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Michigan Teen’s Death Fueled Anti-Vaccine Rhetoric. We Got CDC’s Investigative Report.
A 13-year-old Saginaw County boy, who died in his sleep three days after getting a second dose of a COVID-19 vaccine had a systemic bacterial infection that caused his death, according to an investigation by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Preliminary autopsy findings revealed that Jacob Clynick had myocarditis, which is inflammation of the heart muscle that can affect heart rhythm and its ability to pump. Three days before Jacob’s funeral, a CDC advisory committee acknowledged “a likely association” between the Pfizer and Moderna coronavirus vaccines and a slight risk of heart problems in adolescents and young adults.
A CDC spokesperson told the Free Press on Friday that “the primary cause of the patient’s death was sepsis (bloodstream infection) due to the bacteria Clostridium septicum, a type of bacteria that produces a toxin that can cause inflammation and damage to the heart and other organs.”
That news was a surprise to Jacob’s father, Joseph Clynick. “I think it had to have something to do with the vaccine,” he said. “It doesn’t make any sense that it wouldn’t.” Clynick told the Free Press that he didn’t get any notification from federal, state or local health authorities about the outcome of the CDC investigation. His child’s autopsy report lists the cause of death as “myocarditis of unknown etiology.”
In addition, documents the Free Press obtained from the CDC under the Freedom of Information Act show tension over the official cause of death between federal health investigators and the medical examiner who signed the autopsy report in Jacob’s case.
Not All COVID ‘Misinformation’ Is Equal — or Even Misinformation
Published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the study by six researchers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, started with a worthy goal: examining the role of doctors in spreading dangerous misinformation on social media. But the study undermines its own purpose by wrongly classifying value judgments and some scientifically valid points as misinformation.
For example, consider this statement, which a doctor posted on Facebook in February 2022: “It’s time to recognize natural immunity as at least as good as vaccinations and end the mandates.”
Paul Offit — who has decades of experience fighting anti-vaccine misinformation — called foul at the JAMA study author’s classification of this statement as misinformation. The first part about natural immunity is true, he said. And the call to end vaccine mandates was one view in a legitimate debate — a value judgment, not a fact.
The JAMA article also labeled as misinformation statements about the downsides of masking. But several studies concluded that having to wear a mask all day can impede the ability of children (and adults) to interact and communicate. It’s not “misinformation” to discuss the downsides of public health measures.
Moderna CEO Made $400 Million Last Year — 2,435x the Median Salary of Employees
The CEOs of more than 300 publicly traded healthcare companies collectively raked in $4 billion last year as Americans struggled under high inflation, according to an analysis by STAT News.
Topping the income chart is the CEO of Moderna, the company that developed one of the leading COVID-19 vaccines in the world — with significant support from U.S. taxpayers and federal scientists.
Moderna’s Stéphane Bancel made $398 million in 2022, which equaled the total pay for the next six highest-paid CEOs in the biotech and pharma sector, according to STAT’s analysis. It also put Bancel near the top of the income inequality chart, showing Bancel’s compensation was 2,435 times more than the median salary of Moderna employees last year.
Bancel’s haul was largely from pre-planned stock sales, and he has said that he will donate much of it to charity. Still, the pandemic made Bancel a billionaire; his net worth is estimated to be over $4 billion, and Moderna made roughly $36 billion in worldwide sales from the vaccine, its only product.
Biden Administration to Urge Americans Get New COVID Boosters
The Biden administration plans to urge all Americans to get a booster shot for the coronavirus this autumn to counter a new wave of infections, a White House official said on Sunday. The official said that while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report an increase in infections and hospital admissions from the virus, overall levels remain low.
Moderna and other COVID-19 vaccine makers Novavax, Pfizer and German partner BioNTech SE have created versions of their shots aimed at the XBB.1.5 subvariant.
Pending approval from health regulators in the United States and Europe, the companies expect the updated shots to be available in the coming weeks for the autumn vaccination season.
“We will be encouraging all Americans to get those boosters in addition to flu shots and RSV shots,” the official said, referring to the Respiratory Syncytial Virus.
Local Governments Are Spending Billions of Pandemic Relief Funds, but Some Report Few Specifics
Joplin officials say they have big plans for $13.8 million of pandemic relief funds the tornado-ravaged southwestern Missouri city received under a two-year-old federal law. Yet the latest federal records show none of the money has been spent — or even budgeted.
In fact, about 6,300 cities and counties — nearly 1 in 4 nationwide — reported no expenditures as of this spring, according to an Associated Press analysis of data released by the U.S. Treasury Department. About 5,100 of those listed have no projects — either planned or underway.
So what gives? Is the money not needed? Are cities just sitting on it?
Local and federal officials told the AP in interviews that the publicly available data is misleading — pockmarked by differing interpretations over exactly what must be reported, lagging in timeliness and failing to account for some preliminary planning. Critics contend it’s an indication of a flawed pandemic response.
Long COVID Cognitive Research Needs an Overhaul, Task Force Says — Expert Group Issues Recommendations for Future Studies
Long COVID cognitive research needs better studies, an international task force urged. The approach to assessing cognitive dysfunction after SARS-CoV-2 infection requires an overhaul to better understand long COVID prevalence, trajectory, mechanisms, phenotypes, and psychosocial factors, said experts from the NeuroCOVID International Neuropsychology Taskforce.
Long COVID cognitive dysfunction, including “brain fog,” can affect even relatively young people and can last for months. A modeling study based on 1.2 million COVID patients showed that 2.2% had cognitive problems lasting 3 months or longer after symptomatic infection. Moreover, data from patients with severe COVID suggested that SARS-CoV-2 infection may raise the risk of subsequent neurodegeneration.
The task force outlined three recommendations based on the initial guidelines the group proposed in 2021. The first calls for a rigorous assessment of post-COVID cognitive dysfunction. Studies relying on self-reported data early in the pandemic have skewed perceptions about the frequency of cognitive dysfunction, Weisenbach and co-authors pointed out, and objective and subjective findings often don’t align with each other. Comprehensive test batteries should be used, and studies should include control groups, diverse samples, and when possible, pre-pandemic and post-pandemic data, they argued.
The group’s second recommendation was for new research to identify clinical phenotypes. COVID severity, age, family history, and pre-existing cognitive or psychiatric disorders are factors to consider, the task force observed. Other phenotypes may be based on COVID-19 variants, vaccination status, or history of other viral illnesses or pre-existing autoimmune conditions.
COVID Boosts Risks of Health Problems 2 Years Later, Giant Study of Veterans Says
Three-and-a-half years since SARS-CoV-2 spread around the world, scientists are still documenting the virus’ myriad effects on human health. What’s clear already is that those effects can continue long beyond the original infection.
Now, researchers have attempted to quantify this long-term harm using a massive database of U.S. veterans’ health records. They found a dramatically increased risk of dozens of conditions including heart failure and fatigue, sometimes years postinfection. Overall, the team estimates, COVID-19’s public health impact is more than 50% greater than that of cancer or heart disease.
Other researchers say the conclusions broadly reflect what physicians have seen. However, several cite drawbacks in the study’s statistical analysis that could have led it to overestimate harm to the general population. “The authors have done a good job in doing the analysis, but there are some limitations and those limitations are not small,” says Maarten van Smeden, a medical statistician at the University Medical Center Utrecht. “You have to take this with a little grain of salt.”
COVID Linked With Higher Risk of High Blood Pressure, Study Finds
When it comes to developing high blood pressure, COVID-19 might play an outsized role, a new study says.
The report, published Monday in the medical journal Hypertension, found that more than 1 in 5 patients who were hospitalized with COVID-19 — and over 1 in 10 who were not — had been diagnosed with high blood pressure six months later. Compared with people who had influenza, another upper respiratory virus, those hospitalized with COVID-19 were over twice as likely to develop hypertension.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, high blood pressure, also known as hypertension, increases the risk of heart disease and stroke, the leading causes of death in the United States. Nearly half of the adults in the nation have hypertension, and in 2021, the CDC says, it caused nearly 700,000 deaths in the United States.
In the new study, the researchers looked at the medical records of over 45,000 COVID-19 patients and nearly 14,000 influenza patients in the Bronx borough of New York City between 2020 and 2022. Before their viral infection, none of the patients had a history of hypertension. At a six-month follow-up appointment, the researchers then tracked which ones had new diagnoses of the heart condition.
