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Too Few Americans Are Getting Vaccinated for Flu, COVID & RSV, CDC Warns
U.S. News & World Report reported:
Low vaccination rates for the flu, RSV and COVID-19 are putting Americans at higher risk for severe illness and hospitalization this winter, a new government alert warned Thursday. There is an “urgent need” to boost vaccination rates as the trio of viruses spread through the country, the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention said.
With the flu, roughly 7 million fewer adults have gotten their flu shot so far this season compared with last season. Overall, the vaccination rate is about 36% for both adults and children, according to CDC data.
For COVID-19, coverage is even worse: Just 17% of adults aged 18 and up and about 8% of children have gotten the latest shot, according to CDC data. That includes about 36% of seniors, who are at higher risk for severe disease. Even the new RSV vaccine isn’t being embraced by older adults. Only about 16% of those 60 and older have gotten the shot, the data showed.
Key reasons include a lack of provider recommendation, concerns about side effects, and a lack of time or forgetting to get vaccinated, according to a national survey of adults that was included in the CDC advisory.
Stop Giving Foreign Animal Labs a Free Pass
Any time the United States is funding something overseas, it needs to be met with strict oversight to ensure accountability, transparency, and accordance with U.S. law. Unfortunately, it has come to light that this is not at all the case for overseas projects captained by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). A legally questionable and dangerous loophole has allowed the NIH to ship billions of taxpayers’ dollars to risky and inhumane animal testing laboratories in foreign countries — including China and Russia — with absolutely no oversight.
That is exactly why we’re working together to pass the bipartisan Worldwide Animal Testing Compliance and Harmonization Act, otherwise known as the WATCH Act, to close this reckless NIH foreign lab loophole and protect public health, tax dollars, and animal welfare.
The NIH has quietly been avoiding these federal laws by conducting animal testing in foreign countries that are completely exempt from all oversight required of animal labs here at home.
The worst-case scenario of this oversight blind spot came to a head in Wuhan, China in late 2019 and led to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Anthony Fauci‘s National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) sent taxpayer dollars to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for outrageously risky gain-of-function experiments on “humanized mice” — which would have violated federal law in the U.S. — and made bat coronaviruses more contagious and deadly to humans.
Officials from the State Department and other agencies had warned for years that the Wuhan lab was doing dangerous coronavirus research and was ill-equipped to prevent an accident or misuse of research for military purposes. Nevertheless, Dr. Anthony Fauci repeatedly ignored the warnings, never investigated, and kept the money flowing. Now, it is widely believed — including by the FBI and Energy Department — that this perilous, NIH-funded animal lab is what sparked the COVID pandemic.
Americans’ Physical Health Has Deteriorated Since the Pandemic: Gallup
Americans’ physical and mental health are suffering more than before the pandemic, new data shows.
The big picture: More Americans reported diabetes diagnoses, less regular healthy eating, high cholesterol and lower confidence this year, compared with before the pandemic, according to Gallup survey data released Thursday.
What we’re seeing here is definitely pandemic-related,” said Dan Witters, the director of Gallup’s well-being research. “We’re seeing a pretty substantial drop-off in healthy eating habits and high levels of energy to get things done each day.”
“These trends are going to dovetail with the rising rates of obesity and diabetes,” he added. Obesity and diabetes are at record highs, per Gallup.
Switch From Selling COVID Drugs on Market Rather Than to Governments Continues to Sting at Pfizer
Pfizer’s forecast for sales of its COVID-19 vaccine and treatment next year falls more than $5 billion short of the Wall Street consensus. The drugmaker’s sales tumbled in early morning trading.
Pfizer expects sales for both the treatment, Paxlovid, and the vaccine, Comirnaty, to total $8 billion in 2024, according to an initial forecast the drugmaker released Wednesday. Analysts expect nearly $14 billion in combined sales, with $8.34 billion coming from Comirnaty and Paxlovid contributing $5.55 billion, according to FactSet.
Those products combined to rake in more than $56 billion in sales last year, Paxlovid’s first full year on the market. But both Pfizer and the Street expected a decline starting this year as demand waned and the drugmaker switched to selling through the commercial market instead of in bulk to the federal government.
Still, Pfizer warned in October that sales of the vaccine and treatment were turning out weaker than expected. The drugmaker also reported a third-quarter loss of more than $2 billion as falling sales of COVID-19 products clipped revenue. Sales of Pfizer’s COVID-19 treatment Paxlovid and the vaccine Comirnaty slid 97% and 70%, respectively, during the quarter.
‘Long Flu’ Joins ‘Long COVID’ as New Diagnosis
U.S. News & World Report reported:
“Long COVID” has become a well-known potential consequence of COVID infection, with symptoms that can last weeks, months or even years.
Now it appears that “long flu” is also possible, with some patients developing long-lasting health problems following a severe infection, a new study finds.
The researchers tracked patients up to 18 months after their infection, looking for 94 different adverse health outcomes involving the body’s major organ systems.
“Five years ago, it wouldn’t have occurred to me to examine the possibility of a ‘long flu,’” said senior researcher Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, a clinical epidemiologist with the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. “A major lesson we learned from SARS-CoV-2 is that an infection that initially was thought to only cause brief illness also can lead to chronic disease.”
What to Know About the New COVID Variant JN.1
U.S. News & World Report reported:
A new COVID-19 strain has emerged that appears likely to stick around in the U.S. through the holiday season.
JN.1, which is a close relative to BA.2.86, is the fastest-growing variant in the U.S. According to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, JN.1 was responsible for more than 1 in 5 new coronavirus cases in recent weeks.
The new strain was first detected in the U.S. in September. Since then, it has grown to represent an estimated 15%-29% of new infections, according to CDC data. The agency expects that JN.1’s prevalence in the U.S. will continue to increase.
Scientists See Risk of Lost Opportunity for Long COVID Research in China
With more than a full year past since China eased restrictions and let COVID-19 sweep its households, scientists are worried a unique opportunity may be slipping away to study long COVID from possibly hundreds of millions of infections in that country.
Global disease experts say little is known about China’s experience with long-term COVID effects, which in Britain, Canada, the U.S. and elsewhere are thought to have afflicted millions with debilitating fatigue, brain fog and other symptoms that persist for months or even years.
China’s rare circumstances — relying on home-grown vaccines and mostly avoiding COVID until late in the pandemic — could, these experts say, provide particularly valuable data and insights on long COVID.
China’s National Health Commission said in a faxed reply to queries that the country supported scientific researchers looking at the coronavirus. Regarding long COVID, it said Chinese and international research so far suggested the rate of occurrence is low, organ damage is fairly rare, and symptoms gradually improve with the passage of time.
New Dry Powder Aerosol COVID Vaccine Shows Promise Against Multiple Virus Strains
News Medical Life Sciences reported:
In a recent study published in the journal Nature, researchers developed and tested a novel dry powder aerosol vaccine against COVID-19. The nanoparticle-based vaccine comprises cholera toxin B subunits with the SARS-CoV-2 RBD antigens.
Study findings revealed that this single-use nasal spray promotes the robust production of IgG and IgA antibodies and bolsters local T cell responses with the nasal tract and alveoli in murine and non-human primate models. The composition of the virus allows it to confer defense against both ancestral COVID-19 variants and the more recent Omicron strains.
This novel vaccine could form the basis for a new generation of non-invasive vaccines against both COVID-19 and other respiratory tract infections.
