Biden’s Covid plan - US-Russia nuclear treaty - US rejoins WHO

The president’s plan emphasizes ramping up testing for the coronavirus, accelerating the pace of vaccinations and providing more funding and direction to state and local officials, according to a copy of it released Thursday. Biden is requiring masks on public transportation, including trains, buses and aircraft. Biden also directed agencies to use the Defense Production Act to compel companies to make supplies needed to combat the pandemic.
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Biden previously announced that his administration will aim to administer 100 million vaccine shots in its first 100 days. Biden will direct the Federal Emergency Management Agency to set up 100 community vaccination centers in the next month as part of that effort. Even as the vaccination effort gains speed, the plan calls for continued research into treatments for Covid, especially antivirals like Gilead’s remdesivir.
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Biden signed an order that directs the Department of Health and Human Services to collect data on school reopenings and the spread of Covid, allowing for more scientific research into the risk of putting kids back in schools. The president will establish a new pandemic testing board to discover new kinds of effective and rapid tests and scale them up quickly.

Normally the House has no role in confirming Cabinet secretaries. But Austin retired from the military four years ago, short of the seven years required by law to take the civilian job without a waiver from both houses of Congress. Austin served in the Army for more than 40 years, including three as head of U.S. Central Command, a marquee post that oversees military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
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Adding to the pressure on House Democrats were reports that members of the Republican Steering Committee, an influential conservative bloc of House lawmakers, planned to oppose the waiver for Austin. It argued that approving it would set a "new dangerous precedent" after doing so four years after granting a waiver to retired Marine Gen. Jim Mattis.
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He would be just the third defense secretary to require a waiver from Congress to assume the post. Both [House and Senate votes to grant the waiver] were overwhelming and bipartisan. Austin will make history if the Senate confirms him, becoming the nation's first Black Pentagon chief. A Senate vote on Austin's confirmation is expected as soon as Friday.

Washington and Moscow signed New START, short for the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, for a 10-year period in 2011. Simply put, the agreement limits the size of the two countries’ nuclear arsenals, which together account for 93 percent of all nuclear warheads in the world. The deal expires February 5, and the Trump administration failed to reach an agreement with Russia to keep it alive.
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Russia has already expressed a desire to renew the deal for at least a year, maybe more. If New START went away, the US and Russia would have no agreements in place to constrain their nuclear arsenals. “The Russians won’t allow for verifications and inspections without a legal basis,” [Rose Gottemoeller, who led the New START negotiations during the Obama administration] said in August.
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But Trump’s arms control envoy Marshall Billingslea has already criticized the move, saying the US is giving up its leverage to compel Russia to limit other weapons, including hypersonics. The five-year extension will likely be “the first and last success for Biden’s arms control agenda,” said Matthew Kroenig, a nuclear expert at the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington, DC. “It will be hard to get Russia to agree to anything else for five years.”

Former US President Donald Trump cut ties with the World Health Organisation (WHO) in May 2020, calling the group "China-centric," and the US was officially set to leave in July 2021. Trump cited the same reasons for refusing to join COVAX. COVAX is a voluntary scheme that was launched by the WHO, Gavi vaccine alliance, and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) in April 2000. It plans to distribute 2 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses worldwide by the end of 2021.
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But Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Thursday that the US would now reinstate payments to the WHO, and that government personnel would resume "regular engagement." Fauci offered support for a "robust and clear" international inquiry into the origins of the pandemic, such as the investigation the WHO is conducting in China.
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Speaking about re-joining COVAX, [Anthony Blinken, Biden's nominee for secretary of state] said that the Biden administration believed strongly that they can both ensure every American gets the vaccine and help others around the world get access. The WHO said Monday, however, that certain countries and companies who had promised equitable access by signing up to COVAX have gone around the scheme, putting themselves first and in doing so driving up prices.

Instacart plans to lay off nearly 2,000 of its workers, including the 10 workers from the Kroger-owned Mariano’s who unionized early last year, Vice reports. These workers are responsible for in-store shopping and packing of groceries. Currently, Instacart says it’s working to place the impacted employees with jobs at retailers or place them at other grocery stores that still rely on Instacart shoppers.
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“Instacart firing the only unionized workers at the company and destroying the jobs of nearly 2,000 dedicated frontline workers in the middle of this public health crisis, is simply wrong,” [United Food and Commercial Workers] International President Marc Perrone said. Those laid off will receive separation packages, according to Instacart. But according to UFCW, Instacart will provide between $250 to $750 to the workers they let go.
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“As a result of some grocers transitioning to a Partner Pick model, we’ll be winding down our in-store operations at select retailer locations over the coming months,” an Instacart spokesperson said in a statement to TechCrunch. This all comes as Instacart is gearing up to go public. In November, Reuters reported Instacart picked Goldman Sachs to lead its IPO at a $30 billion valuation.