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Planet Normal: ‘People Should Be Made Aware of Link Between COVID Jab and Heart Problems’

The Telegraph reported:

Vaccines undoubtedly allowed the country to get back to normal after the coronavirus pandemic, but information about potential side effects is not as well publicized as it should be. That’s the view of the Telegraph Science Editor Sarah Knapton, who spoke to columnists Liam Halligan and Allison Pearson on the latest Planet Normal podcast.

“I do think there is some sort of link between heart problems and the jab,” Sarah told the podcast. Sarah said in some cases mRNA vaccines are believed to have caused an issue called “molecular mimicry.”

“When you get a jab, sometimes the body basically mistakes the protein,” she said. “It’s trying to fight proteins in the heart or peptides in the heart … It basically causes autoimmunity and starts battling you rather than the virus.”

Sarah warns there is an “observational link that shows there’s an increase in heart problems, particularly after the mRNA jabs. People should be aware of it and they should be told about it so they can make up their own minds.”

‘Severely Damaged’ and Abandoned: Australian Victims of COVID Vaccine Injuries Feel They Are ‘Not Being Heard’ by Australian Government

Sky News reported:

Thousands of Australians suffering from COVID-19 vaccine injury feel they are “not being heard” or treated fairly by the government. Veteran Liberal MP Russell Broadbent has taken up the case of the thousands of Australians who have experienced an adverse reaction after getting the COVID-19 jab.

He’s met with a number of vaccine injury victims in person, in the hopes he can encourage a better response from the government. “Every one of these vaccine injuries was in strong, healthy, well men and women before they took the vaccine,” Mr. Broadbent said.

Former AMA president Kerryn Phelps is one of many Australians speaking out about vaccine injury in an attempt to ignite a conversation about the vaccine program and response. Dr. Phelps penned a lengthy submission to a parliamentary inquiry into long COVID last year, revealing she and her wife had both been injured after receiving Pfizer jabs.

Launched in December 2021 by the previous government, the COVID-19 vaccine claims system was designed to compensate Australians who had suffered a “moderate to severe impact” following inoculation. Since the compensation scheme was established there have been more than 3,200 claims with only 3% or just 109 being approved. More than 2,480 are still under review while 383 have been refused and 232 have withdrawn.

House Republicans Take Their First Swat at Biden’s COVID Response

NBC News reported:

Congressional Republicans took their first crack at Biden administration officials over their response to the COVID pandemic during a hearing Wednesday as part of a wider push to use their new power in Washington to probe everything from the actions of the FBI to the business dealings of the president’s son.

The hearing is expected to be the first of many by House Republicans around the pandemic response as well as the origins of the COVID virus. A separate committee also plans to investigate how hundreds of billions of dollars in COVID relief funds were lost to fraud during both the Trump and Biden administrations.

The committee members questioned Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Rochelle Walensky, Food and Drug Administration commissioner Robert Califf and Lawrence A. Tabak, the senior official performing the duties of the director of the National Institutes of Health.

Members are also pursuing investigations into the origins of the virus. A letter sent to the National Institutes of Health earlier this month asked for a range of documents related to the monitoring of biosafety and research practices at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where Republicans have speculated the virus may originate. Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., accused the NIH of stonewalling Congress in its efforts to uncover the origins of the virus during the hearing Wednesday.

An Experimental COVID Treatment Could Be a Promising Alternative to Paxlovid, Study Finds

USA TODAY reported:

An experimental COVID-19 antiviral appears to be effective at preventing hospitalizations without some of the downsides of other treatments. A study appearing Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine found that a shot of interferon lambda prevented 51% of hospitalizations among people who have been vaccinated — an already low-risk group and one that hasn’t been proven to benefit from other treatments.

Interferon lambda still has to go through the regulatory approval process, so it’s not available. But the study suggests it could be a viable alternative to authorized treatments like Paxlovid and is superior in some ways. Monoclonal antibodies, which were effective against earlier variants, are no longer working, leaving people who can’t take Paxlovid with fewer options.

Lambda is a type of interferon that has effects specifically in the liver and lungs, not the whole body. This limits side effects seen by other interferons, including flu-like symptoms, body aches and depression, said Dr. David Apelian, interim CEO of Eiger BioPharmaceuticals, which makes interferon lambda and provided it for the study. The company is also testing it against flu and RSV, hoping that eventually, interferon lambda can treat a wide range of respiratory viruses.

Data from the newly published study has been available for nearly a year and Dr. Paul Sax, who directs the division of infectious diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and was not involved in the research, said he thought the drug would have been approved long ago. But the Food and Drug Administration determined that the study was not adequate to win authorization and said more data was needed. Eiger has not yet managed to fund another COVID-19 trial.

Drug Companies Face COVID Cliff in 2023 as Sales Set to Plummet

Reuters reported:

Pharmaceutical companies that made billions from the pandemic over the past two years selling vaccines and treatments are now up against a steep COVID cliff and investor pressure to spend their windfalls wisely.

Western drugmakers including Pfizer Inc. (PFE.N), BioNTech SE (22UAy.DE), Moderna Inc. (MRNA.O), Gilead Sciences Inc (GILD.O), AstraZeneca Plc (AZN.L) and Merck & Co (MRK.N) are estimated to have brought in about $100 billion in revenue from COVID vaccines and treatments in 2022.

These companies are used to steep revenue drops known as patent cliffs that occur when their exclusivities on big-selling drugs expire and generic rivals move in, but they strategize for those swings for years.

Pfizer has been the biggest corporate beneficiary of the pandemic financially, with more than $56 billion in 2022 revenue from the vaccine it developed with German partner BioNTech and from its COVID-19 antiviral treatment Paxlovid.

Big Changes Are Coming to U.S. Healthcare as Pandemic Emergencies Expire

U.S. News & World Report reported:

Americans received unprecedented access to healthcare during the pandemic, including hassle-free public insurance and free tests, treatments and vaccines for COVID-19. Now, they need to prepare for most of that to unwind, experts say.

The change most Americans will notice is an end to free COVID care, starting with testing, experts said. Depending on their insurance status, people will have to pay some or part of the cost of both at-home tests as well as the more comprehensive and accurate COVID tests conducted at doctors’ offices and hospitals.

Eventually, people will also have to start forking over money for COVID vaccines and treatments like Paxlovid.

Australia to Expand Rollout of Fifth COVID Vaccine Shot

Reuters reported:

Australia will roll out a fifth dose of COVID-19 vaccine later this month to all citizens aged 18 and above who have not contracted coronavirus or been vaccinated in the past six months, Health Minister Mark Butler said on Wednesday.

The decision expands eligibility for the booster shot to include about 14 million people, more than half the country’s population, who will be offered Omicron variant-specific vaccines from Feb. 20, Butler said.

Only severely immuno-compromised people had been recommended to take a fifth dose until now, the advice being to receive the booster three months after their fourth shot.

But there has been a slow uptake of booster shots, with official data showing around 72% having had a third dose and only 44% their fourth one.

No New Variants Emerged From China’s COVID Outbreak, Study Finds

NBC News reported:

Analysis of COVID-19 cases in Beijing suggests that no new variants emerged from China’s recent outbreak, according to a study published Wednesday.

The Chinese-funded study, which was published in The Lancet, found that of 413 sampled infections in Beijing, all belonged to existing COVID variants. The most common was Omicron subvariants BA.5.2 and BF.7, which together accounted for more than 90% of local infections.

Although the study covered a short period early in the outbreak and the sampling was limited to Beijing, its findings are in line with reports from Italy and other countries that have been testing arrivals from China for COVID and sequencing the results, said Tongai Maponga, a researcher in the Division of Medical Virology at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa.