Leader of Canada’s Trucker Protests Against COVID-19 Restrictions Gets 3 Months House Arrest
One of the most prominent figures from Canada’s trucker protests against COVID-19 restrictions in 2022 was sentenced to three months of house arrest on Wednesday.
Pat King, 47, was found guilty in November of five criminal charges including mischief and disobeying a court order. He faced up to 10 years in prison.
In its ruling Wednesday, an Ontario Superior Court judge gave King nine months credit for time already spent in custody before and during his trial. On top of the house arrest, he will have to complete 100 hours of community service at a food bank or men’s shelter.
Two other organizers, Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, are awaiting the outcomes of their trials. The February 2022 protests, dubbed the Freedom Convoy, were sparked by a Canadian government vaccine mandate for truck drivers crossing the U.S.-Canada border.
Al Attorney General Marshall Joins Multi-State Effort to Investigate Fauci’s COVID-19 Actions
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall joined a coalition of state attorneys general last week in seeking accountability for Dr. Anthony Fauci’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, arguing that state laws remain a viable avenue for legal action despite a federal pardon.
In a letter to congressional leaders, the attorneys general urged continued scrutiny of Fauci’s role in the federal pandemic response and requested access to any evidence that could support state-level investigations. The letter, addressed to House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, commended the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic for uncovering what it described as fraud, waste and abuse in the government’s handling of COVID-19 according to a news release.
The subcommittee’s findings suggest Fauci and other federal officials engaged in misconduct, including misleading the public about the origins of COVID-19, misrepresenting National Institutes of Health funding for gain-of-function research in Wuhan and suppressing scientific debate on pandemic policies and vaccine risks.
“Americans deserve full transparency and accountability for the decisions made during the pandemic — decisions that affected every aspect of their lives,” Marshall said in the release.
Women Have a Higher Risk for Long COVID. Estrogen May Play a Role.
Women have a higher risk of developing long COVID than men, depending on their stage of life and whether they have experienced menopause, according to a new nationwide study from RECOVER, the long COVID research initiative funded by the National Institutes of Health.
The research, published in January, studied over 12,000 adults and found that overall, female participants had a 31% higher risk of developing long COVID after an infection with the coronavirus than male counterparts. Women between the ages of 40 and 54 who were not yet menopausal were at the highest risk and were 45% more likely to develop long covid than men of the same age group.
However, among women ages 40 to 54 who had already experienced menopause and women ages 18 to 39, there was no significant difference in long COVID risk compared to men in the same age groups.
Paxlovid’s Impact on Hospitalization and Death in Covid-Vaccinated Older Adults Far Weaker Than Previously Thought
Paxlovid does not significantly reduce COVID-19 hospitalization and mortality among vaccinated older adults, according to new UCLA-led research. The study questions the assumption that Paxlovid’s effectiveness in reducing COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths in unvaccinated adults also applies to vaccinated adults. Pfizer’s 2022 clinical trial found reduced COVID-19 hospitalization in unvaccinated middle-aged adults; while a subsequent 2024 clinical trial found no significant reduction in vaccinated middle-aged adults.
Since most older Americans have already received two or more COVID-19 vaccines, Paxlovid’s effectiveness on vaccinated older adults has remained an important unanswered question.
“Since the strongest predictor of severe COVID-19 is advanced age, it has been crucial to obtain evidence on whether the results of the Pfizer trials generalized to older and vaccinated populations,” said Dr. John Mafi, an associate professor-in-residence of medicine in the division of general internal medicine and health services research at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the study’s lead author.
Vasculitis Patients Need Multiple COVID Vaccine Boosters
People with vasculitis may need at least three or four vaccinations for COVID-19 before they start to show an immune response against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection, new research has suggested.
In a longitudinal retrospective study, serum antibody neutralization against the Omicron variant of the virus and its descendants was found to be “largely absent” after the first two doses of COVID-19 vaccine had been given to patients. But increasing neutralizing antibody titers were seen after both the third and fourth vaccine boosters had been administered.
Results also showed that the more recently people had been treated with the B-cell–depleting therapy rituximab, the lower the levels of immunogenicity that were achieved, and thus protection against SARS-CoV-2.
Five Years Later, Americans Say Pandemic Drove Them Apart
A new Pew Research Center poll shows 72% of Americans said the pandemic did more to divide the country than bring it together, with 75% saying COVID-19 took a toll on their own lives. The poll was conducted in late October 2024 with 9,593 respondents.
The poll suggests that, five years after the pandemic was officially declared in March 2020, the nation has not yet healed from the societal effects of the novel coronavirus, with Americans citing the once-in-decades event as an accelerator of the political divide between the left and the right, the distrust of government institutions, and the rise of disinformation.
Among the three-quarters polled who said the COVID-19 pandemic took a toll on their lives, 27% said the toll was major and 47% said it was a minor toll.
While more than one million Americans have died from COVID-19 in the past 5 years, and millions more live with long COVID, only one in five adults (21%) now say the coronavirus is a major threat to the health of the U.S. population as a whole.
A majority (56%) said the virus is no longer something they need to worry about much, as most Americans have been infected with the virus, many multiple times.
When examining poll results through political party affiliations, 60% of Republicans said COVID-19 is no worse than a cold or flu, but 76% of Democrats describe COVID-19 today as worse than a cold or flu.
Carnegie Mellon to Pay Students $4.8m for Shifting to Remote Classes During COVID
Carnegie Mellon University has agreed to pay $4.8 million to settle a class action brought on behalf of students whose in-person classes were moved online when the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020.
The proposed settlement has been agreed to by the plaintiffs and been submitted to Judge Robert J. Colville in federal district court in Pittsburgh for approval. There are an estimated 13,337 students in the settlement class.
The Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) students’ class action was filed May 15, 2020. The students claimed that that they were entitled to refunds of tuition, fees, and other charges because, beginning in March 2020, CMU provided classes remotely in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The class action maintained that students who paid tuition and fees for the Spring 2020 semester had an implied contract with CMU that entitled them to in-person instruction, and that by switching to remote education in response to the pandemic, CMU breached that implied contract.
The plaintiffs also contended that the university’s shift to remote education gave rise to claims of unjust enrichment and conversion, or the taking of property without permission. CMU has denied all allegations of wrongdoing but said it decided to enter into this settlement to “avoid further expense, inconvenience, and burden, and the uncertainty and risks of litigation.”
So Many Americans Died From COVID, It’s Boosting Social Security to the Tune of $205 Billion
As the U.S. approaches the fifth anniversary of the official start of the COVID-19 pandemic, new research finds so many Americans died from the virus that the nation’s Social Security trust fund will see a net increase of hundreds of billions of dollars as a result of retirement benefits that will not be paid out.
The working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research finds that approximately 1.7 million excess deaths among Americans 25 and older occurred between 2020 and 2023 related to the pandemic. Premature deaths related to COVID-19 mean Social Security will not make retirement payments to those individuals in the future, reducing payments by about $294 billion, the researchers found.
At the same time, some of that gain is offset by the lost tax revenue from those individuals, as well as increased survivor benefits to spouses and children of the deceased, resulting in an estimated $205 billion less in future outlays.
