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How the Race for a COVID Vaccine Enriched Monkey Poachers and Endangered Macaques
The smuggling of monkeys caught in the wild is believed to have been going on for years due to the colossal demand for laboratory monkeys in the U.S. and the limited supply at breeding facilities at home and abroad.
The arrival of the pandemic and the race to find a COVID vaccine squeezed the market even further, experts say, setting off a mad scramble for the animals that fueled a spike in monkey poaching and contributed to the endangerment of the species most commonly used in drug studies — the long-tailed macaque.
“It’s gotten out of hand,” said Malene Friis Hansen, the director of the Long-tailed Macaque Project, a Denmark-based nonprofit group focused on conserving the primates. “The insane demand coming from the U.S. is driving the trade to an unsustainable level.”
The U.S. leads the world in the number of primates it imports for medical research. Between 2017 and May, more than 150,000 monkeys arrived in the U.S. to be used in experiments, according to figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
FDA Study Links Pfizer COVID Vaccine With Blood Clotting? Panic on Social Media After New Report
International Business Times reported:
Pharma giant Pfizer was trending on social media following an “FDA study” linking its COVID-19 vaccine with blood clotting in older individuals. The study titled ‘Surveillance of COVID-19 vaccine safety among elderly persons aged 65 years and older’ was published by the journal Vaccine, earlier this month.
The study was jointly conducted by the researchers from U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Acumen LLC, Department of Economics, Stanford University and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
The Epoch Times reported that a database of elderly persons in the United States found that pulmonary embolism, blood clotting in the lungs, met the initial threshold for a statistical signal and continued meeting the criteria after a more in-depth evaluation.
Three other observations including a lack of oxygen to the heart, a blood platelet disorder called immune thrombocytopenia and another type of clotting called intravascular coagulation, also raised red flags for the researchers, as per the outlet. The study included the subjects who received COVID-19 vaccine shots from Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson and Johnson.
‘I Don’t Trust It:’ Vaccine Hesitancy Lingers Even as China COVID Cases Surge
Headhunter Candice knows the COVID-19 infections engulfing Beijing and much of China will soon hit her home of Shenzhen city, but she would rather face it without a vaccine booster, saying she fears potential side effects more than the virus.
The 28-year-old took two doses of Sinovac’s CoronaVac last year, hoping it would make travel easier, but she has since grown more skeptical, citing stories from friends about health impacts, as well as similar health warnings on social media.
“I don’t trust it,” she said, speaking on the condition that only her first name be used. Candice said she has refused to participate in recent vaccination drives organized by her local community.
Candice is part of a group that demonstrates how vaccine hesitancy still runs deep in mainland China, academics say, which poses a growing headache for Beijing as it tries to persuade more to get vaccinated in the face of a spike in infections after the lifting of strict anti-COVID measures.
Israeli Government Mysteriously Loses Pfizer Vaccine Agreement That Promised to Share Population’s Data
The government of Israel has admitted in court that it has failed to locate its COVID-19 vaccine agreement with Pfizer despite an extensive search.
In 2020, Israel secured vaccines from Pfizer on a priority basis, promising to provide epidemiological data of its citizens in exchange. In a petition pending at the Jerusalem District Court, the Israeli Ministry of Health (MoH) claimed to have lost the agreement and also raised doubts about whether the agreement was even signed by the parties involved.
The agreement was made public in January last year. The ministry published the redacted agreement due to rising criticism about the terms involved in the data transfer. Many of the statements were hidden.
The agreement had also left spaces for signatures from the Health Ministry Director General as well as an executive from Pfizer whose name was blacked out. According to the agreement, MoH would provide data to Pfizer to the extent that such data does not reveal an individual’s identity.
CDC: Omicron Subvariants BQ, XBB Responsible for 3 Out of 4 Coronavirus Cases
U.S. News & World Report reported:
The Omicron subvariants that present “serious threats” to COVID-19 vaccines are growing in the U.S., according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
BQ.1.1, BQ.1 and XBB were responsible for more than 76% of coronavirus infections this week, according to CDC estimates — up from nearly 71% of cases last week.
The subvariants are raising concerns about a potential winter wave of COVID-19 as they are posing challenges to vaccines and monoclonal antibody treatments. A study published last week found that the subvariants are the “most resistant SARS-CoV-2 variants to date.”
No Link Between Sudden Hearing Loss and COVID Vaccination, Large Study Says — No Association Seen With SARS-CoV-2 Infection Either
Sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSNHL) was not associated with receipt of COVID-19 vaccination, a register-based country-wide retrospective cohort study in Finland showed.
Among 5.5 million Finnish residents, the adjusted incidence rate ratios (aIRRs) of SSNHL with the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA COVID vaccine’s three doses were 0.8 (95% CI 0.6-1.0), 0.9 (95% CI 0.6-1.2) and 1.0 (95% CI 0.7-1.4), respectively, compared with incidence before the pandemic, reported Petteri Hovi, MD, Ph.D., of the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare in Helsinki, and colleagues.
“Within the COVID-19 vaccinated population, the incidence of SSNHL did not show a temporal pattern associated with vaccination, and the incidences during the main risk periods were similar to the incidences before vaccination and those after the main risk periods,” they noted in JAMA Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery.
Clinton-Backed Initiative Ships Pfizer COVID Drugs to Africa
The COVID Treatment Quick Start Consortium delivered its first shipment of Paxlovid, a COVID-19 treatment made by Pfizer Inc., to Africa on Monday with 1,000 courses of the drug arriving in Zambia.
The consortium, launched in September and backed by the Clinton Health Access Initiative and institutions including Duke University, aims to distribute 100,000 courses of the drug donated by Pfizer to poor nations, which have yet to receive therapeutic medicines to tackle the coronavirus.
America’s Historically Bad Flu Season May Be Peaking
The U.S. has been pummeled by respiratory illness, including a harsher flu season than we’ve seen in years. But new data indicates the outbreak may be peaking.
A succession of respiratory illnesses — the viruses that cause the common cold, RSV, strep, COVID and the flu — kicked off early and hit hard this season.
What we’re watching: Experts believe the nationwide trend may be close to peaking. But they predict the outbreak will morph into regional waves of illness into early spring that could stress health systems and collide with COVID.
Between the lines: This matches up to the experience in the clinical setting, at least at Children’s National, where a succession of respiratory illnesses hit earlier than usual, causing exponential jumps in cases, before finally starting to drop, Sarah Ash Combs, an emergency department physician at Children’s National Hospital, said.
