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Pfizer Gathers Celebrities Together for a Crossover COVID Booster Ad
It’s all the rage for superhero films: Bring together several fan-favorite celebrities into one cinematic event. Pfizer is following Marvel and DC’s lead, bringing together its five most recent COVID commercial celebrities for a new ad promoting its booster.
Singer John Legend, professional soccer player Megan Rapinoe, singer Charlie Puth, TV personality Martha Stewart and pro football star Travis Kelce have all over the past year undertaken ads or promoted work for Pfizer specifically for its COVID vaccine and new booster.
Now, Pfizer is splicing their previous ad work together, with the celebs showing off their distinctive blue Band-Aids for their COVID shots in the company’s latest ad, “Got Yours?”
The narrator asks what this diverse set of American all-stars has in common: It is, of course, that they have all had their new Pfizer COVID booster. The draw will be seeing all five celebrities in one place. Pfizer is releasing the 30-second spot as it aims to shore up its lagging COVID vaccine sales.
The pharma had, from 2020 until this year, seen tens of billions of dollars come pouring in for its COVID vaccines and drug Paxlovid. But, in a severe and sudden reversal of fortunes, those sales have all but dried up in 2023 as the pandemic turned into an endemic.
Rand Paul Wants Fauci Taken Down or a New Law Passed
Senator Rand Paul is still aiming to take down Dr. Anthony Fauci — or have a new law passed to regulate gain-of-function research.
The Republican from Kentucky appeared on The Will Cain Podcast this week and spoke about how Fauci, the former chief White House medical adviser, allegedly committed crimes related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“He lied to Congress, that’s a felony,” Paul said while speaking about Fauci. “I’ve referred him for prosecution, and [Attorney General] Merrick Garland has responded saying he got our letter, but there’s been no investigation as we know of.
“We know he lied, not because I say so but because his private emails contradict his public statements,” Paul said. “To me, culpability is important, but I don’t have control, I can’t prosecute…but the other thing I want to have happen is, I want this type of research that we’re paying for through our tax dollars to be circumscribed, to be regulated, to have a real committee of scientists looking at what is worthwhile, what is not worthwhile.
Lawsuit Challenges Federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program — Claims ‘Consistently Lost, Ignored, Denied, or Caught Up’ in Bureaucracy, Complaint Alleges
A recently filed lawsuit is challenging the constitutionality of the federal Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP).
In a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana last month, attorneys for a group of plaintiffs alleging they had been seriously injured after they “did the right thing” and received a COVID-19 vaccine wrote that the CICP is the “epitome of a kangaroo court or a star chamber — a proceeding that ignores recognized standards of law and justice, is grossly unfair, and comes to a predetermined conclusion.”
In an email to MedPage Today, Aaron Siri, JD, the managing partner of Siri & Glimstad, who is representing the plaintiffs, wrote that “leading up to when we filed, there had been hope that Congress was going to correct the serious issue of failing to provide often desperately needed support for those injured by COVID-19 vaccines.”
However, to date, there has been little in the way of resolution or compensation for plaintiffs “wholly consumed by survival needs,” but who “recognize the importance of the challenge they currently bring” to the court, the complaint noted.
As of October 1, there have been 12,233 CICP claims related to COVID countermeasures. The CICP has compensated six of those claims — five for myocarditis and one for anaphylaxis.
‘We Were Told the Vaccine Was Safe — but What Happened Has Been Life-Changing’
The Telegraph via Yahoo!News reported:
Jamie Scott can recall nothing of the four weeks and five days he remained in a coma in intensive care. “I don’t remember any of it. I don’t remember any of that time. The only thing I can remember is waking up and seeing Kate,” said Jamie.
He is now a test case; the first person to lodge a claim for damages against AstraZeneca in a landmark legal action that — should he win — could pave the way for hundreds of claims and damages that will run into the tens, if not hundreds, of millions.
Jamie was 44, fit and healthy, and a keen 10km runner, when his life (and by extension Kate’s and their boys’) was turned upside down. A little over two years ago — on April 23, 2021 — Jamie did what so many other Britons did. He went to his local GP clinic in the West Midlands, where the family lives, for a COVID jab. It was in the relatively early days of the vaccine rollout and the U.K. was pushing hard the AstraZeneca vaccine developed at Oxford University.
There had been warnings starting to emerge of possible blood clots associated with the vaccine — two weeks before Jamie had the jab, the U.K. had stopped giving the AstraZeneca vaccine to the under-30s. But Jamie had wanted to do his bit and get vaccinated so he and the children could visit his elderly father. He wasn’t having the jab for himself. For a man his age and in excellent health, COVID-19 posed little threat. The AstraZeneca vaccine proved to be nearly fatal.
Vaccine Maker Novavax Tops Revenue Estimates, Eyes More Cost Cuts
COVID-19 vaccine maker Novavax (NVAX.O) on Thursday beat market estimates for quarterly revenue, boosted by U.S. government grants to help cover the expense of clinical trials, and said it was prepared to further cut costs next year.
Shares rose nearly 4% in early trading as the company projected more than $2 billion in cash through end of 2025 from already secured revenues.
Still, the Maryland-based biotech, which has been banking on cost cuts and commercial sales of its retooled COVID shot to help it stay afloat, reiterated its “going concern warning.”
Novavax said it had reduced liabilities by $128 million in the third quarter and was prepared to cut costs by an additional $300 million in 2024 to better align itself with the smaller-than-expected COVID-19 vaccine market.
New Pandemic-Era Stress Scale Aims to Help Identify at-Risk Adults, Kids
A new study from researchers at Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes Program (ECHO) at the National Institutes of Health shows how a stress scale developed to identify who was most at-risk of needing mental health support during the pandemic has the potential to evaluate traumatic stress reactions to ongoing large-scale threats.
The study, which describes the Pandemic-Related Traumatic Stress Scale (PTSS), is published in the journal Psychological Assessment. Researchers conducted the study at 47 ECHO cohort study cites across the United States, Puerto Rico, and Washington DC. The study included 17,839 adults and children.
The adult caregiver population, which was 98.7% female, had the highest measures of pandemic-related stress, followed by adolescents, pregnant and postpartum participants, and children.
Long COVID Linked to Allergies in New Study
In an analysis of 13 published prospective studies of people of all ages with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection who were followed up for at least 12 months, pre-existing allergic conditions were linked to higher risks of experiencing long COVID, according to a study today in Clinical & Experimental Allergy.
This is one of the first studies to assess the relationship between long COVID and allergies. The studies included 9,967 participants and were published from January 1, 2020, to January 19, 2023. For long COVID, the authors used a definition of self-reported or physician-diagnosed symptoms continuing or developing after acute COVID-19 onset.
Four of the 13 studies provided estimates on the association between pre-existing allergic conditions such as asthma or hay fever and long COVID. Pre-existing asthma was associated with an increased risk of long COVID, but the evidence was very uncertain, the authors said. The odds ratio (OR) for preexisting asthma and long COVID was 1.94 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.08 to 3.50).
In an analysis of three studies that included data on preexisting allergic rhinitis, the condition was significantly associated with an increased risk of long COVID (OR, 1.96; 95% CI, 1.61 to 2.39).
Salt Water Gargling, Nasal Irrigation May Keep COVID From Worsening
U.S. News & World Report reported:
If you’re suffering from COVID, you might want to grab a glass of warm water and a shaker of salt.
New research suggests that gargling and rinsing your nasal passages with a saline solution may help keep you out of the hospital. In the small study, researchers found that gargling four times a day for 14 days with salt water seemed to ease symptoms and cut the odds of being hospitalized significantly.
The researchers found that 19% of those who gargled the low dose of salt were hospitalized, as were 21% of those who gargled the high-salt dose. These percentages were significantly lower than the 59% hospitalization rate of patients who didn’t gargle, Espinoza said.
