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Business

France’s fuel shortage causes frustration for motorists, anxiety for government

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Petrol pumps have been running dry in France as striking energy workers disrupt deliveries. As frustration mounts among motorists, businesses and beyond, President Emmanuel Macron has called for calm. 

On Friday morning a queue hundreds of metres long snaked out from a petrol station in the suburbs of Paris.

“We’ve been waiting for an hour,” said one motorist, whose car was already running on empty. “The queue hasn’t moved at all. I don’t know what we are supposed to do.” 

Another driver joined the line of vehicles after trying two other stations, one of them just across the street. “I got there at the same time as everyone else, then the signs showed there was no more petrol left,” she said.  

Fuel shortages are hitting petrol stations across France, causing frustration and long waits for motorists, as a strike by workers at TotalEnergies and Esso-ExxonMobil enters its 12th day. 

Three out of six refineries are currently shut down in France due to worker strikes that have cut production by 60%, equivalent to 740,000 barrels of petrol per day. The majority of TotalEnergies’ network of around 3,500 petrol stations – nearly a third of all stations in the country – are running low on fuel.  

Government figures estimate that just 19% of petrol stations are affected, with particular shortages in the north. But president of the Système U retail chain, Dominique Schelcher, told FranceInfo radio that the government figure underestimated the disruption. 

“Only the west [of France] will have fuel stocks,” he said, adding that “it was impossible to order” fuel in the north, east, and south of France for this weekend. 

As well as causing frustration for individual drivers, the shortages have thrown businesses – including delivery services, medical assistance, logistics chains and taxi companies – into chaos.  

“What worries me is [what will happen to] disabled people, because we risk not being there for them if this continues,” said one taxi driver, waiting at a petrol pump in Paris. “I’ve only got half of my reserve tank left.” 

‘Nothing can get out’ 

French union CGT called for strike action against TotalEnergies over a week ago as part of a broader action across the French energy sector.  

Workers are demanding salary increases against a backdrop of a cost-of-living crisis and soaring profits in the energy industry. 

In the second trimester of 2022, TotalEnergies recorded profits of $5.7 billion compared with $2.2 million during the same period in 2021.  

CGT has called for a tax on these profits and a 10% salary increase – 7% to counter inflation and 3% “profit sharing”, demands that have been largely supported by energy workers. 

At the TotalEnergies refinery in Feyzin near Lyon, production work was continuing but deliveries had stalled.

CGT representative Pedro Afonso told AFP that “100% of dispatch workers were on strike for the 6am shift”, adding: “Normally there are 250 to 300 trucks every day and 30 to 50 rail carriages. Now nothing can get out.” 

Some 70% of ExxonMobil workers were also on strike, said CGT representative Christophe Aubert. “It’s the same workforce on shift all weekend, so nothing’s going to move and nothing is getting out.” 

The strikes were originally intended to last three days, but almost two weeks later TotalEnergies is still insisting that wage negotiations begin in mid-November, as planned, with an expected average salary increase of 3.5%.  

TotalEnergies has downplayed the impact of its worker strike, instead maintaining that supplies are under pressure due to the popularity of the company’s discount fuel prices over the past few months. 

Demand at TotalEnergies petrol stations has increased by an estimated 30 percent as customers have taken advantage of discounts offered by the company amid rising fuel costs.  

‘Let’s not panic’ 

As frustrations mount for striking energy workers and motorists, the stakes are also rising for the French government. 

“Let’s not panic,” said President Emmanuel Macron on Friday, as he called for calm on all sides. Yet even as the president appealed for an end to the strikes, he agreed that executives at Total should take into account the “legitimate salary demands” of its workers.

Their demands come amid a worsening cost-of-living crisis. In the same press conference, the president warned of difficult months ahead for gas prices, as food costs are expected to continue soaring.

Negotiations between the French government and unions, including CGT, over pension reforms are also expected to cause tension in coming months.  

Yet petrol, especially, holds a place of special significance in the French psyche. “Fuel prices are synonymous with the gilets jaunes (Yellow Vest protesters),” said Paul Smith, associate professor of French politics at the University of Nottingham.    

“The current situation troubles [the government] as a foretaste of problems to come – a potential winter of discontent.”

The Yellow Vest protest movement, sparked in the winter of 2018 by rising petrol prices, saw thousands take to the streets for weeks on end as a gesture of defiance against the authorities and President Macron. 

>> For France’s Yellow Vest protesters, the fight goes on 

As government spokesperson Olivier Véran sidestepped referring to a petrol shortage on Wednesday, instead citing “temporary tensions” affecting supply, the government is taking extra measures to ensure petrol reaches the pumps.  

Fuel tanker trucks will exceptionally be allowed to operate on Sundays to make deliveries and the government has dipped into its strategic fuel reserves to supplement available stocks. 

Currently, 90 days’ worth of fuel stocks remain, the minister for energy transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, has said. 

In the meantime, efforts are also being made to open discussions between CGT and TotalEnergies – so far without success.

Further strike action is expected in the coming days. 

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US

Tensions rise amid frustration over mystery Manchin deal

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Lawmakers are frustrated about being kept in the dark as Democratic leaders strategize how to jimmy an energy deal struck with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) behind closed doors through Congress — while also averting a government shutdown.

Democratic leadership is aiming to use a must-pass government-funding bill to advance an energy permitting proposal by Manchin by the end of the month. But with roughly two weeks standing between Congress and the critical funding deadline, tensions are simmering over the closely-kept negotiations. 

“We don’t know what it is. They haven’t released the text, they don’t give us the detailed explanation,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) told The Hill this week. “So, I don’t know how you could ask people to vote for something they don’t know what it is.”

“There’s a reason they’re keeping it secret: it’s either still being negotiated or it’s so weak it has no meaning or it’s too strong for other people,” she added.

Only a broad outline of Manchin’s plan has been released. 

It includes setting maximum timelines for the environmental review process for energy projects, which advocates say could undercut the analysis required for a project’s approval and weaken community involvement. Other components would make it harder for states to block projects that run through their waters and require the president to pick a “balanced” list of energy projects that should be prioritized.

The outline also says that a natural gas pipeline that runs through West Virginia, known as the Mountain Valley Pipeline, would be completed. 

But in the absence of official text, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are complaining that they don’t know what they’re debating. 

Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) who is leading the left-wing opposition to Manchin’s reforms, said he’d be open to negotiating a package if it will provide protections for communities that face high pollution burdens. 

Still, he expressed frustration that the details of Manchin’s proposal haven’t been spelled out.

“We’re negotiating in the dark and all the cards are held by the Senate and we’re just supposed to react,” Grijalva told The Hill. 

He said he’s seeking a meeting with leadership to negotiate and also plans to reach out to Manchin. 

Pressed on Thursday whether the text would be released before legislation is unveiled for the funding bill, Manchin told The Hill he believes it will be “released in the CR,” referring to the continuing resolution, which is expected to push the government funding deadline to December as the midterm cycle picks up.

A continuing resolution is a short-term spending bill that keeps spending at present levels.

As for when and how the funding bill will be brought up for consideration, much appears to be up in the air, as top leaders indicate those details are still being hashed out.  

Sen. Richard Shelby (Ala.), top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, speculated that the CR might not drop until “probably closer to the end of the month” — which he noted would up the pressure on both sides to pass a CR before funding lapses.

However, he raised doubts about whether Manchin’s permitting measure will make it into the larger funding package.

“Republicans and a lot of Democrats [are] against it. So, I don’t know where it goes yet,” he said.

He pointed to a separate permitting proposal released by Capito and other Republicans this past week as an alternative.

It’s not totally clear how different the Capito and Manchin plans will be, though Manchin has suggested his plan will be similar to the plan from his fellow West Virginia senator.

“She dropped the marker on the same lines of what we’ve done,” Manchin said. He also expressed hopes that Republicans lining up behind her proposal, which has backing from over 40 GOP members, will translate to support for the funding bill if it includes permitting reform. Such support could also translate to the House, where there is significant Democratic opposition to the plan.

“It means that basically Democrats and Republicans are in the same mindset of going permitting and why it’s so important, and hopefully she’s able to bring at least 20 of them,” Manchin said.

Like the Manchin outline, the Capito legislation would limit environmental review timelines, restrict states’ authorities to block projects and require the completion of the Mountain Valley Pipeline. It goes further, preventing the federal government from restricting an oil and gas extraction process known as fracking that has been linked to water contamination. It also would allow states to take over authority from the federal government of energy production on public lands. 

Some in the GOP view the Capito legislation as a starting point for negotiations, while others appear less willing to meet Manchin in the middle. But, as Manchin’s efforts are still seen as their best shot to get any kind of reform done, they may eventually coalesce around his proposal. 

Meanwhile, nearly 80 House Democrats are calling on party leadership to separate Manchin’s deal from the funding bill, though some are wary of threatening to vote against the deal if it means a government shutdown. 

“If it’s attached then that would theoretically be a shutdown vote,” Grijalva told The Hill, but he cast doubt on the chances all Democrats opposing the proposal would vote down a stopgap bill containing the measure.

Grijalva acknowledged that not every member who opposes the permitting reform changes would be willing to go to a shutdown — and didn’t say whether he himself would vote to shut down the government — but said that right now, his coalition has power. 

He said that in “any close vote, and if the Republicans don’t support any part of it, which has been the history, then then I think our vote becomes that much more significant.”

“But I’m not promoting that … The ask right now is to divide it,” he added. 

That doesn’t mean some members aren’t already doing the math, however.

“As small as our margin is, we only need what? Three, four or five?” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), one of the dozens of Democrats supporting Grijalva’s effort, told The Hill on the matter Thursday. “So, we’ll see if we have that.” 

Alex Bolton contributed.

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Health

‘Frustration and Stress’: State Officials Fault Rollout of Monkeypox Vaccine

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Roughly 5,000 doses of monkeypox vaccine intended for Fort Lauderdale, Fla., left the national stockpile’s warehouse in Olive Branch, Miss., on July 19. They somehow ended up in Oklahoma.

Then Tennessee. Then Mississippi again. Then, finally, Florida.

In Idaho, a shipment of 60 vaccine doses disappeared and showed up six days later, refrigerated rather than frozen, as needed. Another 800 doses sent to Minnesota — a significant portion of the state’s total allotment — were unusable because the shipment was lost in transit for longer than the 96-hour “viability window.”

The federal government’s distribution of monkeypox vaccine has been blemished by missteps and confusion, burdening local officials and slowing the pace of immunizations even as the virus spreads, according to interviews with state health officials and documents obtained by The New York Times.

Officials in at least 20 states and jurisdictions have complained about the delivery of the vaccine, called Jynneos. (More than half are led by Democrats, including California, Washington, Connecticut and Michigan, suggesting that their grievances are not politically motivated.)

“This is happening everywhere,” said Claire Hannan, executive director of the Association of Immunization Managers, a nonprofit group that represents state, local and territorial officials.

“Our response is completely inefficient and breaking the back of state and local responders,” she added. Ms. Hannan said she had never “seen this level of frustration and stress.”

In previous emergencies, including the 2009 swine flu outbreak and the Covid-19 pandemic, vaccines were delivered directly from manufacturers to health care providers through a system run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

That system, called VTrckS (pronounced “vee-tracks”), routinely moves billions of vaccine doses for annual immunizations and, importantly, is integrated with state databases that track vaccinations and doses.

But Jynneos is being disbursed from the National Strategic Stockpile by a different government agency under the Department of Health and Human Services. That agency was never set up to take ongoing orders, arrange deliveries from the stockpile, track shipments or integrate with state systems.

Instead, the stockpile was designed to deliver massive amounts of vaccine to each state in response to a catastrophic event, according to a federal official with knowledge of the stockpile’s operations.

“If it was a smallpox response, they’re not going to be sitting in their offices ordering vaccine,” the official said of state health authorities. The stockpile is intended to be “pushing products out — it’s not an ordering-based system,” the official added.

As it stands now, the stockpile is shipping monkeypox vaccine to just five sites in each state, regardless of its size. State officials must distribute the doses, track them manually and enter the data into their databases, none of which would have been necessary under the C.D.C.’s system.

Until recently, orders for Jynneos had to be placed via email instead of an automated system, and state officials often did not know where their deliveries were or whether they had been sent at all.

Some containers arrived without labels saying they contained vaccines or needed cold storage. Some were tracked down only after multiple emails and phone calls. Doses of Jynneos have arrived in the dead of night.

“We had no way to track vaccine shipments, when they actually shipped or when they were going to arrive,” Chris Van Deusen, director of media relations at the Texas Department of State Health Services, said in an email. “They just showed up with no notice.”

H.H.S. officials two weeks ago switched to a different ordering system, which has been used to deliver antiviral drugs from the stockpile. But that system is also not linked to state immunization databases, and it is not well suited to monitoring the special conditions needed for transporting vaccines, several state officials said in interviews.

In a statement, the H.H.S. said that of more than 1,100 deliveries of Jynneos, “only a minuscule number of shipments have experienced issues.” The stockpile “has not experienced any loss of Jynneos vaccine in transit for any reason, including temperature excursions,” the statement said.

The delivery flaws threaten to aggravate tensions between federal health officials and their state counterparts. Xavier Becerra, the H.H.S. secretary, recently suggested that states and localities should be doing more to help contain the monkeypox outbreak.

But allegations that states are not requesting all their available vaccine doses or are shirking their responsibilities don’t tell the whole story, some officials said.

“We don’t want to point fingers at any of our partners on any level of government,” said Dr. Umair Shah, secretary of health for Washington State. But “the system that the federal government put in place was, in essence, clunky.”

The traditional system for delivering vaccines, VTrckS, has been operated for years by McKesson, a drug and medical supply distributor, under contract with the C.D.C.

VTrckS processes orders, tracks shipments, offers delivery estimates and notifications, and is integrated with state registries so that each package of vaccines can be tracked and easily redistributed from one provider to another when necessary.

In the past, “we have literally done nothing except basically hit an approve button,” said Kathryn Turner, the deputy state epidemiologist of Idaho and secretary and treasurer for the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists. “It’s a very slick system, and it’s worked for years and years and years.”

Other state officials said they were baffled by the decision to use a new ordering process that required emailing and manual data entry during a rapidly escalating outbreak.

“We have the systems in place,” said Jeremy Redfern, a spokesman for the Florida Department of Health. “Why they’re not using them, I don’t really know.”

H.H.S. considered several options for delivering the vaccine from the national stockpile, but other systems “could not be implemented on the timeline needed for distribution of Jynneos,” the department said in its statement.

It would take several months to integrate VTrckS with the stockpile, the statement said. The department is seeking a commercial partner to improve delivery.

As of Thursday, the United States recorded nearly 11,000 monkeypox cases, although the real number is thought to be much higher.

Federal officials have allocated 1.1 million doses of Jynneos to states and have said they shipped about 600,000 of those. Even when all the doses are distributed, the nation will be a long way from the roughly three million shots needed to protect men who have sex with men, who have been most at risk in the current outbreak. (Federal health officials are considering stretching the supply by giving the shots in a different way.)

State officials are permitted to order only 40 percent of the remaining doses immediately and another 30 percent on Monday. “When and whether” the final 30 percent will be available is yet to be determined, Mr. Van Deusen, the Texas official, said.

Mr. Van Deusen said that the pace of distribution slowed significantly throughout July, with shipments arriving more than a week after they were ordered.

Some states are struggling with distribution even after shipments from the stockpile have arrived.

State officials must determine when and how to roll out doses from their five allotted sites and must manually track them. It is a painstaking process, particularly in large states, for which most health departments have neither the staff nor the funding to hire new workers.

States are wrestling with whether to roll them out immediately or hold some back for unexpected situations, and whether to store the doses centrally or send them to localities so they are ready to go. Federal officials have not provided much guidance, as they did when distributing Covid vaccines.

Big states in particular have found it challenging to move Jynneos from five receiving sites to local hubs and from there to individual providers. The loading and unloading at each step require time and labor, and jeopardize the cold storage and careful handling needed.

Public health departments have been underfunded and overworked for years, and the Covid-19 pandemic has made the problems worse. Many jurisdictions simply don’t have the capacity to deal with a new outbreak.

“There’s just all of these parts of the system that are stressed, are really strained,” said Dr. Anne Zink, Alaska’s chief medical officer and the president-elect of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. “It’s no wonder people are frustrated on all levels.”

Some state officials said they resented the suggestion by the federal government that they were slowing the country’s response by withholding monkeypox data from federal agencies.

Many officials are prevented by state laws from sharing data on cases and vaccinations, and even states that can send information now have to enter it manually into the ordering system and their own databases.

State officials have “had terse discussions” about these issues with H.H.S. officials, said Dr. Christine Hahn, medical director for the Idaho Division of Public Health.

“Instead of you and C.D.C. talking and sharing data,” Dr. Hahn said state officials told the agency, “you throw new systems at us and then say, ‘Boy, the states aren’t sharing the data.’”

Not all states say they have experienced vaccine distribution problems. Officials in New York said that vaccines ordered within the last week had arrived as scheduled, but declined to elaborate on deliveries before then.

In an email to The Times, California’s health department said: “To date, there have been no issues with ordering and receipt of the monkeypox medical countermeasures.”

But in calls with federal agencies and with the Association of Immunization Managers, health officials in California, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Connecticut, Illinois and Indiana have all voiced frustration with federal handling of the vaccine.

“Everyone expressed frustration” that VTrckS was not given more consideration, read the notes from a call between state and federal officials on July 20, and they “made it clear that all states would rather go that route A.S.A.P.”

H.H.S.’s new solution — the ordering system introduced last week — is still far from ideal, some state officials said. “The processes for monkeypox and Covid-19, then, have states using multiple systems,” said Ken Gordon, a spokesman for Ohio’s department of health. “It has been challenging.”

Management of the national stockpile switched hands in 2018 from the C.D.C. to a different federal agency within the H.H.S. But state officials said that they had no idea that vaccine delivery from the national stockpile would also be changing, and that the C.D.C.’s system would no longer be used.

“That might be the right decision long-term, but boy, short-term for us, it’s definitely caused some hiccups,” Dr. Hahn said.

H.H.S. staff began training state workers to use the new system put in place two weeks ago in a webinar four days before it was deployed.

The H.H.S. said that as of Aug. 8, more than 99 percent of the vaccines had been ordered and all state health departments had received their doses. Still, some states were reporting difficulties getting their doses.

The new program may “grow into something later that’s better and is actually functional,” Dr. Zink said. But “it’s definitely not there now.”

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Health

Frustration builds in LGBTQ community over government response to monkeypox

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And Garrett-Pate is one of the lucky ones.

His partner works an hourly job, so when his doctor recommended that he get the vaccine, he had to go on his lunch hour. After two hours in line, he gave up and went back to work. He had to start the process over again another day in order to get vaccinated.

It’s a scene playing out in public health departments and clinics across the country as the monkeypox outbreak spreads.

“State and local public health agencies are doing their best with the resources they have, but the federal government has not done enough and are often not acting fast enough to protect the LGBTQ community,” Garrett-Pate said.

“There has not been an aggressive response from the federal government and, unfortunately, even from the White House, a White House that should be leading right now,” he said. “This is not about pointing fingers. But at the end of the day, the buck stops somewhere. And we don’t have the resources that we need to protect the community.”

Garrett-Pate is the managing director of external affairs for Equality California, an LGBTQ+ civil rights group. It and three other organizations sent a letter last week to Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to demand better vaccine access, testing, treatment and, in general, better plans to mitigate the disproportionate impact that the monkeypox outbreak has had on the LGBTQ community.

Vaccines are free when people can find them, testing costs can add up, and treatments are still difficult to access.

Access has been a struggle since the monkeypox outbreak reached the US two months ago. The CDC estimates that about 1.5 million people are eligible for the two-dose vaccine, but as of Thursday, the US Department of Health and Human Services said that 338,000 doses have been delivered.

The San Francisco Department of Public Health told CNN that it requested 35,000 doses of the Jynneos monkeypox vaccine to meet the needs of the community. As of Thursday, it has received only about 12,000 doses — less than half of what it requested from the federal government.

One of the major public clinics offering the vaccine there had to shut down Tuesday when it ran out after vaccinating 600 people.

Georgia’s Department of Public Health said it has given out all 13,876 of the vaccines it received so far. Its next allocation of 34,120 will be available over the next four to six weeks. There is more demand than vaccines.

“As soon as we open up appointment slots, they are taken up within a very short mount of time — minutes,” the department’s director of communications, Nancy Nydam, said in an email.

As of Friday, New York City’s public health department website says all available appointments for vaccines have been filled at this time.

The federal government says it is working to get more vaccines distributed. HHS announced that ordering could begin this week on 786,000 additional monkeypox vaccines. The agency anticipates making about 1.9 million doses available in 2022, with an additional 2.2 million doses available in the first half of 2023.

Public health response so far

As of Friday, the United States has than 5,000 probable or confirmed monkeypox cases, according to CDC data.

Monkeypox can infect anyone. But the majority of cases in this outbreak have been among men who have sex with men, including people who identify as gay, bi and transgender, according to the CDC. However, the agency says it has detailed information on only about half of the cases, and that doesn’t include information on who’s been vaccinated. It doesn’t have the authority to collect that data yet.

Since the start of June, the CDC says, it has been doing extensive education and outreach to the LGBTQ community.

The agency has worked with the umbrella organization for local Pride committees to raise awareness. It released educational videos, engaged with groups that work with health disparities and industries whose workers may be exposed to monkeypox, and created awareness campaigns on Instagram and on dating apps popular with the gay community like Scruff, Adam4Adam and Grindr. The agency is also planning to participate in listening sessions with LGBTQ community groups.

“We appreciate the LGBTQ+ community and their medical and community service providers for helping us in our efforts to raise the visibility of the current situation and of the steps people take to protect their health and the health of others,” CDC spokesperson Kristen Norlund said in an email Friday.

On Thursday, the New York State Department of Health declared monkeypox an imminent threat to public health and San Francisco declared monkeypox a local public health emergency

“We have always been on the forefront of advocacy and action for LGBTQ+ health and I’m issuing this declaration to reaffirm our commitment to the wellbeing of these communities and to allow us to move more quickly to obtain and distribute the resources needed to help those disproportionately impacted,” said Dr. Susan Philip, the San Francisco public health officer.
The US has not made such an emergency declaration, which would provide more money and staff, help with data collection and help cut through red tape to better fight the outbreak.

Echoes of previous crises

Garrett-Pate and other leaders in the community see the federal response as a familiar pattern of neglect of the LGBTQ community.

“We faced outbreaks that have turned into crises that have turned into epidemics and pandemics that disproportionately impact our community in the past, and unfortunately, in the past, public health entities starting with the CDC and FDA have not moved quickly enough or afforded these outbreaks and public health crises the urgency that they demand.”

Garrett-Pate likens the monkeypox outbreak to the AIDS epidemic, when the Reagan administration dragged its feet and, historians say, showed outright disdain for the LGBTQ community.

By 1989, the US had lost nearly 90,000 people — mostly gay, bi and trans men — to AIDS, but “the Reagan administration had all but turned its back on the AIDS epidemic, costing precious time and lives,” according to one commentary in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The Biden administration is no Reagan administration, Garrett-Pate said, and monkeypox is not AIDS. But he believes that even more recently, with Covid-19, the government failed to do enough for the community.

The CDC found that members of the LGBTQ community were likely more vulnerable to getting Covid-19 and were potentially more susceptible to severe illness. But sexual orientation and gender identity information is still not consistently captured by standard Covid-19 data collection systems.

“We saw how the pandemic disproportionately impacted the LGBTQ community, and yet we still don’t have the data collection that is needed to fully understand why that was and to what degree it was disproportionately impacting LGBTQ people,” Garrett-Pate said.

“The Biden administration has absolutely been supportive of our community. But at the end of the day, we need vaccines, and we need them yesterday. There’s no reason it should be taking this long.”

People who work with the federal government say they are working hard on the issue.

“We have been very transparent about a limited supply and have, at every turn, really tried to overdeliver on our promises to make sure that we had vaccine sooner than we said we might have it, that we would have more to provide than we said we might have, that we could get it out to more jurisdiction than we said we might be able to do and have tried our best to really over deliver for the American people,” said a federal health adviser who requested anonymity because they’re not a government employee and they don’t speak for any federal agency.

Sean Cahill, director of health policy research at the Fenway Institute in Boston, a health organization that works with sexual and gender minorities that has treated patients with monkeypox, said that what the federal government has done is not enough.

“They’ve not overdelivered. Not even close. They’ve underdelivered. Honestly, we went from one person diagnosed with monkeypox in mid-May to nearly 5,000 people today. The US government has not done a good job controlling this,” Cahill said. “They’ve not done a good job getting vaccines into people’s arms. They mismanaged testing in the early weeks, although the CDC has done better recently. Getting treatments is still too complicated.”

Cahill said his organization has been advocating for the US to declare monkeypox a public health emergency.

“We really would have liked them to have a sense of urgency about this,” he added. “Community members have a huge sense of urgency. They’re trying to protect themselves. They’re trying to get vaccinated, and we need public health agencies to step up and to deliver more than they have up until now.

Some state and local officials have tried to lend their support.

California state Sen. Scott Wiener, who represents the San Francisco area, submitted a budget letter last week in which he asked for an emergency budget appropriation to support expanded testing, vaccinations and education. San Francisco has a strong health infrastructure, he said, and a LGBTQ community that’s receptive to efforts to take care of their health.

“But even here, it’s hard,” Wiener said. “Our community gets ignored. Our health is always devalued by society at large, and it’s happening again.”

Wiener said he faults the “very, very, very sluggish response by the federal government.”

Faster action may have kept outbreak in check

The lack of access is also frustrating for Christopher Vasquez, communications director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. His organization was one of the signers of the letter to the CDC demanding a bigger response.

“We’ve known about monkeypox for 50 years. And we’ve had a vaccine for multiple years. This has been so abysmally handled, and we’re seeing upticks in cases because we didn’t get it under control when we had the greatest chance to do so,” he said.

Everywhere he goes in the community, he said, people are talking about monkeypox. They’re scared and don’t know how they can realistically keep themselves safe with a lack of vaccines.

“If this were something like Covid that was affecting the entire population, we would have seen a much more robust response from the government,” Vasquez said. “I’m not claiming the Biden administration has any animus to the LGBTQ community. I just think because we’re a limited community, they didn’t put the full weight and resources of the federal government behind stopping this early.”

The federal health adviser said it’s understandable that some in the LGBTQ community are frustrated and feel left behind.

“I can totally understand the frustration,” the adviser said. “I think, in some ways, we should expect that, and we should welcome that, because they’re representing people who are suffering from a disease that is quite painful and it’s causing really significant disease. That said, I think that what we have tried to do is, again, over-deliver in our promises to the community, and at times, we find that the community doesn’t necessarily recognize the achievements that we have and moves directly on to an additional criticism.”

Some experts though have said it’s now too late to stop what we had the tools to stop earlier.
“This is another example of failure of not only the US but global public health policy toward emerging infectious diseases. They are late to the party,” said Dr. Robert Murphy, executive director of the Harvey Institute for Global Health at Northwestern University.

“Sadly, it’s the same old story: unable to quickly diagnose, unable to vaccinate high risk persons, unable to rapidly treat those at highest risk. The situation is even more frustrating because unlike what happened with Covid-19 there’s already existing technology to diagnose, treat, vaccinate to prevent monkeypox.”

Vasquez said that after two-plus years of managing the pandemic, he thought the country would have learned how to better protect public health.

“I think a lot of people within the community that monkeypox is affecting really feel left behind,” he said. “Once again, it’s been left on the shoulders of gay and bi men, MSM and trans folk to spread the word by mouth. We shouldn’t have to learn how to get vaccines here in San Francisco through Instagram stories.”

CNN’s Amanda Sealy contributed to this report.



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Health

Frustration, anger in S.F.’s LGBTQ community over government response to monkeypox outbreak

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As the city of San Francisco declared a state of emergency Thursday in response to rising cases of monkeypox, members of San Francisco’s LGBTQ community expressed frustration and anger over the government’s response.

Referring to the population most affected by the outbreak so far, Health Officer Susan Philip on Thursday said officials wanted “to affirm our commitment to the health of our LGBTQ communities in San Francisco, as we have historically always done as a city.”

But among LGBTQ residents, lines with hours-long waits for the vaccine and a shortage of education about best practices to avoid transmission have been common complaints, as well as a shortage of the vaccine itself. A lack of centralized information about vaccination appointments has also been a concern.

“Information is trickling down in a lot of different ways, and it’s not getting to the people that really need it the most quick enough,” said drag performer and LGBTQ activist Juanita More.

Monkeypox in the Bay Area


A well-known organizer in the city’s queer scene, More was able to get an appointment for a first vaccine dose through her physician. But she said she worries that because of the lack of information, others in the nightlife community, as well as sex workers “who are in contact with people all the time,” are not being prioritized.

Anyone can get monkeypox, but during the current outbreak it has been spreading largely through male-to-male sex.

S.F. Health Officer Dr. Susan Philip (left), city Health Director Dr. Grant Colfax, and Mayor London Breed address the monkeypox outbreak.

Scott Strazzante/The Chronicle

Outside of Strut, the Castro district wellness center run by the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, 68-year-old Tom Lappin said he had hoped he would receive the vaccine Thursday afternoon — after his doctor encouraged him to do so because he has cancer — but was told the waiting list had more than 1,000 people on it.

“I’m feeling apprehensive,” Lappin said, adding that the dearth of clear information about the virus and the disorganized response are making him and his husband think twice about things like sharing laundry machines with their neighbors. He said many residents like him are hearing echoes of the AIDS crisis, and questioning whether the current mindset is, “It’s just affecting gay people, and we don’t care, so we’re not shipping vaccines?”

In a report Wednesday, San Francisco officials said that 261 people had confirmed or probable monkeypox infections, with more than 30% of cases affecting Latinos across the city. Health officials also said that they anticipate cases will continue to grow in the coming weeks.

Honey Mahogany, chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party and candidate for District Six supervisor, was blunt in her assessment of the official response:

“I feel like our government across the board has really failed us in this response to this outbreak,” she said, prior to the announcement of the state of emergency.

Honey Mahogany poses for a portrait in San Francisco County, Calif., on Thursday, July 28, 2022. San Francisco declared a state of emergency over monkeypox.Ethan Swope/The Chronicle

“We should have learned our lessons from the HIV and AIDS crisis: that just because it affects one community doesn’t mean it can’t quickly spread to affecting everybody else,” said Mahogany.

“Additionally, I don’t think that we’ve learned our lesson from COVID-19,” she said. “We have just been through this, many of these systems haven’t even been completely dismantled yet. Why couldn’t we have used these systems to get people to (the) monkeypox vaccine?”

After San Francisco’s announcement, she said it should be followed with action on the federal level: “It’s about time! We need a local, but also a national emergency to be called so we can effectively nip this in the bud. We know how to do this, and we have the tools at hand.”

Tyler TerMeer, executive director of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, said Thursday that while he applauded the decision to declare monkeypox a public health emergency, the foundation — and San Francisco’s queer community — had been ringing the alarm about the rapid spread of monkeypox since May, and vaccine access is still severely lacking.

More than 7,300 individuals are waiting for a vaccine at the foundation’s sexual health clinics in San Francisco, he said, and added that there is no end to that demand in sight.

The emergency declaration “could have happened sooner, but at the end of the day I believe this is the appropriate moment,” said TerMeer. “Anything beyond this would have been too late.”

Juba Kalamka, community health care services director at the St. James Infirmary, a nonprofit health care organization in San Francisco focusing on Bay Area sex workers, said he “appreciates the urgency” of the declaration.

“The state of emergency gives us the opportunity as people who are working with more marginalized communities to have a very specific and grounded conversation about monkeypox,” he said. “So I think it’s a good thing.”

Jupiter Peraza, director of social justice initiatives for the Transgender District, also saw the declaration as a positive development: “We are definitely very pleased to hear that the city of San Francisco has officially declared a public emergency for monkeypox,” she said. “We think that that was a step that the city needed to take mostly because of their large and prominent LGBT population that the city possesses.”

Strut, a Castro district health center, has provided resources during the monkeypox outbreak.

Ethan Swope/The Chronicle

The city’s announcement came just a few days before the “Up Your Alley” leather and fetish event on Sunday, also known as Dore Alley because of its South of Market neighborhood location. On Monday, the Tubesteak Connection party that was planned for Thursday evening announced its postponement due to concerns over lack of vaccine availability.

Organizers of Saturday’s Sneaks party at Club Six advised guests on their e-vite page to “Take care of yourself, think about what level of risk you are comfortable with, keep an eye out for symptoms and should you unfortunately suspect exposure or infection, take care not to spread it to others.” Although they are not canceling the event, they also noted “We accept refunds — please stay home if you are not well and we will see you next time.”

Bob Goldfarb, the executive director of the Leather & LGBTQ Cultural District in the South of Market area, said the organization was using its social media accounts to put out information about the virus ahead of the Dore Alley events this weekend.

“I think that there is a lot of confusion about methods of transmission and the actual impact of an infection itself,” said Goldfarb. “The Department of Health recommends if you’re going into a crowd that you be fully clothed and covered to avoid skin to skin contact, which is apparently the primary method of contracting the disease.”

While Goldfarb noted that there will be gatherings and dance parties this weekend “where it is atypical to be fully clothed,” he has spoken to people who are taking various degrees of caution.

“Some people are avoiding events and some people … are just diving in as carefree as ever. (But we) are very happy to see people who are taking precautions to minimize that skin-to-skin contact and the risk of transmission.”

Todd Janzen, 60, says he is planning to go to the Dore Alley Fair on Sunday, but added that his risk calculation felt different as a married man no longer “on the meat market.”

Ethan Swope/The Chronicle

Diamond Heights resident Todd Janzen, 60, said he was still planning to go to the main street fair for “Up Your Alley” on Sunday, but added that his risk calculation felt different as a married man no longer “on the meat market.”

Still, the chaos surrounding the outbreak brought back memories of the AIDS crisis, which he lived through as a San Francisco resident in the 1980s, he said.

“I lost a lot of very close friends,” Janzen said. “To me that was a far more scary time. We didn’t know. We had no idea. People were dropping like flies.”

The fact that monkeypox is rarely fatal has come as a grounding comfort to many other queer San Franciscans who acutely remember the AIDS crisis and the city’s response.

Lower Haight resident Jack Davis, 71, said he and his friends are wondering if it’ll be the third pandemic they’ll live through — while they’re still coping with PTSD from the past two.

“This is not our first rodeo,” said Davis, adding he’s now asking his friends if he can hug them, out of concern for how the virus is spreading. “Everyone I talk to is aware of it and concerned about it. Some people are changing their sexual behavior and some people are not.”

In response to the emergency declaration, podcast host and adult film performer Kristofer Weston said that he is glad that the increase in cases is now being addressed.

“I’m noticing lots of gay men are quickly trying to find out where they can get the vaccine or at least get the first dose,” said Weston. “I’m also noticing a few dropping out of events this weekend, out of caution.”

San Francisco’s Castro district has a large population of gay men, who have been particularly hard hit by monkeypox.

Ethan Swope/The Chronicle

While he has seen some confusion over the vaccination rollout and transmission of the virus, he also believes that the LGBTQ community has been good at getting the message out as quickly as possible. Weston has had one vaccination as said that although he will still attend Dore Alley, he is changing his plans somewhat.

“I’m avoiding events where there’s high volumes of skin to skin contact, like sweaty, shirtless men,” said Weston. “I’m not so concerned about the fair itself because it’s outdoors and I can cover up if I want to. I’m not so concerned about just casually getting it in a crowd.”

Just after Thursday’s announcement, the atmosphere along Castro Street seemed as jovial as any other day.

Groups gathered inside the district’s storied saloons and bars for midafternoon ales, tourists gawked at the street’s plethora of phallic cookies, a well-known San Francisco porn star strolled up toward Harvey Milk Plaza, and two men efficiently pasted posters up and down the block for “X-Rated,” a Dore Alley party scheduled for Saturday night at Space 550.

LGBTQ activist and AIDS Memorial Quilt founder Cleve Jones said that while he is disappointed by the federal response to the virus, he believes San Francisco “has done a relatively good job.”

Of concern to Jones, however, are both what he sees as the unserious nomenclature associated with the term “monkeypox” and ongoing labeling of the virus as a “gay disease.”

“That gives power to those who would like to ignore it or mock it as it only happens to other people,” said Jones.

“Because we thought of HIV as a gay disease, tens of millions of heterosexual, men and women and their children would lose their lives,” he said. “The stigma associated with this is powerful, it gives people an excuse to not be concerned, it gives people an excuse to not take precautions. It gives government leaders an excuse to hesitate and hold off. “

“We’re already seeing an abundance of this coming from the right wing,” he added. “It just seems like every time we have a public health crisis there are certain elements who want nothing more to do than mock the people that are afflicted to minimize the urgency.”

Tony Bravo and Annie Vainshtein are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: tbravo@sfchronicle.com, avainshtein@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @TonyBravoSF, @annievain

 



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World

Intercepted Russian military conversation reveals frustration with defective equipment and Ukrainian shelling

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Russian occupiers in the city of Popasna, Luhansk oblast

Read also: Russian troops try to storm outside Severodonetsk, says Luhansk governor

One of the invaders can be heard saying that he came under heavy fire from the Ukrainian Armed Forces at night and complained about the shortage of personnel.

“We have three people on duty here all day,” one of the speakers, presumably a Russian soldiers, said in the intercept.

Read also: Evacuation of 568 civilians sheltering in the Azot plant in Severodonetsk ‘impossible’, says Luhansk governor

“There’s barely time to sleep. If only it were so that some would be here, others — there. As things stand, these three are on guard all night, and four — there. In the morning, as we went out, they started [pounding] us with AGS (automatic grenade systems). At first, they struck the field, then got closer and closer. Some ‘Transits’ were driving around. They did not just hit us, they also [pummeled] someone else there.”

Another participant in the conversation responded that a tank unit near them had also come under fire.

Read also: Russia losing dozens of troops daily in street battles in Severodonetsk, says Luhansk governor

“One 200, one 300,” the other participant said, referring to Russian military codes for dead and wounded.

“They [struck] at night. A reconnaissance and sabotage group came. They showed us everything. And told us everything. There is nothing worthwhile to take and leave with. Trash everywhere. Either (the equipment) drives and doesn’t shoot, or it shoots and doesn’t drive.”

Read also: Ukrainian army blows up Russian pontoon bridge in Luhansk Oblast

Numerous intercepted Russian military conversations have revealed low and rapidly worsening morale among the invaders, due to heavy casualties and poor supplies. Military experts have commented that the Russian army’s poor logistics were a major contributing factor in their loss in the Battle for Kyiv.

Help NV continue its work reporting on the Russian invasion 

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US

Texas school shooting: Frustration mounts in Uvalde over shifting narratives. State senator says lack of clarity could hinder future safety measures

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Ten days after a gunman slaughtered 19 students and their two teachers in their classrooms at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, there are still significant gaps in the information officials have released about law enforcement’s response.

“My point as a policymaker, which is the third function of my job, is to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” said state Sen. Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat who represents Uvalde.

“How in the world are we going to be able to do anything if we can’t figure out what happened in that building in those 40 minutes?”

The shifting police narratives, unanswered questions and the horror of knowing 21 victims were trapped with a gunman for more than an hour — despite repeated 911 calls for help from inside the classrooms — is tormenting this small Texas city.

Gutierrez has questioned whether the responding officers on scene were aware of those calls as they stood outside the classrooms. It’s also unclear whether the incident commander, who made the call for the officers not to confront the shooter immediately, was on scene as the shooting unfolded.

The frustration was palpable Friday night when Uvalde held its first board meeting following the massacre.

The main public development was that Superintendent Hal Harrell reiterated students would not be returning to Robb Elementary — after which the school board went into a lengthy closed-door session that was scheduled to involve the approval of personnel employments, assignments, suspensions and terminations.

Angela Turner, a mother of five who lost her niece in the shooting, expressed outrage. “We want answers to where the security is going to take place. This was all a joke,” she told reporters, referring to the meeting. “I’m so disappointed in our school district.”

Turner insisted that she will not send her children to school unless they feel safe, adding that her 6-year-old child told her, “I don’t want to go to school. Why? To be shot?”

“These people will not have a job if we stand together, and we do not let our kids go here,” she said as she pointed to a vacant school board podium.

Dawn Poitevent, a mother whose child was slated to attend Robb Elementary as a second-grader, was tearful as she told reporters that she wants the board to consider letting her child stay at his current school, Dalton Elementary.

“I just need to keep my baby safe, and I can’t promise him that. Nobody can promise their children that right now,” Poitevent said. “At least if he goes to Dalton, he’s not going to be scared, and he’s not going to be having the worst first day that I can possibly imagine.”

Poitevent added that her son, Hayes, has been telling her that he’s scared to go to school because a “bad man” will shoot him.

“We’re just trying so hard to get past everything,” she said. “We’re trying to bury our babies and say goodbye to people that really mattered.”

Gutierrez reiterated that the issue goes beyond school safety.

“The errors that occurred here, the systemic failure, the human errors that ended up in this terrible loss of life: Everybody is accountable,” Gutierrez said.

Gun manufacturer under scrutiny

Also under scrutiny is the gun manufacturer of the weapon used in the mass shooting.

Lawyers for the father of shooting victim Amerie Jo Garza, 10, said Friday they asked gunmaker Daniel Defense to provide all marketing information, particularly strategy aimed at teens and children, according to a statement.

“She would want to me to do everything I can, so this will never happen again to any other child,” Alfred Garza III said in the statement. “I have to fight her fight.”

Attorneys for her mother, Kimberly Garcia, also sent a letter to the company, demanding it “preserve all potentially relevant information” related to the shooting.

On Thursday, an attorney representing teacher Emilia Marin filed a petition to depose the gunmaker, according to a court filing. Marin had been wrongly accused of opening the door that the shooter used to access the school.

“The subject matter of the potential claim is the conduct of Daniel Defense which was a cause of the injuries and damages suffered by Emelia Marin,” according to the petition provided to CNN by the teacher’s lawyer.

Daniel Defense has not replied to multiple requests by CNN for comment.

On its website, Daniel Defense said it will “cooperate with all federal, state, and local law enforcement authorities in their investigations,” referring to the Uvalde shooting as an “act of evil.”

In February, the families of five children and four adults killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting reached a $73 million settlement with the gun manufacturer Remington, which made the Bushmaster AR-15-style rifle used in the massacre. That shooting, which left 20 children and six adults dead in Newtown, Connecticut, was the deadliest school shooting in the US.

House hearing focuses on recent shootings

Next week, survivors and others affected by the recent shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde will testify before the House Oversight Committee, according to the committee’s website.

Witnesses scheduled at next Wednesday’s hearing include Miah Cerrillo, a fourth-grade student at Robb Elementary; Felix Rubio and Kimberly Rubio, whose 10-year-old daughter Lexi was killed in the shooting at Robb Elementary; Zeneta Everhart, whose son Zaire Goodman was injured in the Buffalo, New York, shooting; and Dr. Roy Guerrero, a pediatrician in Uvalde, Texas. Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia will also testify.

“The hearing will examine the urgent need for Congress to pass commonsense legislation that a majority of Americans support,” Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney said in a statement. “This includes legislation to ban assault weapons and bolster background checks on gun purchases, while respecting the rights of law-abiding gun owners.”

Meanwhile in Texas, a state legislator established a committee to “conduct an examination into the circumstances” surrounding the shooting.

“The fact we still do not have an accurate picture of what exactly happened in Uvalde is an outrage,” Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan, a Republican, said in a statement Friday.

CNN’s Ed Lavandera, Morgan Rimmer, Meridith Edwards, Omar Jimenez, Travis Caldwell and Christina Maxouris contributed to this report.

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US

Biden approval near record low amid economic frustration: poll

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President BidenJoe BidenTrump tears into Biden as he moves toward 2024 campaign Biden says he hopes his legacy ‘is that I restored the soul of this country’ Cyber officials urge federal agencies to armor up for potential Russian attacks MORE’s approval rating hit a near-record low in a new poll as Americans become increasingly frustrated with the economy.

The ABC News and The Washington Post poll found that 37 percent of adults in the U.S. strongly or somewhat approve of the way Biden is handling his job as president, compared to 55 percent who said they strongly or somewhat disapprove. Seven percent said they had no opinion.

The approval is a four-point drop from November, when ABC News and the Post found that Biden had a 41 percent approval rating among adults in the U.S. 

The rating, however, is not the president’s lowest — a Quinnipiac University poll of U.S. adults conducted last month found the president had a 33 percent approval rating.

February’s approval rating comes as Americans are grappling with economic frustrations, with consumer prices increasing 7.5 annually at the end of January, the fastest rate since February 1982.

Inflation in the U.S. has been elevated since the middle of last year, when the economy began rebounding from the COVID-19 slump, driving prices up.

Thirty-seven percent of American adults polled said they approve of the way Biden is handling the economy, compared to 58 percent who said they disapprove. Five percent said they had no opinion.

Fifty-four percent of respondents said they trust Republicans to do a better job at handling the economy, while 35 percent said the same of Democrats. Seven percent said they trusted neither, while three percent said they had no opinion and one percent said they trusted both.

And on the state of the economy, only three percent of respondents said it is currently “excellent.” Twenty-one percent said it is “good,” 36 percent said it is “not so good” and 39 percent said it is “poor.” One percent of respondents did not have an opinion.

A majority of adults say the economy got worse under Biden. Fifty-four percent of those polled said the economy has gotten somewhat or much worse since Biden took office, while only 17 percent said it has gotten much or somewhat better. Twenty-seven percent of respondents said it has remained the same, with one percent saying they had no opinion.

The poll surveyed 1,011 adults, including 904 registered voters, between Feb. 20 and Feb. 24. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus four percentage points.



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Sports

Jerry Jones expresses frustration with Amari Cooper

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Cowboys receiver Amari Cooper signed a five-year, $100 contract before the 2020 season. It made him the league’s highest-paid receiver in 2021 with a $20 million base salary and a $22 million cap number.

Yet, Cooper tied for 39th in receptions (68), 34th in receiving yards (865) and tied for 37th in points among non-kickers (eight touchdowns). He wasn’t even the leading receiver on the team with CeeDee Lamb catching 79 passes for 1,102 yards.

Cooper also didn’t enamor himself to Cowboys owner Jerry Jones by deciding not to get vaccinated. Cooper was one of only two unvaccinated players on the active roster.

In November, Cooper tested positive for COVID-19 and missed two games. The Cowboys lost both.

On Friday, Jones didn’t hold back, expressing frustration with Cooper.

“How he fits in and he should take half the field with him when he goes and runs the field,” Jones said on 105.3 The Fan, via Mark Lane of WFAA. “Not half, that’s an exaggeration, of course, but a whole bunch of that defense should have to honor Cooper. He ought to be able to catch it when they’re going in the middle with him. Others do. You throw to people that are covered all the time in the NFL.”

That doesn’t seem to bode well for Cooper’s future in Dallas, barring a pay cut.

As a practical matter, Cooper signed a two-year, $40 million deal. It allows the Cowboys to walk away with no guaranteed money and only $6 million in dead money for 2022.

“The reason those contracts are being discussed is because they have two sides to them; one’s got it coming and the other’s got to pay it,” Jones said. ”And the one that’s got it coming is going to go out and perform usually to the level of the contract. That’s usually the way I think about those contracts.”

The Cowboys have until March 20 to decide what to do with Cooper. That’s when his $20 million salary for 2022 becomes fully guaranteed.

Cooper admitted after the loss to the 49ers last week that he doesn’t know what his future holds but said he “hopefully” remains with the Cowboys.

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Sports

Eagles’ DeVonta Smith explains why frustration boiled over

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After the Eagles’ final offensive play fell incomplete through the hands of Jalen Reagor on Sunday, DeVonta Smith let his frustration boil over.

The Eagles’ rookie stomped his feet and once he got to the sideline, tossed his helmet.

“That just shows that I care about the game. I love the game,” Smith said on Friday. “I love going out there and competing. Like I said, you want to win every game that you can. Losing that way, I mean, it’s rough.”

While the game is now well in the rearview, Friday was the first opportunity reporters had to talk to Smith since the end of the game and that final play.

The Eagles didn’t lose to the Giants because of that one play but since it happened last, it’s a play that has been dissected numerous times since the game ended with a 13-7 loss. And it has spurred plenty of debate, especially because Smith was calling for the ball mid-play.

So was he open?

“My quarterback seen what he seen,” Smith said. “I’m not mad at the decision he made. He made the decision that was the best for the team.”

Earlier in the week, head coach Nick Sirianni pointed out the lack of route discipline on that play, which was a mesh concept between Smith and Quez Watkins running crossers. That route discipline was off and Hurts didn’t like what he saw in front of him, so he didn’t deliver a pass to Smith, who was supposed to be his top option on the play.

 

On Friday, Smith took some of the blame.

“Yeah, I could have won better at the line of scrimmage,” Smith said. “If I had won better at the line of scrimmage, it would have left no doubt about where the ball was supposed to be or what he seen. That’s on me. Win at the line of scrimmage and we probably wouldn’t be in this situation.”

In the game, Smith was targeted just 4 times and had just 2 catches for 22 yards. So it’s likely that his frustration had been building throughout the game on Sunday.

But Smith didn’t blame Hurts.

“Quarterback has to make his reads. I’m not a quarterback, I can’t tell him what to read,” Smith said. “He seen what he seen and he made the right reads. The ball went to who it was supposed to go to.”

Jason Kelce this week said it’s a great sign that Smith wants the ball in his hands at crucial moments, but said Smith knows that’s not always the way things go.

“I think the No. 1 thing, he has the ultimate belief and confidence in himself and what he can do and what he’s able to do,” Hurts said. “And I do as well. I’ve always known that about him. The ultimate competitor.”

Through 12 games this season, Smith has 48 catches for 686 yards and 4 touchdowns and is still on pace to break the Eagles’ single season rookie receiving record.

But he also knows teams are going to work to take him away. In the last game, the Giants held Smith and Dallas Goedert to a combined seven targets. Those two are clearly the Eagles’ top two receiving options.

“Teams throw all different things at you and you just have to adjust to it,” Smith said. “Every team is different. Every team has their way.”

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