Here’s what you need to know at the end of the day.
(Want to get this newsletter in your inbox? Here’s the sign-up.) Good evening. Here’s the latest at the end of Monday. 1. Boosters are complicating efforts to persuade the unvaccinated to get shots. The number of eligible people in the U.S. still weighing whether to get a Covid vaccine has sharply dwindled, leaving mostly hard-core refusers. In a September vaccine survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation,71 percent of unvaccinated respondents said the need for booster shots indicated that the vaccines were not working. Experts in vaccine behavior fear that the country is bumping up against the ceiling of persuadable people, one that is significantly lower than the threshold needed for broad immunity from Delta and, possibly, future variants. In other coronavirus news: 2. A lawsuit is seeking to hold hospitals responsible after one of their doctors addicted vulnerable women to pain medications and assaulted them over many years. Ricardo Cruciani was finally charged with sexual assault in Pennsylvania, registering as a sex offender and surrendering his medical license in a plea agreement in 2017. He is free on $1 million bail while facing criminal charges in New York and New Jersey. Former patients are saying he got away with offenses for years because hospitals looked the other way. The doctor was able to secure positions at hospitals in three states over the course of a decade. The New Jersey lawsuit, as well as civil suits filed in New York and Pennsylvania, claim that hospitals ignored reports that Cruciani was sexually assaulting patients, allowing him to quietly change jobs and continue his predatory behavior. 3. An exodus of residents is the latest sign of resistance to Hong Kong’s political upheaval. Last year, Hong Kong experienced its biggest population loss since the government began keeping records in the 1960s. Public hospital doctors and nurses have quit in large numbers. Emigrants withdrew $270 million from the city’s retirement plan. And schools are seeing a sharp drop in enrolled students. Government officials have brushed off concerns about a general exodus, but even they have acknowledged the blow to schools. Mainland-China-style “patriotic education” has been a driver of the departures. “They prefer their children to have more freedom of speech and to have more balanced education,” John Hu, an immigration consultant, said of parents.
