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Celebrity Paid Partnerships With Pfizer Raise Questions
A host of celebrities are facing scrutiny on social media after promoting Pfizer‘s COVID-19 vaccine in paid partnerships on their respective Instagram accounts over the past week. In the past few days, musicians Pink and Questlove, actor Jean Smart and Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps have each taken to Instagram to share sponsored posts in which they have spoken about the vaccine.
As part of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer‘s Know Plan Go initiative, each celebrity has shared factors that have put them at a higher risk of developing severe COVID-19. These stories have also been shared on the Know Plan Go website.
While each star has shared different stories regarding the importance of the vaccine to them, a common factor threading their posts together is that they have shared the uploads with comments turned off.
A spokesperson for Pfizer told Newsweek that the campaign will serve the “public health goal” of continuing to educate the public on defense against COVID-19.
We Are Overcounting COVID Deaths and Hospitalizations. That’s a Problem.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the United States is experiencing around 400 COVID deaths every day. At that rate, there would be nearly 150,000 deaths a year. But are these Americans dying from COVID or with COVID?
Understanding this distinction is crucial to putting the continuing toll of the coronavirus into perspective. Determining how likely it is an infection will result in hospitalization or death helps people weigh their own risk. It also enables health officials to assess when vaccine effectiveness wanes and future rounds of boosters are needed.
Two infectious-disease experts I spoke with believe that the number of deaths attributed to COVID is far greater than the actual number of people dying from COVID. Robin Dretler, an attending physician at Emory Decatur Hospital and the former president of Georgia’s chapter of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, estimates that at his hospital, 90% of patients diagnosed with COVID are actually in the hospital for some other illness.
“Since every hospitalized patient gets tested for COVID, many are incidentally positive,” he said. A gunshot victim or someone who had a heart attack, for example, could test positive for the virus, but the infection has no bearing on why they sought medical care.
Dretler also sees patients with multiple concurrent infections. “People who have very low white blood cell counts from chemotherapy might be admitted because of bacterial pneumonia or foot gangrene. They may also have COVID, but COVID is not the main reason why they’re so sick.”
J&J Slashes Production of Its Unpopular COVID Shot
The Wall Street Journal reported:
After mobilizing to quickly develop and manufacture a COVID-19 vaccine, Johnson & Johnson has vastly scaled back its efforts in producing the shots as it faces slumping demand.
The New Brunswick, N.J., pharmaceutical company in recent months terminated manufacturing agreements with companies that helped produce the shot during the pandemic such as Catalent Inc. and Sanofi SA.
Meanwhile, a partnership with rival Merck & Co. to help make the shots, forged at the urging of the U.S. government, hasn’t lived up to expectations. The companies are now engaged in arbitration.
J&J said it is making its COVID-19 vaccine available where needed, and it has hundreds of millions of doses available. It didn’t comment on whether it will continue to produce it. J&J’s vaccine hasn’t been as widely used as the Moderna Inc. or Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE shots. Manufacturing issues limited the shot’s availability and the risk of a rare but serious blood-clotting condition dissuaded some people from using it.
CDC Identifies Possible Safety Issue With Pfizer’s Updated COVID Vaccine but Says People Should Still Get Boosted
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday that there is a possible safety issue with the bivalent COVID-19 vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech but that it is unlikely to represent a true risk. The agency said it continues to recommend that people stay up-to-date with COVID-19 vaccines.
The CDC said one of its vaccine safety monitoring systems — a “near real-time surveillance system” called the Vaccine Safety Datalink — detected a possible increase in a certain kind of stroke in people 65 and older who recently got one of Pfizer’s updated booster shots.
A rapid response analysis of that signal revealed that seniors who got a bivalent booster might be more likely to have ischemic strokes within the first three weeks after their shots, compared with weeks four through six. Ischemic strokes, the most common form, are blockages of blood to the brain. They’re usually caused by clots.
The Vaccine Safety Datalink, or VSD, is a network of large health systems across the nation that provides data about the safety and efficacy of vaccines through patients’ electronic health records. The CDC said it had identified possible confounding factors in the data coming from the VSD that may be biasing the data and need further investigation.
Quebec Man’s COVID Vaccine Story Spurs Others to Come Forward
The story of a Gatineau, Que., man who developed a debilitating skin condition after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine has struck a chord with many Canadians, dozens of whom reached out to share their own similar experiences.
Shortly after Tisir Otahbachi received his second dose of the Moderna vaccine in August 2021, a burning rash that had started on his hand spread to his limbs and back, forcing him to quit his job and seek medical treatment in Ontario. Otahbachi is now seeking redress through Quebec’s vaccine injury compensation program.
According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, only a tiny fraction — 0.011% — of the more than 95 million vaccine doses administered in this country as of Dec. 9 resulted in serious adverse reactions. But that’s still more than 10,000 reported cases.
While many of those who reached out after reading Otahbachi’s story said they’d also had a difficult time convincing doctors that a COVID vaccine may have caused their skin condition, Ottawa’s medical officer of health Vera Etches told CBC Radio’s Ottawa Morning last week that medical professionals are encouraged to report all suspected cases.
Omicron Subvariant XBB.1.5 Possibly More Likely to Infect Those Who Are Vaccinated, Officials Say
New York City health officials are warning residents that the infectious Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5 may be more likely to infect people who have already been vaccinated or infected with COVID-19.
“Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5 now accounts for 73% of all sequenced COVID-19 cases in NYC,” the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene tweeted on Friday. “XBB.1.5 is the most transmissible form of COVID-19 that we know of to date and may be more likely to infect people who have been vaccinated or already had COVID-19.”
The department added that getting vaccinated against the virus, including receiving an updated booster shot, remains the best way to protect against hospitalization and death, including from new variants.
WHO Questions Severity of XBB.1.5 COVID Subvariant as U.S. Cases Rise
The Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5 is still gaining ground within the United States, accounting for at least 43% of sequenced cases from the last week, according to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The big picture: The XBB.1.5 COVID subvariant — nicknamed the “Kraken” variant — is representing more and more cases, and experts are questioning the variant’s severity as real-world data emerges.
Flashback: The CDC said at the end of December that the XBB.1.5 strain was responsible for 40.5% of confirmed U.S. cases for the week ending on Dec. 31, 2022, Axios reported. But one week later, the CDC’s estimates changed to reflect that the XBB.1.5 variant made up 18.3% of cases for the week ending on Dec. 31, 2022, and 27.6% of sequenced cases for the week ending on Jan. 7.
Details: The World Health Organization said in a risk assessment earlier this week that the Omicron XBB.1.5 variant — which it called one of the “most antibody-resistant variants” — doesn’t have any mutations that make people sicker compared to previous variants.
The Symbolic End of Operation Warp Speed
The departure of COVID chief science officer David Kessler, announced Friday by the White House, marks the unofficial end of the “Operation Warp Speed” era and the extraordinary all-of-government response to the pandemic.
Why it matters: The cross-agency effort the Trump and Biden administrations ran to speed up the production and distribution of COVID therapeutics is widely viewed as one of the few legitimate successes in the federal pandemic response.
What they’re saying: Kessler’s most valuable contributions came in the way he interacted and brokered deals with drugmakers and kept the flow of countermeasures available to the public, said former NIAID director Anthony Fauci.
The big picture: The Trump administration launched Operation Warp Speed just months into the pandemic. The FDA authorized the first COVID vaccine in December of the same year, shaving years off of the typical vaccine development and approval process.
Federal Program to Compensate B.C. Man for COVID Vaccine-Related Paralysis
Julian Scholefield says he did everything possible to protect himself and his family from COVID-19. The B.C. man says he received his first Pfizer vaccination shot in May of 2021. Six months later, he went back for his second shot and said everything was fine, adding he didn’t even have a sore arm after getting the injection.
Two weeks later, though, the Okanagan resident said things took a rapid turn for the worse when he and his family were enjoying a day out on the lake. Within two hours, Scholefield was paralyzed from the waist down. The Summerland man would spend three months in three different hospitals. Doctors finally diagnosed him with acute disseminated encephalomyelitis or ADEM.
“A neurologist who really took an in-depth study into my case did further testing on me,” said Scholefield, “and was able to essentially eliminate any other causes except for the COVID(-19) vaccine.”
Now wheelchair-bound, Scholefield filed for the federal vaccine injury support program (VISP) in September 2021. After 15 months, a decision was made. “Just yesterday, I did get documentation that states that they have approved my claim and that the next step would be to be determining the dollar value of that,” Scholefield said.
Since June 2021, more than 1,200 vaccine injury claims have been reported. But of those, only 50 claims have been approved by the medical review board.
For Long COVID Fatigue, a Strategy Called ‘Pacing’ Helps, but at a Cost
What is it like to live with the chronic fatigue of long COVID? It feels like dragging your body through wet cement, says Judy Schaefer, 58, a once avid hiker who lives in Seattle. It’s knowing that simple tasks, like showering or cooking dinner, will be exhausting, says Alyssa Minor, 36, a physiotherapist in Calgary.
Experts say the extreme fatigue experienced by many long COVID patients has a name: myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME/CFS), a condition previously known as chronic fatigue syndrome. Researchers estimate that about half of people with long COVID have developed ME/CFS.
There is no known cure for ME/CFS, but some experts say a complicated lifestyle change can help manage some of the symptoms.
It’s called “pacing.” Pacing is an “activity management” strategy, which requires people to carefully limit their daily activities, reduce their energy expenditure and track their symptoms.
Holiday Gatherings Didn’t Trigger Spike in Respiratory Illnesses: CDC
U.S. News & World Report reported:
Going into the holiday season, many public health experts feared a “tripledemic” of flu, COVID-19 and RSV cases. New government data now shows that didn’t happen.
Reports of flu-like illness are down for the sixth straight week, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Friday. Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) case counts have also dropped in recent weeks, CDC data shows.
Case counts vary depending on location, but “it has slowed down, tremendously,” Dr. Jason Newland, a pediatric infectious diseases physician at St. Louis Children’s Hospital in Missouri, told the Associated Press.
Hospitalizations for COVID-19 rose through December, according to the AP, but it’s not yet clear whether they then started dropping or kept climbing because of data reporting lags.
China Should Set Aside Politics and Look at COVID Jab Imports, World’s Largest Vaccine Maker Says
China needs to move past political considerations and look at importing COVID-19 jabs to end the pandemic globally, according to the chief executive of the world’s latest vaccine manufacturer.
“They need to open themselves up to healthcare and vaccines from the West and set aside any political issues or things that are holding them back,” Adar Poonawalla, CEO of the Serum Institute of India, told CNBC’s Joumanna Bercetche at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
He stressed China’s decision not to import vaccines from the U.S., India and elsewhere, which have been “very effective.”
The Pune-based Serum Institute of India produces more than 1.5 billion vaccine doses annually for various diseases. Poonawalla said that the company would be interested to provide vaccines to China, but that discussions with Beijing officials had been unsuccessful so far.
