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Fauci Admits Defeat: Says COVID Here to Stay, People Need to ‘Calculate Individual Risk’
While President Joe Biden campaigned on a promise to “shut down the virus, not the economy,” Dr. Anthony Fauci — the highest-paid employee in the U.S. government — was taking a much more cautious approach — suggesting that COVID might never go away.
And with Washington, DC, now a superspreader party town for the far-less deadly Omicron strain, Fauci has now explicitly thrown in the towel on trying to rid the world of COVID-19 — telling ABC’s “This Week” that the virus is here to stay, and people will just have to decide what level of risk they’re willing to take.
“This is not going to be eradicated and it’s not going to be eliminated,” Fauci told host Jonathan Karl. “What’s going to happen is that we’re going to see that each individual is going to have to make their calculation of the amount of risk that they want to take in going to indoor dinners and in going to functions, even within the realm of a green zone map of the country where you see everything looks green but it’s starting to tick up.”
“We’re going to have to live with some degree of virus in the community,” Fauci continued, adding that “the best way to mitigate that, Jon, is to get vaccinated.” Yes, a vaccine developed for a completely different strain that wanes in protection just six weeks after the receipt of a fourth dose, according to a recent Israeli study.
Visual Disturbances After Each COVID Shot? — Rare Sequence of Ischemic Optic Neuropathy in Both Eyes After First and Second Doses
A 53-year-old man presented to the hospital after losing vision in his left eye. He explained that he had been given his second dose of Pfizer‘s COVID vaccine (Comirnaty) 10 days previously. He said that he had experienced similar symptoms 7 days after he received his first dose of the vaccine.
Clinicians presenting this case (one of two originally published) of non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy after receiving the Pfizer vaccine emphasized that the case “describes an association, not causation, between NA-AION and COVID-19 vaccination.”
However, they noted that “the timing between the vaccine and the development of the ischemic optic neuropathy,” in addition to the patient’s symptom onset “in one eye after the first dose and in the other eye after the second dose makes a potential role of the COVID-19 vaccines in the pathogenesis of this condition plausible in these two cases.”
How Can Schools Combat the COVID Slide? Bullying Prevention Is the Best Place to Start
Thus far, much of the discussion surrounding the pandemic‘s lingering impacts has centered on learning loss, which has resulted in testing declines of as much as six percentile points in reading and 12 percentile points in math in grades three through eight.
But the more important story might not be what’s down due to the pandemic but rather what’s up. Because as test scores drop, reports of mental health problems are on the rise — and you can’t address learning loss if students are overwhelmed by challenges outside the classroom.
Over the past two years, many schools have reported elevated levels of anxiety, stress and behavioral problems among students. Perhaps most troubling of all is an increase in reports of bullying as more kids take their anger and frustration out on peers and exacerbate a problem that was already reaching epidemic proportions before the pandemic. Just a few years ago, 90% of students in fourth through eighth grades had already reported being bullied or harassed. Of that overwhelming majority, 41% believed it would happen again.
Why White House COVID Czar Dr. Jha Says He’s ‘Not Overly Concerned’ About Rising BA.2 Cases
COVID-19 cases are rising again in the Northeast, due in part to the Omicron’s highly contagious BA.2 subvariant — but the White House’s new COVID czar isn’t too worried about it just yet.
On Monday, Dr. Ashish Jha acknowledged the growing number of COVID cases in parts of the country: 27 states, plus Washington DC, have experienced a jump in new cases over the past seven days, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
But, Jha said, the data doesn’t point toward another full-on COVID surge because hospitalizations are currently “the lowest they have been in the entire pandemic.” According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. is currently averaging just over 1,300 hospitalizations per day, which is indeed a pandemic-era low point.
Why the Latest Rise in COVID Cases Is Being Treated Differently
COVID-19 cases are showing signs of rising again, even as many Americans are eager to move on.
Washington, DC, has been hit with a string of high-profile cases in Congress and the administration, and cases in the city overall are on the rise. New York and other areas in the Northeast are also seeing increases, with Philadelphia announcing on Monday that it will reintroduce a requirement that people wear masks in indoor public places.
But there are important ways that any coming spike in COVID-19 cases, fueled by a subvariant of Omicron known as BA.2, is likely to be less damaging than previous surges, experts say. And that may lead the nation to treat a new rise in cases differently.
Axios-Ipsos Poll: Most Americans Say COVID Is No Longer a Crisis
Less than one in 10 Americans now describe COVID-19 as a crisis — with about three in four calling it a manageable problem and one in six saying it’s no problem at all — according to the latest installment of the Axios/Ipsos Coronavirus Index.
These sentiments — and the public’s growing desire to be done with mask mandates and other restrictions — raise significant challenges for public health officials in managing new surges, and could create real political headwinds ahead of the midterms.
The latest wave of our national survey actually found a slight uptick in people’s perceptions of the risks of certain activities, including flying, attending sports events and returning to work. Yet it shows the highest share of Americans visiting friends and family members outside the home — and the lowest rate of social distancing — since the early part of last summer.
New Omicron XE COVID Variant First Detected in the UK Spreads to Japan as Cases Rise
Japan has reported its first case of Omicron XE — a new COVID-19 strain first detected in the U.K. — just as British cases of the subvariant rise.
The XE variant was found in a woman in her 30s who arrived at Narita International Airport from the U.S. on March 26. The woman, whose nationality was not immediately disclosed, was asymptomatic, Japan’s health ministry said Monday.
It comes as cases of the new strain have almost doubled in Britain, according to the latest statistics from the U.K. Health Security Agency.
XE has since been detected in Thailand, India and Israel. It is suspected that the latter Israeli cases may have developed independently. The U.S. has not yet reported any XE cases.
COVID Hospitalizations, Cases Continue to Rise in Most Provinces Amid 6th Wave
COVID-19 hospitalizations and cases are on the rise once again across Canada, according to public health data, as the reality of a sixth wave of the pandemic begin to take shape.
Although every province except Ontario and Quebec has moved from reporting COVID-19 data daily to now posting weekly updates, a majority of jurisdictions in Canada is seeing a rise compared to last month.
Canada’s chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam and her provincial counterparts have said an even more transmissible subvariant of Omicron, dubbed BA.2, is behind the current wave.
RedHill Pill Shows Promise Vs Omicron; mRNA Vaccines Appear Effective in Those With Well-Controlled HIV
An experimental drug being developed by RedHill Biopharma Ltd (RDHy.F) that improved outcomes in a randomized trial involving severely ill COVID-19 patients infected with earlier versions of the coronavirus is showing promise against the Omicron variant in test-tube experiments, researchers said.
The oral drug, opaganib, has dual anti-inflammatory and antiviral effects. When opaganib was added to treatment with Gilead Sciences’ (GILD.O) remdesivir and corticosteroids in hospitalized patients infected before Omicron was predominant, it improved the average time until patients no longer had detectable virus in their blood by four days, sped up recovery by 34%, and reduced mortality by 70%, compared to a placebo, according to data released previously by the company but not yet formally published.
Opaganib’s antiviral/anti-inflammatory mechanism “is expected to act independently of viral spike protein mutations and remain effective against Omicron subvariants BA.2, XE and other emerging and future variants,” the company said.
People living with well-controlled HIV infections are likely to have immune responses to the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines from Moderna (MRNA.O) and from Pfizer (PFE.N)/BioNTech (22UAy.DE) similar to those of otherwise healthy individuals, according to new data.
Pfizer Bids $100 Million for Brisbane App That Listens for COVID
ResApp, a Brisbane-based company that promises to diagnose COVID-19 through an app that listens to the sound of a cough, has agreed to a $100 million takeover by pharmaceutical giant Pfizer.
The ASX-listed company made headlines last month when it announced that it had developed an app that can screen for COVID-19 through a smartphone app.
The company claimed the app’s algorithm “exceeds the real-word measured sensitivity of rapid antigen tests”. ResApp said in the announcement that it was preparing to gain regulatory approval for the product.
The algorithm correctly detected COVID-19 in 92% of infected people in a pilot clinical trial of 741 patients in India and the U.S., ResApp said.
Germany Agrees to Deal With CureVac, GSK for mRNA Vaccines Until 2029
Germany has signed a contract with CureVac (5CV.DE) and its British partner GlaxoSmithKline (GSK.L) for domestically produced mRNA vaccines to bolster supplies in case of public health emergencies, the German biotech firm said on Monday.
The five-year contract allows for the production of up to 80 million doses at short notice until 2029, CureVac said, adding that those doses could be for the remainder of the current pandemic or future outbreaks.
