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Everyone Over 12 Expected to Be Eligible for New Boosters, White House Official Says
White House COVID coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha said on Wednesday that the newly updated COVID boosters will be available to teens and adults “in a few short weeks.”
The new boosters target the Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5, as well as the original strain of the virus. BA.5 accounts for nearly 90% of new COVID cases in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Food and Drug Administration will determine how well the updated shots protect against the virus, Jha said, adding that he expects that they should “work much better at preventing infection transmission and serious illness” than the current boosters.
New Book Challenges COVID Vaccine Narrative
As more research is published on people who have taken the COVID-19 vaccine, more data — at least the data that make it to publication — are revealing that many people have had harmful effects from the injections.
Of course, COVID-19 itself came with health consequences, and everyone understood that. The vaccine was supposed to be so safe and effective that it was acceptable to even coerce people into getting it. In fact, even those who caught COVID-19 and achieved natural immunity were compelled to get the vaccine.
In her latest book “Neither Safe Nor Effective: The Evidence Against the COVID Vaccines,” Dr. Colleen Huber shares some of the data that have been emerging.
The Arizona-based naturopathic medical doctor says the damage done so far from the mRNA vaccines is undeniable. She also highlights issues in the medical and media fields that have kept people from getting access to facts. This all comes as many people are still being pressured to take the vaccine or are suffering consequences.
COVID: ‘Very Rare’ Vaccine Complications Led to Alston Man’s Death
A former rock singer died due to “very rare and aggressive complications of the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine”, an inquest has ruled. Zion XXX, from Alston in Cumbria, developed an “excruciating” headache eight days after his jab in May 2021.
The 48-year-old was taken to hospital but died as a result of “vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia.” His fiancée Vikki Spit was the first person to receive compensation for a COVID-19 vaccine death.
The inquest in Newcastle heard that Zion XXX was generally fit and well with no significant previous medical history. His death certificate confirmed he died due to complications from the vaccine, which had led to swelling and bleeding on the brain.
Up to July 27, 2022, the MHRA had received reports of 444 cases of major thromboembolic events (blood clots) with concurrent thrombocytopenia (low platelet counts) in the U.K. following vaccination with AstraZeneca.
HHS Says It Plans to Extend COVID Public Health Emergency
State and local public health officials — having not heard differently this week — are expecting the Biden administration to extend the COVID-19 public health emergency for another 90 days in mid-October.
An extension would ensure expanded Medicaid coverage, telehealth services, boosted payments to hospitals and other pandemic measures remain in place beyond the midterm elections even as public health experts and lawmakers debate the merits of a PHE that was first declared in January 2020.
The administration has not notified groups, including the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, Federation of American Hospitals and the American Public Health Association, that the PHE would end, a courtesy HHS has said it would issue 60 days before the COVID-19 declaration is terminated. The 60-day notice would have been issued early this week under that pledge.
“Silence from the administration means that the public health emergency will almost certainly be extended into January 2023,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Why Do People Consent to Receiving SARS-CoV-2 Vaccinations? A Representative Survey in Germany
In Germany and elsewhere, public discourse about how to deal with the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has been dominated from the beginning by the opinion that it is important to achieve a high number of COVID-19 vaccinations in the population.
Politicians and media presented these novel vaccinations as beneficial and receiving them as an act of solidarity and respect for others. In parallel, politicians and other stakeholders have talked about restricting access to public participation for those that are not vaccinated.
This increases implicit pressure on persons that have hitherto refused to be vaccinated to finally assent to being vaccinated. This also introduces novel motives that are no indication for vaccinations, as a medical indication for vaccination would be the prevention of severe or fatal disease.
Anywhere but Here
When Alice Hughes downloaded a preprint from the server Research Square in September 2021, she could hardly believe her eyes. The study described a massive effort to survey bat viruses in China, in search of clues to the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. A team of 21 researchers from the country’s leading academic institutions had trapped more than 17,000 bats, from the subtropical south to the frigid northeast, and tested them for relatives of SARS-CoV-2. The number they found: zero.
The paper meshed with a growing political reality in China. From the start of the pandemic, the Chinese government — like many foreign researchers — has vigorously rejected the idea that SARS-CoV-2 somehow originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and escaped.
But over the past 2 years, it has also started to push back against what many regard as the only plausible alternative scenario: The pandemic started in China with a virus that naturally jumped from bats to an “intermediate” species and then to humans — most likely at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan.
Beijing was open to the idea at first. But today it points to myriad ways SARS-CoV-2 could have arrived in Wuhan from abroad, borne by contaminated frozen food or infected foreigners — perhaps at the Military World Games in Wuhan, in October 2019 — or released accidentally by a U.S. military lab located more than 12,000 kilometers from Wuhan.
COVID Can Impair Brain Function, Large Study Suggests
Patients recovering from coronavirus infection suffer from increased rates of neurological and psychological problems, according to a wide-ranging observational study published Thursday.
Researchers from Oxford University combed through more than a million patient files and discovered that two years after infection, patients who had recovered from COVID-19 were at a higher risk of psychosis, dementia and “brain fog” when compared with patients who recovered from other respiratory diseases.
For some symptoms, there was an initial uptick that leveled off. Anxiety and depression fell to rates in line with other respiratory diseases after two months.
But, in the case of brain fog, for example, adults aged between 18 and 64 who had recovered from COVID-19 suffered from it at a rate 16% higher than patients with other respiratory diseases. The difference was more marked in those aged over 65, where increased risk was also found for psychosis and dementia.
Biden Officials Accelerating Monkeypox Vaccine Effort, Including 1.8 Million Additional Doses
The Biden administration is planning to accelerate the delivery of its remaining supply of monkeypox vaccines and will make an additional 1.8 million doses available for ordering starting Monday, officials said Thursday.
Jurisdictions will only be able to access the additional doses if they adopt the intradermal administration of vaccine and have used 90% of their current supply of vaccine, officials said.
The Department of Health and Human Services is also launching a pilot program to provide additional vaccine allocations to state and local health departments in jurisdictions that are hosting large events that attract members of the LGBTQ community.
The latest federal data show more than 13,500 monkeypox cases have been reported so far in the United States.
Monkeypox Vaccine Maker Can’t Keep up With Demand as Case Numbers Swell
Danish biotech company Bavarian Nordic A/S, the only producer of an FDA-approved monkeypox vaccine, said it is struggling to meet the demand for its shots amid the rise in cases of the disease.
Increased demand may force the company to expand its limited manufacturing capacity by outsourcing some of its production, including to facilities in the U.S. Currently, the vaccine is only manufactured at Bavarian Nordic’s Danish facility.
The Danish company had previously said it would produce all of its vaccine doses in the local facility, and that transferring some of its technology to a third-party producer would be cumbersome and inefficient, Bloomberg reported.
But monkeypox case numbers are swelling worldwide, leading to a surge in demand for vaccines and treatments.
Illinois Health Department Urges Schools to Watch for Monkeypox; COVID Measures Pulled Back
Monitoring students and staff at Illinois schools for new and unexplained lesions is among the new monkeypox prevention guidance recommended this week by the state’s health department as officials pivot away from COVID-19 restrictions.
While the monkeypox virus in children is exceedingly rare, with just a handful of such cases across the U.S., a Tuesday webinar hosted by the Illinois Department of Public Health for school district administrators statewide conveyed strategies for preventing the spread of the infection in schools.
“Any persons with MPV should remain out of school until MPV symptoms have resolved, the rash has healed, all scabs have fallen off and a fresh layer of skin has formed per (CDC) recommendations,” officials said in a statement.
School districts were urged to “rapidly identify and assess people who might have been exposed to MPV, in collaboration with the local health department,” while noting that “rashes are not uncommon in children due to a variety of causes.”
