Miss a day, miss a lot. Subscribe to The Defender's Top News of the Day. It's free.
Americans Deserve the Truth About the Overcounting of COVID Deaths
Los Angeles Daily News reported:
For nearly three years, we have lived under a regime of “health officer orders,” accompanied by piles of data telling us the precise number of “cases” and “deaths due to COVID.” Analytical creations to count “transmission” and “community spread” were formulated to explain the supposed need to impose unprecedented restrictions on the population.
The “emergency,” which was said to be justified by the risk that hospitals would be overwhelmed, has continued for years longer than any credible threat that hospitals might be overwhelmed. Throughout it all, the public was told continuously that people are dying in frightening numbers “due to COVID.”
CNN medical analyst and Washington Post columnist Dr. Leana Wen was one of the most alarmist COVID “experts” throughout the pandemic, consistently arguing for the tightest restrictions on freedom and the nastiest treatment of people who chose not to receive the emergency-use-authorized vaccines. So it was something of a news event when she wrote a recent column titled, “We are overcounting COVID deaths and hospitalizations. That’s a problem.”
Massachusetts took additional measures to determine how many hospitalized patients “with” COVID were there “due to” COVID. The state requires hospitals to report how many COVID-positive patients receive a particular drug, dexamethasone, which is a standard treatment for the type of lung inflammation induced by COVID. The result? Only about 30% of patients hospitalized “with” COVID were hospitalized “for” COVID.
CDC Aware of Reports of ‘Debilitating Illnesses’ After COVID Vaccination: Official
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officials are aware of reports of long-lasting problems following COVID-19 vaccination, an official recently disclosed. “With respect to reports of people experiencing debilitating illnesses, we are aware of these reports of people experiencing long-lasting health problems following COVID vaccination,” Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, director of the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office, said on Jan. 26.
Shimabukuro was speaking during a Jan. 26 Food and Drug Administration (FDA) meeting that discussed COVID-19 vaccine safety and effectiveness.
Dr. Hayley Gans, a pediatrics professor at Stanford University Medical Center, had asked how federal authorities were tracking problems that have cropped up after vaccination and might not be “amenable” to rapid cycle analysis, or one way of monitoring vaccine safety.
Shimabukuro’s comments are unusual among federal officials, who have been reluctant to connect adverse events with the COVID-19 vaccines. U.S. officials have only acknowledged a handful of serious adverse events as being caused by one or more COVID-19 vaccines.
Vaccine Makers Kept $1.4 Billion in Prepayments for Canceled COVID Shots for the World’s Poor
The New York Times via Yahoo!Finance reported:
As global demand for COVID-19 vaccines dries up, the program responsible for vaccinating the world’s poor has been urgently negotiating to try to get out of its deals with pharmaceutical companies for shots it no longer needs.
Drug companies have so far declined to refund $1.4 billion in advance payments for now-canceled doses, according to confidential documents obtained by The New York Times.
Gavi, the international immunization organization that bought the shots on behalf of the global COVID vaccination program, COVAX, has said little publicly about the costs of canceling the orders. But Gavi’s financial documents show the organization has been trying to stanch the financial damage. If it cannot strike a more favorable agreement with another company, Johnson & Johnson, it could have to pay still more.
The vaccine-makers have brought in more than $13 billion from the shots that have been distributed through COVAX. Under the contracts, the companies are not obligated to return the prepayments Gavi gave them to reserve vaccines that were ultimately canceled.
House Republicans Pass Bill to End COVID Public Health Emergency
House Republicans passed a bill on Tuesday to end the COVID-19 public health emergency, moving ahead with the legislation despite the Biden administration announcing one day earlier that the declaration would end in May.
The legislation — titled the Pandemic is Over Act — passed in a 220-210 party-line vote.
The measure, which stretches two pages, would terminate the COVID-19 public health emergency on the day it is enacted. The Trump administration implemented the declaration in January 2020 and it has remained in place since.
The bill, however, is unlikely to move in the Democratic-controlled Senate. Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) said the bill would “abruptly and irresponsibly end the COVID-19 public health emergency virtually overnight.”
Pfizer Sees Steep 2023 Fall in COVID Sales, Aims to Bolster Pipeline
Pfizer Inc. (PFE.N) on Tuesday forecast a bigger-than-expected drop in sales of its COVID-19 vaccine and treatment for 2023, intensifying investor concerns over demand for the products as governments cut orders and work through inventories.
Chief Executive Albert Bourla said that 2023 should be a “transition year” for Pfizer’s COVID products, before potentially returning to growth in 2024.
Pfizer’s total annual sales crossed the $100 billion mark for the first time in 2022, driven by the more than $56 billion in sales of its COVID-19 vaccine and Paxlovid antiviral treatment. It expects total 2023 revenue of $67 billion to $71 billion.
The company launched five new products last year and hopes to introduce as many as 14 more over the next year and a half, including a vaccine for the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and an mRNA flu vaccine.
Colorado Doc Put on Probation for Ivermectin Prescriptions — Scott Rollins, MD, and the State Medical Board Reached an Agreement on ‘Unprofessional Conduct’
The Colorado Medical Board put a family medicine physician’s license on probation after he admitted to prescribing ivermectin for COVID-19 without properly informing patients of the drug’s risks or discussing the FDA-approved treatments for the disease.
Scott Rollins, MD, who practices in Grand Junction, and the board reached an agreement on the matter late last month, according to an online records search through the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies’ Division of Professions and Occupations.
The agreement specifically referred to three patients — unnamed and listed as Patients 1-3 — for whom Rollins did not perform or did not document the performance of clinical assessments, and did not discuss or document the discussion of several factors related to the prescription of the antiparasitic drug for the treatment and prevention of COVID.
Rollins’ license was placed on indefinite probation until his successful completion of a medical record-keeping seminar from the Center for Personalized Education for Physicians, which he completed in September 2022, as well as a 6-month follow-up program to be completed within a year of the agreement.
COVID Emergency’s End Will Mean New Costs, Hassles
The White House’s announcement that it will end the COVID-19 public health emergency — and a separate COVID national emergency — on May 11 will mean new costs and more hassles for Americans seeking healthcare.
It will also affect those receiving government nutrition assistance and could make it easier for immigrants to request asylum.
The end of the emergency also reinforces the conclusion President Joe Biden expressed last September, that most Americans have moved on from the pandemic despite the toll of more than a million lives, and that they have accepted the risks that come with the disease.
Many will have to pay for COVID-19 vaccines, tests and treatments. People without health insurance will have to pay out of pocket, while those with private plans could see more costs depending on the terms of their insurance. Insurers typically cover the costs of preventive care, such as vaccines, but often charge deductibles or require cost-sharing for drugs.
A Scientist Is Using AI to Design a Nasal Spray That Could Protect Us From the Flu, COVID and Colds
A prominent researcher has designed a nasal spray that he hopes will protect people from getting sick with COVID-19. For him, it’s an early step toward his ultimate goal of crafting a virus-fighting cocktail that could work against several common infections.
The spray, in development by David Baker at the Institute for Protein Design at the University of Washington, aims to block the SARS-CoV-2 virus from entering cells and activating the immune system in the first place. Baker’s lab plans to start early human testing of the nasal spray later this year to make sure it’s safe and test its efficacy. The lab has reported promising results in mice.
To be clear, Baker’s spray is different from a vaccine. Vaccines stimulate the immune system to recognize and fight off an invading pathogen. Baker’s spray contains proteins designed to stick to the parts of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that it uses to enter human cells, rendering them inert.
The spray will need to prove itself in several successively larger clinical trials before it becomes available more broadly, a process that typically takes years. Even if it wins approval, Baker said there’s not yet a viable business model for this kind of therapeutic — another hurdle that will need to be overcome.
Public Health Emergency for Mpox Officially Ends
The public health emergency for the mpox outbreak that began last year is officially ending as of Tuesday, with the number of reported cases continuing to dwindle and advocacy groups declaring the emergency’s conclusion a victory for the LGBTQ community.
The Biden administration announced in December that it was not expecting to renew the public health emergency (PHE) for mpox, previously referred to as monkeypox, that was first declared in August 2022. The PHE was renewed once in November.
The most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows the seven-day moving average for mpox cases to be three, a steep drop from when cases peaked in August with more than 400 being reported daily on average.
As of the most recent CDC data, about 1.18 million doses of smallpox vaccines were administered during the monkeypox outbreak.
