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Covid News Watch
U.S. Military ‘Revises’ Post-Vax Myocarditis Stats Lower + More
U.S. Military ‘Revises’ Post-Vax Myocarditis Stats Lower
The U.S. Department of Defense has revised its figures related to heart inflammation cases following COVID-19 vaccination. This change marks yet another instance in the military‘s ongoing efforts to navigate the complex landscape of vaccine side effects.
Ashish Vazirani, the acting under-secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, cited an Oct. 11 report which says that the number of myocarditis and pericarditis cases post-vaccination among military personnel is now estimated between 80 and 90. This contrasts sharply with the previous count of 120 cases within 21 days of vaccination, a number that also excluded additional cases occurring beyond this time frame. The Pentagon’s silence in response to inquiries adds an air of mystery to this sudden recalibration.
This revision emerges as the latest in a series of actions perceived as downplaying the vaccine’s side effects. In 2021, amidst data indicating diminishing vaccine efficacy, the military continued to mandate vaccination for all members, regardless of their recovery from COVID-19 or the emerging evidence suggesting the superiority of natural immunity over vaccination. This mandate was only recently lifted under new legislation signed by President Joe Biden.
The recent disclosure by Vazirani in a letter to Senator Ron Johnson further complicates matters. He highlights the challenge of reporting precise adverse event numbers due to the complexities of establishing a direct causal link between vaccination and clinical diagnoses. This statement contradicts an earlier report to Representative Mike Rogers, which cited 326 cases of myocarditis, 351 cases of pericarditis, and 353 heart attacks among military personnel. These numbers, derived from the Defense Medical Surveillance System and the Theater Medical Data Store, reveal a stark discrepancy in reported figures.
Vaccine Fatigue at Work: Only 8% of Iowa Nursing Home Workers Have Up-to-Date COVID Shots
COVID-19 vaccination rates among Iowa’s nursing homes are significantly lagging this year, highlighting the toll that vaccine fatigue is taking on front-line healthcare workers as the respiratory virus season nears.
Only 8% of nursing home staff statewide are up to date on their coronavirus shots as of Nov. 26, the latest data available from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
And only 45% of Iowa’s nursing home residents are up to date on COVID-19 vaccines, according to the CDC. While that’s better than the national average of 27%, it still trails rates from previous years.
“That all ties into what we call vaccine fatigue,” said Madisun VanGundy, public health communications officer at the Polk County Health Department. “People are tired of hearing about COVID. They want to get back to their lives and forget it happened.”
Veteran Big Pharma Chief Lashes Out at Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk’s Drug Ad Criticism on X
Former Fox News frontman Tucker Carlson, ousted from his prominent ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’ segment on Fox News this year, has transitioned to hosting a new video series on X while maintaining the same format. Employing his renowned acerbic presenting style, he strongly criticized pharmaceutical drug ads.
During his tenure at Fox, Carlson voiced criticism towards figures such as Anthony Fauci, M.D., the outgoing director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and chief medical adviser to the president. He also questioned the necessity of wearing face masks during the pandemic, probed the origins of COVID, and expressed skepticism about the need for lockdowns.
Carlson, when asked about whether advertisers had influenced Fox in general, said advertisers “are the bogeyman […] especially pharma, which is the biggest advertiser in television.” He said: “If Pfizer [which markets COVID vaccines and drugs] is sponsoring your show, you’re not going to question the vax, it’s that simple,” adding that their size and money helps “shape the news coverage.”
Elon Musk, the recent owner of X and a consistent promoter of Carlson’s X series in recent months, posted on his account in response to the latest video: “Well said.” Brent Saunders, former Allergan CEO before its acquisition by AbbVie and current chief and chairman of Bausch and Lomb, countered Musk and Carlson on X.
Rare Syndrome After COVID Vaccines Described — ‘Long Vax’ Events Often Include Neurologic Symptoms
People who experienced rare long-term adverse events after COVID-19 vaccination often had neurologic symptoms, survey data showed.
Among 241 people who self-reported a post-vaccination syndrome (PVS), the five most common symptoms were exercise intolerance (71%), excessive fatigue (69%), numbness (63%), brain fog (63%), and neuropathy (63%), reported Harlan Krumholz, MD, of Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, and co-authors in a paper posted on the preprint server medRxiv. The paper has not been peer-reviewed.
“The study is the largest investigation of the experience of people reporting a chronic, debilitating condition that began soon after a COVID-19 vaccination,” Krumholz told MedPage Today.
“It raises awareness about what these individuals are experiencing and points attention to the need for more studies to understand what is underlying this condition and how to relieve suffering,” he continued. “These people are not anti-vaxxers — they were all vaccinated — but because of politics, many have had the experience of being dismissed and ignored.”
Ongoing symptoms after COVID vaccines are rarely studied. “Even the definition of post-vaccination syndrome is in flux, but a working definition could be symptoms that begin with a week of a vaccination and persist for at least 2 months,” Krumholz said.
Pfizer Sues Hungary as Pandemic Court Cases Mount
A court document obtained by POLITICO shows that Pfizer, together with its partner BioNTech, opened legal proceedings against the Hungarian government in January this year over COVID-19 vaccine deliveries.
A spokesperson for Pfizer confirmed the case, which is unfolding in a Belgian court. “Discussions with the government in Budapest continue,” they added.
The document shows that the case concerns payment for 3 million BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine doses, worth around €60 million. The dispute began when Hungary notified Pfizer in November 2022 that it did not intend to pay the pharmaceutical company, citing the conflict in Ukraine.
Pfizer’s suit against Hungary parallels one the pharmaceutical company opened against Poland. In both instances, the countries are being sued in civil court over their refusal to take and pay for deliveries of COVID-19 jabs they had signed up for. The two cases add to a growing body of legal proceedings related to the EU’s pandemic-era vaccine procurement efforts.
Small Study Finds Brain Alterations After COVID Omicron Infection
Researchers in China report thinning of the gray matter and other changes in certain parts of the brain in 61 men after COVID-19 Omicron infection.
For the study, published late last week in JAMA Network Open, the researchers evaluated 61 men before and after infection with the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant in January 2023. The men had been part of a larger cohort who had undergone magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and neuropsychiatric screenings before infection in August and September 2022. The average age was 43 years.
In certain regions of the brain, gray-matter thickness had thinned, and the ratio of right hippocampus volume to total intracranial volume was significantly reduced after infection. Gray-matter thinness was negatively correlated with anxiety scores, and the ratio of the right hippocampus to total intracranial volume was positively correlated with Word Fluency Test scores.
The results, they said, shine a light on the emotional and cognitive mechanisms of Omicron infection, show its link to nervous system alterations, and confirm that imaging can enable early detection and treatment of neurologic complications.
Young Adults More Prone to Anxiety, Depression During COVID Than Older Adults, Data Show
The findings of a study yesterday in JAMA Network Open suggest that more than a third of young U.S. adults had anxiety or depression during the COVID-19 pandemic, and economic and social uncertainty may have played a role.
Their analysis included 3,028,923 respondents. The investigators found likely anxiety disorders in 40% of adults 18 to 39, compared with 31% in those 40 to 59 and 20% in people 60 and older. They noted likely depressive disorders in 33% of the young adults, 24% of those 40 to 59, and just 16% in the oldest group.
They noted, “Levels declined throughout the pandemic period for those aged 40 years and older but remained elevated for younger adults …. Younger adults’ anxiety and depression increased more than older adults’ after surges in COVID-19 case counts but decreased less following vaccination against the virus.”
Study Finds Sharp Drop in FDA Inspections Since Pandemic Began
Food and Drug Administration inspections of drug manufacturing facilities in the U.S. and abroad dropped well below pre-pandemic levels between 2020 and 2022, according to a new study in Health Affairs.
Why it matters: The findings are further evidence of a fragile global drug supply chain at a time when some critical medicines are in short supply. Some of the squeeze was due to inspections that took overseas facilities offline because of safety concerns.
Between the lines: The FDA early in the pandemic said it would curtail many of its inspections, but work picked back up by July 2020. However, the agency didn’t resume nonprioritized domestic inspections and non-mission-critical foreign inspections until last year, the authors write.
By the numbers: The study found a 79% decrease in inspections of foreign facilities and a 35% drop in inspections of domestic facilities in 2022 compared to 2019.
Secret Warnings About Wuhan Research Predated the Pandemic + More
Secret Warnings About Wuhan Research Predated the Pandemic
In late October 2017, a U.S. health official from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) arrived at the Wuhan Institute of Virology for a glimpse of an eagerly anticipated work in progress. The WIV, a leading research institute, was putting the finishing touches on China’s first biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) laboratory. Operating with the highest safeguards, the lab would enable scientists to study some of the world’s most lethal pathogens.
The project had support from Western governments seeking a more robust partnership with China’s top scientists. France had helped design the facility. Canada, before long, would send virus samples. And in the U.S., NIAID was channeling grant dollars through an American organization called EcoHealth Alliance to help fund the WIV’s cutting-edge coronavirus research.
In emails obtained by Vanity Fair, the NIAID official told her superiors what she’d gleaned from the technician who’d served as her guide. The lab, which was not yet fully operational, was struggling to develop enough expertise among its staff — a concern in a setting that had no tolerance for errors. “According to [the technician], being the first P4 [or BSL-4] lab in the country, they have to learn everything from zero,” she wrote. “They rely on those scientists who have worked in P4 labs outside China to train the other scientists how to operate.”
She’d also learned something else “alarming” from the technician, she wrote. Researchers at the WIV intended to study Ebola, but Chinese government restrictions prevented them from importing samples. As a result, they were considering using a technique called reverse genetics to engineer Ebola in the lab. Anticipating that this information would set off alarm bells in the U.S., the official cautioned, “I don’t want the information particularly using reverse genetics to create viruses to get out, which would affect the ability for our future information gain,” meaning it would impair the collaboration between NIAID and the WIV.
A six-month investigation by VF has found an almost decade-long trail of warnings issued by the Department of Energy to other government agencies, including the NIH, concerning the risk that U.S.-funded biology research could be misused by overseas partners. In mid-2019, an Energy Department official went so far as to issue a specific warning to NIAID about the coronavirus research the agency was funding at the WIV.
Anthony Fauci Will Testify Before Congress on COVID Origins and the U.S. Pandemic Response
Anthony Fauci, former chief White House medical adviser, is expected to testify before Congress early next year as part of Republicans’ yearslong investigation into the origins of COVID-19 and the U.S. response to the disease.
Fauci, who served as the nation’s top infectious disease expert before retiring last year, will sit for transcribed interviews in early January and a public hearing at a later date. It will be his first appearance before the Republican-controlled House.
Rep. Brad Wenstrup, the GOP chairman of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, who is also a longtime member of the House Intelligence Committee, has accused Fauci and U.S. intelligence of withholding key facts about its investigation into the coronavirus. Republicans on the committee last year issued a staff report arguing that there are “indications” that the virus may have been developed as a bioweapon inside China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology.
That would contradict a U.S. intelligence community assessment released in unclassified form in August 2021 that said analysts do not believe the virus was a bioweapon, though it may have leaked in a lab accident.
COVID Vaccine Rates in the U.S. Are Slumping — and It Will Be a Challenge to Boost Them
Three years into the COVID-19 pandemic, few Americans are rolling up their sleeves to get a COVID vaccine. Only 15.7% of U.S. adults had received the newest COVID shots from Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax as of Nov. 18, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those jabs, some of which won approval in mid-September, are designed to target the Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5.
Some vaccine makers and health experts believe U.S. COVID vaccination rates in 2024 and beyond will likely look similar to the meager uptake of the latest round of shots this fall and winter.
Some experts hope a new, more convenient slate of shots targeting more than one respiratory virus could boost COVID vaccinations. But others are more skeptical about whether those combination jabs will make a difference.
New CDC Life Expectancy Data Shows Painfully Slow Rebound From COVID
Newly published data on life expectancy in the United States shows a partial rebound from the worst phase of the coronavirus pandemic, but drug overdoses, homicides and chronic illnesses such as heart disease continue to drive a long-term mortality crisis that has made this country an outlier in longevity among wealthy nations.
Life expectancy in 2022 rose more than a full year, to 77.5 years, in data released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than four-fifths of this positive jump was attributable to a drop in COVID-19 deaths.
But the rebound in 2022, which the CDC had anticipated after studying death rates, regained less than half the years lost to the pandemic, the federal health agency reported.
Steven Woolf, director emeritus of the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University, said many peer countries suffered smaller drops in life expectancy and rebounded more quickly from COVID-19’s impact.
What To Know About Rapidly Spreading ‘Pirola’ COVID Variant BA.2.86 — and If Vaccines Offer Protection
Pirola, or BA.2.86, is the third most prevalent COVID strain in the U.S., and although there may be concerns the new monovalent vaccines — which protect against the XBB lineage that Pirola isn’t a part of — don’t offer protection against Pirola and its subvariants, drugmakers and the CDC are sure the vaccines offer a defense.
Pirola made up 8.8% of cases as of November 25, almost triple the number of cases the variant made up during the previous two-week period ending on November 11, when Pirola wasn’t even one of the top five most prevalent variants, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
It’s circulating the most in the Northeast, where it’s the second most common variant in the region (13%) after HV.1. Pirola joined four other variants as “variants of interest” by the World Health Organization on Monday, a step up from its “variant under monitoring” label in August.
Some experts aren’t so sure Pirola and its offspring — most notably JN.1 — will be very protected under the new vaccines. The authors of a bioRxiv study wrote in a pre-publication comment, which hasn’t yet been peer-reviewed, that the newer vaccines could spur the spread of the more recent Pirola viruses.
Suicide Rate Reached Record High in 2022 but Dropped Among Young People
Suicides among young Americans, whose mental health problems during the coronavirus pandemic reached crisis proportions, declined sharply in 2022, while rates for older groups — especially men — rose, according to data released by the government Wednesday.
The increase in suicides among people older than 35 was responsible for an overall 1% rise in the suicide rate to a record high of 14.3 per 100,000 people since 2021, according to provisional data released by the National Center for Health Statistics. The total number of suicides last year — 49,449 — rose by 3% and is expected to increase further when final data is available.
Men, who comprise the vast majority of suicides each year, saw a 2% jump in their total, to 39,255, resuming a long trend of increases after two years of small declines. Suicides among women rose 4%, to 10,194, but the rate remained roughly the same as it has been for decades.
People older than 75 posted the highest suicide rates since at least 1999.
Scoop: Biden Administration Sending Free COVID Tests to Schools
The Biden administration for the first time will allow all schools to order free COVID-19 tests from the federal government ahead of the holidays, officials told Axios first.
Why it matters: The Uptake of updated COVID vaccines has been sluggish, making other precautions like timely testing all the more critical as respiratory virus season heats up.
Details: The Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR), an agency within HHS, has a stockpile of hundreds of millions of COVID tests. It is teaming up with the Department of Education to allow school districts to order tests directly to distribute to families.
CDC Revamps Wastewater COVID Data Reporting
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently unveiled new wastewater data tracking dashboard to make it easier to track local and national trends, even by variant. Wastewater tracking is one of the early indicators health officials use to gauge the activity of SARS-CoV-2 and other viruses.
On Twitter (X), Niall Brennan, MPP, senior adviser to the CDC’s director, said the makeover was done over a 4-week period by a team informally called “Poo’s Clues.” He added that the goal was to reimagine how to present the data and improve the visualizations, which were previously underwhelming.
Amy Kirby, Ph.D., MPH, a microbiologist and epidemiologist who is part of the CDC team, pointed out on Twitter that the dashboard also includes mpox wastewater tracking.
Moderna Begins Work on China mRNA Manufacturing Site + More
Moderna Begins Work on China mRNA Manufacturing Site
U.S. vaccine maker Moderna (MRNA.O) began construction of its first facility in China this month to manufacture mRNA medicines, the company said on Tuesday.
Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine has yet to be approved in China, but the company said in July it had signed a deal with the city government of China’s financial hub Shanghai to work towards opportunities for it to research, develop and manufacture mRNA medicines in the country.
The facility in Shanghai would manufacture medicines for the domestic population, the world’s second-largest after India, a spokesperson for Moderna told Reuters.
It did not say what it planned to make at the facility and when production might start.
WHO Authorizes Emergency Use of Novavax’s Updated COVID Shot
Novavax‘s (NVAX.O) updated vaccine has been granted emergency-use authorization by the World Health Organization (WHO) for active immunization to prevent COVID-19 in individuals aged 12 and older, the company said on Tuesday.
The updated Novavax shot, which was authorized in the U.S. last month, targets a descendant of the XBB lineage of the coronavirus that was globally predominant earlier this year.
The emergency use listing helps speed up the regulatory approvals to import and administer the vaccines by member states, according to the WHO.
Novavax missed out on the COVID-19 vaccine windfall, which benefited mRNA rivals, due to manufacturing issues that delayed its filing for regulatory approval during the peak of the pandemic. Its original COVID shot received U.S. authorization in July 2022, long after Pfizer (PFE.N) and Moderna (MRNA.O) vaccines were in use.
Ex-White House Official Sheds More Light on Fate of Researcher Who May Have Caused COVID Pandemic
A former Trump administration official has claimed “it’s certainly possible” the Chinese government killed a Wuhan scientist who may have caused the COVID pandemic by secretly working on a vaccine months before the global health crisis broke out.
Dr. Robert Kadlec, who served as an official in the biodefense and epidemic response departments during the pandemic, said Chinese military scientist Zhou Yusen was conducting research on live animals at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2019, and filed a patent for a COVID vaccine in February 2020 — barely one month after China put Wuhan into a lockdown due to the first outbreak.
Three months later, Dr. Yusen died when he allegedly fell from the roof of the Wuhan Institute. “It looked like he was censored as a consequence of whatever happened,” Kadlec told Australia’s Sky News. “Our evidence would suggest that something happened while he was doing his work, which we believe was when the virus first emerged,” he said.
Yusen’s quick turnaround of a COVID vaccine sparked concerns the Wuhan Institute was secretly working on a vaccine months before Beijing admitted to the outbreak of the novel virus. That research may have led to an accidental lab leak, House Republicans concluded in an April report.
But Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former head of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, repeatedly denied the claim. Kadlec now says he thinks Fauci’s denial was a way for the doctor to divert attention away from the fact that his agency allocated grant money that was used to fund experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Childhood Pneumonia Surge Reported in Netherlands Amid Outbreak in China
Childhood pneumonia cases are surging in the Netherlands, a health agency in the country has reported. During the week of Nov. 13-19, there were 103 pneumonia cases in the Netherlands out of every 100,000 children between the ages of 5 and 14. That was an increase from 83 the prior week, according to the Netherlands Institute for Health Services Research (NIVEL).
China has also seen an unexplained increase in childhood pneumonia cases and other respiratory illnesses. On Nov. 22, WHO said it requested “additional epidemiologic and clinical information” from China — as well as laboratory results from the affected children.
“I think people are worried about new respiratory infections showing up, even in other countries, as we have found out how quickly a respiratory virus can spread internationally,” said Edward Liu, M.D., infectious diseases section chief at Hackensack Meridian Jersey Shore University Medical Center. “No one wants another pandemic.”
“It makes sense for the WHO and/or CDC to assist China and the Netherlands in determining the cause of these respiratory infections.”
Pandemic Preparedness: Is the U.K. Ready for a Pandemic That Affects Children?
Before COVID-19, concerns were raised that the U.K. was unprepared for a pandemic that predominantly affected children. The situation has not changed with a lack of granular pandemic planning for children since the planning for a potential H1N1 pandemic in the mid-2000s.
This is of concern as a future global pandemic may result in a marked increase in critical illness and mortality in children compared to the COVID-19 pandemic, where serious illness has been much lower than in adults. For example, the emergence of a new virus with the pathogenicity and high transmissibility of measles would be devastating.
Children are extremely effective at transmitting respiratory viruses. For example, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infects almost all children by the age of two and infection rates of health workers caring for children with RSV, are very high.
Mitigating transmission is problematic as infants and young children have close physical contact with siblings and family members and, if admitted to the hospital, with the staff caring for them. The social distancing of young children during play is difficult; they are far less likely to wash their hands and much more likely to smear oral and nasal secretions onto others and rarely cover their mouths and nose when coughing and sneezing. SARS-CoV-2 and other respiratory viruses such as RSV and influenza may also be transmissible in small aerosol particles.
New COVID Variant Takes Hold in the United States
U.S. News & World Report reported:
The prevalence of a highly mutated COVID variant has tripled in the past two weeks, new government data shows. Now, nearly 1 in 10 new COVID cases are fueled by the BA.2.86 variant, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Monday.
The variant is spreading the fastest in the Northeast: Just over 13% of cases in the New York and New Jersey region are blamed on BA.2.86.
The CDC also noted that BA.2.86 variant poses a “low” public health risk.
In recent weeks, scientists have been studying a steep increase in a BA.2.86 descendant called JN.1, which has become the fastest-growing subvariant worldwide.
MRI Study Spotlights Impact of Long COVID on the Brain
A new study comparing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) images of patients with long COVID, fully recovered COVID-19 survivors, and healthy controls shows microstructural changes in different brain regions in the long-COVID patients. The findings will be presented next week at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.
The research is the first to use diffusion microstructure imaging (DMI), a novel MRI technique, which looks at the movement of water molecules in tissues. DFI can detect smaller brain changes than traditional MRI.
“We noted gray matter alterations in both patients with long-COVID and those unimpaired after a COVID-19 infection,” said lead study author Alexander Rau, MD, of the University Hospital Freiburg in Germany. “Interestingly, we not only noted widespread microstructural alterations in patients with long COVID, but also in those unimpaired after having contracted COVID-19.”
The authors of the study said that though the findings are intriguing, they do little to explain why some patients develop long COVID and others do not.
House Moves to Limit So-Called Gain-of-Function Research + More
House Moves to Limit So-Called Gain-of-Function Research
House lawmakers late Tuesday voted to attach a U.S. ban on controversial infectious disease research to legislation that could ultimately fund federal health agencies like the National Institutes of Health.
The bill would bar any federal agencies from funding so-called gain-of-function research, which involves altering a pathogen to study its spread, potentially making it more transmissible or severe in the process.
The spending bill already included a restriction on funding this research in any country determined to be a “foreign adversary,” including China. Scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology studied gain-of-function in some viruses, fueling theories that the COVID-19 pathogen was a lab leak. Those theories have never definitively been proven.
Matt Gaetz Claims ‘Big Pharma’ Prevents Colleagues Investigating Vaccines
Matt Gaetz has claimed congressional committees are declining to investigate injuries caused by the coronavirus vaccines because “they are bought and paid for by Big Pharma,” without providing any supporting evidence.
The House Republican made the comment at a hearing hosted by his colleague, Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, which took place at a congressional office building but wasn’t an official House or Senate committee.
Gaetz said Tuesday at Greene’s “injuries caused by COVID-19 vaccines” committee hearing: “A reasonable person watching this hearing might wonder why this is a field hearing being chaired by Congresswoman Greene rather than a hearing held by the House and the Senate with one of our standing committees. I believe that reason is because far too many members of those committees obtain those committee seats because they are bought and paid for by Big Pharma.
“And if you go look at the people who lead these positions in the House and Senate, and you line up the money they get from Big Pharma lobbyists and Big Pharma PACs, it is pretty easy to see why we are here,” he said.
Addressing her committee, Greene said: “As a member of the COVID Select Committee I hope this hearing today will offer a voice to those who have been injured by these vaccines or have lost loved ones to them. While I myself am unvaccinated, I have tremendous compassion for those who trusted the government and took the vaccine.”
GP Surgery Blunder Led to Healthy 28-Year-Old Being Given Fatal AstraZeneca COVID Jab
The Telegraph via Yahoo!News reported:
A “precious and beloved” son died after he was wrongly given the AstraZeneca COVID jab because of a blunder almost 20 years ago that mistakenly classified him as morbidly obese. Alex Reid, who was 28, died from a rare blood clot caused by the vaccine. But an inquest heard he would never have received the vaccine but for an error in his medical records.
His distraught parents said their “happy, healthy, precious and beloved” son’s death was “unacceptable, immoral and fundamentally wrong”, and accused AstraZeneca and the Government of ignoring “the small number” of people who died or were seriously affected as a result of the blood clots in order to quickly roll out the vaccine during the pandemic.
Reid, an operations controller from Leeds, was called in early to have a first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine, developed with the University of Oxford because the local GP practice had mistakenly recorded him as having a body mass index of 68.
He received his first dose on March 21. By the time he was due his follow-up dose on May 18, 2021, the Government’s vaccine advisers had recommended — more than a month earlier — that recipients under 30 receive alternatives to AstraZeneca because of the extremely rare risk of blood clots. But in Reid’s case, because he had AstraZeneca as his first jab, he was given a follow-up dose of the same vaccine. He died in Leeds General Infirmary on June 29, 2021, six weeks later.
The coroner recorded the cause of death as vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT), a new condition linked to the AstraZeneca vaccine that is suspected of causing more than 80 deaths in the U.K. and hundreds more serious disabilities.
Report: America’s Trust in Scientists Drops in Wake of COVID Pandemic
U.S. News & World Report reported:
Public trust in scientists fell again in 2023 even as COVID-19 has faded into the background for many Americans, according to a new report.
Survey results from Pew Research Center published on Tuesday found that confidence in scientists to act in the public’s best interest fell from 77% in 2022 to 73% as of last month. It’s a far drop from 87% in April 2020, which quickly declined to 84% by November 2020 as the pandemic worsened.
Those with little or little to no confidence in scientists have, perhaps not surprisingly, increased since the pandemic. The report found that 27% of U.S. adults fall into the category, which is up from 12% in April 2020.
How to End the Futile Blame Game Over Failed Long COVID Research
The health outlook for Long COVID sufferers is no better today than it was when the condition was first recognized in early 2020. This has been attributed in large measure to the disappointing results of clinical research, particularly when compared to the magnitude of the problem.
Now with hundreds of published results emerging from federally conducted or sponsored research, outraged experts and patient advocates say that there is little to show for it. The critique is that the pace of the work is slow and opaque and that little has emerged that directly impacts prevention or patient care. The biomedical community has been under steady attack for lack of progress in prevention and treatment underlying a failure to help patients.
There is a lot at stake in getting the U.S.’s Long COVID research strategy right. With a national prevalence of the disease in the range of 5% to 15%, an estimated 10 to 35 million working-age adults have Long COVID, and it may be keeping as many as 4 million people out of work. There is a desperate need for effective treatments to mitigate their devastating frustration, suffering, functional impairment, and disability.
COVID Increased Gender Life Expectancy Gap in U.S.
For more than 100 years, American women have outlived American men, largely due to differences in rates of cardiovascular disease and lung cancer. Now COVID-19 has widened the gendered life expectancy gap, according to a research letter published yesterday in JAMA Internal Medicine.
The absolute difference in age-adjusted death rates between men and women increased from 252 to 315 per 100,000 from 2010 to 2021, the authors found.
Men experience higher mortality rates from COVID-19 for many reasons, mostly because they carry a higher burden of comorbidities that make them susceptible to severe COVID, the authors note. Men also experience more socioeconomic factors, including incarceration and homelessness, that have been linked to COVID-19 deaths.
“Differentially worsening mortality from diabetes, heart disease, homicide, and suicide suggest that chronic metabolic disease and mental illness may also contribute,” the authors said.
Eating Disorders Skewed Younger During the Pandemic
The demographics of eating disorders are shifting younger, now most commonly affecting teens between 14 and 18 years old, according to a new analysis.
Why it matters: The data, based on a FAIR Health repository of 43 billion private health insurance claims, sheds new light on an uptick in eating disorders during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly among teens.
By the numbers: From 2018 to 2022, insurance claims for eating disorder treatment increased 65%, with the largest increase occurring during the pandemic’s first year.
Between the lines: The shift comes amid a youth mental health crisis that experts say has been exacerbated by the pandemic’s isolation and social media.
Pfizer’s Cost-Cutting Campaign Hits Sandwich Site in U.K., Where 500 Workers Will Lose Jobs
Earlier this month, Pfizer’s $3.5 billion cost-cutting campaign crossed overseas to Ireland. Now, just a week later, Pfizer is announcing hundreds more job cuts in the U.K.
Pfizer plans to cut approximately 500 roles and ax its Pharmaceutical Sciences Small Molecule (PSSM) capabilities at its site in Sandwich in Kent in the U.K., a company spokesperson confirmed over email. The spokesperson described the layoffs as a “one of the consequences” of Pfizer’s enterprisewide cost realignment program, which the drugmaker unveiled in mid-October.
Layoffs have been sweeping across Pfizer ever since the company unveiled a plan to shave off $3.5 billion in annual costs by the end of 2024. The move comes as uncertainty plagues future product sales of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine Comirnaty and antiviral Paxlovid.
This latest round of cuts follows a 100-employee reduction at one of Pfizer’s Irish manufacturing plants in Newbridge in Kildare last week. Those staffers worked on the production of the company’s oral COVID med Paxlovid, Pfizer confirmed at the time. Prior to that, Pfizer said it would cut roughly 200 positions at its site in Kalamazoo, Michigan, following a review of demand for its COVID products.
Acuitas Sues CureVac for Credit on COVID Vaccine Patents
Biotech company Acuitas Therapeutics has filed a lawsuit in Virginia federal court against Germany-based CureVac (5CV.DE), accusing it of failing to credit Acuitas scientists on patents related to COVID-19 vaccines.
Acuitas told the court on Monday that CureVac omitted its scientists from patent applications for lipid nanoparticle technology used in messenger RNA-based vaccines after they collaborated to develop the technology during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Canada-based Acuitas, which also developed related technology used in Pfizer and BioNTech’s COVID-19 shots, asked the court to list its scientists as co-inventors on the CureVac patents, which could allow Acuitas to license them independently.
Pfizer and BioNTech have also sued CureVac, asking a judge to block CureVac’s infringement allegations against the companies. Acuitas has separately asked to intervene with its inventorship claims in that case in Virginia.