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U.S. CDC Says COVID Vaccine-Related Myocarditis Much Lower for Children Than Teens
The U.S. Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC) on Thursday said reports of heart inflammation linked to the Pfizer (PFE.N)/BioNTech (22UAy.DE) COVID-19 vaccine have been much lower in 5- to 11-year-old boys than in adolescents and young men, representing only a slightly elevated rate than normal.
The agency, in a presentation to an advisory committee discussing the need for booster vaccine doses for children, cited data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).
CDC Recommends COVID Booster Shot for Children Ages 5 to 11
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended Thursday that children ages 5 to 11 get a third dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine to boost their immunity as cases and hospitalizations tick upward in many pockets of the United States.
CDC director Rochelle Walensky greenlit the recommendation Thursday evening, and she also encouraged parents of children in that age group who have not yet been vaccinated to get their first shot soon.
Walensky also announced that the CDC was strengthening its recommendation that people 50 and older should get a second booster dose — a fourth shot in most cases — to be considered up to date on their coronavirus vaccinations.
Previously, the agency said that older adults may get a booster. Immunocompromised people 12 and older should also get a second booster, she added.
Bay Area Clinics Start Delivering COVID Booster Shots for Kids 5-11
Children ages 5-11 on Friday became eligible to receive a COVID-19 booster shot, and several clinics across the Bay Area were ready to deliver them. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday recommended the booster for young children four months after they receive their initial vaccine.
In Santa Clara County, the fairgrounds expo center was just one of the locations preparing for and accepting the 5-11 age group for smaller doses of the vaccine booster. Pediatric practices also were taking appointments.
But parents of elementary school-aged children aren’t exactly clamoring for the protection. Only a third of California children in the age group are fully vaccinated.
Biden Seeks New Unilateral Powers for WHO Chief to Declare Public Health Emergencies
President Joe Biden’s administration is pushing amendments to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) governing regulations to give Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus unilateral authority to declare a public health emergency in any nation based on whatever evidence he chooses.
The proposed U.S. amendments were forwarded to the WHO in January for consideration next week by the UN’s 75th World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland.
In a Jan. 26 letter to a virtual meeting of WHO’s executive board, Loyce Pace, Assistant Secretary for Global Affairs of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) described “the importance of equity and equitable access to medical countermeasures and the negative impacts of misinformation and disinformation related to the pandemic. We agree that we must all do better.”
Nowhere do the amendments or accompanying documents explain how or why U.S. public health officials believe the equity issue in healthcare would be addressed by giving Tedros the authority to declare a public health emergency on the basis of information provided by a source other than the affected nation.
Alcohol-Related Deaths Have Soared During the COVID Pandemic
The pandemic and its attendant anxiety, boredom and loneliness have not been good for people who struggle with alcohol use. According to a new study published in JAMA Network Open, alcohol-related deaths among U.S adults ages 25 and up increased by 25% in 2020, and 22% in 2021, compared to average annual deaths from 2012 to 2019.
Led by Dr. Yee Hui Yeo, an internal medicine physician at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, the study relied on a massive database maintained by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that registers nearly all deaths in the U.S. and their causes.
Not all groups were affected equally. Men and women were similar in alcohol-related mortality, with both showing a 25% increase in 2020. Age was a much more significant factor. Far and away, the hardest-hit age group was the youngest measured — 25 to 44-year-olds — among whom deaths rose by 40% in 2020 and 33% in 2021.
Family’s Legal Bid as Blood Clots Killed Man After COVID Jab
A man’s life was tragically cut short after he died from blood clots following an AstraZeneca COVID-19 jab. His devastated family is now wanting to take legal action after he died two weeks after receiving his vaccine.
Jack Hurn, from Redditch, received his first dose of the vaccine at a Dudley center on May 29 last year, reports our neighboring county site Coventry Live. He died from blood clots on his brain.
They had allegedly asked staff about alternative vaccines as they were “aware of concerns around the use of AstraZeneca” for younger people. Lawyers say medical advice at the time recommended that under-30s should get an alternative to the AstraZeneca vaccine after it was revealed that younger people were at greater risk of blood clots.
However, the staff reassured the family that it was safe and they went ahead with the vaccination. Jack started suffering headaches within days and died 11 days later at Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital where doctors allegedly described him as having “catastrophic” blood clots on his brain.
America’s COVID Apathy Stress Test
A third of Americans say the pandemic is over, and the spike in cases hasn’t prompted much noticeable policy or behavioral change. But vaccines and therapeutics are now widely available, making the virus much less dangerous — at least for people who have access to and choose to use them.
Biden administration officials yesterday said that a third of Americans live in areas where the risk of COVID infection is high enough that they should consider wearing a mask indoors, the NYT reports.
But there’s no sign that mask mandates are coming back, even in the bluest parts of the country. New York City Mayor Eric Adams said yesterday that, although the city is considered to be in the high alert level, he’s not bringing back mask mandates now.
Hopelessness Around Youth Mental Health Is Creating a ‘Nihilistic Contagion’
I have been a child psychiatrist for more than 20 years. I’ve worked in the city, in the suburbs and in rural settings. I’ve seen patients in teaching hospitals and I’ve run a busy private practice.
In all that time, I have never seen psychiatric suffering as pervasive and intractable as I have over the last 18 months. The lack of real change in our nation’s child and adolescent mental health infrastructure has fostered pernicious and pervasive defeatism among patients and clinicians alike.
This hopelessness is a major feature of the current emergency. It might even be the major feature. Things will not get better unless the approach to it can effectively remedy this deeply ingrained pessimism. Mental health stigma has been impressively diminished. Now it’s time to overcome the ugly defeatism that fosters the ongoing inertia in mental healthcare.
The Quest for Longer-Lasting COVID Vaccines
To maintain durable protection against the virus that causes COVID-19, scientists are working around the clock to develop next-generation vaccines. But some of the nuances around why and how immunity against COVID-19 fades remains a mystery.
The steepest drops in immunity — which come about four to five months after vaccination and up to eight months after infection, but can vary — are against COVID-19 symptoms, getting infected and getting sick.
But there’s another piece of the immunity puzzle that scientists are urgently trying to solve, and that is whether some of this drop off in our protection may be a result of the mRNA technology used to build some COVID-19 vaccines, such as those developed by Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech, which were the first in the world to use this platform.
New Clue About Why COVID Is Deadlier for Men: Estrogen May Play a Protective Role
It’s one of the pandemic’s prolonged mysteries: Why have men died of COVID at higher rates than women?
COVID’s fatality rate for men was 1.7 times higher, on average than the rate for women across 38 countries, a 2020 study found. More recent research from Harvard University scientists found that although men represented 49% of COVID cases in the U.S., they accounted for 55% of COVID deaths from April 2020 through May 2021.
This week, a study lent further support to a leading theory about the discrepancy: Estrogen may offer some protection against severe COVID.
COVID: Sexually Transmitted Diseases Surged in U.S. During Pandemic
U.S. cases of gonorrhea, syphilis and congenital syphilis declined at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, but then rose markedly for the rest of the year, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported. Chlamydia declined slightly. The CDC cautioned that the data may be an undercount because of the pandemic.
The CDC’s report said the decline in chlamydia, the most common STD, was most likely because of changes in screening rather than a drop in new infections. Cases were highest among young adults aged 15-24. Since chlamydia is usually asymptomatic, diagnosis depends on screening or routine preventive care.
During the pandemic many health departments redirected employees to help control COVID-19, thus reducing screening and emphasizing of the diagnosis and treatment of syphilis and gonorrhea.
Suicidal Thoughts Among Canadians Significantly Higher During COVID: StatCan
When COVID-19 hit in 2020, 16-year-old Lexi Daken’s routine changed. Her father, Chris Daken, told Global News Wednesday, “Once COVID-19 hit, she was home, isolated and didn’t really get that social interaction as much.”
Lexi, who was a Grade 10 student, spent eight hours at Dr. Everett Chalmers Regional Hospital in Fredericton, N.B., in February 2021 being assessed by a mental health professional after a guidance counselor noticed mental health issues.
She eventually left the hospital without receiving any immediate help, according to her family. Less than a week later, she died by suicide. Daken said the mental impact of lockdown due to COVID-19 was “definitely a part of the outcome.”
Researchers with the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) found that the prevalence of suicidal thoughts among adults was significantly higher in 2021 than in 2019 before COVID-19 hit.
