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Philly isn’t getting vaccines where they’re needed most | Morning Newsletter

And, finally, Phillies fans return to Citizens Bank Park.

    The Morning Newsletter

    Start your day with the Philly news you need and the stories you want all in one easy-to-read newsletter

Good morning from The Inquirer newsroom.

First: Neighborhoods that are home largely to lower-income Philadelphians of color have some of the lowest vaccination rates in the city, according to an Inquirer analysis of city-provided zip-code-level data.

Then: Phillies fans returned home to Citizens Bank Park.

And: The family of Walter Wallace Jr. sued the Philadelphia police officers who fatally shot him in October.

— Tommy Rowan (@tommyrowan, morningnewsletter@inquirer.com)

The 16 Philadelphia zip codes with the lowest COVID-19 vaccination rates are home to largely lower-income residents of color, an Inquirer analysis shows. And those zip codes also tend to have higher case rates, hospitalizations, and deaths.

Meanwhile, residents of the highest-income zip codes have been vaccinated at twice the rate in the lowest-income zip codes.

Reporters Jason Laughlin and Jonathan Lai, who analyzed city-provided zip-code-level data for this story, spoke with outreach coordinators and area residents about the effort to vaccinate everyone in these areas at a faster rate.

Read on for the full story about the areas that need the vaccine most.

At Citizens Bank Park on Thursday, the Phillies welcomed back fans for the first time in 18 months for their game against the Atlanta Braves on Opening Day.

Reporter Stephanie Farr wrote that despite COVID-19 protocols capping attendance at 8,800 — or 20% of the stadium’s capacity — and mandatory face masks muffled fans’ screams, the unified boos and cheers of baseball fans still filled the stadium. At times, she wrote, the fans’ exuberance felt like a collective sigh of relief.

“For just a few hours in this corner of South Philadelphia, Philly felt like Philly again.”

Read on for Farr’s full dispatch from the Sports Complex.

  1. Vaccine appointment you can’t make or don’t need? Cancel. No-shows are complicating local rollouts.

  2. Daily coronavirus case counts in Philly have doubled in the last month. Track the spread here.

  3. Symptoms of COVID-19, flu, common cold, and allergies can overlap. Here’s how to tell the difference.

  4. Am I eligible to get vaccinated? Know the requirements for Philly, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.

  5. Where can I get a COVID-19 vaccine in the Philly area? Use our lookup tool.

What you need to know today

  1. The family of Walter Wallace Jr. — the West Philadelphia man who was fatally shot by Philadelphia police in October, setting off days of protests — filed a wrongful-death lawsuit Thursday against two officers.

  2. The demolition of a 100-year-old hosiery mill in Kensington was stopped Thursday after neighbors posted videos online of falling debris. The videos led the city’s Licenses & Inspections agency to investigate, which found the contractor was working with expired demolition permits. The stop-work order comes about a week after neighbors gathered to protest the seven-story, 150-unit apartment complex that embattled developer Gagandeep Lakhmna aims to build at the site he bought in September 2020.

  3. The poorest Pennsylvanians will receive around $712 million in retroactive food stamp benefits — $188 million for Philadelphia residents alone ― now that a July lawsuit initially filed against the Trump administration by a local law firm has been settled.

  4. SEPTA will reopen its troubled Somerset Station in Kensington on Monday.

  5. Christopher Miyares, who was confronted in 2013 by a shotgun-wielding John Fetterman — then mayor of tiny Braddock, now lieutenant governor and running for the U.S. Senate — claims Fetterman has “lied about everything” that happened that day. But Miyares, currently an inmate at a state prison in Somerset County, said that incident should not stop Fetterman from becoming a senator. Meanwhile, Fetterman’s successor in Braddock endorsed race rival State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, and Fetterman has raised $3.9 million in the first three months of his campaign.

  6. A Philadelphia police inspector was arrested Thursday for assaulting a man in his Northeast neighborhood, and he will be fired as a result of the arrest, Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said.

  7. The National Cancer Institute says it’s not funding a study that asked West Philadelphia residents for fecal samples for research into links between gentrification and colorectal cancer.

Through your eyes | #OurPhilly

Amen, @gritadelphia. Some of the best parts of Philadelphia are down alleys and between buildings.

Tag your Instagram posts or tweets with #OurPhilly and we’ll pick our favorite each day to feature in this newsletter and give you a shout-out!

That’s interesting

  1. 🥘 The Locust Street luncheonette Middle Child is bringing an even larger location to Fishtown.

  2. 🏀 Now that Villanova is no longer competing for a national championship, sports columnist Mike Jensen looks at the future of City 6 men’s basketball, and identifies newer facilities as a bottom-line need.

Opinions

“Major League Baseball is a story of the haves and the have-nots; it is a story of the colony and the country club,” writes academics Earl Smith and Marissa Kiss, pushing for MLB to actually invest in equality and diversity and not just talk about it.

  1. Columnist Will Bunch writes that America’s military-industrial complex squandered $1.7 trillion on a lame fighter jet while the president is begging for infrastructure cash. And he asks: Isn’t there a better way?

  2. Vladimir Putin, like China’s Xi Jinping, thinks Western democracy is on the ropes and he can crush democratic opposition in Russia with impunity, writes columnist Trudy Rubin. She argues that “Killer” Putin must be prevented from murdering opposition leader Alexei Navalny in prison.

What we’re reading

  1. Philly Mag has a list of seven classic candies that got started in Philadelphia, just in time for a sugary weekend.

  2. The New York Times looks at the crisis in child care, and specifically at the child-care centers that improvised during the pandemic and are scrambling to stay open with razor-thin budgets and little government guidance. And asks: “How long will the short-term solutions last?”

  3. Our own writer-at-large David Gambacorta wrote a piece for Longreads about Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s lost album, Human Highway, and details how the group once-thought to be “the super group to end all super groups” fumbled a chance to record their best album.

Your Daily Dose of | Home

When it was time for Benjamin Tucker to leave his residency at Woods Services in Bucks County, his caregiver lost sleep over his future. So Bob Reiss, a direct-support professional and staff mentor at Woods, which provides mainly residential services to people who have developmental or other disabilities, looked to a life-sharing solution.