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Somerville firefighters rescue swan from icy Mystic River

Somerville firefighters rescued a swan in distress on the Mystic River near Assembly Row Tuesday afternoon, according to officials.

Fire Chief Charles Green told WBZ News Radio that firefighters received a report about the bird trapped in the ice around 12:30 p.m.

Firefighters used an ice sled to rescue the swan, marooned about 50 feet from the shore, according to Deputy Chief Vincent Lampley. The operation took about 10 minutes, he said.

Firefighters worked in freezing temperatures — Tuesday’s high was 12 degrees with a wind chill as low as minus 15.

The swan was turned over to Somerville Animal Control. Animal Control Officer Haley LaMonica took the bird to New England Wildlife Center for care.

No further information was immediately available at press time.

Local doctors say one-way masking works, if it’s the right kind

You’re fully vaccinated and wearing a mask, but others around you aren’t covering up.

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Should you worry?

Two doctors with local ties say no, as long as you’re wearing something that offers adequate protection.

Abraar Karan — an infectious-disease doctor at Stanford, and former resident at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School — told The Atlantic that everyone should upgrade their masks, and for health-care workers, N95 should be mandatory.

“These masks are literally designed to block out infectious aerosols,” he told the magazine.

Later, he tweeted that one-way masking works.

“For many, they have no choice — they are immunocompromised, they live in an area without mandates,” he said. “For them, I am hopeful that a high filtration respirator can still protect them.”

Dr. Shira Doron — epidemiologist and director of antimicrobial stewardship at Tufts Medical Center — said that we’ve reached the point in the pandemic “where it’s become unsustainable to depend on others for protection.”

“Luckily, if you want to avoid COVID at all costs, you don’t have to rely on anyone else’s mask compliance,” she tweeted in a link to the same article.

According to The Washington Post, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is thinking of updating its mask guidance, recommending that people opt for the highly protective N95 or KN95 masks worn by healthcare workers. Studies show that N95s reduce the wearer’s uptake of coronavirus particles by 57 to 86 percent, according to The New York Times.

Woman in need of transplant finds donor in Target parking lot

People find so many necessary things at Target, but 66-year-old Gail Weisberg’s discovery may top the list: a new kidney.

Weisberg, of Hudson, desperately needed a new organ, according to WBZ.

After waiting more than two years on the transplant list, with the help of a friend, Weisberg started her own search through a sign on her car, according to the TV station.

It read: “Wanna be an angel for an angel? [Best friend] needs a kidney.”

Debbie Munley of Marlborough saw the sign, while Weisberg waited in the store’s parking lot for her curbside pickup, according to Fox 25.

That day, Munley told the TV station, she was feeling really thankful for all she has, especially her husband’s clean bill of health from prostate cancer.

So she knocked on Weisberg’s car window, and offered her a kidney, she told Fox 25.

The station noted that Munley got tested and discovered that she was a match for Weisberg. The two will undergo surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital on Feb. 15, according to Fox.

Weisberg told the TV station she can’t express her gratitude for Munley, who is saving her life.

“Certainly, we’ll be in each other’s lives for our whole life. And I’ll have a part of her with me,” she told Fox 25.

Supporters set up a GoFundMe for Weisberg, to cover her medical expenses.

9 things we learned from Episode 9 of the Tom Brady documentary, ‘Man in the Arena’

In the ninth episode of the documentary series “Man in the Arena,” Tom Brady explored the end of his time with the Patriots.

The primary focus was the 2018 season (culminating in the Super Bowl LIII win over the Rams), but the show also touched on Brady’s final thoughts about playing in New England for Bill Belichick.

Unlike previous episodes, where Brady and multiple guests were interviewed, the ninth installment (titled “Maybe”) involves only Brady and former Patriots teammate, Julian Edelman.

Here are a few takeaways:

Brady’s thoughts on Edelman’s evolution

Though they would become a tight partnership on the field, Brady initially viewed Edelman as a player with potential who lacked polish.

“I didn’t know much about Julian except I knew we were going to scout this kid from Kent State who I think ultimately was a better football player than he was a wide receiver,” said Brady.

But by 2018, the onetime “football player” had evolved into a multi-time Super Bowl winner, and one of Brady’s most trusted targets.

“Julian stepped up his game just to a ridiculous level,” Brady noted of Edelman that season. “He became a driving force for our team and [from] a different era than earlier in my career, Julian kind of became the real type of Patriot that a lot of the guys before him were.

Later, he credited Edelman’s drive and work ethic in reaching his absolute potential.

“He was spectacular. That’s all that I would say,” said Brady. “He was the ultimate overachiever.”

Edelman on his 2017 injury, and the “business” of the NFL

During a preseason game against the Lions in 2017, Edelman tore his ACL.

“I got outside my base, tried to cut at high velocity, terrible technique, probably getting a little too cocky out there and I blew out my knee,” he recalled.

One of Edelman’s more interesting observations in the whole episode was his description of being gone from football for a year, and the mental weight it carried.

“You spend a lot of time away from the game and you watch your team go out and succeed, you start thinking, and you start getting hungry, and you start getting crazy,” said Edelman. “You start trying to compete every day with yourself.

“Injuries in professional football or any kind of professional sport, it’s so psychologically demanding because you want to see your team do well, but you don’t want to see your team do too well because then, hey, it’s a business.”

Edelman’s suspension

Prior to the 2018 season, in which Edelman would be returning from the missed season due to injury, he was suspended for taking performance-enhancing drugs.

The former receiver never directly addressed the subject of drug use in the documentary, though he added more to the subject of how difficult it was for him without football.

“That was a very tough year for me, strictly for the fact that I’m not playing the game I love,” Edelman said. “You’re sitting and you’re reflecting everyday, about yourself, your game, your life, this, that, what’s going to happen. Because the one thing that’s probably the most scary thing for an athlete is the unknown.

Looking back on his suspension, Edelman had mixed feelings.

“In hindsight, it was almost a blessing in disguise,” he began.

“But not great,” Edelman quickly added. “Not a great thing.”

A wakeup call against the Titans

Before a Week 10 matchup against the Titans, Brady said that he reached out to former teammate (and now Tennessee head coach) Mike Vrabel.

“Against Mike I remember talking s*** to him the day before,” said Brady. “I called him up on his phone and [he’d] been a friend of mine for a long time.”

But as it turned out, it was Vrabel’s Titans who had the last laugh. The Patriots, despite entering at 7-2 on a six-game winning streak, lost 34-10.

“We got our a** kicked,” Brady bluntly noted. “They put it on us pretty good. They probably played one of the best games they’d played all season, and really embarrassed us.”

The game taught Brady and the Patriots a lesson.

“It just showed that if we played poor, and another team played really well, they could beat us by [24] points,” said Brady. “So it just heightens your sense of practice, focus, determination, planning, strategy, all those things had to go way up.”

“In the end, you’re wrong again”

In 2018, the Patriots didn’t close out the regular season with a characteristic run of victories as in previous Super Bowl seasons. This, not surprisingly, was a sign for prognosticators that New England wasn’t destined to win another championship.

“One of the great advantages that I thought our teams always had was we took advantage of the extra time to not rest, but to get better and improve,” Brady said of the team’s bye week.

“There’s a lot of humility in that. You have to be able to address the things that we’re not good at,” Brady added. “We go to that postseason and it was like: ‘Yeah, we’re not probably on paper the strongest team.'”

Edelman noted that despite the skepticism from football experts, the Patriots had still been good enough to earn a bye week.

“That’s the crazy expectation factor that we see with New England,” he explained.

“But I was confident because I started feeling better,” Edelman continued. “It was starting to line up for me. When you tear your ACL, you’re learning how to walk again, to get your endurance strength and be able to go out and play Week 1, I don’t know. I didn’t get to play in Week 1, but I felt pretty sluggish in Week 4, so it allowed me to build up and get ready for December and January. That’s when I started peaking.”

The Patriots promptly dispatched the Chargers in the divisional round, 41-28. Brady acknowledged that he savored proving predictions wrong.

“It’s nice for me every once in a while to get a subtle shot just to make sure that people know that, ‘Yeah, I may hear you, but in the end it’s not going to affect [me], and in the end, you’re wrong again.'”

The AFC Championship

Prior to covering the AFC Championship, Brady added an interesting callback to the Patriots’ notable loss in Kansas City in 2014 (a game that became famous for being a low-point prior to that year’s Super Bowl run).

“We were there in 2014, and we didn’t play great and they destroyed us. It was the loudest I could ever remember a football stadium,” said Brady. “I’m happy I went through that experience because when we went there for the playoffs, the AFC Championship, I knew how loud the game was going to be at the start. So there was no intimidation.”

Looking back on a back-and-forth game, Edelman had a dramatic recollection from one of the pivotal moments. Trailing in the fourth quarter, it appeared that the Chiefs had intercepted Brady on a deflected pass. It would have all but sealed Kansas City’s trip to the Super Bowl.

“I was never scared [in] that game until [the would-be interception],” Edelman admitted. “Then I’m sitting there like, ‘We really lost this f****** game? Damn, this offseason is going to suck.'”

Fortunately for the Patriots, an offsides penalty by defensive lineman Dee Ford negated the interception, handing New England the ball back.

“Then I saw the flag, oh we’re back let’s go,” Edelman jubilantly recalled. New England made the most of its second chance.

In the end, the Patriots emerged victorious 37-31 in overtime, and Super Bowl-bound.

The good and bad of Belichick

Both Brady and Edelman sounded off on playing for Belichick.

“Coach Belichick and I had for so many years a really great relationship, but it was always player-coach,” said Brady. “He was there to coach football. I was there to play football. He had always said there’s nobody I’d rather have play quarterback for our team than you, and I felt that same way about him as a coach.

“I loved the way that he had us focused in the biggest moments and here we were again in the biggest moment,” Brady noted of heading into Super Bowl LIII.

Edelman was more candid.

“I mean Bill is a very hard guy to play for,” he explained. “It seemed like the more popular you were, the better you were doing, the more he would like to slam you down a little bit.

“He demands a lot out of you, and you hate him sometimes, but then I mean, you love him a little,” Edelman added.

Brady’s comparison of Super Bowls

In the eighth episode of the documentary (which had covered the Super Bowl LII loss to the Eagles) Brady noted that despite the Patriots’ ability to score points, he had never really felt like the team had control of the game.

But in Super Bowl LIII, Brady contrasted his experience even as New England was less effective on offense.

“For some reason we always felt somewhat in control,” Brady said of playing the Rams in that game. “Even though we weren’t playing great, we kept getting field position, we kept moving the ball, we were right on the brink.

“If you contrast to the previous year where we were constantly moving [the ball] down the field and scoring points, and constantly getting the ball in the end zone, I still felt that game was very much not in our control,” said Brady.

In the end, the Patriots “found ways to adjust in the fourth quarter of the game,” as Brady explained.

New England made enough plays and held on for the sixth Super Bowl of the Brady-Belichick era.

The last word on Belichick

In the closing moments of the episode, Brady jumped ahead (past the end of the 2019 season) to his final thoughts on playing for Belichick prior to leaving as a free agent in 2020.

“We found an amazing working relationship together and I think he was the best coach I could’ve ever asked for,” said Brady. “We had our challenges at different moments, but they were just moments.

“They don’t define what the relationship was,” Brady added. “In the end we accomplished things that no one had ever accomplished in NFL history.”

Man’s body recovered from Learned Pond in Framingham

First responders recovered the body of a man from Learned Pond in Framingham Tuesday afternoon amid freezing temperatures, according to Framingham Souce.

According to the news site, Framingham police did not identify the person or release any details.

NBC 10 Boston reported that a passerby spotted the body and contacted police.

The Source noted that first responders worked in freezing temperatures — Tuesday’s high was 12 degrees with a wind chill as low as minus 15.

Fire Chief Michael Dutcher told the news site that firefighters donned their cold water gear and helped recover the body.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Massachusetts lawmakers grilled Charlie Baker over his response to the omicron COVID-19 wave. Here’s what we learned.

COVID-19 infections are at record heights. Short-staffed hospitals are straining to deal with the spike in patients. And some Massachusetts lawmakers are asking why Gov. Charlie Baker’s administration isn’t doing more.

Despite the state’s high vaccination rate, the unprecedented volume of COVID-19 cases due to the omicron variant has exacerbated a bed capacity crunch at local hospitals and forced schools and businesses to scramble to stay open.

While experts expect the dramatic surge to peak this month, they also project a number of tough weeks ahead, especially for hospitals and schools.

“I wish we were doing more to slow transmission, frankly,” state Rep. Bill Driscoll, a Milton Democrat and co-chair of the Legislature’s joint COVID-19 oversight committee, said during a virtual hearing Tuesday afternoon.

“We seem to be coping and managing through the blizzard that is the omicron surge this winter, but I don’t want to see us get here again,” Driscoll added.

In fairness, the situation in Massachusetts is hardly unique. And the Baker administration argues they’re already doing a lot — in some ways as much as, if not more, than any other state in response to the omicron wave.

The hearing Tuesday afternoon came just a few hours after Baker activated an additional 500 National Guard members to help hospitals and announced that the state had acquired 26 million rapid COVID-19 tests to distribute to schools and childcare centers over the next few months.

Of course, lawmakers wouldn’t have asked Baker and Health and Human Services Secretary Marylou Sudders to testify at the hearing Tuesday if they felt that was sufficient.

The two top officials were grilled about everything from mask policies to vaccination efforts during the sometimes-tense, 90-minute hearing, which shed new light on how the Baker administration is approaching the current omicron wave, and beyond.

Here’s what we learned:

1. With hospitals again under duress, why isn’t the public being asked to flatten the curve?

In response to the omicron surge, the Baker administration is now asking all residents to voluntarily wear a mask in indoor public places, although the Republican governor says he has “no interest” in making it a statewide requirement.

However, with COVID-19 hospitalizations now pushing 3,000 and 92 percent of hospital beds in Massachusetts occupied, state Sen Cindy Friedman questioned why the same “flatten the curve” rationale that justified strict lockdowns at the beginning of the pandemic didn’t at least justify an indoor mask mandate now.

“There is desperate need for relief so they can keep their staff healthy and care for those who need to be in the hospital,” Friedman said, adding that hospital leaders she had spoken to have “consistently” called for an indoor mask mandate for places like restaurants and businesses.

Baker acknowledged that hospitals are “incredibly challenged.” But he argued the current mask requirements for schools, health care settings, public transit, and congregate care facilities was enough.

“We have chosen to focus on mask mandates in places where we think the populations are either at risk or we believe that it’s an important tool to provide some degree of comfort and satisfaction and safety for people,” he said.

While dozens of cities and towns, including the most densely populated, like Boston, have imposed their own indoor mask mandates, Sudders also suggested there would be little public appetite for reimposing a statewide order.

“I’m not sure, other than frustrating people in the public, what a mask mandate would do,” she said.

Sudders stressed that the “issue facing our hospitals is a hospitalization of people who are unvaccinated,” who make up a disproportionate share of of COVID-19 patients, especially those in the intensive care unit.

However, she added that “as you’ve heard the governor say, he’s not inclined, we’re not inclined,” to implement any statewide version of the vaccine requirements Boston and a handful of other communities are planning to implement for indoor venues like restaurants, gyms, theaters, and museums.

Unlike the COVID-19 wave during the spring of 2020, the capacity crunch now is primarily being caused by a staffing shortage resulting in the effective loss of 700 hospital beds, which Sudders argued presents different options.

During the hearing, Sudders highlighted several less public-facing actions officials can take if the hospitals continue to be squeezed, adding that “hopefully” it won’t get to the point of rationing care.

The Baker administration has already ordered hospitals to pause all nonessential elective procedures likely to result in inpatient admission.

Sudders said Tuesday that they could also order them to postpone “100 percent” of elective procedures, both inpatient and outpatient. However, at the request of hospitals, they have held off on that for now.

The administration has also not utilized the new flexibility afforded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to let healthcare workers who have asymptomatic COVID-19 return to work in direct care after just seven days of isolation.

“Those are two levers … that we would pull if you would, or initiate before we got to crisis standards of care,” Sudders said.

Sudders also floated the idea of limited liability protections for health care staff during the omicron surge.

“These are .. folks who are working extraordinarily hard and have continued to work extraordinarily hard and are making the best decisions they can in real time,” Sudders said. “And we would welcome that.”

2. Baker says getting kids vaccinated has been harder than he thought

Massachusetts is a national leader when it comes to the pediatric vaccine rollout. With about 44 percent of children aged 5 to 11 vaccinated with at least one dose, the state is second only to Vermont when it comes to vaccinating its youngest eligible cohort.

But there are striking gaps.

As The Boston Globe‘s editorial board recently examined, the pediatric vaccination rate is lagging far behind in lower-income and conservative-leaning communities.

Baker’s administration has launched significant outreach and sponsored vaccine clinics at places like schools and public events. But even the governor admitted Tuesday that it’s been “more difficult” than he thought.

“It takes two in this equation,” Baker said. “We need to put vaccines in front of people. I would argue we’ve done a very good job of that. There’s always more to do. But then you got to get people willing to go.”

Baker said he has had “some really intense conversations” trying to convince people he knows to get their children vaccinated.

“Honestly, sometimes I can make the sale and sometimes I can’t,” he said.

Baker added that he’s “very open” to suggestions if the Legislature had ideas about things they weren’t doing to boost vaccination rates in general (he also noted that the state’s goal is to get every vaccinated person boosted; so far, they’ve reached about 40 percent).

“I’m all in on this, but the kid thing, in particular, is a more difficult sell for many folks than I thought it would be,” Baker said.

“I think it’s because there’s so much noise out there about vaccines generally, and it has not helped us, in my opinion — not just here in Massachusetts, but around the country — make the case,” Baker said.

3. State officials are beginning to look beyond the current wave

As much as the hearing Tuesday focused on the current wave, the experiences of countries like South Africa where the omicron variant hit earlier also portend a dramatic drop (COVID-19 samples taken from Boston-area wastewater this week are already showing a drop, though they remain above previous peaks).

And then what?

Baker said Tuesday that his administration is planning to put together a group to discuss the state’s approach to COVID-19 in the medium-to-long term.

“There’s a lot of different and differing points of view about how this whole thing is going to evolve going forward,” the governor said, adding that he would like to have members of the House and Senate on the committee.

“The basic goal there would be to really talk about how to think about this thing, not just today or next week or next month, but how should we be really thinking about this down the road,” Baker said.

Some experts optimistically project that the omicron surge’s wave of mostly mild infections will combine with vaccinations to accelerate the pandemic’s shift to an “endemic,” where it is treated more similarly to the common flu.

“Omicron may grease the wheels of that process a bit, especially in countries with high levels of vaccination and immunity,” according to the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.

However, experts say low vaccination rates in some areas can contribute to the emergence of additional variants, which could have more lethal or transmissible mutations.

Lawmakers recently allocated $200 million in federal pandemic relief funds to the Baker administration to use on the ongoing pandemic response. Baker said about $175 million has been spent on supporting various health care providers, since most vaccination and testing spending is federally reimbursable.

That still leaves millions unspent.

“We always wanted to keep something in our pocket just in case something came up that was unanticipated that we could apply it to,” Baker said.

Here’s why the Celtics shouldn’t trade Jayson Tatum or Jaylen Brown

Through the first 41 games this season, just 20 of which they have won, the Celtics have been so annoying that a good portion of the fan base wants them to make a trade almost certain to be regrettable just for the sake of not having to watch this anymore.

And what is this, exactly? An extraordinary, exasperating knack for courting, and often finding, disaster late in games in which they once held a big lead.

It’s the only consistent thing about them, really. And sometimes the anticipation of how they’ll crumble in crunch time this time is the only interesting thing about them.

In their last nine games going back to a Christmas Day game against the Bucks in which they blew a 19-point lead, the Celtics:

  • Got torched by Jaylen Nowell and Greg Monroe — not exactly a dream “NBA Jam” tandem — in a 108-103 loss to the Timberwolves;
  • Shot 4 for 42 from 3-point range in a 91-82 loss to the Clippers;
  • Lost to the Spurs, 99-97, when Jaylen Brown couldn’t convert a fairly tough layup at the buzzer;
  • Gave up 41 points to Evan Fournier and lost to the Knicks, 108-105, on an R.J. Barrett banked-in 3-pointer at the buzzer.

I’m telling you, the Celtics didn’t find that many creative ways to lose when they were tanking hopelessly for Tim Duncan in 1996-97.

It should be noted that the Celtics have averted self-inflicted disaster on occasion, including a 116-111 overtime win against a depleted Magic team Jan. 2, when within a span of about 24 seconds late in regulation, we got the most quintessential Marcus Smart sequence we will ever witness: Defensive rebound, missed 4-footer, airing of grievances to the official while running back on defense, ferocious steal from Franz Wagner, clever but risky bounce pass to Brown for the tying layup.

As innovative as the Celtics have been at losing late leads, let’s get this on record right now: Trading Brown or Jayson Tatum right now would be a panic move that would almost certainly haunt the franchise for years.

Don’t get me wrong. I get why Celtics fans would fall for the temptations of the “Trade Machine.” Tatum and Brown are outstanding individual players — the former is probably a top-15 player in the league, the latter, what, top 30? — but in their fifth season as teammates, they do not yet maximize each other’s skills.

There are too many Tatum step-back 23-footers with 12 seconds on the shot clock, too many Brown drives to the hoop with his head down and the defense closing in, too much my-turn basketball. Their isolation-ball habits when a game starts to get tight are the antithesis of Celtics basketball, not to mention aesthetically unsatisfying unless one of them happens to be on fire, such as when Brown dropped 50 on the Magic.

The “Trade Machine” tells you what can be done. It doesn’t tell you what should. And there are multiple reasons not to trade Tatum or — and his name comes up more often, perhaps because he’s regarded as the slightly lesser player — Brown.

First, have you ever heard a potential trade that has the Celtics getting equal value in return?

Ben Simmons, you say? He’s a malcontent, a historically bad shooter (the Celtics need more shooting, if anything), and since when is it Boston’s obligation to remedy Philadelphia’s chronic headaches?

Maybe De’Aaron Fox from Sacramento? Good player. Fun player. Speedy. Get it done, Brad Stevens! (Checks Fox’s basketball-reference page.) Uh … what’s this? He’s a worse career shooter from 3-point range than Smart (24.7 percent this season), and averages fewer assists per game than Smart (5.3 to 5.1). The Celtics need a commanding, playmaking point guard to take the reins late in games. Fox is not that. Anyone know where to find the next Chris Paul?

How about Domantas Sabonis from the Pacers? OK, fine, that might be interesting. He’s crafty and well-rounded (he had a 42-point game and a triple-double recently), and he might fit with Tatum. But he wouldn’t do much to help the Celtics’ perimeter shooting woes (he’s at 32.3 percent on 3-pointers), and Brown is the better all-around player.

The other important argument for keeping Tatum and Brown together: Contrary to what their shot selection sometimes suggests, they do care. They recognize that this doesn’t mesh as it should, and they want it to work. Brown mentioned as much after a win over the Knicks last Saturday. It was Tatum’s turn to acknowledge their desire to thrive as teammates after Monday’s win over the Pacers.

“[There are] not many players in the league like JB,” said Tatum. “The grass ain’t always greener. We’ve had some great stretches and this year hasn’t been what we’ve expected, but I think in the long run it will be good for us. We’ve got to figure some things out, but I think the most important thing is we both want it extremely bad. We want to try to figure it out together. So for us just to be on the same page is extremely important. We’ve got each other’s back and we’re going to give it all we’ve got to figure this out, regardless of what people say.”

The Celtics don’t need to break them up. They need to get them the right help. Perhaps Robert Williams, who has been on a tear since coach Ime Udoka (who has had a steep learning curve in his first head coaching gig) criticized him after the Timberwolves loss, can develop into the third star. His block with two minutes left in the Pacers game led to a Grant Williams 3-pointer, arguably the pivotal play in the game. Robert Williams has bad habits to break defensively, but he’s easily the most fun player to watch on this team.

Several Celtics, including Tatum, are shooting well below their career averages. Maybe that suggests a bunch of Celtics are about to get hot at the same time. But it’s clear that they need more shooting on the roster. Aaron Nesmith and Payton Pritchard need to be allowed to develop. Grant Williams needs to play in crunch time. Smart and Dennis Schröder cannot be paired when the game is on the line. (Schröder did not play in overtime Monday after Smart left with an injury. That was a wise decision by Udoka.)

For all of the words we’ve spent here on their creative ways of losing, there have been signs lately that this is salvageable. They’ve won four of six entering Wednesday night’s rematch with the Pacers, including a 15-point win over the Suns on New Year’s Eve without Tatum, who was in COVID-19 protocol.

Now Tatum and Brown are both healthy, and they vow they’re going to get this right, together. Step away from the “Trade Machine” and give them the chance. These Celtics need more players with their special level of talent, not fewer.

Bare grocery shelves? Here’s why shoppers across the country are facing shortages.

Benjamin Whitely headed to a Safeway supermarket in Washington D.C. on Tuesday to grab some items for dinner. But he was disappointed to find the vegetable bins barren and a sparse selection of turkey, chicken and milk.

“Seems like I missed out on everything,” Whitely, 67, said. “I’m going to have to hunt around for stuff now.”

Shortages at U.S. grocery stores have grown more acute in recent weeks as new problems — like the fast-spreading omicron variant and severe weather — have piled on to the supply chain struggles and labor shortages that have plagued retailers since the coronavirus pandemic began.

MORE COVID-19 NEWS

The shortages are widespread, impacting produce and meat as well as packaged goods such as cereal. And they’re being reported nationwide. U.S. groceries typically have 5% to 10% of their items out of stock at any given time; right now, that unavailability rate is hovering around 15%, according to Consumer Brands Association President and CEO Geoff Freeman.

Part of the scarcity consumers are seeing on store shelves is due to pandemic trends that never abated – and are exacerbated by omicron. Americans are eating at home more than they used to, especially since offices and some schools remain closed.

The average U.S. household spent $144 per week at the grocery last year, according to FMI, a trade organization for groceries and food producers. That was down from the peak of $161 in 2020, but still far above the $113.50 that households spent in 2019.

A deficit of truck drivers that started building before the pandemic also remains a problem. The American Trucking Associations said in October that the U.S. was short an estimated 80,000 drivers, a historic high.

And shipping remains delayed, impacting everything from imported foods to packaging that is printed overseas.

Retailers and food producers have been adjusting to those realities since early 2020, when panic buying at the start of the pandemic sent the industry into a tailspin. Many retailers are keeping more supplies of things like toilet paper on hand, for example, to avoid acute shortages.

“All of the players in the supply chain ecosystem have gotten to a point where they have that playbook and they’re able to navigate that baseline level of challenges,” said Jessica Dankert, vice president of supply chain at the Retail Industry Leaders Association, a trade group.

Generally, the system works; Dankert notes that bare shelves have been a rare phenomenon over the last 20 months. It’s just that additional complications have stacked up on that baseline at the moment, she said.

As it has with staffing at hospitals, schools and offices, the omicron variant has taken a toll on food production lines. Sean Connolly, the president and CEO of Conagra Brands, which makes Birds Eye frozen vegetables, Slim Jim meat snacks and other products, told investors last week that supplies from the company’s U.S. plants will be constrained for at least the next month due to omicron-related absences.

Worker illness is also impacting grocery stores. Stew Leonard Jr. is president and CEO of Stew Leonard’s, a supermarket chain that operates stores in Connecticut, New York and New Jersey. Last week, 8% of his workers – around 200 people – were either out sick or in quarantine. Usually, the level of absenteeism is more like 2%.

One store bakery had so many people out sick that it dropped some of its usual items, like apple crumb cake. Leonard says meat and produce suppliers have told him they are also dealing with omicron-related worker shortages.

Still, Leonard says he is generally getting shipments on time, and thinks the worst of the pandemic may already be over.

Weather-related events, from snowstorms in the Northeast to wildfires in Colorado, also have impacted product availability and caused some shoppers to stock up more than usual, exacerbating supply problems caused by the pandemic.

Lisa DeLima, a spokesperson for Mom’s Organic Market, an independent grocer with locations in the mid-Atlantic region, said the company’s stores did not have produce to stock last weekend because winter weather halted trucks trying to get from Pennsylvania to Washington.

That bottleneck has since been resolved, DeLima said. In her view, the intermittent dearth of certain items shoppers see now are nothing compared to the more chronic shortages at the beginning of the pandemic.

“People don’t need to panic buy,” she said. “There’s plenty of product to be had. It’s just taking a little longer to get from point A to point B.”

Experts are divided on how long grocery shopping will sometimes feel like a scavenger hunt.

Dankert thinks this is a hiccup, and the country will soon settle back to more normal patterns, albeit with continuing supply chain headaches and labor shortages.

“You’re not going to see long-term outages of products, just sporadic, isolated incidents __ that window where it takes a minute for the supply chain to catch up,” she said.

But others aren’t so optimistic.

Freeman, of the Consumer Brands Association, says omicron-related disruptions could expand as the variant grips the Midwest, where many big packaged food companies like Kellogg Co. and General Mills Inc. have operations.

Freeman thinks the federal government should do a better job of ensuring that essential food workers get access to tests. He also wishes there were uniform rules for things like quarantining procedures for vaccinated workers; right now, he said, companies are dealing with a patchwork of local regulations.

“I think, as we’ve seen before, this eases as each wave eases. But the question is, do we have to be at the whims of the virus, or can we produce the amount of tests we need?” Freeman said.

In the longer term, it could take groceries and food companies a while to figure out the customer buying patterns that emerge as the pandemic ebbs, said Doug Baker, vice president of industry relations for food industry association FMI.

“We went from a from a just-in-time inventory system to unprecedented demand on top of unprecedented demand,” he said. “We’re going to be playing with that whole inventory system for several years to come.”

In the meantime, Whitely, the Safeway customer in Washington, said he’s lucky he’s retired because he can spend the day looking for produce if the first stores he tries are out. People who have to work or take care of sick loved ones don’t have that luxury, he said.

“Some are trying to get food to survive. I’m just trying to cook a casserole,” he said.

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Associated Press Writers Parker Purifoy in Washington and Anne D’Innocenzio in New York contributed.

NY Giants fire Joe Judge as coach after 10-23 record in 2 years

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (AP) — The New York Giants have cleaned house, firing coach Joe Judge a day after general manager Dave Gettleman retired.

The Giants announced the move late Tuesday afternoon, ending some brief speculation that the owners planned to hire a new general manager and let him determine the 40-year-old coach’s fate.

Co-owners John Mara and Steve Tisch said they felt it was best for the Giants to move in another directions after five straight seasons of double-digit losses.

The Giants have made the playoffs once since winning the Super Bowl in February 2012. They have gone through four coaches in the past six seasons, starting with Ben McAdoo in 2016, interim coach Steve Spagnuolo, Pat Shurmur in 2018 and Judge who was hired in 2020.

Mara said he met with Judge on Monday and again on Tuesday, informing him of the decision at the second meeting.

“I said before the season started that I wanted to feel good about the direction we were headed when we played our last game of the season. Unfortunately, I cannot make that statement, which is why we have made this decision,” Mara said.

The new general manager will hire a coach.

“This will be a comprehensive search for our next general manager,” said Mara upon Gettleman’s retirement. “We are looking for a person who demonstrates exceptional leadership and communication abilities, somebody who will oversee all aspects of our football operations, including player personnel, college scouting and coaching.”

Tuukka Rask agrees to 1-year deal to return to Bruins goal

BOSTON (AP) — The Boston Bruins have signed Tuukka Rask for the rest of the season, bringing back the winningest goalie in franchise history after he recovered from offseason hip surgery.

Rask, 34, was a free agent who remained unsigned while he recovered from an operation to repair a torn labrum in his hip. He said at the end of last season that he did not want to play for anyone other than Boston.

“This is our home,” he said. “At this point of my life and my career, I don’t see any reason to go anywhere else, especially with the health I’m looking at now and a recovery time of five or six months. Hopefully it works out that I recover well and we can talk about contracts when the time is right for that.”

Rask played in only 24 games last season as the team managed his workload while he fought hip and back injuries. After a second-round loss to the New York Islanders, he revealed that he needed hip surgery.

Rask began skating with the Bruins again this winter and signed a professional tryout agreement with Providence last week, but the AHL team had two games scrubbed because of COVID-19 protocols. Its next scheduled game is Friday night; the NHL Bruins are scheduled to play Montreal on Wednesday night and Philadelphia on Thursday night.

“I feel great,” Rask said last week during a video conference call with reporters. “The biggest issue for me was the catching of the joint and the pain that created. So that all is gone. … I don’t have to think about it locking up on me again and creating that pain, so I feel great.”

Rask said he never really considered retiring this offseason. The lure of being able to make one more run at a Stanley Cup and finish out his career alongside stars Patrice Bergeron and Brad Marchand played a factor in his decision to attempt a comeback.

““That’s why I never really, in my head wanted to flirt with opportunity to go somewhere else,” Rask said. “For us as players when you have a team like the Bruins, basically a bunch of us have grown up together. So, you kind of feel that brotherhood. You don’t want to leave guys on bad terms.

“I just wanted to come back and maybe be helpful and try to finish it out with a bunch of those guys I’ve played with my whole career.”

The 2014 Vezina Trophy winner who was also a finalist in 2020, Rask led the Bruins to the Stanley Cup Finals in 2013 and again in 2019. He is the franchise’s career leader with 306 regular-season wins (57 more in the playoffs), 560 regular-season games (104 in the playoffs) and a .921 save percentage.

In all, he is 306-163-66 with a 2.27 goals-against average and 52 shutouts. Last season, he was 15-5-2 with three shutouts, a 2.28 goals-against average and a .913 save percentage.

AP Sports Writer Kyle Hightower and AP Hockey Writer Stephen Whyno contributed to this story.