevi Indian Tribe has thwarted the company’s efforts to make necessary fixes to its public water system.

“The irony of this whole debacle is that my wife and I can sit on our front porch any time of the day or night and watch millions and millions of gallons of water flow by, and yet we can’t get any of it to drink. We feel like we’re in a Third World country,” said Gary Chamberlain, 75, an 18-year resident of Havasu Lake and former chairman of the town’s municipal advisory council.

Community meeting

Residents aired their grievances during a community meeting on Thursday, Sept. 5, in Havasu Lake, hosted by officials with the state Public Utilities Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency, which assumed regulatory oversight of the Havasu Water Co. on Jan. 1 because its 1,500-foot pipeline runs across the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe’s reservation.

Residents voiced frustration over bureaucratic red tape they claim has prevented them from getting clean and safe drinking water consistently. They also complained about increasing water rates and unsatisfactory results when complaining to state and federal agencies seeking help.

“We’re tired of this! This has got to stop!” demanded one resident who did not give their name.

Government officials told them they were doing everything they could, but insisted there is a process.

Christopher Chen, drinking water enforcement officer for the EPA, said the agency issued an order in May giving the water company until Dec. 31 to submit a plan for correcting significant deficiencies. Should the company fail to comply with the agency’s directives, the EPA can seek redress with the U.S. Department of Justice, Chen said.

The EPA has ordered Havasu Water Co. to develop a plan to, among other things, come into compliance with federal safe drinking water standards regarding levels of trihalomethanes, retain an appropriately certified operator, and submit timely surface water treatment data.

On Aug. 7, the agency issued the water company a notice for failing to comply with the May order by not submitting a compliance plan and not providing evidence that qualified personnel were operating its water system, among other things.

“We feel like we’ve exhausted all our routes for getting the water system to return to compliance, and we need to escalate — we’ll evaluate our options, and that can potentially be a referral to the Department of Justice,” Chen said during Thursday’s meeting.

But Chen also said the water company has been making strides, albeit small ones.

“We have seen progress made, but it may not be the progress you’re seeking,” he said.

Power outage started descent

Problems at Havasu Water Co. first surfaced in March 2022, when it was hit by a Southern California Edison power outage. The company did not have operable backup generators to keep its decrepit pump working, which cut off the supply of water to its customers. The crisis was compounded when the company’s only operator walked off the job.

Inspectors with the state Water Resources Control Board were called in to investigate, and it took nine days before the company could restore water service for showers and toilet flushing. However, residents said they went about a month before potable water was restored.

That opened a floodgate of citations and violation notices issued to the water company by the WRCB, starting with a $1,500 fine in May 2022 after the company failed to provide evidence that it had a certified water treatment operator and distribution system operator on staff. The company also failed to provide the state with a corrective action plan.

And while the company has provided documentation to the state Public Utilities Commission claiming it has certified operators working at its treatment plant, a PUC representative said during Thursday night’s meeting his agency has yet to actually observe the operators on site and working.

“That’s a little more difficult figuring out,” said Wilson Tsai of the PUC’s water services division.

From March 2022 to December 2023, the WRCB issued nine citations to the company totaling more than $7,800 for failing to comply with its directives.

According to court and EPA records, Havasu Lake residents had clean and running water only 44% of the time from March 2022 to March 2023. For the remainder of that time, their water was under-pressured and subject to “do not drink” and water boil notices due to high levels of trihalomethanes.

Patrick Wilson, senior regional toxicologist for the EPA, assured residents Thursday that the levels of trihalomethanes in their water supply were not that harmful.

“At the end of the day, we are talking about an extremely low level of contaminants in the water,” Wilson said. Still, he said it was unacceptable for the water company to continuously exceed trihalomethane levels in violation of federal safe water drinking standards.

“And we’re going to do something about it,” Wilson said.

Since the EPA assumed regulatory oversight of the water company, it has issued more than a dozen letters and notices to company President Jennifer Hodges citing significant deficiencies at its treatment plant, noncompliance with EPA administrative orders, interruptions in water service, and concerns over water pressure loss and water boil notices.

Lingering dispute with tribe

Havasu Water Co. had spent more than a decade of wrangling with the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe when the tribe sued in March 2020 over the right of the water company to run its pipeline across tribal land to the Lake Havasu waterfront, where it pumps its water to customers.

The tribe maintains that a 30-year agreement allowing the pipeline expired in 2006, and the water company has refused to negotiate a new annual rental agreement at fair rental value. Instead, the company continued paying the tribe only $500 a year under the original agreement, according to the lawsuit.

The water company disputes the tribe’s assertion that its 1976 agreement with the tribe terminated in 2006, and the lawsuit is ongoing.

“The tribe seeks to have the pipeline and pumping equipment removed, which will deprive 361 customers of water,” said Patrick Webb, an attorney representing Havasu Water Co., in an email. “This concerted illegal attempt to put Havasu Water Co. out of business after 60 years of serving the public has already cost the company and its customers hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, which has delayed maintenance of the water system.”

Webb called the tribe’s lawsuit “erroneous,” noting that, in 1985, the Public Utilities Commission ordered the easement to be extended for the provision of public utility water service until it was no longer necessary.

Related links

Crippled water supply problems still lingering weeks later for Havasu Lake residents
Havasu Water Co. fined for leaving residents without drinkable water
Residents and Indian tribe at odds over water

Webb also claims the EPA has erroneously asserted jurisdiction over the water company, which has been regulated by the state for the last 60 years. He said federal courts already have ruled that the treatment plant is not within the boundaries of the Chemehuevi reservation, but rather on federal Bureau of Land Management land.

“The EPA, apparently in cahoots with the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe, now erroneously asserts that it has displaced California regulation of the water company because it is a tribal water company within the Chemehuevi’s reservation, when it’s not,” Webb said.

Attorneys for the tribe did not respond to telephone calls and emails requesting comment.

While the legal battle between the tribe and water company rages on, and state and federal regulators continue pushing the water company to comply with their directives, Havasu Lake residents, at least for the foreseeable future, could be looking at more water boil notices and more bottled water.

“Our water situation has not gotten any better,” Chamberlain said. “It’s gross negligence in my book.”

​ Orange County Register 

Alexander: How much can Jim Harbaugh change the Chargers?

• September 6, 2024

EL SEGUNDO — How much do fresh atmosphere, environment and leadership really help on an NFL game day?

Or, to put it another way, will the ebullient, sometimes hokey but unwavering attitude Jim Harbaugh has brought to the Chargers be the antidote to … well, Chargering?

We will have 17 opportunities to find out this season, beginning with Sunday’s game at SoFi Stadium against the Las Vegas Raiders. (And for the moment we’ll overlook the fact that SoCal’s chapter of Raider Nation considers this one of 10 home games, eight in Allegiant Stadium in Vegas and one each in SoFi against the Chargers and Rams).

The day-to-day environment itself is dramatically different. The name of Chargers’ new training center, “The Bolt,” might be a shameless ripoff of the Dallas Cowboys’ “The Star.” But the three-story, 150,000-square foot facility is a dramatic improvement over the team’s temporary digs in Costa Mesa the past seven seasons. And – you can avert your eyes, San Diegans – it makes the team’s old quarters in Mission Valley look like the NFL training grounds equivalent of a two-room shack. It’s that opulent.

And while I didn’t see any inspirational signs encouraging Chargers players to attack every day “with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind” – one of the Harbaugh family’s favorite expressions, handed down from paterfamilias Jack Harbaugh – the influence of the new coach is there, and it’s unmistakable.

Consider: Each Chargers player this week got a collared work shirt with an inscribed name tag and an embroidered lightning bolt, the sort of shirt your mechanic wears when you take your car for servicing. The point: To get where they want to go, hard work is involved. Derwin James Jr. proudly displayed his at his locker after Thursday’s practice.

“It (the environment) definitely feels different,” he said. “Everything is new for us. … I love it. Very detailed, technicians, hard-working coaches.”

The idea that paying attention to the little things will enable you to conquer the big things? Here’s an example: Harbaugh himself organized and orchestrated the taking of the team photo, making sure every player was in the spot he needed to be. Potentially it’s like herding cats. This one was done in seven minutes.

“That was my first experience having a head coach kind of call everybody up and sit everybody down in the seat for the team photo,” edge rusher Khalil Mack said. “But he’s been like that this whole time. I talked to one of the ladies on the (team) plane, and he was cleaning up his area and she’s saying, ‘No, I got it.’ And he’s like, no. He’s walking the halls picking up (stuff), you know, so you kind of get a sense of the person he is and the man he is.

“He’s a detail guy, a detail-oriented guy. And so, yeah, it was different, but he’s a special dude.”

Offensive tackle Rashawn Slater played against Harbaugh’s Michigan teams at Northwestern. “We had him in the first half” of a Wolverines-Wildcats meeting in 2018, he said, “but then they turned around and put a beating on us.”  From seeing his teams across the field and talking to fellow players after Harbaugh was hired in January, he had an inkling what was coming.

“They’ve really instilled this culture of, just preparation,” he said. “Preparation, hard work, consistency. That’s really at the foundation of everything we do, and I think everyone’s bought into that. And it’s very special. Simple but effective, you know?

“… The message (from other players) was, ‘You’re going to work, but you’re going to love him.’ And I would definitely agree with that. It’s been hard work, but we all bought into the vision and we all understand the purpose. And, you know, he’s a great guy.”

There’s a Ted Lasso kind of quirkiness to Harbaugh, sort of a befuddled uncle quality that can come particularly – but evidently not exclusively – at the interview podium. As Joey Bosa put it in a video interview with Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer, “He has a unique perspective on things … he gets his messages across in a unique way, in a fun, kind of funny Jim Harbaugh type of way.”

During his midweek availability this week, Harbaugh talked about wanting to create a season where everyone in the organization, not just in the locker room, considers this the “favorite ball team they’ve ever been on.”  He compared the tunnel vision involved in preparing for the season to “being in a submarine and ready to surface.”

And this was his answer when Channel 2’s Jim Hill asked Harbaugh what his biggest concern was going into the season:

“You do everything you can to prepare, but you just don’t know. The way the preseason’s set up, it’s hard for any team to know exactly what they have. So, yeah, it’s like, let’s go. We’re jumping out of a plane and let’s hope the parachute opens. You know, hopefully we all packed it in there good and it opens for us. And there’s been – I can’t say enough about all the people in the organization that have made sure that parachute is packed right.”

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There are no “Believe” signs in the Chargers’ locker room as far as I could tell, although each player’s nameplate includes not only his college but his high school alma mater and what his recruiting ranking was. Additional motivation intended, perhaps, for the guys whose nameplates read “NR” for “not ranked?”

However you characterize it, Harbaugh’s style has worked at each stop along his coaching trail – at the University of San Diego, at Stanford, with the 49ers, and at Michigan. If he can erase this franchise’s history – if he can bring home a Lombardi Trophy to be displayed in “The Bolt,” does that make him a miracle worker?

We’re about to find out. As Harbaugh put it this week, “Every day matters, but the games count.”

[email protected]

​ Orange County Register 

How to avoid the new ‘shoulder season’ crowds

• September 6, 2024

By Sam Kemmis | NerdWallet

Traveling during peak season can be a drag. Visiting Europe in the summer, for example, means contending with higher prices, tight availability and throngs of fellow travelers.

That’s why many savvy travelers choose to vacation during “shoulder seasons” that lie between peak season and low season — spring and autumn for many destinations. Yet remote work and overcrowded peak seasons have increased the popularity of these shoulder seasons.

Take the Jersey Shore, a popular seaside destination in New Jersey, for example. This coastal region has seen a significant increase in visitors during the fall months, with October through December occupancy rates in 2023 up by as much as 50% compared to pre-pandemic levels, according to a 2024 report from AirDNA, a short-term rental analytics firm. And it’s not the only place that’s getting more visitors outside of peak season.

As many destinations see more tourists spill into the shoulders, what’s the best way to avoid these offseason crowds?

Avoid trendy destinations

If everyone is zagging their travel plans, maybe it’s a good time to zig.

For example, Japan saw a huge influx of travelers this spring. The number of U.S. citizens departing for Japan in March through May of 2024 rose 17% compared with the same months in 2023, and jumped a whopping 41% compared with the same months in 2019, according to the International Trade Administration. Similarly, Greece saw nearly three times as many U.S. visitors from March through May in 2024 compared to the same period in 2019.

Closer to home, popular national parks have seen a surge in shoulder season crowds.

In Maine, “Acadia National Park, which was once highly seasonal with peak demand only in July and August, now sees high demand stretching from June through October,” Chloé Garlaschi, a communications manager for AirDNA, said in an email. “This trend is part of a broader shift where national park destinations are attracting visitors outside of their traditional peak periods.”

If everyone you know is talking about visiting Tokyo or Athens, Greece, maybe it’s worth researching locales that have seen fewer tourists in recent years. For example, Australia saw 27% fewer U.S. visitors in the spring months of 2024 compared with the same months in 2019. China, which has seen much less U.S. tourism since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, had 78% fewer U.S. visitors this spring compared with 2019.

Embrace the offbeat

Even within popular destinations, it’s possible to venture to offbeat locales with far fewer tourists. Most travelers to Japan visit the Eastern cities of Tokyo and Kyoto, but fewer venture inland to mountain towns such as Takayama, which boasts impressive temples and a quiet, quaint atmosphere. And few foreign tourists visit the island prefecture of Okinawa in Japan’s south, despite its warm weather and distinct culture from the mainland.

In the U.S., well-known national parks like Acadia (in Maine) and Yosemite (in California) may be popular during shoulder season. But lesser-known parks such as Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado or California’s Channel Islands National Park may see smaller crowds.

Avoid high prices

When demand for travel to a destination peaks, so do prices for airfare, accommodations and ground transportation. So looking for deals can save you money and help you avoid the most crowded spots.

According to data provided by Hopper, a travel booking platform, these destinations in the U.S. are seeing the biggest spike in flight booking demand this autumn:

Seattle.
Portland, Ore.
Salt Lake City.
San Jose, Calif.
Hawaii Island, Hawaii.
Spokane, Washington.
Lihue, Hawaii.
Indianapolis.
Portland, Maine.
Asheville, N.C.

Meanwhile, these international destinations are seeing the biggest price spikes:

Seoul, South Korea.
Shanghai.
Athens, Greece.
Frankfurt, Germany.
Venice, Italy.
Zurich.
Lima, Peru.
Brussels.
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Bangalore, India.

Of course, just because a flight is expensive doesn’t mean the destination will be crowded, but it does provide a proxy for demand. These lists give a sense of which spots are hot even when the weather isn’t.

Know thy shoulder

Not all shoulder seasons follow the same pattern, so knowing the right time to travel to avoid crowds means more than just leaving in the spring or fall.

“In Phoenix and Scottsdale, [Arizona], we see an unconventional seasonal pattern,” Garlaschi said. “The peak season actually falls in February and March due to the mild winter climate.”

And keep in mind that, even though travel data show shoulder seasons getting more popular, crowds (and prices) will still be much lower during these off-peak periods. You don’t have to travel to the North Pole in winter to avoid overtourism.

Sam Kemmis writes for NerdWallet. Email: [email protected]. Twitter: @samsambutdif.

The article How to Avoid the New ‘Shoulder Season’ Crowds originally appeared on NerdWallet.

​ Orange County Register 

Health agencies scramble to prepare for new mpox strain

• September 6, 2024

Ariel Cohen | CQ-Roll Call (TNS)

WASHINGTON — State and federal health agencies are gearing up to respond to a new strain of mpox — the virus formerly known as monkeypox — if the new strain spreads to the United States.

But this time, they are doing so with fewer resources.

Both an mpox public health emergency declaration and federal pandemic preparedness law were still in effect in 2022, the last time the U.S. faced a widespread mpox outbreak. That gave the federal government and state health departments more resources and flexibility than it has now to deal with an outbreak.

Last month, the World Health Organization declared a public health emergency of international concern, the highest alarm under international health law, over the new mpox strain. The strain, known as clade 1b, has been rapidly circulating in central Africa and has been detected in Sweden and Thailand.

The new strain differs from the 2022 world outbreak of the clade IIb mpox strain, which U.S. officials treated with two doses of the JYNNEOS mpox vaccine. Much like the COVID-19 vaccines, the mpox shot JYNNEOS prevents severe infection, hospitalization and death from mpox, but doesn’t fully prevent transmission, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Clade 1b is endemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the strain is more widespread than any other outbreak. Clade 1b usually causes a higher percentage of people with mpox to get severely sick and die, compared to clade IIb, according to the CDC.

While clade 1b has not yet been detected in the U.S., state and federal health officials are gearing up for what could be a potentially worse outbreak than in 2022 by leaning on the lessons it learned two years ago.

“It’s a different ballgame than in 2022, in some ways that are better and in some ways that are TBD,” Jen Kates, senior vice president and director of global health and HIV policy at KFF, said. She noted that public health jurisdictions today are already armed with mpox vaccines and treatments, unlike in 2022.

Budgeting for vaccines

The State Department says it’s been preparing for clade 1b’s emergence in the U.S. since December 2023 through increased monitoring of wastewater and other surveillance systems. But access to public health surveillance systems has waned since the COVID-19 public health emergency ended.

And the 2022 mpox public health emergency allowed the federal government to more easily free up resources to produce and distribute vaccines to high-risk groups at no cost.

The federal government ended the emergency declaration in 2023, but JYNNEOS vaccine maker Bavarian Nordic privatized the vaccine earlier this year. Now states must order it on the commercial market. State health officials said the budget is more of a concern now that vaccines are privatized.

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Crystal La Tour Rambaud, the manager of the vaccine preventable disease program of the Pima County Health Department in Tucson, Ariz., said that between the mpox vaccine and new RSV vaccine, costs are adding up.

“It’s just added a lot onto the plate in just a couple years, where the budget hasn’t changed significantly,” La Tour Rambaud said.

As a result, the Pima County Health Department is reassessing whom they offer free vaccinations to, and in some cases, only offering free shots to the uninsured. Insured individuals can get vaccinated at commercial pharmacies, she said.

Under the current structure, those with public or private insurance can access the mpox shots without any cost barrier, because the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel has recommended the vaccine.

But the only way uninsured adults can get the shot at no cost is if their jurisdiction has used federal funds to purchase the vaccines.

Raynard Washington, the director of the public health department in Mecklenburg, N.C., said the department has been able to use some of STD and HIV funds for mpox response, but are still stretched too thin.

The pandemic preparedness law expired in September 2023, but Congress extended seven provisions of that law via the March government funding bill until the end of 2024. This included policies to help activate personnel during a public health emergency, among others.

The CDC recommends health departments report all mpox cases to the CDC within 24 hours and promote vaccination in their communities. Under a declared public health emergency, the government can waive certain authorities to streamline disease reporting, sending funds to jurisdictions, for example.

Even though there is no public health emergency in effect now, Washington said that in Mecklenburg, “overall, the system is probably better prepared now than we were in 2022” because they’ve dealt with mpox before. Public health departments already have vaccines on the ground and people in the community who have been vaccinated.

The Mecklenburg health department is pushing for the reauthorization of the federal pandemic preparedness law as well as giving CDC the authority it needs to collect data, from both health care systems and laboratories so it could share that information to jurisdictions.

But because there is a new strain of mpox, it’s possible they’ll have to change their response.

“We might be starting back at ground zero again, depending on how this all plays out,” Washington said.

©2024 CQ-Roll Call, Inc., All Rights Reserved. Visit cqrollcall.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

​ Orange County Register 

More than half of HIV-positive Americans are 50+. Figuring out care is complex

• September 6, 2024

Anya Sostek | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (TNS)

In the late 1980s, Linda Rose Frank began working with HIV-positive individuals at the University of Pittsburgh. At the time, those affected were mainly young men with a terrifying prognosis.

“There was not really anything to treat people,” she said. “We were watching people die.”

More than three decades later, Frank still works at the University of Pittsburgh in the care of those living with HIV. But now, the majority of HIV-positive people are over the age of 50 — and one focus of Frank’s work is how to best care for people aging with human immunodeficiency virus.

Frank is executive director and principal investigator of the MidAtlantic AIDS Education and Training Center. In the last few years, MAAETC has developed training materials specifically focusing on HIV and aging, such as a pocket training guide on “integrating geriatric principles in the HIV clinic.”

“Sometimes it’s difficult to ascertain whether or not what we are seeing is something related to HIV or a normal aging condition,” said Frank. “That requires a lot of assessment by experts.”

The Centers for Disease Control estimates that for its most recent year of data, 2022, there were about 596,000 people over the age of 50 living with HIV — about 53% of the total number. And while most of those people were diagnosed prior to turning 50, more than 2,600 people over the age of 55 were newly diagnosed with HIV that year.

“I think that people assume that older folks don’t engage in sexual relationships, but of course we know that’s not true,” said Frank, who is also a professor in the department of infectious disease at the University of Pittsburgh, as well as Pitt’s nursing and medical schools. “Or that we assume that it’s only young people who use substances — that’s also not true.”

Frank advocates for routine testing for HIV by primary care physicians regardless of age or risk factors. “Just like you need to know your blood pressure and cholesterol, you need to know your HIV status,” she said. “That’s the way to normalize it for everybody.”

Knowledge of HIV status is so important because medications and treatment are so effective, she said. One study last year in Lancet HIV found that for many patients who started their HIV drug regiments after 2015, life expectancy is similar to that of the non-HIV positive population.

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One key to long-term health in HIV-positive individuals is ongoing monitoring, said Frank, and that can become even more important in the aging population.

“One of our concerns is that people get lost to care,” said Frank. “For somebody over 50, maybe their husband or wife died and they became depressed — sometimes they’ll drop out of care. Our goal is to do more research to find the people who dropped out of care and get them back in.”

Medication interactions also have to be carefully reviewed in an aging population, as do mental health and mobility concerns. These issues will only intensify as the population continues to age. For its most recent demographic report, the CDC added a “75 and above” category to its age tables. And one estimate predicts that by 2030, 70% of people with HIV will be older than 50.

“They got diagnosed and got treatment,” said Frank, “and now they are living to 50, 60, 70 and above.”

(c)2024 the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Visit the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at www.post-gazette.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

​ Orange County Register 

Israeli soldiers fatally shoot American woman at West Bank protest, witnesses say

• September 6, 2024

By JULIA FRANKEL and AREF TUFANA

NABLUS, West Bank — Israeli soldiers killed an American woman demonstrating against settlements in the West Bank on Friday, two protesters who witnessed the shooting told The Associated Press. Two doctors said she was shot in the head.

The U.S. government confirmed the death of 26-year-old Aysenur Ezgi Eygi but did not say whether she had been shot by Israeli troops. The White House said in a statement that it was “deeply disturbed” by the killing of a U.S. citizen and called on Israel to investigate what happened.

Eygi was also a Turkish citizen, Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Oncu Keceli said, adding that the country would exert “all effort to ensure that those who killed our citizen is brought to justice.”

The Israeli military said it was looking into reports that troops had killed a foreign national while firing at an “instigator of violent activity” in the area of the protest.

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The woman who was fatally shot was attending a weekly demonstration against settlement expansion, protests that have grown violent in the past: A month ago, American citizen Amado Sison was shot in the leg by Israeli forces, he said, as he tried to flee tear gas and live fire.

Jonathan Pollak, an Israeli who was participating in Friday’s protest, said the shooting occurred shortly after dozens of Palestinians and international activists held a communal prayer on a hillside outside the northern West Bank town of Beita overlooking the Israeli settlement of Evyatar.

Soldiers surrounded the prayer, and clashes soon broke out, with Palestinians throwing stones and troops firing tear gas and live ammunition, Pollak said.

The protesters and activists, including Pollak and the Eygi, retreated from the hill and the clashes subdued, he said. He then watched as two soldiers standing on the roof of a nearby home trained a gun in the group’s direction and shot at them. He saw the flares leave the nozzle of the gun when the shots rang out. He said Eygi was about 10 or 15 meters (yards) behind him when the shots were fired.

He then saw her “lying on the ground, next to an olive tree, bleeding to death,” he said.

Mariam Dag, another ISM activist at the protest, also said she saw an Israeli soldier on a rooftop. Dag said she then heard the firing of two live bullets. One ricocheted off something metal and hit a Palestinian protester in the leg; the other hit Eygi, who had moved back into an olive grove, she said. Dag said she ran toward the fallen woman and saw blood coming from her head.

“The shots were coming from the direction of the army. They were not coming from anywhere else,” she said.

Eygi had just arrived in the West Bank on Tuesday, Dag said. “This was our first day on the ground together. She was very happy and very excited this morning to start. She was really keen on coming to the demonstration.”

“This has been happening to Palestinians for decades. This happened because of the impunity which the Israelis act with,” including help from Western governments, she said. Before Friday’s shooting, ISM said 17 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli forces at the weekly Beita protests since March 2020.

Two doctors confirmed Eygi was shot in the head — Dr. Ward Basalat, who administered first aid at the scene, and Dr. Fouad Naffa, director of Rafidia Hospital in the nearby city of Nablus where she was taken.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. was “intensely focused” on determining what happened and that “we will draw the necessary conclusions and consequences from that.”

In a written statement shared on X, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said it condemned “this murder carried out by” the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

At least three activists from the International Solidarity Movement have been killed since 2000. ISM activists often place themselves between Israeli forces and Palestinians to try to stop the Israeli military from carrying out operations. Two ISM activists — American Rachel Corrie and British photography student Tom Hurndall — were killed in Gaza in 2003.

Corrie was crushed to death in March 2003 as she tried to block an Israeli military bulldozer from demolishing a Palestinian home in the southern Gaza town of Rafah near the Egyptian border. Hurndall was shot in the head by an Israeli soldier about a month later.

It’s also one of a handful of cases in which apparent Israeli fire killed Americans inside the West Bank since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. Neither American nor Israeli authorities have released findings into investigations into the twin killings of two Palestinian-American teens, Mohammad Khdour and Tawfic Abdel Jabbar, shot in the span of a month while driving down dirt roads close to their villages in the northern West Bank.

Palestinian officials said the killing reflected Israel’s intensified repression of Palestinian protests in the West Bank since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. Israeli forces rarely use live ammunition to put down protests inside Israel. But in the West Bank, Palestinian demonstrations are frequently met with live fire.

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Hussein Al-Sheikh, the secretary general of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, wrote on X that the killing marked “another crime added to the series of crimes committed daily by the occupation forces.”

Settlements are overwhelmingly viewed by the international community as illegal under international law.

The settlement of Evyatar was initially an outpost unrecognized under Israeli law but was legalized by the Israeli cabinet in July, in a move the far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said was in response to recognition of Palestinian statehood by a number of countries.

Israeli fire has killed over 690 Palestinians in the West Bank since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct. 7, Palestinian health officials say. In that time, attacks by Palestinian militants on Israelis in the territory have also increased.

AP writers Aamer Madhani and Matthew Lee in Washington, and Jack Jeffery in Ramallah, West Bank, contributed to this report.

​ Orange County Register