Covid News Watch
FDA to Soon Decide on Second Round of Omicron-Tailored Boosters + More
U.S. FDA to Soon Decide on Second Round of Omicron-Tailored Boosters — WSJ
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is close to making a decision on the authorization of a second dose of updated COVID-19 vaccine boosters for high-risk people, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing sources.
FDA officials could make the decision within a few weeks, the WSJ said, adding the regulator is considering authorizing second jabs of Omicron-targeted shots for people who are 65 years and older or those who have weakened immune systems, although officials are yet to reach a final decision.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would have to recommend the shots after the FDA authorizes the second Omicron-tailored boosters from Pfizer-BioNTech (PFE.N)/(22UAy.DE) and Moderna (MRNA.O) for them to become widely available.
The decision comes at a time when the FDA plans to shift to an annual COVID booster campaign with an updated strain, similar to the way Americans receive their flu shots.
Biden Will Release COVID Origin Intelligence
President Joe Biden signed into law Monday a bill to declassify intelligence on the origins of COVID-19, offering the public a chance to review the information that government agencies say is inconclusive.
The legislation called the COVID-19 Origin Act of 2023, which passed the Senate and House with unanimous support earlier this month, orders the Director of National Intelligence to declassify within 90 days of enactment all information relating to potential links between China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology and COVID-19. The director is then to submit the information in a report to Congress. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) sponsored the bill.
Why it matters: Biden’s signature is a step further in providing transparency about what the U.S. knows about how the pandemic started. Some scientists and government agencies have theorized that researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology inadvertently spread COVID-19 to people in the city where the virus first emerged, while others have insisted that an animal more likely transmitted it to people.
The Wall Street Journal has reported that U.S. intelligence agencies believe three workers at the Wuhan lab were hospitalized in the month before the virus emerged. A determination that the virus leaked from the Chinese lab would further strain the U.S.-China relationship, and also erode trust in leading scientists who argued for the natural origin hypothesis.
‘I Suspected a China Lab Leak Early on — but My Research Was Rejected’
I became aware of SARS-CoV-2 in late December 2019. I happened to hear a news report about a new unknown virus coming out of China and the next day saw an unusual clinical case report about a family in Wuhan Central Hospital.
When I initially saw the viral genome, in January 2020, I noticed a pretty esoteric thing. The virus we would later call SARS-CoV-2 has something called a furin cleavage site (FCS). The FCS, which had never before been seen in a SARS-CoV-2-related coronavirus, is a genetic feature that makes it easier for a virus to infect human cells. So, when I saw this FCS on SARS-CoV-2, I knew it was going to make it easier to infect cells and easier to evade the immune system by tunneling into neighboring cells.
Knowing FCSs were not found in nature in these SARS-related viruses I also knew that for years scientists have been artificially putting new FCSs into viruses to see what they do, and in every case I have seen, in which they published their results, it has increased infectivity, transmissibility, pathogenicity, or a combination of them.
I found that when you looked at this virus, it had none of the properties of natural infection and it still doesn’t to this day. I have not found a single shred of actual evidence that supports the idea that SARS-CoV-2 is a type of spillover infection that we have ever seen in the past.
Why ‘Lab Leak’ Proponents Are Unconvinced by Raccoon Dog Evidence for Coronavirus Origins
A new report suggesting that the coronavirus may have originated in raccoon dogs has energized scientists who have long argued that the pandemic began at a wildlife market in Wuhan, where the pathogen jumped from animals to humans.
But to the smaller faction of researchers who maintain that the coronavirus was the result of a laboratory accident, the raccoon dog findings — described in an Atlantic article published on Thursday — failed to produce convincing evidence of a natural origin that rules out human involvement.
“It speaks volumes that this weak and missing data is considered the strongest evidence for a market origin,” molecular biologist Alina Chan of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard told Yahoo News. A leading proponent of the lab origin hypothesis, Chan noted that “even the natural origin proponents analyzing this data have said it is not definitive and not direct evidence of infected raccoon dogs at the market.”
Moderna Expects to Price Its COVID Vaccine at About $130 in the U.S.
Moderna Inc (MRNA.O) expects to price its COVID-19 vaccine at around $130 per dose in the U.S. going forward as purchases move to the private sector from the government, the company’s president Stephen Hoge said in an interview on Monday.
“There are different customers negotiating different prices right now, which is why it’s a little bit complicated,” Hoge said ahead of a Congressional hearing run by Democratic U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders on Moderna’s pricing plans.
Moderna previously said it was considering pricing its COVID vaccine in a range of $110 to $130 per dose in the United States, similar to the range Pfizer Inc. (PFE.N) said in October it was considering for its rival COVID shots sold in partnership with BioNTech (22UAy.DE).
Sanders, chair of the Senate’s powerful Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, has said Moderna should not raise the price of its vaccine because of the government funding it received. He plans to question Moderna Chief Executive Stephane Bancel on the price increase at the hearing on Wednesday.
8 Burning Questions Bernie Sanders and Other Senators Should Ask Moderna’s Stéphane Bancel
Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel has some explaining to do. Bancel will appear alone before Sen. Bernie Sanders’ health committee on Wednesday, where he’ll have to defend his company’s suggestion it will likely quadruple the price of its COVID vaccines once sales transition from bulk federal purchases to the open market.
The Senate hearing will be a watershed moment for Bancel, a biotech superstar forged during the pandemic. While COVID vaccine rival manufacturer Pfizer is an established pharmaceutical behemoth with a massive lobbying influence in Washington, in contrast, Moderna registered its first lobbyist in Washington in 2019 and its COVID-19 vaccine is its only product on the market.
Sanders, a Vermont Independent, has in the past accused Bancel and Moderna’s other co-founders of profiteering off of taxpayer-funded research since facets of the company’s approach to making its messenger RNA-based vaccine were developed at the National Institute of Health’s Vaccine Research Center.
On the same day the hearing was announced, Moderna revealed plans to create a patient assistance program to provide vaccines at no cost to people who are uninsured or underinsured. Those with insurance won’t face out-of-pocket fees at the time they are vaccinated, but the higher price could well be reflected in insurance premiums.
Deadly Drug-Resistant Yeast Gained Ground, More Drug Resistance Amid COVID
A deadly, drug-resistant fungus emerging in the US gained ground faster and picked up yet more drug resistance amid the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Monday.
The yeast Candida auris has been considered an “urgent threat” — the CDC’s highest level of concern — since it was first reported in the U.S. in 2016. The yeast lurks in healthcare settings and preys upon vulnerable patients, causing invasive infections with a fatality rate of between 30 to 60%.
In 2019, before the pandemic began, 17 states and Washington, DC, reported a total of 476 clinical cases. But in 2020, eight additional states reported cases for the first time, with the national clinical case count jumping 59% to 756. In 2021, 28 states were affected, with the clinical case count nearly doubling to 1,471. Asymptomatic cases detected through patient screening also jumped amid the pandemic, tripling from 1,310 cases in 2020 to 4,041 cases in 2021. The data appeared Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
But its spread wasn’t the only alarming aspect of the yeast’s pandemic activities. It also became more drug-resistant. Before the pandemic, six patients developed infections resistant to first-line antifungal drugs, echinocandins. But, in 2021 alone, there were 19 such cases. Similarly, before the pandemic, there were only four reports of pan-resistant infections; that is, the fungus was resistant to all available drugs. In 2021, there were seven patients with pan-resistant infections.
Anthony Fauci Documentary on PBS Covers a Career of Crises
There’s a moment in the new PBS documentary about Dr. Anthony Fauci when a protester holds up a handmade sign reading, “Dr. Fauci, You Are Killing Us.” It says something about Fauci that it’s not initially clear when that sign was waved in anger — in the 1980s as AIDS made its deadly rise or in the 2020s with COVID-19 vaccine opponents.
“American Masters: Dr. Tony Fauci,” offers a portrait of an unlikely lightning rod: A government infectious disease scientist who advised seven presidents. Fauci hopes it can inspire more public servants like him.
Director Mark Mannucci offers an intimate look at his subject, with images of Fauci running from meeting to meeting and wolfing down Wheat Thins between Zooms. His wife attests to the stress by pointing out their security detail due to threats.
COVID-19 may have introduced Fauci to millions of Americans, but his long career at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases was marked by numerous previous health scares, among them HIV, SARS, MERS, Ebola and even the nation’s 2001 anthrax attacks.
The Lab Leak Conversation Shows It’s Time to Rethink Our Biosecurity Infrastructure, Not Just Policies
The COVID pandemic exacerbated fear and panic regarding the potential for a future bioterrorism agent. As the lab leak theory continues to cause debate, politicians want to be able to tell their constituents that they are solving the problem by adding more oversight to biological research. But if all they are doing is adding more burden, bureaucracy, and box-checking, is it really making anyone more secure?
For half a century, efforts to build a governance system around the security of biology have largely focused on the development and use of biological weapons, starting with the Biological Weapons Convention, which opened for signatories in 1972 and went into force in 1975. It wasn’t until the early 2000s that the research side of biology started getting more attention from the security community, with experts creating methods to determine what security issues we need to worry about, and what we should do about them.
After 9/11 and the anthrax mailings, the federal government placed heavy restrictions on research with agents that were deemed to be biological weapons of mass destruction — referred to as select agents. Then, from 2007, there was new attention paid to dual-use research or experiments that could both benefit and harm society, agriculture, or the environment.
Scientific advances such as CRISPR, gene drives, synthetic viruses and increased pathogen capabilities, are rapidly proceeding while innovation in our collective ability to govern their security concerns is not.
‘COVID-Somnia’ and the Impact of Long COVID on Sleep
When Priya Mathew recovered from a mild case of COVID-19 in November, she thought she was out of the woods. Then came long COVID.
“At one point I counted 23 symptoms,” Mathew told CBS News. “The most alarming ones were shortness of breath, labored breathing, heart palpitations.”
One of the most crippling symptoms? Insomnia. Mathew isn’t alone. Dr. Emmanuel During, a psychiatrist and neurologist, has been seeing this in sleep patients at Mount Sinai Hospital. For those with long COVID, he says insomnia is often related to pain and is resistant to treatment.
Even for those without long COVID, the pandemic has robbed many of a restful night’s sleep. Nearly a third of Americans said they’ve experienced sleep disturbances since COVID began, according to a 2022 survey from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. That’s down from 56% the year before. The phenomenon is described as “COVID-somnia.”
FDA Flags J&J’s COVID Vaccine for Myocarditis, Pericarditis Risk + More
FDA Flags J&J’s COVID Vaccine for Myocarditis, Pericarditis Risk
Becker’s Hospital Review reported:
The FDA updated its fact sheet for healthcare providers about Johnson & Johnson‘s COVID-19 vaccine to include warnings of myocarditis and pericarditis.
Myocarditis is inflammation of the heart and pericarditis is inflammation of the lining outside the heart. Both are listed as potential risks of the vaccine, and the FDA said symptoms typically happen within eight days of inoculation. The risk is very low, the agency said.
The agency made the revision on March 13, about 10 months after the FDA limited the shot’s use after worries about a blood clot risk. The shot makes up a small share of all COVID-19 vaccinations: Nearly 19 million J&J shots have been administered, while 475 million of Pfizer‘s and Moderna‘s vaccines have been used, according to the CDC.
FDA Authorizes Pfizer’s COVID Omicron Booster as Fourth Shot for Kids Under 5
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday authorized Pfizer’s Omicron booster shot for kids under five years old who were previously vaccinated with three doses of the company’s original vaccine.
Children six months through four years old who completed their three-dose primary series with Pfizer and BioNTech’s original monovalent shots more than two months ago are now eligible to receive a single booster dose of the updated shot. The new shot is bivalent, meaning it targets the original COVID strain as well as Omicron BA.4 and BA.5.
Pfizer’s primary series for young children consists of three doses, while rival drugmaker Moderna’s primary series for that same age group is only two.
The Public Want Answers on the Origins of COVID
The public deserves to know the whole truth: How did the coronavirus pandemic begin? What happened in Wuhan in 2019? Was it from a lab leak? Why did the first cases of the virus pass by undetected? And why is it, more than three years later, that we still know so little about the origins of the virus that changed the world?
Research for Newsweek by Redfield & Wilton Strategies shows an overwhelming 70% of Americans say it matters to them a significant or fair amount whether the coronavirus pandemic originated from a lab leak or from nature. Notably, this figure includes virtually identical proportions of those who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 (72%) and for Donald Trump (75%). This broad bipartisanship has resulted in Congress voting unanimously for all government intelligence on the origins of the virus to be declassified. President Joe Biden, however, has yet to decide whether to sign or veto this bill.
Biden’s decision to sign the bill cannot wait. Trust in science urgently needs to be restored. Forty-three percent of Americans, a plurality, say they trust the scientists and public health officials less as a result of their pandemic experience. This is bad news for democracy and society at large. Without urgent and honest answers to restore their trust, it could have a detrimental effect on public health for many decades to come.
3 Years After COVID, It’s Past Time Taxpayers Stop Funding This Corrupt Organization
It seems that the long-repressed truth about COVID is finally allowed to trickle out. The Wall Street Journal broke the story that the Department of Energy’s intelligence now indicates that the COVID-19 virus “likely arose from a laboratory leak.” FBI Director Chris Wray is now saying the same in public. Despite the FBI’s opaqueness with the American people while “assessing the origins,” for “quite some time,” most people — not religiously devoted to the government/media/Big Pharma-approved narrative — could see the writing on the wall years ago.
Still, vindication of the truth alone is not enough. Justice demands accountability for all those who withheld and helped obscure information on the origins of this pandemic — especially the World Health Organization (WHO), which no longer deserves a scintilla of America’s trust, another penny of her tax dollars, or another second of her membership.
WHO Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus recently lashed out at people asking questions about COVID origins for supposedly turning “what should be a purely scientific process into a political football.” Such obvious defensive deflection makes sense; after all, while China was doing its best to cover up the virus’ origins, the WHO was the regime’s loudest cheerleader on the international stage, despite all indications of wrongdoing.
The Biden administration is now supporting the creation of a new international agreement that will fork over even more power and legitimacy to globalist WHO bureaucrats in Geneva. Officially tabbed as the “WHO Convention, Agreement, or Other International Instrument on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness, and Response” or “WHO CA+” this “zero draft” of the proposed agreement, set for final consideration in 2024, would further empower the WHO by granting it more power to craft worldwide “public health” policy.
One of the Coronaviruses Causing Common Colds Boosts Immune Response to COVID in Children, Study Finds
During the pandemic, medical doctors and researchers noticed that children and adolescents infected with COVID-19 became less ill than adults. A possible explanation for this is that children already had a prior level of immunity to COVID-19 provided by memory T cells generated by common colds.
After studying unique blood samples from children taken before the pandemic, researchers from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have now identified memory T cells that react to cells infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
A possible explanation for this immunity in children is that they already had colds caused by one of the four coronaviruses causing seasonal common cold symptoms. This could stimulate an immune response with T cells able to also react to cells infected with SARS-CoV-2.
This new study reinforces this hypothesis and shows that T cells previously activated by the OC43 virus can cross-react against SARS-CoV-2.
Judge Rejects Request From Moderna, Moving Key COVID Vaccine Case to Discovery
A key COVID-19 vaccine case is moving to the discovery phase after a U.S. judge rejected a bid by Moderna to dismiss some of the patent infringement claims against it.
Moderna and the U.S. government, which backed the company, failed to prove that claims involving the company’s COVID-19 vaccine contract with the government should be dismissed, U.S. District Judge Mitchell Goldberg ruled on March 10.
Goldberg in late 2022 rejected a similar effort but Moderna revived its bid after the government filed a statement asserting it, not the company, should face the claims relating to the contract.
The parties, though, have failed to prove that the government’s interpretation “trumps a court’s analysis of this issue,” Goldberg said.
Pfizer Adjusts EU Vaccine Deal but Still Wants Payment for Undelivered Doses: FT
Pfizer and European Commission officials have waded through months of pushback over a large, controversial COVID-19 vaccine supply deal in Europe. They’ve now reportedly hashed out a new supply agreement — but there’s a catch.
Under the terms of a revised deal, Pfizer agreed to extend the European supply contract from 2023 out to 2026, the Financial Times reports based on two people with knowledge of the talks. Given the drop in vaccine use, Pfizer also agreed to cut the total number of doses to be supplied by 40%, but the company is also pushing for payment for the doses that will never be manufactured, according to the publication.
Pfizer and the European Commission (EC) inked their large vaccine supply deal in May 2021. The agreement covered 900 million vaccine doses for delivery split between 2022 and 2023, with the option for the EC to order another 900 million doses in the future. In December 2021, European officials exercised part of the option and agreed to buy another 200 million doses.
Since then, many European countries found they had too many doses as the pandemic eased. Officials have spent many months deliberating on how best to tackle the vaccine glut.
CDC Urges Bivalent Booster in New Push. Will People Listen?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported:
Three years into the pandemic, COVID-19 vaccines are an increasingly hard sell — especially in Georgia. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Only about 10% of residents in the state have gotten an updated bivalent booster, which targets the original strain and Omicron subvariants circulating now.
People are either unaware or simply not interested in the latest booster. And they likely aren’t getting the nudge from their doctor. A recent CDC study showed that nearly 60% of people surveyed had not received the bivalent booster because it had not been recommended by their healthcare provider.
The CDC is hoping to change that and move the needle. The agency is launching a nationwide initiative to talk to physicians about encouraging this latest booster, starting here in Georgia.
After 3 Years of the Pandemic, Loneliness May Be Ebbing for America’s Older Adults
U.S. News & World Report reported:
On the third anniversary of the pandemic, a new poll shows fewer older adults are experiencing loneliness and isolation though the numbers are still high.
About one-third of adults aged 50 to 80 still sometimes or often experience isolation and loneliness, according to the University of Michigan researchers. They may go a week or longer without social contact from someone outside the home.
Still, that’s fewer than half of older adults who reported this in June 2020.
“Three years into the COVID-19 pandemic, we see reason for hope, but also a real cause for concern,” said Dr. Preeti Malani, senior advisor and former director of the University of Michigan (U-M) National Poll on Healthy Aging. “If anything, the pandemic has shown us just how important social interaction is for overall mental and physical health, and how much more attention we need to pay to this from a clinical, policy and personal perspective.”
Long COVID Has Some Weird Symptoms. Face Blindness May Be One of Them.
Early in the pandemic, a 28-year-old customer service representative and portrait painter caught COVID-19. She had a high fever for a few days and trouble breathing. Her sense of smell and taste disappeared. But by mid-April 2020, she had recovered enough to start working from home.
It wasn’t until June, when she saw her family for the first time since her illness, that she realized she’d lost something else. She could no longer recognize her own father or distinguish him from her uncle.
It’s not clear how many people have developed face blindness after having COVID-19. But the woman, whom researchers identified only as “Annie” to protect her privacy, was one of more than 50 long COVID patients who reported to Dartmouth College researchers in a new study they were having trouble identifying faces after their infection.
Some people are born with face blindness, called prosopagnosia, while others lose the ability to identify faces from brain damage, typically caused by a stroke or brain injury.
Pfizer’s COVID Drug Data Supports Use in High-Risk Patients — FDA Staff
The U.S. health regulator’s staff reviewers said on Tuesday data from Pfizer Inc.’s (PFE.N) COVID-19 drug trials support its use in adults at high risk of progressing to severe disease, bringing the pill closer to full approval.
The Food and Drug Administration made its assessment in briefing documents ahead of a meeting of the agency’s external advisers on Thursday to discuss full approval to use Pfizer’s oral pill for high-risk COVID-19 patients exhibiting mild to moderate symptoms.
The FDA’s advisers will vote on whether the benefits related to Paxlovid outweigh its risks. The agency typically follows the advice of its expert advisers but is not mandated to do so.
Paxlovid has been authorized for emergency use since late 2021, and full approval is likely to allow Pfizer to expand its advertising campaign for the drug.
Veru to Proceed With Late-Stage Study of COVID Pill Despite FDA Snub
Drug developer Veru Inc (VERU.O) on Tuesday said it plans to proceed with a late-stage trial of its COVID-19 pill, weeks after the U.S. health regulator declined to authorize the oral drug to treat high-risk patients hospitalized with COVID-19.
It will, however, stop the development of the drug as a potential treatment for prostate cancer as part of its strategy to cut costs.
Veru plans to continue the development of the oral drug, sabizabulin, in late-stage studies with high-risk hospitalized influenza patients and COVID-19 patients. It expects to report interim data from the COVID-19 trial next year.
Finding COVID’s Origins Is a Moral Imperative + More
Finding COVID’s Origins Is a Moral Imperative — WHO’s Tedros
Discovering the origins of COVID-19 is a moral imperative and all hypotheses must be explored, the head of the World Health Organization said, in the clearest indication yet that the U.N. body remains committed to finding how the virus arose.
A U.S. agency was reported by the Wall Street Journal to have assessed the pandemic had likely been caused by an unintended Chinese laboratory leak, raising pressure on the WHO to come up with answers. Beijing denies the assessment which could soon become public after the U.S. House of Representatives voted this week to declassify it.
In 2021, a WHO-led team spent weeks in and around Wuhan, China where the first human cases were reported and said in a joint report that the virus had probably been transmitted from bats to humans through another animal, but further research was needed. China has said no more visits are needed.
Since then, the WHO has set up a scientific advisory group on dangerous pathogens but it has not yet reached any conclusions on how the pandemic began, saying key pieces of data are missing.
Japan Reports First Death Directly Linked to COVID Vaccine
A health ministry panel said Friday that a causal link between the November death of a 42-year-old woman and the COVID-19 vaccine shot preceding it “cannot be denied” — the first acknowledgment of such a link among nearly 2,000 reports so far of deaths following COVID-19 vaccinations in Japan.
The woman received a Pfizer shot targeting the Omicron variant on Nov. 5 at a mass vaccination center. She felt sick seven minutes later, and her breathing stopped after about 15 minutes. Initially suspected to be having an anaphylactic shock, a doctor at the center performed CPR and tried to administer an adrenaline shot, but could not because IV access could not be obtained, according to a report submitted to the vaccine side effects committee under the ministry’s Health Sciences Council.
The woman was taken to a hospital but died of acute heart failure an hour and 40 minutes after receiving the COVID-19 shot. A postmortem CT scan showed that she had experienced acute pulmonary edema, a sudden buildup of fluid in the lungs, the report said.
Rand Paul: U.S. Government as ‘Obstructionist’ as China Over COVID Lab Leak
“We complain that the Chinese government is opaque and obstructionist — and that’s true,” Sen. Rand Paul told The Post. “But we’re getting the same sort of difficulties from our government.”
Since COVID-19 emerged in early 2020, Paul has spearheaded a battle to hold America’s public health apparatus to account. He’s also clashed repeatedly and passionately with recently-retired National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr. Anthony Fauci.
A few questions have been central to their standoff: Did COVID-19 leak from a lab in Wuhan? And did Fauci and the American medical establishment help fund dangerous gain-of-function research that caused the pandemic?
Paul said too much crucial information still remains under lock and key, leaving the American people in the dark about COVID-19’s origins. “The over-classification problem is stymying the investigation,” he added. “Our government has reams of classified material that all point towards the COVID virus originating in the lab in Wuhan.”
CDC, FDA Warn Florida Surgeon General Over His COVID Vaccine Guidance
Two of the United States’ top health agencies have sent a letter to the surgeon general of Florida, accusing him of misleading the public on COVID-19 vaccine side effects. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published the joint letter to Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo on Friday.
In March 2022, Ladapo recommended that certain segments of the population forgo the COVID-19 vaccine due to possible side effects that he believed could outweigh the health benefits.
Analysis conducted by the Department of Health in Florida showed an “84% increase in the relative incidence of cardiac-related death among males, 18 to 39 years old within 28 days following the mRNA vaccination.”
In their Friday letter, the CDC and FDA rejected this assertion.
COVID Could Stem From Risky Experiments at Chinese Lab: Fauci
COVID-19 could have been the result of risky experiments at a laboratory in China, Dr. Anthony Fauci acknowledged in an interview over the weekend.
“A lab leak could be that someone was out in the wild maybe looking for different types of viruses in bats, got infected, went into a lab, and was being studied in a lab, and then came out of the lab,” said Fauci, the former director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). “The other possibility is someone takes a virus from the environment that doesn’t actually spread very well in humans, and manipulates it a bit, and accidentally it escapes or accidentally infects someone and then you get an outbreak.”
The first COVID-19 cases were detected in 2019 in Wuhan, China, where a high-level laboratory is located. Scientists at the lab were funded in part by the NIAID.
‘Profiteering’ of COVID Pandemic Must Never Be Repeated, World Figures Warn
The Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, the former first lady of South Africa and Mozambique Graça Machel and former UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon are among nearly 200 signatories to a letter calling on governments to “never again” allow “profiteering and nationalism” to come before the needs of humanity, in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
In a scathing open letter, published on March 11, current and former presidents and ministers, Nobel laureates, faith leaders, heads of civil society organizations and health experts say COVID-19 vaccines and treatments had been developed with public funding but that pharmaceutical companies had exploited them to “fuel extraordinary profits.”
Instead of distributing vaccines, tests and treatments based on need, companies sold doses to the “richest countries with the deepest pockets,” the letter says.
What People With ‘Super Immunity’ Can Teach Us About COVID and Other Viruses
Three years into the pandemic, a select group of people have achieved something some once thought impossible: They have never tested positive for COVID. Scientists around the world are searching for the genetic reasons these people have dodged COVID — despite repeated exposure to the virus.
Were they born with a form of super immunity? What’s behind their Houdini-like success at escaping infection? “Mostly luck,” said Adam Zimmerman, 40, of Rockville, Maryland, laughing. Neither Zimmerman nor his wife and children have tested positive for COVID.
Even though millions of people have been vaccinated and followed precautions similar to the Zimmermans, they still got sick from COVID, either because of breakthrough infections or waning immunity.
Yet scientists believe it is possible that some people have never been infected because they entered the pandemic equipped with a kind of biological armor against the virus that causes COVID. Now they want to unravel the mysteries hidden in the immune systems of true “COVID dodgers.”
The Next Stage of COVID Is Starting Now
The Atlantic via MSN reported:
To be a newborn in the year 2023 — and, almost certainly, every year that follows — means emerging into a world where the coronavirus is ubiquitous. Babies might not meet the virus in the first week or month of life, but soon enough, SARS-CoV-2 will find them.
Three years into the coronavirus pandemic, these babies are on the leading edge of a generational turnover that will define the rest of our relationship with SARS-CoV-2. They and their slightly older peers are slated to be the first humans who may still be alive when COVID-19 truly hits a new turning point: when almost everyone on Earth has acquired a degree of immunity to the virus as a very young child.
Today’s status quo may be more of a layover than a final destination in our journey toward COVID’s final form. Against SARS-CoV-2, most little kids have fared reasonably well. And as more babies have been born into a SARS-CoV-2-ridden world, the average age of first exposure to this coronavirus has been steadily dropping — a trend that could continue to massage COVID-19 into a milder disease. Eventually, the expectation is that the illness will reach a stable nadir, at which point it may truly be “another common cold,” says Rustom Antia, an infectious-disease modeler at Emory.
For Some Long COVID Patients, Acupuncture and Other Eastern Remedies Bring Relief That Western Medicines Have Not
Frustrated by a lack of results from Western medicine, some long COVID patients have turned to Eastern alternatives. Many say acupuncture, in particular, has provided relief.
Lauren Nichols, a Massachusetts resident who got COVID in March 2020, estimated that over two years she had tried around 30 different pharmaceuticals to ease her migraines, brain fog, fatigue, seizures, diarrhea and other lasting symptoms.
Eventually her physical limitations — and a lack of answers — became so overwhelming that she developed suicidal thoughts. But about three months after she started acupuncture in May 2022, Nichols said, “I could see the clouds starting to part.
Now, Nichols said, the migraines and most other symptoms have resolved themselves, thanks to a combination of alternative therapies.
Biden Asks for Millions to Go Toward ‘Pandemic Preparedness,’ ‘Global Health Security’ + More
Biden Asks for Millions to Go Toward ‘Pandemic Preparedness,’ ‘Global Health Security,’ as COVID Origin Questions Remain
President Joe Biden has asked for millions in taxpayer dollars to go toward “pandemic preparedness” and “global health security,” even as the origins of COVID have come under scrutiny from lawmakers in recent days.
“This includes over $1.2 billion to prepare for, prevent, detect and respond to infectious disease outbreaks — including by expanding U.S. bilateral partnerships with countries to improve health security capacity,” Biden’s proposed budget reads.
Included in this $1.2 billion is $500 million for “the Pandemic Fund” with the purpose of increasing preparation for a pandemic on a global scale. The Pandemic Fund is an international fund run by the World Bank, with funding from across the globe. The U.S. provides more money for the fund, which was launched in November 2022, than any other country.
The proposed money for future pandemics comes as some have claimed that the U.S. funded the gain-of-function research that created COVID and leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China. On Wednesday, former U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Robert Redfield said that American tax dollars funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where he believes that the virus leaked from.
Trump’s CDC Director Says Fauci Shut Down Debate on COVID’s Origin
Trump administration CDC Director Robert Redfield told a congressional committee Wednesday that his former colleague, Anthony Fauci, and former National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins froze him out of discussions on COVID-19’s origins.
The accusation came during a politically charged hearing Wednesday of the House Oversight and Accountability Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic and stoked Republican claims that Fauci in early 2020 promoted the view that an infected animal spread the virus to humans to divert attention from research the U.S. sponsored at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Redfield said Fauci, who led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the time, and Collins left him out because Redfield suspected the coronavirus had leaked from the Chinese lab. Redfield thought the highly infectious nature of the virus distinguished it from other coronaviruses and made it unlikely to have evolved naturally, he told representatives.
Revamped COVID Panel Argues for Research Limits, Even Bans
Pathogen-altering research is back under fire here, as Republican lawmakers argue it should be banned until policymakers and scientists work out whether these types of studies have helped advance infectious disease research — or played a role in the global COVID-19 pandemic.
A revamped House committee on the coronavirus heard from Trump Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield in a Wednesday hearing, where the embattled virologist argued for a “moratorium” on this approach, known as gain-of-function research, and said it had no value in understanding and readying populations for infectious disease outbreaks.
“On the contrary, I think it’s caused the greatest pandemic we’ve ever seen,” Redfield told the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, which under new Republican leadership has shifted focus from the Trump administration’s pandemic response to the virus’ beginnings.
Redfield said his lab-leak theories about the virus led to other officials sidelining him from the federal response and that he “was restricted from being able to talk to the American public.”
Fauci Rejects Claims He Froze-Out Lab-Leak Proponents, Engaged in NIH Funding ‘Bribe’
Former National Institutes of Allergy & Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Dr. Anthony Fauci responded to comments from Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and ex-Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Robert Redfield from a Wednesday hearing on coronavirus origins, saying claims of a “bribe” of scientists and a “freeze-out” of Redfield are “preposterous.”
Redfield testified he did not know he was excluded from a Feb. 1, 2020, conference call with other healthcare bureaucrats until a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) application revealed such sometime later. “I was quite upset as the CDC director that I was excluded, excluded from those discussions. Why would they do this? Because I had a different point of view and I was told they made a decision that they would keep this confidential until they came up with a single narrative,” Redfield said.
On “Your World,” Fauci rejected Redfield’s characterization while underlining he respects his fellow physician. Fauci also rejected claims Redfield’s support for the lab-leak theory precluded him from participation, saying other experts on the call have made similar assertions.
He responded to Jordan’s comments Wednesday that days after some scientists made the lab-leak hypothesis, they changed their minds. “And then three months later, ‘shazam,’ they get $9 million from Dr. Fauci. Well, isn’t that something?” Jordan asked in part at the time.
Multiple COVID Variants Found in New York Rats: Study
Three different coronavirus variants were discovered in New York City’s rat population, according to a new study. A release from EurekAlert on Thursday states that rats were found to be infected with the Alpha, Delta and Omicron COVID-19 variants.
Henry Wan, the principal investigator for the study and the director of the Center for Influenza and Emerging Infectious Diseases at the University of Missouri, said in the statement that the finds demonstrate why additional monitoring of COVID-19 in rat populations is necessary to keep track of a possible secondary spreading of the virus from animals to humans.
The release states New York City has about 8 million rats, which are also widespread across other urban areas in the United States. It notes that two previous studies indicated that rats had been exposed to the virus, but which variants they interacted with had been unknown.
Coalition of People Injured by COVID Vaccines Speak at Mississippi Capitol
Because their stories don’t fit the “safe and effective” narrative about the COVID-19 vaccines, people with vaccine injuries have been — as one person reported — “left in the shadows.”
Accompanied by physicians and scientists, the vaccine injured shared their stories on Feb. 27–28 at the Mississippi Capitol in Jackson as a part of a campaign held by the MS Against Mandates (MAM) to bring attention to adverse events and those who have been harmed from the vaccines.
Dr. Peter McCullough, a practicing internist and cardiologist who is also the national adviser for MAM, spoke at the event and discussed the CDC’s VaccineAdverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) data, which he said reflects an “embarrassing gross underestimate of what is happening in America.”
‘Pan-Variant’ COVID Vaccine Could Defang Future Strains Thanks to Machine Learning
A new approach to vaccines with a machine learning twist could put an end to boosters and seasonal variant shots, according to MIT researchers. This “pan-variant” vaccine would ignore the virus itself but quickly control infections by cracking down on infected cells.
To be quite clear, this is still in animal testing and is nowhere near being deployed. But with COVID becoming a resident virus in the human population, longer-lasting solutions than occasional boosters for particularly bad strains are in demand.
The problem is that, as amazing as the mRNA vaccines are, they are reactive, not proactive: you see a variant, you sample its spike protein or some other distinctive feature, and you slip it into the immune system so it knows to be on the lookout. It’s a bit like letting a rescue dog sniff the belongings of a lost hiker.
Researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory wanted to find another, more enduring way to keep the body safe from COVID attacks. A paper describing their findings was published today in the journal Frontiers in Immunology.
Diabetes Drug Proves Beneficial in Preventing Long COVID in Clinical Trials
COVID-19 patients who took the diabetes drug metformin for two weeks after a diagnosis were less likely to develop long COVID-19 symptoms, according to results from a clinical trial.
The trial enrolled about a thousand participants who were symptomatic with a COVID-19 infection for less than a week. Participants were randomly selected to receive a placebo or one of three drugs: metformin, ivermectin or fluvoxamine.
About 6% of people who took metformin later developed long COVID-19, as determined by a medical diagnosis. In the placebo group, 10.6% of participants developed long COVID-19. This meant that overall people who took metformin were 42% less likely to develop long COVID-19 compared to people who got the placebo.
Metformin may help prevent long COVID-19 by reducing inflammation and oxidative stress or by suppressing the production of the virus, according to laboratory studies. The participants who received the two other drugs, ivermectin and fluvoxamine, did not see any benefits in terms of preventing long COVID-19.
First Nasal Monoclonal Antibody Treatment for COVID Shows Promise for Treating Virus, Other Diseases
A pilot trial by investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, tested the nasal administration of the drug Foralumab, an anti-CD3 monoclonal antibody.
Investigators found evidence that the drug dampened the inflammatory T-cell response and decreased lung inflammation in patients with COVID-19. Further analysis showed the same gene expression modulation in patients with multiple sclerosis, who experienced decreased brain inflammation, suggesting that Foralumab could be used to treat other diseases. Their results are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In both COVID-19 and multiple sclerosis, the immune system is overactive. Foralumab, manufactured by Tiziana Life Sciences, is a drug that stimulates regulatory T cells of the immune system, or anti-inflammatory cells, resulting in decreased inflammation. This contrasts with other monoclonal antibodies previously given to treat or prevent symptoms of COVID-19 (such as Evusheld) that target the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, which only had activity against specific variants and subvariants.
Long COVID Patients Face Medical Debt After Insurance Denies Claims
In June 2021, 32-year-old Alyssa Maness was diagnosed with POTS, a nervous system disorder that her doctors believe was triggered by COVID.
Because her heart problems didn’t go away, in early 2022 her doctors began conducting a series of lab tests in an attempt to better understand her long COVID symptoms.
When Maness submitted the testing to her insurance — Anthem Blue Cross — the provider deemed the testing medically unnecessary and declined to cover the cost. She’s now on the hook for the medical bills, which have already cost her more than $10,000 out of pocket.
Maness is among several long COVID patients in the United States interviewed by NBC News who say their insurance providers are declining to provide coverage related to their illness.
