Advisers to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday voted to recommend use of COVID-19 booster shots redesigned to target the BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants of the coronavirus for people aged 12 years and older. https://t.co/y0zKkJfXed
— Reuters Health (@Reuters_Health) September 2, 2022
… Where can I get one and how much will it cost?
The new boosters, which are intended as single shots, will be available at the same places where the previous boosters and vaccines have been available — at doctors offices, hospitals, pharmacies and community health clinics.Like the previous coronavirus shots, the updated boosters have been purchased by the federal government and will be free to consumers.
The booster takes two weeks to take full effect and can be administered at the same time as the annual flu shot, officials said. The CDC suggests that young men who get the monkeypox vaccine, called Jynneos, might want to wait for four weeks before getting the updated booster. That reduces the risk of inflammation of the heart muscle, a rare complication of the mRNA coronavirus shots that can affect young men…
What are the side effects of the boosters?
Side effects are not expected to differ from those associated with the current vaccine, which include redness and swelling at the vaccine site, as well as occasional fatigue, headache and muscle soreness, according to the CDC. More serious reactions are rare.
U.S. health advisers on Thursday endorsed new COVID-19 boosters that target today’s most common omicron strains, saying if enough people roll up their sleeves, the updated shots could blunt a winter surge. https://t.co/OL179vrwhF
— The Associated Press (@AP) September 1, 2022
… Who is eligible for the new boosters?
The Pfizer-BioNTech booster was authorized for people 12 years of age and older. The Moderna booster was authorized for people 18 and older.
People who are fully vaccinated against Covid — those who’ve had a primary series — and people who’ve had a primary series plus one or two previous boosters are eligible to get one of these new shots…
Why can’t I get one of the updated boosters if I haven’t been previously vaccinated? Aren’t they more on target than the original vaccines?
Hopefully, yes. But these boosters come in booster-sized doses. Think: smaller. They contain less vaccine than the primary series, perhaps not enough to elicit good protection, if you’ve never been vaccinated against Covid before.
The original Pfizer vaccine contained 30 micrograms (mcg) of antigen, given in two doses, i.e. 60 mcg in total. The original Pfizer boosters also contained 30 mcg. While the updated boosters contain the same amount of antigen, they’re designed to protect against two different versions of Covid. So 15 mcg target the original strain of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and 15 mcg target the Omicron sub-variants BA.4 and BA.5.
With the Moderna vaccine, the primary series was two doses, each containing 100 mcg of antigen. So 200 mcg in total. The original Moderna booster shot was 50 mcg. The bivalent booster also contains 50 mcg, but as with the Pfizer vaccine, that amount of antigen is divided equally between vaccine that targets the original SARS-2 strain and vaccine that targets BA.4/BA.5…
If I had Covid this summer, when can I get the new booster?
First of all, if you currently have Covid, the CDC says that “at a minimum” you should wait until you’ve recovered to get a shot…
If you had Covid but didn’t develop multi-inflammatory syndrome, the CDC suggests you could consider waiting up to three months before getting the booster. But it also notes in your calculations about how to time your booster, you might want to take into consideration personal factors, such as how high your risk is of having severe disease should you become infected, and how much transmission is going on where you live.
How long do I have to wait after previous Covid vaccinations to get the updated booster?
You need to wait at least two months after having had the final dose in your primary series and the same length of time after having had a booster before getting one of the updated boosters.
I’m immunocompromised and I’ve already had five doses of Covid vaccine. Am I eligible to get another shot now?Yes, as long as it’s been at least two months since your most recent Covid booster…
I’ve had four doses of Covid vaccine and my CDC card is full. What happens now?
This one is simple. You’ll get a second card when you get your next booster.
The CDC has told vaccine providers that if they are vaccinating someone whose Covid vaccine record card is full, they should fill in a second card for the individual. People getting a second card should take and store pictures of both cards, and staple the two together.
Much more info at the link — worth reading the whole thing!
The good news: Covid deaths are near all-time lows.
The bad news: Nearly 500 a day still die in the U.S. https://t.co/gKV9IKkJQY— Gregory Zuckerman (@GZuckerman) September 1, 2022
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Last 12 months… pic.twitter.com/rk4bWpb7pU
— JusDayDa (@JusDayDa) August 30, 2022
The Guardian: #China places millions into #COVID lockdown again as economy continues to struggle
Key cities of #Shenzhen, #Guangzhou & #Dalian are under curbs again, amid protests and data showing factory slowdown https://t.co/usdKoIR5Hz— Patricia M Thornton (@PM_Thornton) September 1, 2022
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The Chinese metropolis of Chengdu locked down its 21 million residents to contain a Covid-19 outbreak, a seismic move in the country’s vast Western region that has largely been untouched by the virus.
The capital of Sichuan province, Chengdu is the biggest city to shut down since Shanghai’s bruising two-month lockdown earlier this year. The move — which will upend the lives of millions of people and businesses, with repercussions for China’s economy and beyond — shows the country’s commitment to the Covid Zero approach espoused by President Xi Jinping, despite the disruption it’s causing.
The lockdown of Chengdu Thursday came after 157 new cases were reported. The city, which accounts for about 1.7% of China’s gross domestic product, is home to numerous technology companies and automakers. Foxconn Technology Group, the world’s largest assembler of Apple Inc.’s iPhones, is moving to a closed-loop manufacturing system for the iPads it makes there, according to a person familiar with the decision, while Volvo Car AB suspended work at its factory.
Chengdu is also a popular tourist destination, famed for its giant panda sanctuary…
The entire city will undergo four days of mass testing starting Thursday evening. The extent of the economic dislocation depends on the duration of the lockdown, which city officials haven’t yet disclosed. Some places in China have imposed snap closures lasting a few days or even just hours, while others extended isolation rules until their outbreaks were fully under control…
Due to extremely hot weather in the city, frequent contact among people in indoor entertainment venues including water parks led to increased transmission of the virus, Yang Xiaoguang, head of Chengdu’s health commission, told reporters on Tuesday.
Chengdu postponed the start of the school year on Wednesday, as did multiple cities across China, citing the need to prevent virus transmission.
Some 21 million people have been ordered to stay home in the southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu following a spike in COVID-19 cases. Flights have been suspended to and from the city that is a major transit hub in Sichuan province. https://t.co/cRQvTWBPqw
— The Associated Press (@AP) September 1, 2022
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China is putting millions of people into lockdown again as cases tick up from Shenzhen and Guangzhou in the south, to the northern port city of Dalian. The closures come as Beijing struggles to keep the economy afloat. Will China Ever Be Post-Pandemic? https://t.co/DuluDUIgps
— Majority Post (@majority_post) August 31, 2022
With 6,168 new #coronavirus infections being reported in a day, India's tally of COVID-19 cases rose to 4,44,42,507, while the active cases declined to 59,210, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Friday.https://t.co/RpAANe9mTs
— The Hindu (@the_hindu) September 2, 2022
Good to see for Japan
Start of BA.5 wave descent for fatalities @OurWorldInData
Japan has one of, if not the, lowest cumulative (and excess) mortality rates of large population countries in the world with rigorous tracking pic.twitter.com/W1GR7Jdmtp— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) August 31, 2022
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Gorgeous! (If I were leaving home more than two or three times a month, I’d be tempted… )
PPE FASHIONS! Check out this fabulous custom-designed mask from @nickelpin—I am OBSESSED 😍 pic.twitter.com/hJcesuBw9L
— Leta McCollough Seletzky, JD (@LaSeletzky) September 1, 2022
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COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Thursday / Friday, Sept. 1-2Post + Comments (34)
Today In Very Stupid Shit
by John Cole| 61 Comments
This post is in: COVID-19 Coronavirus, Distance Teaching (Surprise!) and COVID-19, Assholes
Data has been released that to the surprise of absolutely no one, test scores dipped over the past couple of years during the pandemic. These statistics are being used, of course, in a vacuum, to bash teachers and unions with no mention of the 3 year drop in life expectancy over the past two years and the fact that OUR FUCKING ENTIRE SYSTEM OF MEDICINE WAS ON THE VERGE OF NATIONWIDE COLLAPSE AND IN SOME PLACES HAD or that none of the teachers signed up to work in a BSL-4 without PPE and that gathering in enclosed areas is the worst way to spread covid and that kids would then spread it to their parents, grandparents, and caretakers and that 50% of school districts have HVAC systems from the 60’s and 70’s and that none of the people bitching about this were willing to do the bare fucking minimum to wear masks or get a vaccine so it would be safe to reopen schools. So, yeah.
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Monday / Tuesday, Aug. 29-30
This post is in: COVID-19 Coronavirus, Foreign Affairs
… The government plans to roll out a combined 175 million doses of the new boosters developed by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, with Moderna’s shot available to all adults and Pfizer’s offered to those 12 and older, according to a federal planning guide published earlier this month.
The boosters, which officials hope will offer greater protection against the BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron sub variants in addition to guarding against the coronavirus’ original strain, come as the administration tries to get ahead of a fast-changing virus that continues to infect tens of thousands of Americans a day. The actual number is unknown since so many people self-test at home and don’t report their cases to the government.
An FDA spokesperson declined to comment, and people with knowledge of the matter, who were granted anonymity to speak about matters they are not authorized to speak about publicly, cautioned the exact timing could change as the agency races to finalize its work…
Though regulators won’t have human data on these bivalent boosters available to consider, Califf noted that they will be evaluating real-world evidence from similar mRNA shots, human data from other bivalent shots and data from studies on mice. The flu vaccine, which is also updated annually, is also only tested in animals before distribution due to the short turnaround time for manufacturers. However, it is not based on the comparatively new mRNA technology.
Pfizer anticipates that it will begin a human trial on the safety and effectiveness of its booster later this month; Moderna already has one such study underway.
The CDC also said that it expects Omicron-specific boosters for children younger than 12 will be ready shortly after boosters for adults become available.
Who's dying in the US?
All ages, last 3 months, weekly, per 100,000 people https://t.co/kQ5k33u3Kx pic.twitter.com/k4y8bLtBpP— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) August 29, 2022
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A Chinese think tank issued a rare public disagreement Monday with the ruling Communist Party's severe "zero COVID" policy, saying curbs that shut down cities and disrupt trade, travel and industry must change to prevent an "economic stall." https://t.co/A6nnoz9NH2
— The Associated Press (@AP) August 29, 2022
Hong Kong’s iconic Tai Hang fire dragon dance performance, featuring a 67-metre long dragon adorned with burning incense, has been cancelled for a third consecutive year because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Organisers of the three-night annual event said on Commercial Radio on Tuesday that the government refused to grant them an exemption to hold the performance amid rising Covid-19 infections in the city. The century-old custom traditionally involves around 300 current or former residents of Tai Hang, a neighbourhood near Hong Kong’s commercial district of Causeway Bay.
It marked the third time that the event was called off owing to the pandemic. Chan Tak-fai, the commander of the fire dragon dance, said the event was originally scheduled from September 9 to 11 over the Mid-Autumn Festival. Organisers had proposed dividing Tai Hang into seven zones, with Wun Sha Street as the centre, and capping the total number of participants and spectators at 3,000.
All participants would have had to scan the Covid-19 contact-tracing LeaveHomeSafe app, Chan said, and they would need to have received at least three doses of Covid-19 vaccines to take part in or watch the tradition, which villagers believed helped dispel a plague that hit Tai Hang in the 19th century…
“A lot of people called us and asked how come the fire dragon dance – supposedly for warding off an epidemic and killing the germs – did not get approved. We don’t know either, it is out of our control,” Chan said on the radio programme.
On Monday, Hong Kong logged 8,488 new Covid-19 cases and added four new related deaths. The city saw its highest number of daily infections in five months last Sunday, when health authorities reported 9,708 cases…
Hong Kong reported 8,848 new Covid-19 infections on Tuesday, of which 237 cases were imported. The city also added 13 new deaths.
Full, trusted Covid-19 coverage on HKFP: https://t.co/w8LTgNxKZy#hongkong #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/AD1VhxBbON
— Hong Kong Free Press HKFP (@hkfp) August 30, 2022
#India added 5,439 new coronavirus infections taking the total tally of #COVID19 cases to 4,44,21,162, while the active cases declined to 65,732, according to the updated Union Health Ministry data.https://t.co/MvbX3X7uma
— The Hindu (@the_hindu) August 30, 2022
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The total number of infected has reached 19,311,973. As many as 3912 people were hospitalized just in the past 24 hours with 81 fatalities. These data was revealed by the Anti-coronavirus Crisis center.
— BNN Russia (@BNNRussia) August 26, 2022
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New generation of #Covid vaccine shows promising results https://t.co/MZ0TnoSA2M
— delthia ricks ?? (@DelthiaRicks) August 25, 2022
“The virus is not getting more benign,” said @angie_rasmussen. “If the whole population were as immunologically naïve as we were in early 2020, we’d be seeing absolutely staggering deaths tolls from BA.5.” https://t.co/TS2P5elGMu via @khnews
— Liz Szabo (@LizSzabo) August 29, 2022
This is your brain on #COVID19 —
"Its 1,000 trillion synapses are constantly being modified every second of every day. It is too early to know if this neuroplasticity can be harnessed for long-covid patients."https://t.co/ZU3pt9Zk0z— Laurie Garrett (@Laurie_Garrett) August 29, 2022
Scientists uncover how SARSCoV2 blocks antiviral defenses. Team at Francis Crick Institute says the virus manipulates the environment w/in human cells to prevent them from mounting a full-scale assault. Crick team reports the virus has a wily bag of tricks https://t.co/v7HMpqDcxe
— delthia ricks 🔬 (@DelthiaRicks) August 26, 2022
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While the #GOP continues to block full funding of federal #COVID19 programs, the #Biden Admin effort to brace America for the Fall is unraveling, for lack of $$ — especially for low income folks. The last batch of free home test kits shipped, & now this: https://t.co/3xQRd3Syo2
— Laurie Garrett (@Laurie_Garrett) August 29, 2022
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COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Monday / Tuesday, Aug. 29-30Post + Comments (23)
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Thursday / Friday, Aug. 25-26
This post is in: COVID-19 Coronavirus, Foreign Affairs
The United States plans to roll out an updated COVID-19 booster vaccine to include Omicron subvariants of the coronavirus. Regulators are reviewing the shots and could give the go-ahead as soon as next week. https://t.co/A9l0nlSo6r
— Reuters Health (@Reuters_Health) August 25, 2022
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… In its latest weekly assessment of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.N. health agency said there were 5.3 million new cases and more than 14,000 deaths reported last week. WHO said the number of new infections declined in every world region except the Western Pacific.
Deaths jumped by more than 183% in Africa but fell by nearly a third in Europe and by 15% in the Americas. Still, WHO warned that COVID-19 numbers are likely severely underestimated as many countries have dropped their testing and surveillance protocols to monitor the virus, meaning that there are far fewer cases being detected.
WHO said the predominant COVID-19 variant worldwide is omicron subvariant BA.5, which accounts for more than 70% of virus sequences shared with the world’s biggest public viral database. Omicron variants account for 99% of all sequences reported in the last month…
Still a few bugs in the system…
Videos of employees at Tencent's Shenzhen office running away are making the rounds online.
A full building lockdown is said to have been announced after a person tested positive for Covid-19. pic.twitter.com/7M718vlGpm
— Christian Petersen-Clausen (@chris__pc) August 25, 2022
When u arrive at a hotel in Shanghai these days ur given a document with every high and medium risk area in China on it. You are told to check the list and confirm with signature that you have not been to one of these places recently pic.twitter.com/fMN4jYUzTT
— Don Weinland (@donweinland) August 22, 2022
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Just published @NEJM
A marked reduction of death (~80%) and hospitalization (~70%) for Paxlovid in people age 65+ during the Omicron wave in Israel, not seen in the 40-64 year age grouphttps://t.co/1fmfcbI6ux pic.twitter.com/ghEatkxtFc— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) August 24, 2022
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Wouldn't it be nice to be able to take a test at home to find out how well protected — or not — you are against Covid? People are working on it, @EdwrdChen reports. https://t.co/UQQqhq6F6L
— Helen Branswell 🇺🇦 (@HelenBranswell) August 23, 2022
With schools re-opening, it's important for parents—and school nurses—to recognize signs of #Covid, flu, RSV & the common cold ⬇️ https://t.co/RD0fFgb2NI
— delthia ricks 🔬 (@DelthiaRicks) August 25, 2022
New SARSCoV2 variants may be emerging from people who are immune compromised & unable to clear the virus. Emory Univ study. Instead of evolving from acute infections in millions of people, new data suggest variants arising from rarer chronic infections https://t.co/S6ix9ntng3
— delthia ricks 🔬 (@DelthiaRicks) August 24, 2022
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Some scientists are debating hypothesis that tiny clots that constrict blood flow to vital organs could result in the broad range of symptoms in #LongCovid
But other #COVID19 researchers worry that enthusiasm for the clot hypothesis has outpaced the datahttps://t.co/uEST67ideY
— MicrobesInfect (@MicrobesInfect) August 24, 2022
Doctors at Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles describe a mechanism that may cause post-Covid syndromes. Team studied multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children—MIS-C—& #LongCovid to zero in on a theory explaining why some people's immune systems to go haywire https://t.co/jz7muEmJev
— delthia ricks ?? (@DelthiaRicks) August 22, 2022
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Are we approaching 'herd safety' w/ #Covid? Massachusetts may be an example of a possible new milestone. Despite a slew of #Omicron variants—BA.2, BA.2.12.1, BA.4 & BA.5—the state didn't observe excess #Covid mortality even w/ ~227k new cases over 18 weeks https://t.co/0oZp12uy32 pic.twitter.com/9842bNxIMX
— delthia ricks 🔬 (@DelthiaRicks) August 24, 2022
Went to the bank. The lineup was 15 people deep so I braced myself being the only masked person and knowing it would take a while. Man behind me began to share about his struggle with cancer and how he has been waiting since January for surgery..🧵
— Tammy (@tamalama67) August 23, 2022
.. I asked him if he wanted to go ahead of me as it was visible how ill he was, but he declined. I then quietly asked if he wanted one of my extra masks because covid is still in the air and dangerous. He smiled, pulled out a mask from his pocket..
..and put it on. He said he didn’t want to be the only person with a mask on, so he was happy to see me with one. The lady in front of me, who had been listening the whole time, reached into her purse and pulled one out and put it on as well..
I know it’s easy to assume everyone who doesn’t wear masks are people who are ignorant and/or cruel, but there are definitely some who are as scared of being different, or ridiculed, as they are of losing their health. Wise choices have been stigmatized.
Since those in power, who are supposed to set a standard and expectation of caring about each other, have opted out, it’s really up to each of us to support, educate, and protect each other. Even if it’s just one mask, and one person, at a time. 🙏
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Thursday / Friday, Aug. 25-26Post + Comments (21)
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Monday / Tuesday, Aug. 22-23
This post is in: COVID-19 Coronavirus, Foreign Affairs
Pfizer Inc and German partner BioNTech said on Monday they had sought U.S. authorization for a COVID-19 vaccine booster retooled to target the Omicron variant, and would have doses available to ship immediately after regulatory clearance. https://t.co/I7JZUfHjWs
— Reuters Health (@Reuters_Health) August 22, 2022
From a longer thread:
The new boosters are bivalent vaccines. Ancestral strain plus Omicron. The idea is broad protection from a virus that is strayed quite a lot. (2)
Pfizer’s vaccine will be ready first— the first week to 10 days of September is the best estimate.
Moderna will follow the first week in October. (3)
Should you wait to get them?
Unless you are high risk and unboosted this year, it makes sense to wait the few weeks until they are available. Special circumstances like travel might cause you not to. (4)…
How effective can we expect these vaccines to be? All we have is lab work not real world evidence. The FDA tells me that will be a big focus this time around which will serve us well in the future.
Against BA.5 (90% of cases), the expectation is a strong antibody response.(10)…
The bad news I alluded to?
These are the last vaccines that will be free unless Congress changes.
And it will be the drug companies that will set the price & insurance companies that decide how much we pay. (13)…
Read the whole thread here.
Building the ship while sailing it: Pfizer has asked @US_FDA to authorize its updated Covid boosters. The Biden administration wants to start using said boosters next month. The human trials of said boosters haven't yet started. @matthewherper explains. https://t.co/ZLuIlz3PDz
— Helen Branswell 🇺🇦 (@HelenBranswell) August 22, 2022
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Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease official, announced he is stepping down in December https://t.co/BshC1mdyrm pic.twitter.com/6RdRInGhs7
— Reuters (@Reuters) August 23, 2022
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When Alice Hughes downloaded a preprint from the server Research Square in September 2021, she could hardly believe her eyes. The study described a massive effort to survey bat viruses in China, in search of clues to the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. A team of 21 researchers from the country’s leading academic institutions had trapped more than 17,000 bats, from the subtropical south to the frigid northeast, and tested them for relatives of SARS-CoV-2.
The number they found: zero…
“I don’t believe it for a second,” says Hughes, a conservation biologist who’s now at Hong Kong University. Between May 2019 and November 2020, she had done her own survey of 342 bats in the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, a branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in Yunnan province where she worked at the time. As her team reported in Cell in June 2021, it found four viruses related to SARS-CoV-2 in the garden, which is about three times the size of New York City’s Central Park…
But the paper meshed with a growing political reality in China. From the start of the pandemic, the Chinese government—like many foreign researchers—has vigorously rejected the idea that SARS-CoV-2 somehow originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and escaped. But over the past 2 years, it has also started to push back against what many regard as the only plausible alternative scenario: The pandemic started in China with a virus that naturally jumped from bats to an “intermediate” species and then to humans—most likely at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan.
Beijing was open to the idea at first. But today it points to myriad ways SARS-CoV-2 could have arrived in Wuhan from abroad, borne by contaminated frozen food or infected foreigners—perhaps at the Military World Games in Wuhan, in October 2019—or released accidentally by a U.S. military lab located more than 12,000 kilometers from Wuhan. Its goal is to avoid being blamed for the pandemic in any way, says Filippa Lentzos, a sociologist at King’s College London who studies biological threats and health security. “China just doesn’t want to look bad,” she says. “They need to maintain an image of control and competence. And that is what goes through everything they do.”
The idea of a pandemic origin outside China is preposterous to many scientists, regardless of their position on whether the virus started with a lab leak or a natural jump from animals. There’s simply no way SARS-CoV-2 could have come from some foreign place to Wuhan and triggered an explosive outbreak there without first racing through humans at the site of its origin. “The idea that the pandemic didn’t originate in China is inconsistent with so many other things,” says Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center who has argued for more intensive studies of the WIV lab accident scenario. “When you eliminate the absurd, it’s Wuhan,” says virologist Gregory Towers of University College London, who leans toward a natural origin.
Yet Chinese researchers have published a flurry of papers supporting their government’s “anywhere-but-here” position. Multiple studies report finding no signs of SARS-CoV-2–related viruses or antibodies in bats and other wild and captive animals in China. Others offer clues that the virus hitched a ride to China on imported food or its packaging. On the flip side, Chinese researchers are not pursuing—or at least not publishing—obvious efforts to trace the sources of the mammals sold at the Huanan market, which could yield clues to the virus’ origins…
This is a good description of how science works: by hard work, systematic analysis, following the data and peer-reviewed publication. The COVID lab leak theory is dead. Here's how we know the virus came from a Wuhan market https://t.co/NTw6IXnJZw via @ConversationEDU
— Prof. Peter Doherty (@ProfPCDoherty) August 19, 2022
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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has asked Pfizer Inc to test the effects of an additional course of its antiviral Paxlovid among people who experience a rebound in COVID-19 after treatment, the regulator said on Friday. https://t.co/aXlLBLjpTb
— Reuters Health (@Reuters_Health) August 20, 2022
Retrospective analysis (just out in @CIDJournal) of Paxlovid Rx in vaccinated high-risk outpatients shows a strong association between treatment and improved outcomes. Thanks to @SarjuGanatraMD & @SaurabhSDani for leading this interesting study.https://t.co/SKEszJIWlK pic.twitter.com/nuTjQMfGLJ
— Paul Sax (@PaulSaxMD) August 20, 2022
The Lancet study seems to be generating a lot of anxiety on twitter, but keep in mind: The ‘increased risks’ are large jumps in relatively small actual numbers:
… The study group, which included 185,000 children and 242,000 older adults, revealed that risks differed according to age, with people 65 and older at greatest risk of lasting neuropsychiatric effects.
For people between the ages of 18 and 64, a particularly significant increased risk was of persistent brain fog, affecting 6.4 percent of people who had had covid compared with 5.5 percent in the control group.
The study found that 4.5 percent of older people developed dementia in the two years after infection, compared with 3.3 percent of the control group. That 1.2-point increase in a diagnosis as damaging as dementia is particularly worrisome, the researchers said.
The study’s reliance on a trove of de-identified electronic health data raised some cautions, particularly considering the tumultuous time of the pandemic. Tracking long-term outcomes may be hard when patients may have sought care through many different health systems, including some outside the TriNetX network…
There are >118 million Americans age 50+ in the US, a very high proportion left vulnerable
45% haven't had a 1st booster
With current ~500 deaths per day, the CDC should be providing a breakdown by vax/booster status pic.twitter.com/5m5i4fRljU— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) August 20, 2022
.@US_FDA extends the emergency use authorization for Novavax's Covid vaccine. It can now be be given to tweens & teens 12-17.
It's the first non-mRNA vaccine authorized for use in people under the age of 18 in the US. pic.twitter.com/73wpNAMeFJ— Helen Branswell 🇺🇦 (@HelenBranswell) August 19, 2022
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1) if trump were still president, liberals would have a lot of other more pressing concerns
2) there is no political will — and there is now *significant* political cost — to try to enforce more stringent covid protocols, anywhere in the country. https://t.co/egmMPQMegd
— GONELIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) August 20, 2022
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Tucker Carlson, meanwhile, remains a sociopath:
Carlson is talking about the number of murders in Philadelphia, and suggesting the death toll from Covid was far less.
More ppl died of Covid in Philadelphia in two months in spring 2020 than have been murdered over the past 2 yrs. https://t.co/WqZsCXj8u5
— James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) August 22, 2022
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Monday / Tuesday, Aug. 22-23Post + Comments (14)
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Thursday / Friday, Aug. 18-19
This post is in: COVID-19 Coronavirus, Foreign Affairs
Two huge immunization efforts are going to roll out in coming weeks. Figuring out how to optimize delivery of updated Covid booster AND flu shots is no small task. @DrewQJoseph explains. https://t.co/hjUVWfVkNX
— Helen Branswell 🇺🇦 (@HelenBranswell) August 16, 2022
.@CDCDirector tells @CDCgov staff the agency's culture needs to change. https://t.co/RX0sGMMObm
— Helen Branswell 🇺🇦 (@HelenBranswell) August 17, 2022
… As SARS-CoV-2 raged in the summer of 2020, the Trump administration was busy sabotaging the once-premier public health agency. The administration’s meddling included stripping the CDC of its power to collect critical data on COVID-19 patients and pandemic resources in hospitals around the country.
According to multiple investigative reports at the time, then-White House Coronavirus Task Force Coordinator Deborah Birx was frustrated by the CDC’s slow and somewhat messy process of collecting and tidying the data submitted by thousands of hospitals. The data included stats on admissions, patient demographics, bed availability, ventilator use, discharges, and personal protective equipment (PPE) supplies.
In July 2020, the Trump administration abruptly directed hospitals to stop reporting all that data to the CDC and instead submit it to a new database run by the Pittsburgh-based software company TeleTracking Technologies. The little-known company had won a $10.2 million, six-month contract with the federal government, despite having no previous experience with setting up such a data-collection system. Before the award, the company had won only small contracts with the Department of Veterans Affairs for software that tracked the status of patients. The $10.2 million pandemic-era grant was over twenty times larger than all of the company’s previous government grants combined…
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for TeleTracking co-CEO Michael Zamagias told NPR that the company won the contract after the HHS reached out to it directly over the phone. NPR also noted that Zamagias was a long-time Republican donor who was previously in the real-estate business. Notably, he had personal ties to a Manhattan-based real estate financing company, Cooper-Horowitz, which worked extensively with the Trump Organization. Neal Cooper, whose father was a partner in the company, was closely mentored by Zamagias. Cooper told NPR that “we did tons of business with [Trump], billions of dollars of business.”
When officials for the Trump administration delivered the news to the CDC that TeleTracking was taking over, staffers immediately knew that the transfer would be a disaster, according to an investigative report by Science. One CDC staff member left the announcement meeting to sob. Others were outraged. “Birx has been on a monthslong rampage against our data,” one CDC employee texted to a colleague shortly after the meeting. “Good fucking luck getting the hospitals to clean up their data and update daily.”
The CDC staffers were right to be pessimistic. The transition to the new system was chaotic due to technical and administrative problems. Hospitals complained that they didn’t have enough time to prepare and that they faced frustrating technical problems requiring intensive resources at a time when they were overwhelmed with patients. The result was unreliable data amid a public health crisis…
Nevertheless, TeleTracking’s contract has been continually renewed since then, and the company has earned more than $50 million. Now, that’s coming to an end. The latest contract expires on December 31 and will not be renewed. Hospitals will once again submit their data to the CDC starting in mid-December, according to a leaked email seen by Bloomberg News…
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New coronavirus cases reported globally dropped nearly a quarter in the last week while deaths fell 6% but were still higher in parts of Asia, according to a report on the pandemic by the World Health Organization. https://t.co/KK81r02ErP
— The Associated Press (@AP) August 18, 2022
Fish tested for Covid in Chinese city of Xiamen after outbreak https://t.co/EMnfO3byOX
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) August 18, 2022
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— Prof. Shane Crotty (@profshanecrotty) August 16, 2022
New study on long COVID suggests some conditions last 2+ years but others resolve. https://t.co/AQ0oqQWdgO
— Alice Burns (@alicelevyburns) August 18, 2022
But, cognitive risks persist 2 yrs out. Long-term cognitive limitations could pose major challenges for people and may affect employment and health coverage. For more, see https://t.co/ELQygsBDBC.
— Alice Burns (@alicelevyburns) August 18, 2022
From a thread, The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine:
Shelly Miller tells @theNASEM that combination central air filtration + UV exposure can bring #SARSCoV2 spread down to R=0 even if people in the buildings decline to wear masks. pic.twitter.com/LJDk4zVxGd
— Laurie Garrett (@Laurie_Garrett) August 18, 2022
In the lab: Thinking outside the box in the development of a #Covid vaccine. A vax that's currently a work-in-progress is designed to prompt mucosal immunity. It uses bacteriophages and is needle-free?? https://t.co/oieim6CrNk
— delthia ricks ?? (@DelthiaRicks) August 14, 2022
‘Left to rot:' The lonely plight of #LongCovid sufferers. People worldwide with post-Covid illnesses say they aren't getting the help they need. Some studies suggest long Covid could affect as much as 30% of people who were once infected https://t.co/XhfZ4D8IgX
— delthia ricks ?? (@DelthiaRicks) August 15, 2022
More good news, *if* it pans out:
A century-old vaccine offers hope against a range of pathogens. BCG—Bacillus Calmette-Guerin—tuberculosis vax may guard against #Covid & other infections by broadly bolstering the immune system. Also, multiple BCG shots shield Type 1 diabetics from #Covid https://t.co/f4T9P1o0zF pic.twitter.com/ZfBwWvNGJ6
— delthia ricks 🔬 (@DelthiaRicks) August 17, 2022
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COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Thursday / Friday, Aug. 18-19Post + Comments (27)
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Monday / Tuesday, Aug. 15-16
This post is in: COVID-19 Coronavirus, Foreign Affairs
"The CDC position that we need to “live with Covid”, as espoused with its guidance, should be countered by exploiting the science and our clear capabilities of fully containing the virus, once and for all."
From @EricTopol https://t.co/XsPp8Azaja— Kit Yates (@Kit_Yates_Maths) August 15, 2022
Long Covid looks to be *the* pandemic-related topic, at least until the next variant emerges…
Hola, here is your unroll: https://t.co/swzbMJ7vwg Have a good day. 🤖
— Thread Reader App (@threadreaderapp) August 15, 2022
Last evening, we discussed the new @CDCgov guidelines, purportedly a shift to "protect the vulnerable," but fail to do so on many counts https://t.co/lJeFXASFjs
— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) August 13, 2022
Glass half full…
Good news…with cases now headed down, it looks like there was no big wave of deaths from the BA.5 Covid variant. pic.twitter.com/5hE57DKa2r
— Noah Smith ?????? (@Noahpinion) August 13, 2022
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The formidable challenge of BA.5 doesn't detract from the outstanding containment of the virus and high adoption of vaccines in these countries, with a 6-11 fold reduction of cumulative mortality per capita compared with the United States@OurWorldInData pic.twitter.com/00wQpIlJ3T
— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) August 14, 2022
Present situation… as opposed to cumulative. pic.twitter.com/dYrmiWN5n1
— DankH2O (@Dank_H2O) August 14, 2022
something I keep having to correct writers on – the idea that there's a single united covid health app in China! there very much is not, it's a messy patchwork that often communicates badly and that's one of the things that makes travel and supply chains especially hard https://t.co/T6njE8SGF6
— James Palmer (@BeijingPalmer) August 13, 2022
After weeks in #COVID19 confinement, folks in Shanghai eagerly swarm a newly reopened @IKEA https://t.co/lKVx5iNRk2
— Laurie Garrett (@Laurie_Garrett) August 14, 2022
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… A number of Pacific islands had success with keeping coronavirus at bay early in the pandemic through stringent restrictions.
The Marshall Islands, which has a population of 59,000, was one of the last nations in the world to be untouched by Covid-19, before two cases were identified in October 2020. The pair had arrived from the US and were isolated from others.
As recently as one week ago, it had seen no community transmission of the virus – meaning that Covid had not been detected passing from person to person.
But on Monday, the first local spread was confirmed. The government responded by declaring a “state of health disaster”, closing schools and introducing a range of public health measures.
The explosion in cases has seen the Marshall Islands shift from a “prevention to mitigation” strategy, Mr Niedenthal wrote in a Facebook update…
No lockdown has been ordered, but Radio New Zealand (RNZ) reports that many people have chosen to stay at home, with church services cancelled and restaurants appearing quiet.
Since October 2020, two deaths have been reported across the Marshall Islands, and a cumulative total of 3,036 cases have been logged.
However, only nine hospitalisations had been recorded at the time of Mr Niedenthal’s Facebook update on Monday – with figures showing that 70% of Marshallese had been fully vaccinated…
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… Moderna’s latest vaccine – called Spikevax – targets both the original strain and the first Omicron variant (BA.1), which emerged last winter. It is known as a bivalent vaccine as it takes aim at two forms of Covid.
The UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency has considered the evidence and given the vaccine approval for use in adults.
Dr June Raine, the regulator’s chief executive, said: “What this bivalent vaccine gives us is a sharpened tool in our armoury to help protect us against this disease as the virus continues to evolve.”
Experiments on 437 people showed the updated vaccine was safe and gave better immune protection against newer variants.
Levels of antibodies that were able to stick to and disable Omicron (BA.1) were 1.7 times higher in people given the new vaccine. Tests against more recent Omicron variants (BA.4 and BA.5), which are causing the UK’s current wave, also showed higher levels of protection with the updated vaccine.
However, it is far from clear what that means in terms of preventing someone from becoming seriously ill.
Additionally, it is uncertain what variants we will be facing in the coming months and exactly how well the updated vaccine will perform against them…
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Why some people suffer more from #COVID19 than others: a team of scientists #BIH and colleagues from the United Kingdom and Canada have found #genes and #proteins that contribute to a higher risk of severe COVID-19: https://t.co/YA0qtPI6ls ©M. Pietzner w. https://t.co/aeQPAIJKbP pic.twitter.com/zDv95vPrDq
— Berlin Institute of Health (@berlinnovation) August 15, 2022
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In one week's time we learned more about #LongCovid that we had in months, including evidence for a potential biomarker. Yet we're still way behind where we need to be to help millions of people who are affected. https://t.co/IEMD9R3LtU pic.twitter.com/ONWeuShJ1o
— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) August 13, 2022
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Counter-argument, for what it’s worth (I’ll admit — I personally think Dr. Topol is a little bit doomerist):
also, the "percentage of people who have had COVID" is now upwards of 80%! this would imply that 20% or more of Americans had long COVID, which if correct I would not need a chart to determine!
— Andreas Schou (@revhowardarson) August 15, 2022
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Monday / Tuesday, Aug. 15-16Post + Comments (26)
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