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White House Shuts Down Reporter’s Fauci Question on COVID Origin: ‘I’m Done’

Fox News reported:

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre snapped at reporters who raised questions about the origins of COVID-19 during Tuesday’s press briefing, which featured outgoing White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci.

During questions after the White House coronavirus response team updated reporters on the administration’s vaccine efforts, Daily Caller White House correspondent Diana Glebova attempted to ask a question regarding what Fauci has done to investigate the origins of COVID-19. But Jean-Pierre shut Glebova down and rebuked her for speaking out of turn.

When Glebova objected, Jean-Pierre said she was “done” and was “not getting into a back-and-forth with you.” Then Today News Africa journalist Simon Ateba spoke up and said her question was valid and should be asked. “You need to call people across the room. She has a valid question, she’s asked about the origin of COVID,” Ateba said.

Fauci, who will step down as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in December, has faced questions from Republican lawmakers over his agency’s support for coronavirus research in China.

NIAID has provided millions of dollars in grant funding to EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit group that GOP critics claim has supported bat coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lawmakers interested in the lab-leak origins theory of COVID-19 want to probe whether that research was the genesis of the pandemic and whether Fauci played any role in approving money that was sent to the Wuhan lab.

Prime-Age Mortality Remains Elevated Even as COVID Fades

The Epoch Times reported:

More Americans aged 18-49 are dying than in years before, even if COVID-19 deaths are excluded. Such excess deaths reached their zenith during summer and fall last year. They have since subsided but still remain in the thousands each month.

As The Epoch Times previously reported, the excess deaths are likely attributable to increases in drug overdoses, alcoholic diseases and homicide as well as overlooked COVID-19 deaths, delayed consequences of the disease and possible side effects of the COVID-19 vaccines.

Last year, some 96,000 more prime-age Americans died when compared to 2018 and 2019, adjusted for population change. Less than half of those were attributed to COVID-19 in death certificate data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

This year, between January and August, there have been more than 40,000 such excess deaths with less than 28% attributed to COVID-19. That leaves more than 54,000 non-COVID-19 excess deaths in 2021 and more than 29,000 such deaths this year until August in the 18-49 age group.

Patients Must Be a Doctor’s Priority, Not Power or Profits

The Daily Wire reported:

Among the key takeaways from the 2022 elections was voters yearning for a sense of normalcy. The populace wants to turn the page on the pandemic and the containment strategies that have been imposed upon us.

For doctors, that means returning to a pre-pandemic mindset of applying critical thinking and pushing back on misguided protocols and policies — especially those offered up by bullying public health agencies influenced by profit-making entities. Politicians talk about putting America first — for doctors, patients must always come first.

Consider the vaccines. After the federal government used its full force to spearhead a mass vaccine effort, serious questions have arisen about the products’ safety. Never mind that the vaccines fell woefully short of preventing infection or transmission of the disease. According to a report from the Journal of Food and Chemical Toxicology, mRNA injections can weaken the natural immune system, fueling deadly diseases such as heart problems and blood clots.

Pfizer and Moderna, which have received billions of dollars from the U.S. government for COVID products, have now launched trials to determine whether there are any long-term negative health impacts caused by the vaccines that public health officials assured us were safe and forced many to get.

Oregon Corrects False Information on Child COVID Hospitalization Rates

The Epoch Times reported:

A report promoted by the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) has been corrected after falsely claiming nearly 50% of children aged 12 to 17 who contracted COVID-19 required hospital treatment.

The Rede Group, which created the report for the authority, acknowledged the misinformation in a memorandum obtained by The Epoch Times.

The old version of the report claimed that 47.4% of children aged 12 to 17 who contracted COVID-19 required hospital care. According to OHA data, that percentage is actually at or below 1%.

The report also claimed that the hospitalization rates for all age groups were at or above 30% and portrayed the child hospitalization rates as higher than those of the elderly. The new version of the report presents significantly lower rates.

Republican Senators Demand White House Pause All Taxpayer-Funded Gain-of-Function Research

Fox News reported:

Senate Republicans are demanding that the White House pause all federally funded gain-of-function research, which they say may have been responsible for the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus, according to a letter obtained exclusively by Fox News Digital.

Five senators sent a letter to Dr. Arati Prabhakar, the director of the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, on Tuesday, detailing a need to further evaluate the risks of gain-of-function research, which often includes intentionally altering viruses to be more pathogenic or transmissible as a means to develop preemptive treatments for deadly diseases.

The former Obama administration paused new funding of gain-of-function research in 2014 to “assess the potential risks and benefits.” However, it was reinstated by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2017, and the senators argue in their letter that a pause is again necessary after the recent COVID-19 outbreak, which they say may have originated from a lab in Wuhan, China.

NIH admitted last year that the organization it funded for research in Wuhan, EcoHealth Alliance, failed to immediately report an “unexpected result” from its research in 2018 and 2019 that created a coronavirus that was more infectious in mice. The agency terminated the subgrants to Wuhan in August after a two-year investigation. Previous government-funded studies in Wuhan included funds from Dr. Anthony Fauci’s NIAID on bat coronavirus research.

Could Paxlovid Treat Long COVID? Stanford Researchers Launch Study to Find Out

ABC 7 News reported:

A new Stanford study is giving people experiencing long COVID symptoms hope. Doctors are using the antiviral drug, Paxlovid, to see if it works for them.

Dr. Upi Singh, Stanford Medicine Professor of Infectious Disease is a co-principal investigator of the study. “We have to enroll 200 participants. We’ll be enrolling into the New Year for sure. Each participant will be followed for four and a half months. What we are looking for is does treatment with Paxlovid improve symptoms yes/no? If we do see an improvement in symptoms is that sustained over time,” said Dr. Singh.

Typically Paxlovid is given for five days to patients who are experiencing early COVID symptoms. This study triples that dose.

WHO to Rename Monkeypox as ‘MPOX’

Politico reported:

The World Health Organization is planning to rename monkeypox, designating it as “MPOX” in an effort to destigmatize the virus that gained a foothold in the U.S. earlier this year, three people with knowledge of the matter told POLITICO.

The decision, which could be announced as early as Wednesday, follows an initial agreement the WHO made over the summer to consider suggestions for monkeypox’s new name.

It also comes in response to growing pressure from senior Biden officials, who privately urged WHO leaders to change the name and suggested the U.S. would act unilaterally if the international body did not move quickly enough.