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Bill Gates Says COVID Risks Have ‘Dramatically Reduced’ but Another Pandemic Is Coming

CNBC reported:

Bill Gates said Friday that the risks of severe disease from COVID-19 have “dramatically reduced” but another pandemic is all but certain.

Speaking to CNBC’s Hadley Gamble at Germany’s annual Munich Security Conference, Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said that a potential new pandemic would likely stem from a different pathogen to that of the coronavirus family. But he added that advances in medical technology should help the world do a better job of fighting it — if investments are made now.

Two years into the coronavirus pandemic, Gates said the worst effects have faded as huge swathes of the global population have gained some level of immunity. Its severity has also waned with the latest Omicron variant. However, Gates said that in many places that was due to virus itself, which creates a level of immunity, and has “done a better job of getting out to the world population than we have with vaccines.”

He added that the world should move faster in the future to develop and distribute vaccines, calling on governments to invest now.

2,044 Fully Vaccinated Indiana Residents Died of COVID; 329,000 Breakthrough Cases Recorded

International Business Times reported:

More than 2,000 fully vaccinated residents in Indiana have now died of COVID-19 despite a decline in new coronavirus cases in the state.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, health officials in Indiana have registered a total of 2,044 breakthrough COVID-19 deaths. At least 86% of these occurred in residents aged 65 and older, with an average age of 78. The number of deaths represents 0.056% of all vaccinated people in the state.

As of Thursday, health officials have also recorded 329,167 breakthrough infections and 3,858 hospitalizations with COVID-19 among the vaccinated. The figures represent 8.961% and 0.105% of all fully vaccinated individuals across Indiana, respectively, data from the Health Department showed.

A Test to Determine COVID Immunity Could Reshape U.S. Policy

The Hill reported:

Two years into the COVID pandemic, and we still don’t have a way to determine for sure whether the immunity you gain from either an infection or the vaccine is sufficient to protect from reinfection or from serious illness. We call it a correlate of protection. We can still only guess.

It is also clear that previous infection with COVID provides a valuable source of immunity against reinfection, but this protection doesn’t last forever and doesn’t always protect us against the immuno-evasive Omicron variant.

A new study from Qatar just published in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that previous infection provided 60% protection against Omicron with substantial protection against hospitalization, but we haven’t seen the same pattern here in the U.S.

As a country, our approach has been too narrow and rigid. On the one hand, we don’t acknowledge that recent infection provides protection, the way Israel does. On the other hand, we narrowly stick to the view that the vaccine provides complete protection when it does no such thing, especially against Omicron.

Arkansas County Praises Doctor Who Gave Inmates Ivermectin

Associated Press reported:

A northwest Arkansas county issued a resolution praising the doctor at its jail who faces a lawsuit from inmates who say they were unknowingly prescribed ivermectin to treat COVID-19, despite warnings from health officials about the anti-parasitic drug.

The Washington County Quorum Court voted 9-4 Thursday night in favor of the resolution praising Dr. Robert Karas for his work treating inmates with COVID-19 at the county jail. The panel also rejected, by a 10-4 vote, a separate resolution supporting the principle of informed consent for medical treatments.

Karas is scheduled to appear in April before the state Medical Board, which has been investigating complaints against him over the drug’s use at the jail. Karas has said he began giving inmates ivermectin in November 2020. He told a Medical Board investigator that 254 inmates were treated with the drug.

Exclusive: Former Harvard Prof. Martin Kulldorff: ‘Science and Public Health Are Broken’

The Epoch Times reported:

Dr. Martin Kulldorff is one of the most qualified public health pandemic experts in the United States. To the narrative-shapers, he’s a pariah.

As a prominent epidemiologist and statistician, Kulldorff has worked on detecting and monitoring infectious disease outbreaks for two decades. His methods are widely used around the world and by almost every state health department in the United States, as well as by hundreds of people at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

“For some reason, a public official narrative was established, and you weren’t allowed to question it — which, of course, is very detrimental, both to the pandemic and how to deal with the pandemic, because you have to have a vibrant discussion to figure out how best to deal with these things,” he told The Epoch Times.

Improperly Stored COVID Doses Called Isolated Incident

Associated Press reported:

The improper storage of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine at a New Haven clinic, which led to hundreds of people being told to get another jab, is an isolated incident of miscommunication, according to an internal review.

New Haven Health Director Maritza Bond said there was a lack of communication as to who was responsible for checking when the vaccine should have been moved from a freezer to a refrigerator, WTNH-TV reported. Bond said approximately 2,900 doses had been left in the freezer too long and 656 were administered to 625 people.

Bond said the 625 people who received the vaccine were cross-referenced with a state database and none have been identified as having contracted COVID-19. The database does not include the results of rapid at-home tests.

Estimated 73% of U.S. Now Immune to Omicron: Is That Enough?

Associated Press reported:

The Omicron wave that assaulted the United States this winter also bolstered its defenses, leaving enough protection against the coronavirus that future spikes will likely require much less — if any — dramatic disruption to society.

Millions of individual Americans’ immune systems now recognize the virus and are primed to fight it off if they encounter Omicron, or even another variant.

About half of eligible Americans have received booster shots, there have been nearly 80 million confirmed infections overall and many more infections have never been reported. One influential model uses those factors and others to estimate that 73% of Americans are, for now, immune to Omicron, the dominant variant, and that could rise to 80% by mid-March.

Quebec to Offer Third Dose of COVID Vaccine to Teenagers

Global News reported:

Quebecers aged 12 to 17 will be able to get a third dose of the COVID-19 vaccine starting this weekend.

The Health Ministry announced the decision Friday based on new advice from the province’s immunization committee. “Note that the booster dose should be administered three months or more after the last dose of vaccine received against COVID-19,” the ministry said in a statement.

The committee recommends teenagers who are at higher risk of complications from the virus get the third dose. It will also be made available to anyone older than 12 if they wish to get a booster shot.

Africa May Have Been Hit Harder by COVID Than Anyone Knew

The Washington Post reported:

It’s one of the enduring mysteries of COVID-19: Why didn’t the pandemic hit low-income African nations as hard as wealthy countries in North America and Europe?

There is no simple answer to that question. But this week, two new studies added to our understanding of it. One suggested that the number of COVID-19 cases may be vastly undercounted across the continent; another found good evidence that the number of deaths in at least one country could be significantly undercounted.

Neither study necessarily changes our current big picture understanding of the pandemic — that wealthy countries often saw worse outcomes than developing nations.

Six African Countries to Begin Making mRNA Vaccines as Part of WHO Scheme

The Guardian reported:

Six African countries — Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia — will be the first on the continent to receive the technology needed to produce their own mRNA vaccines from a scheme headed by the World Health Organization.

The announcement comes in the same week that BioNTech, which produces the Pfizer vaccine for COVID-19 — itself an mRNA vaccine — announced it planned to deliver factory facilities built out of shipping containers to several African countries to allow the Pfizer vaccine to be produced on the continent.