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This Liberal Crusader Helped Convince America COVID Came From a Lab
Congressional Republicans are banking on a blockbuster hearing Wednesday on the origins of COVID-19 to show once and for all that U.S. scientists, working with a Chinese lab, caused a devastating pandemic. To counter the view of many scientists that COVID originated naturally among wild animals, the Republicans will rely on evidence uncovered by a tiny nonprofit in Oakland, California, led by a disciple of consumer activist Ralph Nader.
U.S. Right to Know and its founder, Gary Ruskin, have proven “more successful than any of us in getting information from the administration,” said Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) after introducing Ruskin at a March hearing.
Ruskin’s work informed Paul’s questions about government transparency and this week will guide Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), chair of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, as he questions Peter Daszak, head of the nonprofit research group EcoHealth Alliance, about whether research he proposed to the Defense Department in 2018 could be what led to Covid. Asked by POLITICO whether Ruskin’s efforts have helped his investigation, Wenstrup said “Absolutely.”
Ruskin says he merely followed the evidence and then publicized it. And the overwhelming majority of Americans now believe what was once derided as a conspiracy theory: The coronavirus that sparked the pandemic came from a Chinese lab.
Iowa ‘Essential Worker’ Claiming COVID Vaccine Side Effects Seeks Workers’ Comp
A Cedar Rapids city employee is seeking workers’ compensation benefits for injuries he attributes to the city’s repeated promotion of the COVID-19 vaccine. State and court records indicate that in April 2021, the city of Cedar Rapids began hosting vaccine clinics and sending out emails and newsletters encouraging, but not requiring, city employees to get the vaccine.
Larry Driscoll, then a 51-year-old manager for the city’s public works department, decided to get the Johnson & Johnson vaccine against COVID-19. After suffering from side effects allegedly caused by the vaccine — including fatigue, facial drooping, loss of balance, and weakness or numbness throughout his body — Driscoll filed a workers’ compensation claim, arguing his issues stemmed from his work for the city.
In January, Workers’ Compensation Commissioner Joseph Cortese II reviewed the matter and ruled that while the city had clearly encouraged workers to get vaccinated, it did not require workers to do so, and he denied Driscoll’s application for benefits.
Driscoll is now appealing that decision by taking the case to Polk County District Court, where he’s seeking judicial review of the matter. In court filings, Driscoll’s attorneys note that their client scheduled his vaccination appointment using a work computer, during work hours, through a city-provided link. In addition, they say, city employees were told they could use up to two hours of pay under the city’s “healthy workplace leave policy” to get the vaccine during work hours.
After COVID Vaccine Rollout, Negativity on Twitter Spiked
Negativity about vaccines surged 27% on Twitter after COVID-19 vaccines first became available, according to a new study presented this week at the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID) Global Congress. In the years prior to COVID-19, there were more negative statements about vaccines than positive ones, but the introduction of vaccines and news about mandating vaccines caused negative statements to spike on Twitter, now called X.
The study used data from open-source software (the Snscrape library in Python). The program downloaded tweets with the hashtag “vaccine” published on Twitter from January 1, 2018, to December 31, 2022.
A total of 567,915 tweets were extracted and analyzed, with 458,045 classified as negative and 109,870 as positive by a machine-learning algorithm. After the introduction of COVID-19 vaccines at the end of 2020, there were on average 10,201 more vaccine-related tweets per month.
The program identified 310,508 tweets (12,420 a month on average) with negative sentiment after December 11, 2020. This represents a 27% increase in negative tweets than would be expected had the COVID-19 vaccines not been introduced (9,785 a month, 95% confidence interval, 9,282 to 10,249).
Chinese Scientist Who First Published COVID Sequence Stages Protest After Being Locked Out of Lab
The first scientist to publish a sequence of the COVID-19 virus in China staged a sit-in protest outside his lab after authorities locked him out of the facility — a sign of Beijing’s continuing pressure on scientists conducting research on the coronavirus.
Zhang Yongzhen wrote in an online post on Monday that he and his team had been suddenly notified they were being evicted from their lab, the latest in a series of setbacks, demotions and ousters since the virologist published the sequence in January 2020 without state approval.
“I won’t leave, I won’t quit, I am pursuing science and the truth!” he wrote in a post on the Chinese social media platform Weibo that was later deleted.
Zhang’s latest difficulty reflects how China has sought to control information related to the virus: An Associated Press investigation found that the government froze meaningful domestic and international efforts to trace it from the first weeks of the outbreak. That pattern continues to this day, with labs closed, collaborations shattered, foreign scientists forced out and Chinese researchers barred from leaving the country.
Zhang’s ordeal started when he and his team decoded the virus on Jan. 5, 2020, and wrote an internal notice warning Chinese authorities of its potential to spread — but did not make the sequence public. The next day, Zhang’s lab was ordered temporarily shut down by China’s top health official, and Zhang came under pressure from Chinese authorities.
Lawmakers, as Part of ‘Lab Leak’ COVID Inquiry, Press to Bar EcoHealth From Federal Research Funds
A House panel is pushing for a virus research group and its director to be formally debarred from any federal funds and criminally investigated, the latest in a campaign to probe the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and regulate virus research.
A new report by a select coronavirus subcommittee says the research group, EcoHealth Alliance, failed to report high-risk viral disease research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China and misrepresented its work to U.S. federal agencies. The report was released ahead of a Wednesday hearing with the organization’s president, Peter Daszak.
While those studies altering viruses, known as gain-of-function research, are not illegal, Republicans in particular have called for the U.S. government to bar these methods from federal funding because they can make viruses more transmissible. Dazsak maintained during the hearing that EcoHealth did not do gain-of-function research.
The U.S.-based EcoHealth first caught the attention of the Trump administration for its coronavirus work at the Wuhan Institute central to lab leak theories. While EcoHealth and federal agencies have maintained there is no relationship between the organization’s work and COVID-19, the National Institutes of Health terminated its research grant in April 2020 on directions from the White House.
NIH reinstituted EcoHealth’s grant in 2023. A debarment would prevent the group from receiving any more federal funds, for any project.
WHO Overturns Dogma on Airborne Disease Spread. The CDC Might Not Act on It.
The World Health Organization has issued a report that transforms how the world understands respiratory infections like COVID-19, influenza, and measles. Motivated by grave missteps in the pandemic, the WHO convened about 50 experts in virology, epidemiology, aerosol science, and bioengineering, among other specialties, who spent two years poring through the evidence on how airborne viruses and bacteria spread.
The WHO report stops short of prescribing actions that governments, hospitals, and the public should take in response. It remains to be seen how the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will act on this information in its own guidance for infection control in healthcare settings.
The WHO concluded that airborne transmission occurs as sick people exhale pathogens that remain suspended in the air, contained in tiny particles of saliva and mucus that are inhaled by others.
The change puts fresh emphasis on the need to improve ventilation indoors and stockpile quality face masks before the next airborne disease explodes. Far from a remote possibility, measles is on the rise this year and the H5N1 bird flu is spreading among cattle in several states. Scientists worry that as the H5N1 virus spends more time in mammals, it could evolve to more easily infect people and spread among them through the air.
Pfizer Beats Revenue Estimates, Raises Profit Outlook on Cost Cuts and Smaller-Than-Feared Drop in COVID Drug Sales
Pfizer on Wednesday reported first-quarter revenue that beat expectations and hiked its full-year profit outlook, benefiting from its broad cost-cutting program, a smaller-than-feared drop in sales of its COVID antiviral pill Paxlovid and strong non-COVID product sales.
The company now expects to book adjusted earnings of $2.15 to $2.35 per share for the fiscal year, up from its prior guidance of $2.05 to $2.25 per share. Pfizer reiterated its previous revenue forecast of $58.5 billion and $61.5 billion, which it first outlined in mid-December.
The pharmaceutical giant said its new profit guidance accounts for its “confidence” in its business and its ability to slash costs. Pfizer said it is on track to deliver at least $4 billion in savings by the end of the year.
The results come as Pfizer tries to regain its footing after the rapid decline of its COVID business. Demand for those products has plunged to new lows, and they transitioned to the commercial market in the U.S. last year. As revenue suffers, the company is trying to improve its bottom line and shore up investor confidence through its cost cuts and a renewed focus on treating cancer after its $43 billion acquisition of Seagen last year.
Global Survey Shows COVID Booster Uptake in Question
A new survey of 23,000 adults in 23 countries taken in October 2023 finds a lower intent to get a COVID-19 booster vaccine (71.6%), compared with 2022 (87.9%).
Moreover, 60.8% expressed being more willing to get vaccinated for diseases other than COVID-19 as a result of their experiences during the pandemic, while 23.1% reported being less willing.
“This study reveals that a substantial proportion of individuals express resistance to vaccination and that concerns about COVID-19 vaccination appear to have spilled over to affect other vaccine-preventable disease,” the authors write.
The findings, published in Nature Medicine, offer a new global snapshot of COVID vaccine attitudes and show that vaccine hesitancy and trust challenges remain throughout the world today.
COVID Hospitalizations Hit Record Low, the CDC Says
Weekly COVID-19 hospitalizations have hit their lowest level ever reported since the pandemic began, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The news comes as the requirements for hospitals to report respiratory illness data, like COVID hospital admissions, expire at the end of April. Federal officials plan to use other data sources such as wastewater, laboratory tests and emergency department data to stay informed about the spread of illnesses.
WHO COVID Vaccine Advisers Recommend Switch to JN.1 Strain
The World Health Organization (WHO) Technical Advisory Group on COVID-19 Vaccine Composition, which meets about every 6 months to assess if any changes are needed, has recommended that the next COVID vaccine formulations use a monovalent (single-strain) JN.1 lineage. The group met in the middle of April to review the genetic and antigenic evolution of SARS-CoV-2, with an eye toward vaccine composition implications.
In a statement, the experts note that the XBB lineage has been displaced by JN.1 and said that, over the short term, circulating variants will likely be derived from JN.1.
In the United States, for example, a JN.1 spinoff called KP.2 that contains the FLiRT substitutions edged out the JN.1 parent virus as the most commonly detected variant, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in its latest variant proportion estimates.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) will meet on May 16 to discuss and make strain-selection recommendations for 2024-25 COVID vaccines.
