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Fauci Pal at Center of COVID Lab-Leak Suspicions Gets New Bat Virus Grant

The Daily Wire reported:

Dr. Anthony Fauci has steered another lucrative grant to study bat viruses to the same company suspected of conducting gain-of-function research at the mysterious Chinese laboratory where some experts believe COVID-19 was hatched.

EcoHealth Alliance last month began a multi-year study of “viral sequences and isolates for use in vaccine development,” according to a grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which Fauci runs. The $3.3 million study, which involves bats and coronaviruses, is set to run through August 31, 2027.

“It should be noted that EcoHealth Alliance was awarded a new NIH grant 10 days ago, providing an additional $3.3 M over five years for a project including high-risk virus discovery research in bats in Southeast Asia,” tweeted Rutgers University Professor of Chemical Biology Richard Ebright, who has been a frequent critic of Fauci and believes the virus was likely man-made.

EcoHealth Alliance, run by Fauci pal Peter Daszak, has been the focus of suspicion that the virus that has killed more than 6 million people worldwide may have been created in the Wuhan Institute of Virology through gain-of-function research, work that purposely makes viruses more transmissible and deadly in order to develop antidotes.

Moderna Turns Down China Request for Vaccine Technology: Report

FOXBusiness reported:

Moderna has turned down a request from Beijing to hand over the core intellectual property behind the development of its breakthrough COVID-19 vaccine. That caused the collapse in negotiations on its sale there, multiple people told the Financial Times.

The pharmaceutical company had commercial and safety concerns concerning the recipe. Moderna is reportedly still interested in selling the product to China.

The mRNA vaccine technology used by Moderna and BioNTech/Pfizer lasts longer and provides higher levels of protection than the inactivated vaccine technology used by Chinese makers. Several Chinese pharma companies are racing to develop a homemade mRNA alternative but have struggled with the emergence of more infectious variants.

One individual close to the Moderna team in Greater China told the FT, the company had “given up” on its previous efforts to access the Chinese market, because of Beijing’s demand that it hand over the technology as a prerequisite for selling in the country.

How the CDC’s Communication Failures During COVID Tarnished the Agency

NBC News reported:

In the early days of COVID, staffers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sought to give Americans guidance about maintaining some semblance of normalcy during a once-in-a-century pandemic that had upended daily life.​​

Communication failures, along with much more consequential errors, would continue throughout the pandemic, deeply tarnishing the agency — long considered the gold standard of public health institutions. The blunders have left career scientists and other longtime employees worried that the wounds can’t be healed.

All culminated in what would become a series of unsettlingly defining moments for CDC employees who say the agency was unable to move fast enough for the public with science solid enough to meet their own expectations.

While some employees say they are optimistic that the agency can improve its public health responses, blunders during the COVID response still haunt those who have dedicated their lives to public health.

New Coronavirus Subvariant BA.2.75.2 Tops Concerns as Officials Gear up for Potential Winter Wave

Los Angeles Times reported:

As officials in California and beyond try to assess how severe a fall-and-winter coronavirus wave may be, one key factor is the growth of several new subvariants now emerging.

It’s too soon to say whether any of the newer variants will rise to prominence in the ways Omicron and Delta did. None have been documented in significant numbers in California or the nation. Still, experts say another super-spreading subvariant — combined with more people being indoors when the weather gets cold — could bring new challenges.

There is a wide expectation for an increase in COVID-19 cases this fall and winter. New York is already recording an uptick since hitting a seasonal low in early September.

BA.2.75.2, which Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical advisor for the pandemic, identified as “one that looks suspicious — that it might start to evolve as a [troublesome] variant.” BA.2.75.2 has not been found widely in the U.S., and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is not counting it separately from the less worrisome but similarly named BA.2.75.

EXCLUSIVE: FDA Preparing to Publish Study on 4 Potential Adverse Events Following Pfizer Vaccination

The Epoch Times reported:

U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) researchers are preparing to publish a study on a set of data that identified four potential issues in elderly persons after COVID-19 vaccination.

The FDA announced in July 2021 that near real-time surveillance detected four potential adverse events of interest (AEI) following receipt of Pfizer’s vaccine. The agency has given zero updates on the matter since then, until Sept. 30, when a spokesperson said that a study on the surveillance is expected to be published soon.

“The medical record review and statistical analyses have recently been completed, and the overall study results are currently under internal review at FDA,” the spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email. “Release of the study findings is expected later this fall.”

The events were blood clotting in the lungs, insufficient oxygen to the heart, low blood platelet levels and disseminated intravascular coagulation.

Long COVID: What Science Has Learned About the Loss of Smell and Taste

CNN Health reported:

Imagine waking up one morning after recovering from COVID-19 to find that your coffee smells like unwashed socks, your eggs reek of feces and your orange juice tastes metallic. Oddly, that’s a good thing: It’s a sign you still have a working sense of smell — even if it’s miswired in your brain.

Your ability to smell can also disappear completely, a condition called anosmia. Without warning, you can no longer inhale the sweet odor of your baby’s skin, the roses gifted by your partner or the pungent stink of your exercise clothes.

Taste and smell are intertwined, so food may be bland or flavorless. Appetite and enjoyment of life may plummet, which past studies show can lead to nutritional deficits, cognitive decline and depression.

As science learns more about how COVID-19 attacks and disrupts smell, “I think you’re going to see interventions that are more targeted,” said rhinologist Dr. Justin Turner, an associate professor of otolaryngology, head and neck surgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville.

Smoggy Air Could Worsen COVID, Even If You’re Vaccinated

U.S. News & World Report reported:

Exposure to air pollution can impede COVID-19 recovery, whether someone is vaccinated or not, according to new research.

“These findings are important because they show that, while COVID-19 vaccines are successful at reducing the risk of hospitalization, people who are vaccinated and exposed to polluted air are still at increased risk for worse outcomes than vaccinated people not exposed to air pollution,” said study co-author Anny Xiang, a senior research scientist at Kaiser Permanente Southern California.

Researchers analyzed medical records from patients in the Kaiser Permanente Southern California health system. This included more than 50,000 patients 12 and older diagnosed with COVID-19 in July or August 2021, while the Delta variant was spreading. About 34% had been fully vaccinated.

The team included researchers from the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine. Using street addresses and air quality data, they determined the patients’ exposure to fine particles known as PM2.5, nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and ozone (O3) levels one month before COVID diagnosis and a year earlier.

Bereaved Families Fear COVID Inquiry Cover-up After Ban on Testimony

The Guardian reported:

Families of those who died from COVID-19 have been barred from submitting individual testimony to the official public inquiry about the standard of care received by their loved ones during the pandemic, the Observer can reveal.

Instead, the inquiry chair, Lady Hallett, is proposing they submit “pen portraits” to a private research company as part of a parallel “Listening Project” that will not have the power to demand the disclosure of documents or investigate claims about their relatives’ care.

“It would appear that Lady Hallett would rather outsource the grief of bereaved families to the Listening Project than engage with us constructively,” said John Sullivan, whose daughter, Susan, died in March 2020 at Barnet hospital after being denied access to an intensive therapy unit because of her Down’s syndrome and supposed cardiac comorbidities. “The inquiry is becoming a farce and an exercise in cover-up,” he said, ahead of the first hearing on Tuesday.

Sullivan is just one of scores of bereaved people who believe their loved ones were victims of inappropriate triaging procedures and Do Not Attempt Resuscitation (DNAR) or Do Not Attempt Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (DNACPR) orders.

Monkeypox Eradication Unlikely in the U.S. as Virus Could Spread Indefinitely, CDC Says

CNBC reported:

The monkeypox virus is unlikely to be eliminated from the U.S. in the near future, according to a report published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week. The CDC, in a technical brief, said the outbreak is slowing as the availability of vaccines has increased, people have become more aware of how to avoid infection, and immunity has likely increased among gay and bisexual men, the group most impacted by the virus.

But low-level transmission of the virus could continue indefinitely among men who have sex with other men, according to the report. The CDC said it does not have a projection of how many total people might get infected by the virus.

The Biden administration declared a public health emergency in August in an effort to ramp up vaccines, testing, treatment and community outreach in an effort to eradicate the virus from the U.S.

The global monkeypox outbreak, the largest in history, is highly unusual because the virus is circulating widely in countries where it is not normally found. Historically, monkeypox has circulated in remote parts of West and Central Africa. In that context, people normally caught the virus from animals. There was little spread between people.

U.S. Monkeypox Deaths Are Rare; Here’s Why They Can Be Difficult to Confirm

CNN Health reported:

There have been more than 25,000 monkeypox cases in the United States during the current outbreak, and deaths among monkeypox patients are rare. Among the few reported, it has sometimes been difficult to determine the role monkeypox played in the deaths.

“It’s sort of the old situation we had with COVID: Did you die of COVID, or did you die with COVID? And so this is the same scenario: Did you die with monkeypox, or did you die of monkeypox?” said Lori Tremmel Freeman, chief executive officer of the National Association of County and City Health Officials.

Many people who have been infected with monkeypox in this outbreak also have compromised immune systems or underlying health conditions, such as HIV. It can be tough for officials to determine whether a death in fact was caused by monkeypox or whether the person died of an underlying health condition while they happened to be infected with monkeypox.