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New Science, Multiple Reports: COVID Vaccine Causes Lung Blockages
A team of doctors has alerted the medical world to the danger of artery blockage from COVID vaccination with a new case report, published on August 5, 2022, in the Cureus Journal of Medical Science.
The case report describes how their patient, 67 years old, started to feel short of breath two days after getting the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine against COVID-19. Then, while doing some yard work, he could not catch his breath, even after resting for half an hour. So he went to the emergency room.
Since this 67-year-old man had no risk factors or previous history of thrombosis, and he had recently had a Pfizer vaccine, the medical team suspected vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia.
Dr. Kenji Yamamoto, a cardiovascular surgeon who works at Okamura Memorial Hospital in Shizuoka, Japan, has recorded a significant rise in vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia since COVID-19 vaccination began. Because of the dangers of VITT, Yamamoto believes that the vaccination booster program should be halted.
Moderna CEO Says COVID Vaccines Will Evolve Like ‘an iPhone’
Forget taking two to three COVID shots a year. Moderna hopes to roll out a single-dose annual booster to cover the coronavirus, the flu and another common respiratory virus within the next five years.
As COVID-19 continues to mutate, Moderna will need to keep updating the vaccines that turned it into a global household name while trying to make it more convenient for consumers, CEO Stéphane Bancel said in an interview with CNN Business Wednesday.
He estimated a timeline of “three to five years” for the new combined product and likened the development of the life-saving jab to that of a smartphone.
“You don’t get the amazing camera, amazing everything the first time you get an iPhone, but you get a lot of things,” he said. “A lot of us buy a new iPhone every September, and you get new apps and you get refreshed apps. And that’s exactly the same idea, which is you’ll get COVID and flu and RSV [respiratory syncytial virus] in your single dose.”
MIT Researchers Create Test to Predict COVID Immunity, Harvard Scientists Develop Test for Both Virus and Antibodies
If you’re wondering how much protection you have from COVID, researchers at two local powerhouse universities say they’ve created new tests that will help determine antibody levels.
MIT scientists on Tuesday announced they’ve developed a blood test that may predict COVID immunity. The announcement came a day after Harvard researchers said they’ve built a saliva test that detects the presence of both antibodies and the virus.
Meanwhile, researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University have created a new point-of-care diagnostic device that can simultaneously detect the presence of both the virus and antibodies in a patient’s saliva.
People would be able to learn their immunity and infection status in a couple of hours, without needing to send samples to a lab.
Is COVID Losing Its Fangs and Becoming More Like the Flu?
Today’s hyper-transmissible strain of the COVID-19 virus has sent cases soaring across the country. But rising deaths — the grim marker of earlier dangerous surges — haven’t kept pace, and the average risk of dying from an infection is dropping to levels almost as low as seasonal influenza, leading epidemiologists say.
“COVID-19 case fatality rates are substantially lower and are rapidly approaching that of the annual flu,” said George Lemp, an infectious disease epidemiologist who has analyzed California public health data through the pandemic and former Director of the California HIV/AIDS Research Program at the University of California, Office of the President.
The Omicron BA.5 Wave Is Starting to Ebb. We Need to Know Why.
The COVID wave fueled by the Omicron BA.5 surge is finally starting to ebb in the U.K. and in some of the harder-hit parts of the U.S. But why? It’s no longer tenable to argue that disease waves peak and fall primarily because people start taking precautions. People, especially in these two countries, are taking fewer precautions all the time.
Scientists are starting to get a handle on the complex factors that drive waves up and down. Behavior patterns are just one small factor. Changing seasons, new contact patterns and waning immunity can drive waves up, and growing immunity can drive them back down.
University of Vermont network theorist Laurent Hebert-Dufresne compares each wave to a wildfire burning itself out when it runs out of fuel. Because most people who are infected retain immunity for a few weeks and some for a few months, the disease can — temporarily — run out of people to infect.
North Korea Declares Victory Over COVID, Hints Kim Jong Un Was Infected
The Wall Street Journal reported:
Kim Jong Un declared victory over North Korea’s COVID-19 outbreak that touched nearly one-fifth of the country’s population — including, apparently, himself.
State media didn’t explicitly say that Mr. Kim, the 38-year-old dictator, had contracted the virus. But the North Korean leader had recently fallen “seriously ill with a high fever,” according to remarks made by his sister, Kim Yo Jong, at a Wednesday meeting attended by top officials.
North Korea first disclosed the outbreak in May. Due to a lack of COVID-19 test kits, the impoverished country had tracked daily infections by tallying the number of fever cases. Some 4.77 million had gotten a fever, of which 74 died. No new cases have been reported since July 29.
At the Wednesday meeting, Mr. Kim, wearing a black Mao suit, appeared vibrant in photos published by state media. Calling it the “greatest miracle” in global health, Mr. Kim praised the country for exterminating the virus without vaccines and accepting maximum-level restrictions for three straight months.
Global Weekly Coronavirus Deaths Have Fallen 9%, WHO Reports
The number of coronavirus deaths fell 9% in the past week while new cases remained relatively stable, according to the latest weekly pandemic report released by the World Health Organization.
The number of new deaths rose 19% in the Middle East while dropping more than 70% in Africa, 15% in Europe and 10% in the Americas.
The western Pacific reported a 30% jump in cases while Africa reported a 46% drop. Cases also fell more than 20% in the Americas and the Middle East.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said the Omicron subvariant BA.5 remains dominant globally, accounting for nearly 70% of all virus sequences shared with the world’s biggest publicly available virus database. The agency said other Omicron subvariants, including BA.4 and BA.2, appeared to be decreasing in prevalence as BA.5 takes over.
America’s New Monkeypox Strategy Rests on a Single Study
Once again, the United States is messing up its approach to vaccines. Three months into its monkeypox outbreak, just 620,000 doses of the two-injection Jynneos shot — the nation’s current best immune defense against the virus — have been shipped to states, not nearly enough to immunize the 1.6 million to 1.7 million Americans that the CDC considers at highest risk.
The next deliveries from the manufacturer aren’t slated until September at the earliest. For now, we’re stuck with the stocks we’ve got. Which is why the feds have turned to Inoculation Plan B: splitting Jynneos doses into five, and poking them into the skin, rather than into the layer of fat beneath. The FDA issued an emergency-use authorization for the strategy.
But this decision is based on scant data, and the degree of protection offered by in-skin shots is no guarantee. The FDA is now playing a high-stakes game with the health and trust of people most vulnerable to monkeypox — an already marginalized population.
The shot was approved for use against smallpox and monkeypox in 2019. But to date, researchers don’t have a strong sense of how well it guards against disease or infection or how long protection lasts. Although scientists know that two doses of Jynneos can elicit similar numbers of antibodies as older poxvirus vaccines, no estimates of the vaccine’s true efficacy, from large-scale clinical trials, exist; a human study in the Congo hasn’t yet reported results.
Africa CDC in ‘Advanced’ Talks to Obtain Monkeypox Vaccines
Africa’s public health agency says the continent of 1.3 billion people still does not have a single dose of the monkeypox vaccine, but “very advanced discussions” are underway with at least two partners.
The acting director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Ahmed Ogwell, told journalists on Thursday that he could not give details, but he said the partners are “largely multilateral institutions and non-African governments.” There are no discussions with the private sector because all available doses have already been bought by countries, he said.
But a clinical trial is underway in Congo for a vaccine, Jynneos, that’s under emergency-use authorization, Ogwell said. The two-dose vaccine is considered the main medical weapon against the disease, but its availability is limited. The Africa CDC did not immediately respond to a question about details of the trial.
More monkeypox deaths have been reported on the African continent this year than anywhere in the world. Since May, nearly 90 countries have reported more than 31,000 cases.
‘Silent’ Spread of Polio in New York Drives CDC to Consider Additional Vaccinations for Some People
A polio case identified in New York last month is “just the very, very tip of the iceberg” and an indication there “must be several hundred cases in the community circulating,” a senior official with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told CNN on Wednesday.
“There are a number of individuals in the community that have been infected with poliovirus. They are shedding the virus,” Dr. José Romero, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said. “The spread is always a possibility because the spread is going to be silent.”
Romero said the CDC is considering a variety of options to protect people from polio, including offering children in the area an extra shot of the vaccine, as U.K. health authorities are doing now in London, or recommending extra doses to certain groups of adults.
