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Covid News Watch
COVID Vaccines Didn’t Work, so CDC Changed the Definition of Vaccines + More
COVID Vaccines Didn’t Work, so CDC Changed the Definition of Vaccines
In early 2020 when the public first learned that a novel virulent virus was making people sick in China and around the world, it made sense to institute public health measures to protect against it.
But, instead of encouraging doctors and scientists to look for ways to treat the virus and ways to keep sick people from healthy people, as has been done with other pandemics in modern human history, government authorities actually actively prevented doctors from treating patients.
Tech companies quickly censored and de-platformed doctors who discussed potentially-effective treatment options. The scientific debate was silenced.
Instead of any open, honest discussion about the effectiveness of preventative measures and the different treatment options, the world was told that the only way out of the coronavirus crisis was via mass vaccination. If the public understood that there were options for treating COVID-19 and that the infection was likely to be mild in over 99% of the people who got it, they wouldn’t be as motivated to get a vaccine.
‘The Results Confirm Our Fears’: Federal School Test Scores Dropped During Pandemic
Test scores for the country’s 9-year-olds suffered significant declines early this year when compared to early 2020, according to federal data released Thursday that will reinforce the worries of educators and politicians over COVID-19’s impact on children.
Students who took National Assessment of Educational Progress long-term trend tests this past winter scored an average of seven points lower in math and five points lower in reading when compared to 9-year-olds who took the same federal exam in 2020 — just before the pandemic was declared a global health emergency and physical classrooms shuttered.
Those results mean fewer students could carry out simple reading tasks, understand texts or handle arithmetic and early math problem-solving. The overall reading score decline marked the test’s largest drop of statistical significance since the 1980s, while the drop in math scores marked the first such drop ever recorded since the government first tested learning trends on the subject during the 1970s.
Thursday’s test scores offer the first nationally representative measurement of how the pandemic affected school learning, and mark a significant preview for more detailed data from separate tests that the government is set to release this fall. The winter tests were administered as Omicron-driven infections led to chaotic school conditions across the country, and while classrooms eased into something approaching more normal in-person learning.
U.S. CDC Advisers Expected to Recommend Omicron-Specific Vaccine Boosters
Vaccine experts will meet on Thursday to discuss updated COVID-19 boosters and make recommendations to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on who should receive the shots, one of the last steps before they are rolled out as soon as this weekend.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday authorized the updated shots from Pfizer (PFE.N)/BioNTech (22UAy.DE) and Moderna that target the dominant BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants as well as the original virus.
The CDC’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) will vote on a recommendation for who should receive the boosters before the agency’s Director Rochelle Walensky makes the final call after the meeting. She has generally been supportive of a booster campaign in recent public statements.
Vaccine makers have yet to complete human trials for the newly authorized boosters, and ACIP members are likely to raise questions over the lack of data. Most of the available data on the redesigned boosters comes from lab and animal studies.
Biden Administration Weighs Saving Monkeypox Doses for Potential Smallpox Outbreak
Top health officials in the Biden administration are weighing whether to save vaccine doses that could be used to fight monkeypox for a potential future smallpox outbreak, according to two people with knowledge of the matter and a senior administration official.
The U.S. has purchased at least 11 million vials of the Jynneos vaccine which is FDA-approved for both smallpox and monkeypox to combat the current monkeypox outbreak. Manufacturer Bavarian Nordic, a pharmaceutical company based in Denmark, is now bottling 5.5 million of those vials.
Some of that vaccine — plus an additional 5.5 million vials stored in Denmark — may be saved if the administration determines the monkeypox outbreak is leveling off, the people familiar with the matter and the official said.
Fauci Warns of ‘Pretty Bad Flu Season’
Outgoing chief White House medical adviser Anthony Fauci said the U.S. should prepare for a “pretty bad flu season” later this year.
Speaking with Bloomberg Law, Fauci noted that a more severe flu season has already been observed in the Southern Hemisphere, which encounters new annual flu strains sooner than the Northern Hemisphere.
“We should be prepared for that superimposed upon what I hope is the residual and not another spike of COVID,” Fauci told Bloomberg.
On Wednesday, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized bivalent COVID-19 boosters, which were updated to target a subvariant of Omicron. Fauci said he hoped the updated shot could help impede the concurrent viral spread of both the coronavirus and influenza.
White House to Encourage COVID Boosters, Flu Shot This Fall
The Biden administration hopes to make getting a COVID-19 booster as routine as going in for the yearly flu shot.
That’s at the heart of its campaign to sell the newly authorized shot to an American public that has widely rejected COVID-19 boosters since they first became available last fall.
Shots of the updated boosters, specifically designed by Pfizer and Moderna to respond to the Omicron strain, could start within days. The U.S. government has purchased 170 million doses and is emphasizing that everyone will have free access to the booster.
White House COVID-19 coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha said this latest round of shots will offer protection during the busy cold and flu season, with the hope of transitioning people to get the vaccine yearly. Typically, at least half of U.S. adults get a flu shot.
Exercise Rates Still Haven’t Recovered From Pandemic, Global Study Shows
U.S. News & World Report reported:
The COVID-19 pandemic stopped people in their tracks, reducing their physical activity. And daily “step counts” still haven’t reached previous numbers, according to a new study.
Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco examined worldwide trends in physical activity by measuring step counts in the two years following the start of the pandemic. Step counts were distinctly lower early in the pandemic compared to pre-pandemic levels and remained lower for the first two years of the global crisis, the study team found.
U.K. Downgrades COVID Alert Level Amid Falling Cases
The U.K.’s COVID-19 alert level has been downgraded to level 2, meaning the virus is in “general circulation” but healthcare pressures and transmission are “declining or stable.”
The chief medical officers of the U.K. nations and the national medical director of the NHS in England have jointly recommended that the COVID alert level be moved down from level 3 amid falling cases. They said the COVID-19 wave of the Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 was “subsiding”.
Rates of COVID have decreased as have the number of severe cases needing hospital care, they added. However, they said further COVID surges were “likely” as they urged people to take up the offer of vaccination. The autumn booster campaign is due to start within days.
EU Regulator Clears Tweaked Versions of COVID Vaccines
The European Medicines Agency has recommended the authorization of two coronavirus vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna Inc., tweaked to include protection against an early version of the Omicron variant.
In a statement on Thursday, the EU drug regulator said the two messenger RNA boosters offered protection both against the original version of COVID-19 and the Omicron subvariant BA.1, which has since been overtaken globally by later Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5.
Nearly 80% of coronavirus cases worldwide are now being caused by Omicron BA.5, according to the World Health Organization.
The decision comes a day after the U.S. drug regulator cleared updated versions of COVID-19 vaccines incorporating protection against the later subvariants, after telling pharmaceuticals in June that any updated boosters must target the most recent versions of Omicron.
EU Regulator Backs Use of Novavax COVID Shot as a Booster
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) on Thursday backed the use of Novavax‘s (NVAX.O) COVID-19 shot as a booster for adults, ahead of an anticipated rise in infections this winter.
The vaccine, Nuvaxovid, is designed to target the strain of the virus that originally emerged in China. The EMA’s recommendation is for people who previously were inoculated with either the Novavax shot or any other COVID vaccine.
Separately on Thursday, the EMA backed two separate COVID-19 vaccine boosters updated to target the Omicron variant of the virus.
Developed by Moderna and the team of Pfizer (PFE.N) and BioNTech (22UAy.DE), the new so-called bivalent shots combat the BA.1 version of Omicron and the original virus first detected in China.
FDA Clears Updated COVID Vaccines Ahead of Fall Booster Campaign + More
FDA Clears Updated COVID Vaccines Ahead of Fall Booster Campaign
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Wednesday authorized updated COVID-19 booster shots specifically targeting a subvariant of Omicron.
The move comes ahead of a fall campaign to give Americans booster shots, which is expected to launch in the coming days. The move marks the first time the vaccines have been updated since the first shots were cleared at the end of 2020, and the updated shots are designed to catch up to evolutions in the virus.
The shots from Pfizer and Moderna target the Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5, as well as the original virus. The shots can begin going into arms once the final step in the process, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention committee, clears them, which is expected to occur on Thursday.
A major question, though, is how many people will actually want the new shots, given that uptake for the existing booster shots has lagged.
California Won’t Expand Teen Vaccines Without Parental OK
California won’t allow teens age 15 and up to be vaccinated against the coronavirus without their parent’s consent.
State Sen. Scott Wiener, the bill’s author, announced Wednesday he won’t put the measure up for a vote in the state Assembly because it doesn’t have enough support to pass. Minors aged 12 to 17 in California already can receive vaccinations for hepatitis B and HPV, which prevent sexually transmitted diseases, without permission from their parents or guardians.
The bill would have allowed teens 15 and older to receive any vaccine that has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, even if their parents objected.
A coalition of groups opposed to vaccine mandates called it a “blatant, dangerous trampling of California parents’ and guardians’ ability to protect and care for their children.”
WHO: New COVID Cases, Deaths Keep Falling Nearly Everywhere
The number of new coronavirus cases and deaths reported globally continued to fall nearly everywhere in the world in what the World Health Organization described as a “welcome decline” at a media briefing on Wednesday.
The U.N. health agency said there were 4.5 million new COVID-19 cases reported last week, a 16% drop from the previous week. Deaths were also down by 13%, with about 13,500 fatalities. WHO said COVID-19 infections dropped everywhere in the world while deaths decreased everywhere except for Southeast Asia, where they climbed by 15% and in the Western Pacific, where they rose by 3%.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that with the coming onset of winter in the Northern Hemisphere and the possible emergence of a more dangerous new COVID-19 variant, experts expect to see a spike in hospitalizations and deaths. Tedros said vaccination rates, even in rich countries, were still too low, noting that 30% of health workers and 20% of older people remain unimmunized.
How COVID Opened a ‘Pandora’s Box’ of Monkeypox, Polio and Other Diseases
As the world grapples with the reality of living with COVID-19, a rogue’s gallery of deadly pathogens seems to have stepped up the attack. Monkeypox, a close relation to smallpox, is officially a public health emergency worldwide. The current outbreak — the first large one ever outside of Africa — has spread globally to more than 45,000 people, including more than 16,000 confirmed cases in the U.S.
And polio, a disease routinely referred to as “eradicated,” is circulating in and around New York City and London, bringing with it the irreversible paralysis that strikes about one of 200 people infected with the disease.
Why this deadly trend is happening at this particular moment is something of a mystery. The rise in anti-vax sentiment and the politicization of public health during the pandemic hasn’t helped, but a panoply of other factors seems to be in play, too — including, in the case of polio, vaccines themselves.
Omicron Booster Shots Are Coming — With Lots of Questions
For the first time since the start of the pandemic, COVID-19 vaccines look set to receive an update. Boosters reformulated to protect against the Omicron variant, which has dominated globally since early this year, may get deployed on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean as early as this month.
BA.1 is no longer circulating; the BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants eclipsed it in the spring. In June, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) asked manufacturers to develop a booster specifically targeting those two subvariants, and last week, both Moderna and the Pfizer-BioNTech collaboration said they have submitted data about their BA.4/BA.5 vaccines to FDA.
President Joe Biden’s administration has already placed an order for 170 million doses of such vaccines. (Pfizer and BioNTech have also submitted the data to EMA; the European Union could first approve a BA.1-based booster and switch to BA.4/BA.5 vaccines later.)
The data on the updated boosters are limited, however, and the impact they will have if greenlit is unclear. Here are some of the questions surrounding this new generation of vaccines.
U.S. Life Expectancy Plunged Again in 2021, but COVID Deaths Aren’t the Only Reason
U.S. life expectancy dropped for the second consecutive year in 2021, falling by nearly a year from 2020, according to a government report being released Wednesday.
In the first two years of the COVID pandemic, the estimated American lifespan has shortened by nearly three years. The last comparable decrease happened in the early 1940s, during the height of World War II.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials blamed COVID for about half the decline in 2021, a year when vaccinations became widely available but new coronavirus variants caused waves of hospitalizations and deaths. Other contributors to the decline are long-standing problems: drug overdoses, heart disease, suicide and chronic liver disease.
Saskatchewan Kids Aged 5 to 11 Eligible for 3rd COVID Vaccine Dose Starting Wednesday
Saskatchewan children ages five to 11 will officially be eligible to receive their third dose of the COVID-19 vaccine starting on Aug. 31.
According to the province’s most recent COVID-19 report, the number of Saskatchewan children aged five to 11 years old who have received two doses of the vaccine is just over 40%.
Currently, Pfizer is the only vaccine approved by Health Canada for this age group as a booster at this time.
COVID Has Reached Every Corner of the World — but These Three Places Claim to Be Virus-Free
The highly transmissible Omicron variant has whittled down the list of countries that have managed to escape the COVID-19 pandemic so far, breaking through the longstanding defenses of numerous Pacific island nations and forcing an unprecedented admission of crisis in North Korea, leaving just one country and a handful of territories still claiming to be COVID-free.
Turkmenistan, a landlocked country of more than 6 million people in Central Asia, is now the only nation in the world still claiming to be entirely COVID-free.
Tokelau and St Helena, respectively territories of New Zealand and Britain, are the only remaining regions that are claiming to still be COVID-free and have not reported a single case of COVID-19 to the WHO, something aided by their remote locations and strict quarantine procedures.
There’s Some Good News in the Battle Against Long COVID
As a scientist who works every day on the immunology of COVID-19 and long COVID, I’m well aware that, heading into autumn and the return to school, the U.K. faces yet more COVID confusion and disharmony. Where are we headed next? Isn’t it over? And why keep harping on about mitigation when we now have so many other concerns?
Any discussion of our current COVID situation must consider the legacy of disability and misery associated with long COVID. In my opinion, there is now some good news among the old bad news. Over the past few months, Office for National Statistics data shows the estimated number of people with long COVID beginning to fall, from a peak of 2 million in May to about 1.8 million. I take this to mean that some are gradually recovering.
And while long COVID following Omicron BA.5 infection is clearly happening, new cases of long COVID are appearing at a lower frequency. Colleagues in Singapore, a country with a large peak of Omicron infections following a relatively mild early pandemic, mention talk of quiet long COVID clinics without patients.
White House to Boost Monkeypox Vaccination Through Large LGBTQ Events
The Biden administration on Tuesday announced plans to expand the response to the monkeypox outbreak by providing vaccinations and education at large LGBTQ-centered events around the country following a recent pilot program carried out in Charlotte, NC.
Demetre Daskalakis, deputy director for the White House’s national monkeypox response, stated during a briefing that the administration was aiming to make its response more “intentional and targeted.”
Daskalakis said the pilot program that recently took place at Charlotte Pride was a “great success.” Similar programs will be carried out at upcoming events such as Atlanta Black Pride Weekend and Southern Decadence, a nearly weeklong annual LGBTQ festival in New Orleans.
Heart Inflammation Risk for Young Men Higher After Vaccination Than After COVID + More
Heart Inflammation Risk for Young Men Higher After Vaccination Than After COVID: Study
The risk of heart inflammation is higher for men as old as 39 after Moderna COVID-19 vaccination than after COVID-19 infection, according to a new study.
Researchers in England analyzed hospital admissions with myocarditis, a form of health inflammation, among the vaccinated between Dec. 1, 2020, and Dec. 15, 2021.
They estimated that the second dose of Moderna’s vaccine, which is advised for a two-dose primary series, leads to 97 myocarditis cases per million above baseline in the first 28 days after vaccination for men younger than 40. That’s up from 16 additional cases per million of myocarditis after a positive COVID-19 test and before vaccination.
Both the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines have long been associated with heart inflammation, but Moderna’s has been linked with much higher rates.
Scientists Question Moderna Invention Claim in COVID Vaccine Dispute
One of the three inventions claimed by Moderna in a legal battle that has erupted over the messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines against COVID-19 was actually patented years earlier by two university scientists.
In a complaint filed on 26 August in a U.S. district court in Massachusetts, Moderna accuses Pfizer and its partner BioNTech of “co-opting Moderna’s patented inventions” covering different aspects of the two COVID-19 vaccines, which have already earned the companies billions of dollars. Both vaccines rely on mRNA that codes for the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2.
BioNTech issued a statement insisting its COVID-19 vaccine work was “original” and said it “will vigorously defend against all allegations of patent infringement.” In a statement to Science, Pfizer said it had “not yet fully reviewed the complaint but we are surprised by the litigation,” adding that the company is “confident in our intellectual property supporting the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.”
At the heart of Moderna’s patent infringement claim are the steps that opened the door for mRNA as a vaccine. Drew Weissman and Katalin Karikó, both at the University of Pennsylvania (Karikó now also works for BioNTech), published the fundamental discovery in 2005: They showed that altering one of the fundamental building blocks of mRNA, the nucleotide uridine, made the molecule less toxic and also more capable of dodging immune destruction.
FDA Expected to Authorize Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech Omicron Boosters
For those who’ve put off a COVID vaccine booster in hopes of getting a shot tailor-made for the Omicron subvariants that have ripped across the country, the wait may soon be over.
The FDA is expected to authorize a pair of booster shots targeting what appear to be the virus’ most contagious strains as soon as Wednesday, three people with knowledge of the matter told POLITICO.
The move would set the stage for the Biden administration to begin offering the reformulated vaccine shortly after Labor Day, in a bid to bolster Americans’ protection against a potential COVID resurgence later this year.
The government plans to roll out a combined 175 million doses of the new boosters developed by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, with Moderna’s shot available to all adults and Pfizer’s offered to those 12 and older, according to a federal planning guide published earlier this month.
Healthcare — White House Fall Booster Push Faces Challenges
Taylor Swift announced her new album last night at the VMA’s and the internet is collectively “screaming, crying, throwing up” over the news.
The White House is gearing up to launch a COVID-19 booster campaign this fall to prevent another major surge, but convincing vaccine holdouts to get another dose will be far from easy.
The challenge: Administration officials say these new vaccines will be key to controlling a potential fall surge, but they will need to convince an increasingly checked-out public to get the shots.
High Percentage of COVID Deaths Had 3rd Shot, More Excess Deaths After 4th Shot
Currently, many countries around the world are promoting the second COVID-19 vaccine booster shots for the elderly, many of whom have already received their first booster shots. Under these circumstances, the transparency and openness of information about the safety of booster shots has become a very important issue.
Amid this discussion, recently, data on the numbers of COVID-19 infections and deaths after vaccine booster injections in two Canadian provinces have been removed.
The author of a Letter to the Editor published in the Prince George Citizen, a long-standing Canadian newspaper, commented, “If you look at the statistics from the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC) site, you will see that there is zero scientific evidence for keeping the vaccine passport in place.”
However, on July 28, 2022, the BCCDC website indicated that their “outcomes by vaccination status” data would be removed as of that date. At present, this data is no longer available on its website.
Increased Disease Potential of COVID Variant BA.5 Currently Circulating in the United States
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, many iterations of the SARS-CoV-2 virus have dominated over others. The B.1 variant of 2020 was overtaken by the Alpha variant in early 2021. Alpha was overcome by Delta later that Summer. Next, Delta was pushed aside for Omicron BA.1 in late 2021, followed by BA.2 shortly thereafter. Now, BA.5 dominates the global virus landscape.
There are two driving forces behind the success of a SARS-CoV-2 variant over another. The first is a variant’s ability to infect those previously infected or vaccinated and the second are the virus’s intrinsic pathogenic properties. Here we focus on the latter, specifically in reference to the latest Omicron variants.
A recent study by Tamura et al. focuses on the latter, specifically on how Omicron subvariants, including BA.5, compare pathogenetically to earlier virus variants.
Understanding the pathogenic dynamics of emerging variants may inform drug and vaccine development, treatment regimens for those with moderate to severe disease, and surveillance for variants yet to come.
With Enough Monkeypox Vaccine Finally in Hand, U.S. Seeks to Make More Shots at Home
After securing enough doses in the national stockpile to vaccinate the most at-risk Americans against monkeypox, the federal government says it has begun training its sights on the next steps of the outbreak.
“We’re watching this very, very closely and will be prepared to move out against any outbreak that might happen in additional populations,” Assistant Secretary for Response and Preparedness Dawn O’Connell told ABC News.
“If we begin to see an outbreak in a college campus, we will make vaccines available on that college campus — absolutely,” said O’Connell, who leads monkeypox response within the Department of Health and Human Services.
Monkeypox Outbreak Can Be Eliminated in Europe, WHO Says
It is possible to eliminate the monkeypox outbreak in Europe, World Health Organization officials said on Tuesday, highlighting evidence that case counts are slowing in a handful of countries.
There are encouraging signs of a sustained week-on-week decline in the onset of cases in many European countries, including France, Germany, Portugal, Spain and Britain, as well as a slowdown in some parts of the United States, despite scarce vaccine supplies.
Small Study Supports TPOXX as Monkeypox Treatment
U.S. News & World Report reported:
The drug tecovirimat appears to be safe and effective for treating the symptoms and skin lesions of monkeypox, a small study suggests.
Tecovirimat (TPOXX) is an antiviral drug for the treatment of smallpox. It works by limiting the spread of the virus in the body. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has allowed doctors to prescribe tecovirimat on a “compassionate use basis” to treat adults and children with orthopoxvirus infections, including monkeypox.
“We have very limited clinical data on the use of tecovirimat for monkeypox infection. There is much to learn about the natural progression of the disease and how tecovirimat and other antivirals may affect it,” researcher Dr. Angel Desai said in a news release from the University of California, Davis. She is an infectious disease specialist at the university.
Latest COVID Booster Shots Will Be Released Before Human Testing Is Complete + More
Latest COVID Booster Shots Will Be Released Before Human Testing Is Complete
The Food and Drug Administration is expected to approve new COVID-19 booster shots this week — before the vaccines are tested on humans, according to a new report by The Wall Street Journal. The new boosters are similar to the COVID vaccines currently available in the U.S. with minor modifications that protect recipients from the latest version of the Omicron variant.
Instead of waiting on data from testing in humans, the agency will use data from trials in mice — as well as the real-world evidence of the safety of currently available COVID vaccines and test results from earlier iterations of boosters targeting older strains to evaluate the newest boosters, FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf said.
Some health experts are wary of the decision to release the shots without completed human trials. In June, two experts penned an op-ed demanding that the FDA not rush through the roll-out of the newest shots.
“I’m uncomfortable that we would move forward — that we would give millions or tens of millions of doses to people — based on mouse data,” one of the authors, Paul Offit, told the Journal.
Moderna’s COVID Vaccine Lawsuit Looks Ahead to Future Markets
Moderna‘s unexpected patent infringement lawsuit against Pfizer and BioNTech over COVID vaccine technology says more about the future market for mRNA shots than the current state of the pandemic. With the federal government’s vaccine purchases likely to drop off, experts see top manufacturers jockeying for customers and using the technology for other conditions.
“Moderna looks at Pfizer’s success as a threat to market share,” said Jacob Sherkow, an authority on intellectual property and the life sciences University of Illinois’ College of Law and College of Medicine. “Filing suit may slow that down and be one way to ensure Moderna’s share of the product is going to remain a leader in this particular space.”
Moderna has said it is using its mRNA platform in four areas: infectious disease, cancer, rare diseases and autoimmune disorders.
“They’re trying to protect the franchise,” Erik Gordon, a University of Michigan business professor, lawyer and expert on the drug industry, told Axios’ Nathan Bomey. “They do want money — but I think the bigger money is money they hope to get in the future based on this platform.”
Annual COVID Boosters May Not Be Good Use of Resources: AstraZeneca Boss
Annual booster vaccination against COVID-19 may not be “a good use of resources,” the boss of major vaccine maker AstraZeneca has said.
The U.K. health authorities are offering a booster jab to everyone over the age of 50 to protect them from COVID-19 and other respiratory diseases this winter.
But Pascal Soriot, AstraZeneca’s chief executive officer, said that he is unclear on whether “boosting people every year is that critical.” In an interview with The Telegraph, Soriot said he believes most of the vaccinated population has a “foundation immunity against severe disease” at this point.
On boosting people every year, he said, “I’m not sure it’s a really good use of money, because most of the people now who catch it will just have symptoms if they get COVID, and that’s it.”
Biden’s COVID Plan Could Lead to Soaring Rates of Vaccine Fatigue
The Biden administration’s reported plans to stop buying COVID vaccines and turn availability over to the private sector could make vaccine uptake worse, experts have said.
On August 16, CNN reported that Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House’s COVID response coordinator, said at an event that the government was working on getting out of the “acute emergency phase” of the pandemic in which it was buying vaccines, treatments and tests for the public to use for free. Instead, these products would move to the regular U.S. healthcare system.
At the same time, Jha added the government had raised money to buy updated booster shots for the BA.5 variant, which he expected to be ready in early- to mid-September and urged all U.S. citizens to get them once they’re available.
“Even with the currently freely available vaccines, we are having difficulty breaking through the ‘vaccine fatigue’ to get people to accept boosters,” said Dr. William Schaffner, professor of preventive medicine in the Department of Health Policy at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.
Rockefeller Foundation Wants Behavioral Scientists to Come up With More Convincing COVID Vaxx Narratives
In yet another sign that the COVID vaccination agenda of globalist institutions did not do quite as well as they had originally hoped, the Rockefeller Foundation has revealed that it (along with other non-profits) has been pumping millions of dollars into a behavioral science project meant to figure out why large groups of people around the world refuse to take the jab.
The “Mercury Project” is a collective of behavioral scientists formed by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), a non-profit group that receives considerable funding from globalist organizations and governments. The stated goals of the project are rather non-specific, using ambiguous language and mission statements. However, the root intentions appear to be focused on using behavioral psychology and mass psychology elements to understand the global resistance to the recent COVID compliance efforts.
Mercury groups will be deployed in multiple nations and regions and will study vaccine refusal and the medical “disinformation” that leads to it. They are operating with the intent to tailor vaccination narratives to fit different ethnic and political backgrounds, looking for the key to the gates of each cultural kingdom and convincing them to take the jab.
‘A Collective Trauma’: COVID Keeps Its Grip on Mental Health of Many Patients
Eric Wood, a mental health professional who leads virtual support groups for Indiana judges and attorneys, can look at a screen full of heads nodding in reaction to what someone said and know that the meeting is providing some relief for participants who have struggled during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Wood, who lives in Indianapolis, can also see how his wife, Diane Keller Wood, has made gradual improvements in her recovery from long COVID’s significant effects on her mental and physical health.
Still, Keller Wood and the jurists, like millions of other Americans, have not fully recovered from the mental health problems connected to the pandemic and the surrounding societal upheaval over the last two and a half years.
While there are indications that, at least among U.S. adults, the rates of anxiety and depression have decreased from the spikes seen during the first year of the pandemic, they still remain higher than before COVID, and there still aren’t enough psychiatrists and therapists.
Biden Administration to Stop Sending Free At-Home COVID Tests Friday
The government will end its giveaway of COVID-19 at-home tests Friday because of insufficient congressional funding, a senior Biden administration official said Sunday.
A stockpile of the tests is being depleted, and officials want to have enough on hand in the event of a fall surge, the source said.
The giveaway, which includes tests mailed at no cost to recipients who request them at Covidtests.gov, will end Friday, according to an announcement on the site — unless there’s a surprise round of funding from Congress, the source said.
Struggling With Long COVID? Here’s What Experts Say You Should — and Should Not — Eat
Fatigue, brain fog, heart palpitations and breathing difficulties. Those are just some of the common symptoms of “long COVID” that can affect people in the long term after recovery from infection, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
Long COVID is essentially post-infection conditions that could linger for weeks, months or years — long after a person tests negative for COVID-19. It can also be referred to as post-COVID conditions or chronic COVID.
Experts who spoke to CNBC Make It said there’s still a lot to learn about long COVID, but nutrition plays a vital role in feeling better.
CNBC Make It finds out what you should and shouldn’t eat if you think you have long COVID.
U.S. Government to Provide $11 Million for Production of Monkeypox Vaccine
The U.S. government said on Monday it would provide about $11 million to support the packaging of Bavarian Nordic’s (BAVA.CO) Jynneos monkeypox vaccine at a U.S.-based manufacturer’s facility.
The Denmark-based company, which is the maker of the only approved monkeypox vaccine, had earlier this month signed up Michigan-based Grand River Aseptic Manufacturing to package the shot.
More than 90 countries where monkeypox is not endemic have reported outbreaks of the viral disease. Globally, the number of confirmed cases has crossed 47,600 with over 17,000 cases reported in the United States so far.
CDC Cautiously Optimistic That Monkeypox Outbreak Might Be Slowing as Cases Fall in Major Cities
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is cautiously optimistic that the U.S. is slowing the spread of monkeypox as new cases fall in several major cities.
“We’re watching this with cautious optimism, and really hope that many of our harm-reduction messages and our vaccines are getting out there and working,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told reporters Friday during an update on the monkeypox outbreak.
Although monkeypox cases are still increasing nationally, the speed of the outbreak appears to be slowing, Walensky said. The U.S. has reported nearly 17,000 monkeypox cases since May, more than any other country in the world, according to CDC data.