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Covid News Watch
Moderna Completes FDA Submission for Use of COVID Shot in Adolescents, Kids + More
Moderna Completes FDA Submission for Use of COVID Shot in Adolescents, Kids
Moderna Inc. (MRNA.O) has made all necessary submissions required by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration for emergency use authorization of its COVID-19 vaccine in adolescents and children, it said on Wednesday.
The company is seeking approval for the use of its vaccines in three distinct age groups — adolescents aged 12 to 17 years, children aged six to 11 and those between six years and six months. The submissions for all three groups were made on May 9, it said.
Although Moderna’s vaccine is approved by the FDA for use in adults 18 years and older, its use in other age groups has hit a roadblock as U.S. regulators have sought more safety data.
Australia, Canada and the European Union though have approved the vaccine for use in six- to 17-year-olds.
NIH Director Confirms Agency Hid Early COVID Genes at Request of Chinese Scientists
National Institutes of Health acting director Lawrence Tabak confirmed to lawmakers Wednesday that U.S. health officials concealed early genomic sequences of COVID-19 at the request of Chinese scientists — but insisted the data remains on file.
Tabak told a House Appropriations subcommittee that the NIH “eliminated from public view” the data from the pandemic epicenter in Wuhan, China, before adding that researchers can still access it via an archaic “tape drive.”
Bill Gates Is so Over This Pandemic
When Bill Gates took the stage at this year’s TED conference, he proposed a permanent team of 3,000 people around the globe called GERM — Global Epidemic Response and Mobilization. The group would monitor potential outbreaks, develop close relationships with public health officials around the world, and oversee drills to prepare for the inevitable — and potentially even worse — sequels to COVID.
The insistent optimism he brought to this idea and much of his speech was nothing like the bleak alarm of his 2015 TED talk, a jeremiad about our lack of preparedness for an imminent pandemic. That presentation has garnered 43 million views on the TED site; unfortunately, he says, 90% of them came after COVID made his prediction tragically accurate.
Still, it wasn’t until I sat down with Gates a few hours after this year’s speech that I realized how fully his attention has shifted away from what, to my mind at least, is an ongoing crisis. He even took it in stride that conference-goers had to make their way past anti-vaxxers calling for his imprisonment and worse.
He was doggedly upbeat, not just about pandemics but in his view of the state of the world, which, it turns out, is much sunnier than mine.
U.S. Licenses Key COVID Vaccine Technology to WHO so Other Countries Can Develop Shots
President Joe Biden on Thursday said the U.S. has licensed a key technology used in the current COVID-19 vaccines to the World Health Organization, which would allow manufacturers around the world to work with the global health agency to develop their own shots against the virus.
The National Institutes of Health has licensed its stabilized spike protein technology to the WHO and United Nations’ Medicines Patent Pool, Biden said.
The decision to share the vaccine technology comes ahead of a virtual global COVID-19 summit that the U.S. is co-hosting Thursday. Though the spike protein technology is crucial, the vaccines also include other components — some of which are proprietary to the companies.
U.S., Foreign Officials to Announce $3.1 Billion in New COVID Funding
U.S. and world officials will announce Thursday $3.1 billion in new funding for the global COVID fight, according to two senior administration officials.
The announcement will take place at the Biden administration’s second Global COVID Summit in which top officials, including Vice President Kamala Harris, are set to appear with global organizations, nonprofits and foreign representatives working to ramp up vaccinations and expand access to therapeutics to fight the virus. Officials from Spain, France, Indonesia, South Korea, Canada and the European Commission are expected to participate.
The bulk of the funding pledges is set to come from international officials. Last month, Congress failed to approve $5 billion in additional global COVID funding meant to help get shots in arms worldwide. There was a chance that funding was going to be included in another Ukraine supplemental package.
But this week, President Joe Biden said he believed a package that included COVID funding would slow down the approval process and that the two measures would have to be separated, with a COVID package potentially moving through at a later date.
WHO: COVID Falling Everywhere, Except Americas and Africa
The number of new coronavirus cases reported worldwide has continued to fall except in the Americas and Africa, the World Health Organization said in its latest assessment of the pandemic.
The downward trend in reported infections began in March, although many countries have dismantled their widespread testing and surveillance programs, making an accurate count of cases extremely difficult.
WHO said there were only two regions where reported COVID-19 infections increased: the Americas, by 14%, and Africa, by 12%. Cases remained stable in the Western Pacific and fell everywhere else, the agency said.
Guardians Hit With COVID Outbreak, Manager Francona Out
The Cleveland Guardians are dealing with a COVID-19 outbreak that has sidelined manager Terry Francona and several of the team’s coaches, leading to the postponement of Wednesday’s game against the Chicago White Sox.
Shortly after Francona’s positive test became known, Major League Baseball said there were “multiple positive COVID-19 tests” in Cleveland’s organization and called off Wednesday’s series finale to allow for more testing and contact tracing. No makeup date has been announced.
Half of COVID-Hospitalized Still Symptomatic Two Years on, Study Finds
More than half of people hospitalized with COVID-19 still have at least one symptom two years after they were first infected, according to the longest follow-up study of its kind.
While physical and mental health generally improves over time, the analysis suggests that coronavirus patients discharged from hospitals still tend to experience poorer health and quality of life than the general population. The research was published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine.
WHO Says Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 Subvariants Have Spread to Over a Dozen Countries
Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 have been detected in more than a dozen countries, helping fuel sporadic COVID outbreaks across the world, but the heavily mutated strains are still circulating at low levels, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.
Less than 700 cases of BA.4 have been detected across at least 16 countries and more than 300 cases of BA.5 have been found across at least 17 countries, WHO’s technical lead on COVID Maria Van Kerkhove said during a Q&A on the organization’s social media platforms.
While the two sublineages don’t make people sicker than the original Omicron strain, they appear to be more contagious, Van Kerkhove said. She noted the WHO will monitor BA.4 and BA.5 to determine if they will eventually overtake BA.2 as the dominant strain worldwide.
Long COVID May Be Chronic, Require Anti-Inflammatory Meds: Study
U.S. News & World Report reported:
New evidence suggests that long COVID patients suffer rampant inflammation that wracks the entire body — and that easing that inflammation could be key to saving their lives.
Severe systemic inflammation during hospitalization for COVID increases the risk of dying within a year after the patient seemingly recovers, University of Florida researchers found.
Patients prescribed anti-inflammatory steroids had a lower risk of death post-discharge than those who didn’t receive the meds, researchers said, although that remains a controversial idea.
Growing Share of COVID Deaths Are Among Vaccinated People + More
Growing Share of COVID Deaths Are Among Vaccinated People, but Booster Shots Substantially Lower the Risk
Since COVID-19 vaccines became widely available, there has been a wide gap in deaths between the vaccinated and unvaccinated. But recent COVID deaths are much more evenly split as highly transmissible variants take hold, vaccine protection wanes and booster uptake stagnates.
Breakthrough infections have become more common in recent months, putting vulnerable populations at increased risk of severe disease or death as more and more transmissible variants continue to spread. This seems to be especially true for seniors in the United States, who were among the first to get their initial vaccine series.
COVID-Era Babies Are ‘Talking’ Less, Signaling Future Reading Challenges
We know the pandemic has had a serious negative impact on the academic achievement of school-age children. But recent evidence shows we also need to worry about COVID-era babies and toddlers.
Because of COVID-related disruptions, about a third of early elementary students will likely need intensive support to become proficient readers, according to one study. Now two additional studies suggest that many children born during the pandemic will also be at risk for academic failure.
It seems that overburdened parents haven’t been able to engage babies and toddlers in the kind of “conversation” that is crucial for language development — and eventually, for reading.
Both of the recent studies relied on an innovative piece of technology that enables researchers to determine how much verbal interaction young children experience.
Gun-Related Homicides Soar to a Level Unseen in 21st Century — Data Revealed A ‘Widening of Some Longstanding Disparities,’ Says CDC Researcher
Homicides involving firearms during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic reached the highest rates the country has seen in more than a quarter-century, according to new CDC data.
From 2019 to 2020, gun-related homicides increased from 14,392 to 19,350, representing a 35% increase (4.6 to 6.1 per 100,000 persons), reported Thomas Simon, Ph.D., of CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC), and colleagues in Vital Signs.
The increased rate of gun homicides was “pervasive,” affecting both rural and metropolitan areas alike, males and females, and all age groups, Simon said, with the greatest increases seen among those ages 10 to 44, males, and in Middle Atlantic states and large metropolitan areas.
While the study was not designed to address whether the pandemic was responsible for the increase in homicides, “disruptions to services and education, social isolation, economic stressors such as job loss, housing instability and difficulty covering daily expenses,” may have played a role, said Simon.
In 2021, U.S. Drug Overdose Deaths Hit Highest Level on Record, CDC Data Shows
Drug overdoses in the United States were deadlier than ever in 2021, according to provisional data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Nearly 108,000 people died of drug overdoses in 2021, and about two-thirds of those deaths involved fentanyl or another synthetic opioid.
Overdose deaths have been on the rise for years in the U.S. but surged amid the COVID-19 pandemic: Annual deaths were nearly 50% higher in 2021 than in 2019, CDC data shows.
The spike in overdose deaths in the second year of the pandemic wasn’t quite as dramatic as in the first year: Overdose deaths were up about 15% between 2020 and 2021, compared with a 30% jump between 2019 and 2020.
‘Significant Uptick’ in California Coronavirus Outbreaks Brings New Warnings
Coronavirus conditions are likely to worsen, with case rates continuing to rise and hospitalizations starting to increase, according to the top health official in the San Francisco Bay Area’s most populous county.
“We are also seeing a pretty significant uptick in reports of outbreaks, from schools, worksites and other congregate facilities,” Dr. Sara Cody, the Santa Clara County public health director and health officer, said at a news conference Tuesday. “Many of them are related to social gatherings. It’s spring — school is ending and people are gathering, and COVID is spreading.”
“Even if you got Omicron during the Omicron surge, you can still get COVID again, unfortunately,” Cody said.
NY COVID Rates Keep Rising; Gov. Hochul Calls Tests ‘Critical Tool’
With yet another virus wave testing New Yorkers’ patience with the 25-month-old pandemic, Gov. Hochul on Tuesday called on people across the state to keep using test swabs to stop the spread.
The governor herself tested positive for the virus on Sunday, caught in a spring surge that has been marked by a drumbeat of symptom-light cases among vaccinated and boosted Americans, but has nonetheless driven death tolls higher in New York recently.
Hyper-infectious subvariants of the Omicron strain continue to circulate, and the weeklong statewide case rate has roughly doubled over the last month, according to state data.
Doctors Say These Pandemic Side Effects Are Serious Problems — and Unlikely ‘to Go Away Anytime Soon’
In September 2021, I collapsed from exhaustion.
My vision went blurry. Then, my eyelids grew so heavy that I could barely keep them up for milliseconds at a time. Panicked, I stumbled approximately 50 yards toward a nearby friend and slumped over her shoulders. She guided me to a shady spot under a tree, where I floated in and out of consciousness for about two hours.
As far as I knew, I was a healthy guy in my late 20s with no known risks of major health issues.
Curious if I was alone, I spoke with a half-dozen medical experts in fields ranging from internal medicine and oncology to dermatology and podiatry. All of them said that in recent months, they’ve seen upticks in health issues that don’t involve contracting the COVID-19 virus but are caused by the pandemic nonetheless.
Sarah Breithaupt: Pandemic Years Have Hit Teens Hard, Especially in DuPage County. But There’s Reason to Hope.
Rarely has an entire population of young people suffered collectively with what is known as an adverse childhood experience, or ACE, a traumatic event with potentially lasting impacts on mental and physical health.
It is safe to say the COVID-19 pandemic is the latest adverse experience shared by many people, joining such historical events as the Sept. 11 attacks, the Great Depression and both world wars. Typically, ACEs are experienced individually or within families, such as domestic violence, neglect and parents who divorce, die or abuse substances.
While the immediate effects of such experiences can be sudden, traumatic and disruptive, the long-range effects are less well known and slowly revealed. Many adults point to ACEs as the reason for personal and lifelong challenges.
More recently, COVID-19 has caused spikes in depression, anxiety, suicide and suicide attempts, which is interrupting normal childhood development and overwhelming mental health care providers. The rate of depression among DuPage County teens, pre-pandemic, was already double the national average of 15.7% for adolescents, as reported in the 2019 National Survey on Drug Use and Health.
Smell, Taste Loss Less Likely With Newer COVID Variants: Study
U.S. News & World Report reported:
Since the early days of the pandemic, loss of smell and taste have been tied to COVID-19 infection. But a new study shows those telltale traits are much less likely with the Omicron variant than with the earlier Alpha and Delta versions of the coronavirus.
The findings are significant in determining whether someone has COVID-19, said lead study author Dr. Daniel Coelho. He is a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, in Richmond.
Rates of smell and taste loss were 17% for Omicron, compared with 44% for Delta and 50% for Alpha, the investigators found.
WHO Calls on Pfizer to Make Its COVID Pill More Available
The head of the World Health Organization called on Pfizer to make its COVID-19 treatment more widely available in poorer countries, saying Tuesday that the pharmaceutical company’s deal allowing generic producers to make the drug was insufficient.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a news briefing that Pfizer’s treatment was still too expensive. He noted that most countries in Latin America had no access to Pfizer’s drug, Paxlovid, which has been shown to cut the risk of COVID-19 hospitalization or death by up to 90%.
South Africa Cuts Back COVID Vaccine Drive Amid Citizen Apathy
South Africa is scaling back its COVID-19 vaccination drive and may have to destroy doses because of a lack of demand from citizens even as the country heads into the fifth wave of infections.
Take up has slowed to the point where keeping some sites running is unaffordable, said Nicholas Crisp, deputy director-general at the department of health and the person in charge of the program. COVID-19 vaccinations will need to be incorporated into South Africa’s standard medical programs, which means these specific shots will be less accessible, he said.
“No one is arriving” to get shots, Crisp said in an interview on Monday. “The numbers are just terrible.”
New Versions of Omicron Are Masters of Immune Evasion
Once again, South Africa is at the forefront of the changing COVID-19 pandemic. Epidemiologists and virologists are watching closely as cases there rise sharply again, just 5 months after the Omicron variant caused a dramatic surge. This time, the drivers are two new subvariants of Omicron named BA.4 and BA.5, which the Network for Genomic Surveillance in South Africa first detected in January.
The new strains didn’t have much of an impact initially, but over the past few weeks case numbers in South Africa jumped from roughly 1,000 per day on April 17 to nearly 10,000 on May 7. A third subvariant called BA.2.12.1 is spreading in the United States, driving increases along the East Coast.
It’s still unclear whether the new subvariants will cause another global COVID-19 wave. But like the earlier versions of Omicron, they have a remarkable ability to evade immunity from vaccines, previous infection, or both — a disturbing portent for the future of the pandemic and a potentially serious complication for vaccine developers.
COVID Cases Explode After White House Media Dinner Becomes Superspreader Event + More
COVID Cases Explode After White House Media Dinner Becomes Superspreader Event
Cases of COVID-19 among attendees to the White House correspondents’ dinner two weekends ago continue to mount, as the fully vaccinated and boosted ‘elites’ who condescended to non-compliant Americans participated in a superspreader event.
As The Hill notes, “High-profile cases following the dinner include ABC reporter Jonathan Karl, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and reporters from The Washington Post, Voice of America and other outlets.”
“The cases have also played into an ongoing debate, with some arguing that the current era of COVID-19 allows vaccinated and boosted people to decide to attend large gatherings even if it means a small risk, while others are more cautious, pointing to the downstream effects on other people of increased transmission,” reports The Hill.
It’s not a debate over whether large gatherings are a good idea since the dominant strain of COVID is only slightly more deadly than the common cold and the vast majority of people will make it through COVID-19 without issue. The point is that those who refused to play the lockdown game were chastised by the very people at this superspreader event.
Fauci, Collins Shared In ‘Secret’ NIH ‘Royalties’ Totaling $350 Million: Watchdog Report
Anthony Fauci, Francis Collins and other bigwigs at the National Institutes of Health reaped more than $350 million in secretive “royalty” payments from drug companies and other third parties over a 10-year period, according to an explosive new report from a watchdog organization.
The report from OpenTheBooks.com said the royalty payments, including at least 23 to Fauci and 14 to his former boss, Collins, were paid out between 2010 and 2020. Government scientists got the payments for being credited as “co-inventors” of various treatments and pharmaceutical products, according to the report.
The report paints an incestuous picture of the NIH doling out $30 billion a year in grants to some 56,000 recipients in Big Pharma, research institutes and other entities, with money flowing back to the secretive agency’s scientists and senior management in the form of huge royalty payments. It is not yet known how much the payments to Fauci, who is the U.S. government highest-salaried employee at $456,028, totaled.
A Company With an Early Contract to Produce Coronavirus Vaccine Hid Evidence of Problems
Emergent BioSolutions, a longtime government contractor hired to produce hundreds of millions of coronavirus vaccine doses, hid evidence of quality control problems from Food and Drug Administration inspectors in February 2021 — six weeks before it alerted federal officials that 15 million doses had been contaminated.
The report, released Tuesday morning by the House and the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, said that all told, nearly 400 million doses of coronavirus vaccine manufactured by Emergent had to be destroyed “due to poor quality control,” including about 240 million doses in late 2020 and early 2021. Previous estimates of lost vaccine were far lower; no contaminated doses were ever released to the public.
The State of the Teen Mental Health Crisis — and How to Help
Never have so many kids reported being so sad and stressed. The American Academy of Pediatrics declared the mental health crisis among children and teens a national emergency.
Consider these troubling stats, reported by Axios healthcare editor Tina Reed.
More than 40% of teens said they persistently felt sad or hopeless during 2021, a CDC survey found. The same survey found increased use of alcohol and drugs during the shutdown. 55% reported emotional abuse from a parent or other adult in the home. Over 10% reported physical abuse.
DC Hasn’t Reported Daily COVID Case Counts to the CDC Since April 27
The DC health department has not shared data with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention since April 27 on the number of new coronavirus cases in the District or on any deaths from the virus, as cases inch upward again elsewhere in the region.
The District stopped reporting daily case data on its own website two months ago, saying it was time to treat coronavirus less like an emergency and more like an endemic illness, but it continued providing case counts to the CDC — which makes the data public — on a sporadic but fairly frequent basis. That stopped April 27, and local officials have not answered questions from reporters about why.
On Monday, a spokeswoman for DC Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) said the city health department is looking into why its normal practice of reporting numbers to the CDC has stopped. The CDC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Alberta Sees ‘Massive Increase’ in Deaths Among Youth During Pandemic: Study
Alberta logged a “massive increase” in deaths from causes other than COVID-19 among youth during the pandemic, a recent study has found. “Increase in all-cause excess deaths was proportionately higher, and in significantly greater numbers, in the younger age groups,” the study read.
“Although older adults are more likely to die of COVID-19, there was massive increase in non-COVID-19 related mortality among the youth. These should be factored in public policy decisions on epidemic/pandemic management.”
The abstract was published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases and written by five Alberta Health Services officials.
Rare Cases of COVID Returning Pose Questions for Pfizer Pill
As more doctors prescribe Pfizer’s powerful COVID-19 pill, new questions are emerging about its performance, including why a small number of patients appear to relapse after taking the drug.
Paxlovid has become the go-to option against COVID-19 because of its at-home convenience and impressive results in heading off severe disease. The U.S. government has spent more than $10 billion to purchase enough pills to treat 20 million people.
But experts say there is still much to be learned about the drug, which was authorized in December for adults at high risk of severe COVID-19 based on a study in which 1,000 adults received the medication.
Biden Administration Warns of Impacts to Updated Vaccine Production as It Pushes Lawmakers for More COVID Funding
The Biden administration is ramping up its warnings of a potential fall and winter surge should Congress fail to pass additional COVID-19 supplemental funding, warning of effects to the production of updated vaccines, as well as other potential consequences to testing and treatments.
The warning comes as scientists are working to develop new vaccines that would offer additional protection from infection and severe illness from new variants. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration will make a decision as soon as June on an updated new vaccine, senior administration official told CNN on Monday, based on data from manufacturers Moderna and Pfizer.
That vaccine would be used in the fall and winter, the official said, but warned there will not be resources to procure and distribute a bivalent vaccine — a vaccine that would combine a currently approved vaccine with an Omicron-specific vaccine, for example — without additional funding from Congress.
U.S. To Ask World for More on Global COVID Fight as Its Own Cash Dwindles
The White House is hosting a global COVID response summit this week — but the U.S. isn’t currently prepared to bring significant new money to fight the virus worldwide, according to two people familiar with the preparations.
Some senior administration officials and health advocates said they fear the world will see the lack of renewed financial assistance by the U.S. as a retreat from the global efforts, and that could affect the Biden administration’s ability to drum up support from other countries.
Novavax Posts First Profitable Quarter as COVID Vaccine Rolls out Around the World
Novavax on Monday reported its first profitable quarter as its COVID vaccine rolls out across several countries around the world, though the company still missed earnings and revenue expectations.
Novavax reported net income of $203 million in the first quarter, compared to a net loss of $222.7 million the same period last year. The company reiterated its 2022 revenue guidance of $4 billion to $5 billion.
Novavax anticipates the FDA will authorize the shots for adults ages 18 and older as a two-dose primary vaccination series this summer, according to Erck. The company is currently in negotiations with the U.S. government on how it can meet demand after authorization, CEO Stanley Erck said.
Norway Discards COVID Vaccines as Supplies Exceed Demand
Norwegian health authorities said Tuesday that the country has a surplus of COVID-19 vaccines and has already discarded more than 137,000 doses because there is declining demand in low-income countries.
The Norwegian Institute of Public Health said it plans a further disposal of doses if global demand does not change. In Norway there is high vaccine coverage while globally a demand for donations has fallen.
“For the first time during the pandemic, the supply now exceeds the demand for COVID-19 vaccine doses,” the agency said, adding that situation also applies to most European Union countries. Norway is not a member of the EU.
Nicole Audia Says Johnson & Johnson Vaccine Sent Her Health Into a Tailspin + More
Nicole Audia Says Johnson & Johnson Vaccine Sent Her Health Into a Tailspin
The FDA announced strict new restrictions on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine due to the risk of rare and life-threatening blood clots. Now it’s only recommended for people who can’t get another vaccine or otherwise won’t be vaccinated at all.
CBS2’s Jessica Moore spoke with a woman who says she wishes she knew about the side effects sooner. From smiling with her family to an agonizing hospital stay, 51-year-old Nicole Audia says the Johnson & Johnson vaccine sent her into a physical tailspin.
“I was in the hospital for six weeks, out of work for 10. My heart will never be the same, and that stinks,” Audia said.
Audia, a mother from Hopewell Junction, says two weeks after getting the J&J vaccine she had a stroke. Her hair fell out in clumps, and doctors injected her with massive amounts of steroids to help calm her body’s extreme reaction.
Data Shows Vaccinated U.S. Citizens Made up More Than 40% of COVID Deaths During Omicron Peak, as Deaths Continue to Rise in Wisconsin
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported:
The state is experiencing an uptick in newly reported deaths, hospitalizations and cases as new data analysis shows that this is not just a pandemic of the unvaccinated.
The pandemic’s toll is no longer falling almost exclusively on those who chose not to or could not get shots, a Washington Post analysis that was published late last month found.
During the Omicron variant surge, the vaccinated made up 42% of deaths in January and February, compared with 23% of the dead in September, the peak of the Delta wave, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Nationwide data also shows that the majority of COVID deaths are among elderly citizens. Nearly two-thirds of the people who died during the Omicron surge were 75 and older, according to a Post analysis, compared with a third during the Delta wave.
‘I Felt so Alone’: Rising Rates of Suicide, Depression Accelerated by Pandemic Among U.S. Kids
The U.S. surgeon general has called it an ‘urgent public health crisis’ — a devastating decline in the mental health of kids across the country. According to the CDC, the rates of suicide, self-harm, anxiety and depression are up among adolescents — a trend that began before the pandemic.
Tonight, we’ll take you to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a community trying to help its kids navigate a mental health crisis. Wisconsin has the fifth-highest increase of adolescent self-harm and attempted suicide in the country, with rates nearly doubling since before the pandemic.
In the emergency room at Children’s Hospital in Milwaukee, doctors like Michelle Pickett are seeing more kids desperate for mental health help.
Bill Gates: COVID ‘Disease of Elderly,’ ‘Low Fatality Rate’ — ‘Kind of Like the Flu’
Bill Gates isn’t an immunologist and he doesn’t even play one on TV. But the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft has immersed himself in the study of the world’s problems and donated billions of dollars to tackle the scourge of malaria in Africa through his philanthropic foundation. So when he speaks, people listen, which makes what he said last week about COVID-19 interesting.
“It wasn’t until early February, when I was in a meeting, that experts of the foundation, said ‘there’s no way” that COVID-19 could have been contained,” he said. “At that point, we didn’t really understand the fatality rate. We didn’t understand that it’s a fairly low fatality rate and that it’s a disease mainly of the elderly, kind of like the flu, although it’s a bit different than that,” Gates said.
Gates also had something to say about the latest variant of the virus and the efficacy of vaccines. “Once Omicron comes along, the vaccine is not reducing transmission, hardly at all, particularly about three or four months after you take the vaccine,” he said.
His comments came after top officials at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said much the same thing, that COVID-19 is now akin to the flu.
FDA: Americans Should Treat COVID Like the Flu
Several top Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials, including Commissioner Robert Califf, admitted that Americans will now have to accept COVID-19 as another respiratory virus, comparing it to influenza.
Califf, Principal Deputy Commissioner Janet Woodcock, and top vaccine official Dr. Peter Marks wrote for the Journal of the American Medical Association that COVID-19 will be around for the foreseeable future while suggesting that it will require yearly vaccines targeting the most threatening variations of the virus.
The virus “will likely circulate globally for the foreseeable future, taking its place alongside other common respiratory viruses such as influenza. And it likely will require similar annual consideration for vaccine composition updates in consultation with the [FDA],” they continued.
It’s a departure from the rhetoric that was expressed by public health officials in 2020 and 2021. In late October 2020, for example, current White House COVID-19 adviser Anthony Fauci said that President Donald Trump’s comparisons to the flu were false, telling NBC at the time “it is not correct to say it’s the same as flu.”
About a year later, Fauci told CBS News that Americans will “likely” have to deal with COVID-19 in a similar manner as influenza.
Preventable by Devi Sridhar Review — Inside the Fog of War on COVID
At the end of her wide-ranging analysis of the pandemic, Devi Sridhar, professor of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, Guardian columnist and Good Morning Britain contributor, raises the dark question of whether COVID-19 will “be the spark for the third world war”.
Sridhar is referring to what might happen if it is ever discovered that China knows much more about the origins of the pandemic than it has so far been willing to let on. How will the rest of the world react?
Sridhar does not mince her words about China’s initial inaction and subsequent indifference to the global spread, nor does she dismiss the possibility that it was a laboratory leak that introduced SARS-CoV-2 to humanity. Still, even if China had acted swiftly and responsibly as soon as evidence emerged of a lethal virus in Wuhan, there is no guarantee that it could have contained it within China’s borders.
It’s Time for a Recovery Lab: How Leaders Can Help Their Teams Process the Pandemic
It’s one thing to physically endure a long-term stressor, and an entirely different experience to endure a long-term mental-emotional-social stressor such as we have through the last few years. As we move through this next phase of the pandemic, we will likely continue to feel varying levels of fatigue.
Continued fatigue is a typical symptom of prolonged stress. However, after two years of straining through the pandemic, social unrest and now the anxieties of war, we are well past the flight-or-fight mode, which is designed to give us strength and energy. Rather, what we are now experiencing is a sense of depletion. Some may even feel as if they are on the verge of exhaustion.
COVID Vaccine Makers Shift Focus to Boosters
COVID-19 vaccine makers are shifting gears and planning for a smaller, more competitive booster shot market after delivering as many doses as fast as they could over the last 18 months.
Executives at the biggest COVID vaccine makers including Pfizer Inc. (PFE.N) and Moderna Inc (MRNA.O) said they believe most people who wanted to get vaccinated against COVID have already done so — more than 5 billion people worldwide.
In the coming year, most COVID vaccinations will be booster shots, or first inoculations for children, which are still gaining regulatory approvals around the world, they said.
Pfizer, which makes its shot with Germany’s BioNTech SE (22UAy.DE), and Moderna still see a major role for themselves in the vaccine market even as overall demand declines.
‘Overwhelming’ Exhaustion: COVID Leaves 66% of Working Parents Burnt out, Study Suggests
From remote school to financial uncertainty, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has been an immensely difficult time to raise kids. And more and more parents are burned out.
A new study has found that 66% of working parents meet the criteria for parental burnout — which occurs when chronic stress and exhaustion overwhelm a parent’s ability to function and cope.
The report found that the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated stressors and contributed “to epidemic levels of parental burnout and exhaustion.” And burnout isn’t going away anytime soon, the report’s authors said.
White House Warns of COVID Surges in the Winter
COVID cases surged during the last two winters and are likely to again this year — unless the country can prepare and act, White House COVID-19 response coordinator Ashish Jha said Sunday morning.
“If we don’t get ahead of this thing, we’ll have a lot of waning immunity, this virus continues to evolve and we may see a pretty sizable wave of infections, hospitalizations and deaths this fall and winter,” Jha said on ABC’s “This Week.”
The Lucky Few to Never Get Coronavirus Could Teach Us More About It
When her partner tested positive for the coronavirus two days before Christmas, Michelle Green worried she, too, would become ill. Somehow, Green never tested positive.
Scientists around the world are investigating how a dwindling number of people such as Green have managed to dodge the coronavirus for more than two years, even after the highly transmissible Omicron variant drove a record-shattering surge in cases this winter.
Experts hope that studying people who have avoided infection may offer clues — perhaps hidden in their genes — that could prevent others from being infected or more effectively treat those who contract the virus.