— Clean Observer (@Hammbear2024) March 21, 2023
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is close to making a decision on authorization of a second dose of updated COVID-19 vaccine boosters for high-risk people, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing sources.
FDA officials could make the decision within a few weeks, the WSJ said, adding that the regulator is considering authorizing second jabs of Omicron-targeted shots for people who are 65 years and older or those who have weakened immune systems, although officials are yet to reach a final decision.
The agency continues to closely monitor the emerging data in the United States and globally, and that data will dictate any decision on additional updated boosters, the FDA said in a statement.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would have to recommend the shots after the FDA authorizes the second Omicron-tailored boosters from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna for them to become widely available.
The decision comes at a time when the FDA plans to shift to an annual COVID booster campaign with an updated strain, similar to the way Americans get their flu shots…
Updated boosters have helped prevent symptomatic infections against the new XBB-related subvariants, according to data released by the CDC in January.
The FDA authorized the so-called bivalent COVID boosters in August that target the BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants, along with the original strain of the coronavirus. Rollout of the updated boosters in the United States started the following month.
As of March 15, around 54 million bivalent vaccine doses were administered, accounting for 16.4% of the U.S. population, according to government data.
Well worth reading / sharing:
US officials are weighing whether to offer people who are at high risk of severe Covid-19 the chance to get another bivalent booster, according to a source familiar with the deliberations https://t.co/uCA2ZSKX0g
— CNN (@CNN) March 21, 2023
Repub Venality Open Thread: Ron DeSquamous, Man of the (Wheezing) People
We all had a good laugh over DeSantis’s recent ‘Assigned Floridian at birth, Identifies as a Rust Belter‘ claims, but this is no joke.
In a strong, lengthy @VanityFair piece Katherine Eban writes that @GovRonDeSantis has decided his ticket to the White House in '24 is going all-out #antivax — on all vaccines.
Playing politics via dangerous anti-public health messaging…https://t.co/lKutoaCyRX— Laurie Garrett (@Laurie_Garrett) March 21, 2023
On December 14, 2020, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, wearing a mask, watched expectantly as a FedEx truck backed up to a loading dock at Tampa General Hospital. The truck carried precious cargo: boxes of the very first COVID-19 vaccines. With a flourish, DeSantis signed the FedEx manifest. “Today, we will have shots going in arms,” he proudly declared.
At the time, Republicans across the country were eager to share credit for a singular feat in President Donald Trump’s otherwise disastrous handling of the pandemic: the record-speed development of COVID-19 vaccines that offered hope of a return to normal life.
By the end of last year, however, DeSantis’s vaccine cheerleading was a distant memory. On December 13, almost exactly two years after the FedEx delivery, he petitioned the Florida Supreme Court to let him empanel a statewide grand jury to investigate COVID-19 vaccine makers, particularly Pfizer and Moderna. “It is against the law to mislead and misrepresent, particularly when you’re talking about the efficacy of a drug,” DeSantis said, comparing the vaccine push to the profiteering that drove the deadly opioid epidemic.
In January, the grand jury went to work looking for dark intent or false claims behind the lifesaving vaccines. It is slated to report its findings by January 2024. That would be just in time to potentially influence the outcome of the Republican presidential primaries, in which DeSantis is widely seen as a leading challenger to Trump, even though he hasn’t yet officially declared his candidacy…
Those familiar with DeSantis’s inner circle say his vaccine stance is indeed driven by politics, not science. “There’s no medical people involved in this,” someone with knowledge of DeSantis’s advisers says. “It’s all political people. Now a couple of those TV doctors, those people are in his orbit, but this is not engineered by the scientific side of the house.” His goal, insiders say, is to tack to Trump’s right and peel off anti-vaxxers whose votes could prove decisive in the Republican presidential primaries next year.
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Covid-19 Came From A Wuhan Wet Market: Looks Like We Can Blame the Raccoon Dogs
— Another Bike Commuter (@schnufflerowner) March 17, 2023
BREAKING: Three years into the coronavirus pandemic, researchers have found genetic evidence that appears to link the outbreak’s origin to a wild animal, @KatherineJWu reports. https://t.co/tt1nsXOKpY
— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) March 16, 2023
Poor tanukis!
For three years now, the debate over the origins of the coronavirus pandemic has ping-ponged between two big ideas: that SARS-CoV-2 spilled into human populations directly from a wild-animal source, and that the pathogen leaked from a lab. Through a swirl of data obfuscation by Chinese authorities and politicalization within the United States, and rampant speculation from all corners of the world, many scientists have stood by the notion that this outbreak—like most others—had purely natural roots. But that hypothesis has been missing a key piece of proof: genetic evidence from the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China, showing that the virus had infected creatures for sale there.
This week, an international team of virologists, genomicists, and evolutionary biologists may have finally found crucial data to help fill that knowledge gap. A new analysis of genetic sequences collected from the market shows that raccoon dogs being illegally sold at the venue could have been carrying and possibly shedding the virus at the end of 2019. It’s some of the strongest support yet, experts told me, that the pandemic began when SARS-CoV-2 hopped from animals into humans, rather than in an accident among scientists experimenting with viruses.
“This really strengthens the case for a natural origin,” says Seema Lakdawala, a virologist at Emory University who wasn’t involved in the research. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist involved in the research, told me, “This is a really strong indication that animals at the market were infected. There’s really no other explanation that makes any sense.”
The findings won’t fully silence the entrenched voices on either side of the origins debate. But the new analysis may offer some of the clearest and most compelling evidence that the world will ever get in support of an animal origin for the virus that, in just over three years, has killed nearly 7 million people worldwide.
The genetic sequences were pulled out of swabs taken in and near market stalls around the pandemic’s start. They represent the first bits of raw data that researchers outside of China’s academic institutions and their direct collaborators have had access to. Late last week, the data were quietly posted by researchers affiliated with the country’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, on an open-access genomic database called GISAID. By almost pure happenstance, scientists in Europe, North America, and Australia spotted the sequences, downloaded them, and began an analysis.
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COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: March 15, 2023
It’s 15 March #LongCovidAwareness Day.
It exists.
It’s real.
It’s disabling to many.
It can affect anyone regardless of their previous health.
It needs more research.
It need equitable clinical pathways.
It needs employment fairness.
It needs destigmatising.
Give your support.— Prof Nisreen Alwan 🌻 (@Dr2NisreenAlwan) March 15, 2023
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Wednesday Evening Open Thread: The GOP Death Cultists Are At It Again
Today, a House hearing on Covid got a bit derailed because it turns out one of the GOP's witnesses wrote a outrageous, racist book speculating that Black people are more prone to violence and Jewish people more financially successful because of genetics. https://t.co/lvXLaroFDZ
— Jennifer Bendery (@jbendery) March 8, 2023
This hearing had barely begun when the top Democrat on the committee pointed out who, exactly, Republicans had chosen to testify on the science of the coronavirus.
Wade is “dangerous” and “extreme” choice to give a platform to, said Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.).
— Jennifer Bendery (@jbendery) March 8, 2023
You’d think the opprobrium which greeted his last book might’ve taught him better, but of course Mr. Wade could not resist a high-profile chance to blame Covid-19 on the machinations of the heathen Chinese. And the MAGAts hearing about today’s hearing via the Wingnut Wurlitzer will no doubt be thrilled to death:
… Wade, a British author and former New York Times science writer, wrote a book called “A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History” that was widely denounced by the scientific community for misrepresenting research into human population genetics…
Wednesday’s hearing had barely begun when Rep. Raul Ruiz (Calif.), the top Democrat on the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, denounced Wade as a “dangerous” and “extreme” pick by Republicans to feature in a hearing supposedly focused on facts and science.
“[Wade] claims that certain populations have been slower to experience an evolutionary change he has described as ‘the transformation of a population’s social traits from the violent, short-term, impulsive behavior typical of many hunter-gatherer and tribal societies’ into ‘the more disciplined, future-oriented behavior observed in other populations,’” he said.
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COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: March 8, 2023
This isn’t an apologists take on medicine or public health over the past 3 years.
Every field and every person whose had something important to say about Covid has made mistakes along the way.
But don’t confuse initial transmission dynamics for political dynamics.
Maybe ‘blue’ cities weren’t more concerned about Covid early on because they—and public health more broadly—are generally “left-leaning”.
What if it was just because more of their people were dying at rates not seen from an infectious disease in nearly a century?
Reflecting on how we should have responded, and how we must improve pandemic response in the future, are critical exercises. This includes recognizing and repairing our mistakes.
But reinterpreting the past only works against us. It makes important change less likely.
What won’t help is the pendulum swing from ‘we’re in this together’ to ‘we’ll manage this by ourselves’.
Public health is a collective exercise, by definition.
We fix it together.
Or we don’t.
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: March 1, 2023
National Security Council’s John Kirby urges caution regarding the WSJ report that the Department of Energy believes, with “low confidence,” that COVID-19 leaked from a lab:
“There is not a consensus right now in the U.S. government about exactly how COVID started.” pic.twitter.com/Gceirrwy6k
— The Recount (@therecount) February 27, 2023
“We” — not just Americans, but globally — are well and truly in the ‘post-pandemic’, a/k/a ‘Long Covid’ phase, which is liable to last even longer than the pandemic itself. Me, I’m planning to mask up around crowds and plan on a vaccine booster every six months for the foreseeable future, but of course I’m an elderly Cynic with multiple comorbidities.
Millions of workers are still missing from the U.S. labor force three years after COVID-19 surfaced, and economists are scratching their heads as to how big the gap actually is and where all these people went. https://t.co/qzndQDKYul
— The Seattle Times (@seattletimes) February 24, 2023
One immediate response was They’re dead, Jim. But given the current state of America’s low-to-middle-income population, this is also a very good hypothesis:
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: March 1, 2023Post + Comments (89)