When voters were asked about support for specific environmental protections, 90% supported expanding setbacks from schools and hospitals, while 92% wanted increased air monitoring at fracking sites and 94% wanted greater disclosure of fracking chemicals.

“[Residents] are forced to do a calculus,” said Sean O’Leary, a senior researcher at the institute. “There are some bad things going on. But we believe that it’s important for jobs. And so how do we deal with that? And the answer is that they will, on the one hand, acknowledge that they think fracking is an economic contributor, while at the same time still being unhappy about the damage that it’s doing in their communities.”

O’Leary said the poll shows voters in both parties overwhelmingly back environmental protections.

“Support for taking mitigating measures like regulation and enforcement is strong among all populations that we surveyed,” O’Leary said, “from Democrats and environmentalists on the left to hardcore Republicans on the right.”

O’Leary said the perception of economic benefits is overblown and points to his research at the ORVI that shows otherwise.

“First of all, the natural gas industry is among the major economic sectors in the U.S. economy,” he said. “It is the least jobs intensive, only about $0.08 out of every dollar that the industry earns or that’s invested in the industry goes to support labor jobs. And so there aren’t very many jobs to begin with.”

Pennsylvania currently has about 17,000 direct jobs in the industry, although an industry report has put that number at 123,000.

By Luc Cohen

(Reuters) – Pennsylvania election officials will be able to notify voters of any mistakes in their mail-in ballots and let them make changes, the state’s top court ruled, in a blow to Republicans who sought to block the practice in a state crucial to determining who will be the next U.S. president.

In declining on Saturday to hear a lawsuit brought by the Republican National Committee and its state affiliate against so-called notice and cure procedures, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court said the RNC filed the case too close to the Nov. 5 election, which pits Republican former President Donald Trump against Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris.

Pennsylvania is one of seven key battlegrounds likely to sway the state-by-state Electoral College outcome that determines the winner of U.S. presidential elections. Whichever candidate wins Pennsylvania will receive 19 electoral votes toward the total of 270 needed for victory.

The case is one of more than 120 voting-related lawsuits the RNC is involved with across 26 states. Republicans say they are trying to restore faith in elections by ensuring people don’t vote illegally, but some legal experts and voting rights groups argue the legal blitz is meant to lay the groundwork to challenge potential losses and suppress votes for Democrats.

The Republican push has yielded some victories.

In another ruling on Saturday, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court declined to hear a case brought by voting rights groups against a state requirement that mail-in ballots must bear the correct date in order to be counted. The court also said that case was brought too close to the upcoming election.

The use of mail-in ballots has surged since the COVID-19 pandemic. Trump, who falsely claims his loss to President Joe Biden in the 2020 election was marred by fraud, has criticized mail-in ballots as unreliable without evidence.

In asking the court on Sept. 18 to block county election boards from adapting “notice and cure” procedures, the RNC argued that the state’s legislature had not granted the local boards the authority to adopt them.

In a Sept. 20 court filing, the Democratic National Committee and its state affiliate argued that the state’s election laws indeed gave local boards the authority to implement such measures, and said the ruling the Republicans sought would prevent local officials from facilitating voter participation.

Charles Lutvak, a spokesperson for Harris’ campaign, in a statement called the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision “a victory, not for Democrats but for our democracy.”

A spokesperson for the RNC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Bill Berkrot)

Pennsylvania has seen more cases of whooping cough than any other state this year, with 2,165 cases of the serious bacterial infection reported as of late September.

At this time in 2023, the state had reported 205 cases to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This year’s cases represent a 956% increase from the year before.

The continued outbreak prompted a statewide alert from health officials in early September, and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia re-instituted staff masking policies this summer to better protect employees and patients.

Whooping cough, or pertussis, is caused by a bacterial infection and can result in a severe cough that lasts for months. It’s particularly dangerous for infants, especially those too young to be vaccinated against the disease.

Preventative measures for whooping cough at CHOP

In August, seeing a rise in cases at its offices in Philadelphia’s collar counties, CHOP began requiring staff to mask in waiting rooms and while seeing patients in Montgomery, Chester, Bucks, and Delaware Counties in Pennsylvania and Burlington County in New Jersey.

At the end of September, with cases also rising in Philadelphia, CHOP staff began masking at their city facilities as well, said Erika Hayes, CHOP’s senior medical director of infection prevention.

“During the COVID-19 pandemic, we all got very, very good about not going out when we were sick and wearing our masks,” she said. “Mid-2020 to about late 2021, the number of pertussis cases were vanishingly rare, and it was because of these good practices.”

The health system is hoping that requiring staff to mask now can help slow the flow of cases.

In a statement, the state Department of Health said areas with high population density like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are seeing the highest increases. Still, pertussis cases in Philadelphia have not been evenly spread among health providers: St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children in Kensington has seen only a handful this year. CHOP has seen 609 across its facilities in the region.

Hayes said she hoped cases might decrease soon. “But honestly, especially with the kids back in school, I am very worried that we may continue to rise,” she said.

Most of the pertussis outbreaks reported this year took place at middle schools, high schools, and colleges, state officials said. Montgomery County’s Plymouth Whitemarsh High School reported a pertussis outbreak among six students in April.

New Jersey also saw higher-than-usual whooping cough cases this summer, prompting an alert from the state health department, although the cases reported so far this year are now lower than year-to-date case counts from 2023. And the state is seeing far fewer cases than neighboring Pennsylvania, with just 128 cases reported this year.

What’s driving the rise in pertussis cases?

At Virtua Health in South Jersey, infection prevention officer Martin Topiel said the health system is seeing more whooping cough cases in its ERs and urgent care centers than usual.

But it’s unclear what exactly is behind the rise. Topiel said that better detection methods could contribute to an increase in reported cases.

Some patients also put off vaccinations during the COVID pandemic, Hayes noted, adding that the standard childhood Tdap vaccine, which protects against tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis, wears off as you age. That might have put more patients at risk.

“People can become susceptible again to pertussis, and pertussis in adults and grown-ups looks like a little bit of a cold and then a cough that won’t go away for a long time,” she said. “A lot of people don’t get diagnosed. But it’s extremely contagious.”

Newborns are at the highest risk of infection and, in rare cases, death from pertussis. In very young babies, the symptoms of whooping cough might be more difficult to spot, since producing the distinctive “whoop” requires muscle tone not yet developed. Instead, they may struggle to breathe or stop breathing.

Preventing serious illness

That’s why it’s especially important for adults and older children to stay up-to-date on Tdap boosters—to protect babies under two months, who are too young to be vaccinated, Hayes said. It’s also important for pregnant people to receive a Tdap shot between 27 and 36 weeks gestation of each pregnancy, state officials said, in order to give newborns some added protection.

State officials said 94.6% of Pennsylvania’s kindergartners are vaccinated for pertussis. And 92.4% of 7th graders and 97.1% of 12th graders have gotten a Tdap vaccine.

Patients can still get ill from pertussis if they’re vaccinated, but the vaccine can prevent more serious outcomes, said Topiel.

“Pertussis can last a very long time and it can be quite disabling and uncomfortable once someone catches it,” he said. “I don’t want people to go through that.”

‘Vaccines are our best defense’

Earlier this summer, Emmani Osborne-Morrison came down with a cold. Emmani has a severe form of epilepsy, and her mother Juliette Osborne, a nurse practitioner from Lumberton, N.J., closely monitors her health.

“She was fatigued, not herself, not eating—I couldn’t make out what it was. I thought it might be chronic sinusitis. But then one night she started coughing,” Osborne said.

Emmani coughed for four hours straight, and Osborne got in touch with her primary care physician and was told to take her daughter immediately to the emergency room. There, she tested positive for whooping cough.

The family quarantined and took preventative antibiotics to prevent the infection from spreading through the household. Emmani was over the worst of it in about two weeks, her mother said, likely because she had been vaccinated.

Osborne advised parents to make sure their kids are vaccinated, too—and to watch out for unusual cold symptoms they might otherwise miss.

“It was very crazy hearing that she had whooping cough when she had already been vaccinated,” Osborne said. But, she said, “vaccinations are our best defense. I believe Emmani’s vaccine helped reduce or shorten her symptoms.”

2024 The Philadelphia Inquirer, LLC. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.