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Likes: According to the latest CDC data, almost 80 percent of pre-K through 12 teachers, school staff, and childcare workers received at least one shot by the end of March. That is great progress in protecting our educators – our essential workers.
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According to the latest CDC data, almost 80 percent of pre-K through 12 teachers, school staff, and childcare workers received at least one shot by the end of March. That is great progress in protecting our educators – our essential workers.
In California some upper income zip codes with low Hispanic populations are placed at the bottom of the list as far as to when they will get the vaccines. No problem though if you happen to be a rich Hollywood actor like Wil Wheaton. You and your wife just take a drive up to Bakersfield to take advantage of an "open clinic" recently setup on the campus of Cal State University Bakersfield to provide vaccinations to surrounding low income and Hispanic neighborhoods on the west side of Bakersfield. A similar clinic has been in operation at Bakersfield City College on the east end of Bakersfield.
Wil Wheaton gets vaccinated at CSUB’s mass vaccination site | KGET 17
The Truth Behind Millions of Vaccines
Questions are being raised after the news emerged that a huge batch of COVID vaccines had to be thrown out after they had been found to be contaminated during the production process.
On March 31, Johnson & Johnson admitted that enough vaccines for 15 million doses had to be thrown out. Soon, the news broke that the company which produced the vaccine at the specific facility in Baltimore, Emergent BioSolutions, had previously been cited several times for quality control issues.
After learning of this, many Americans are concerned about the quality of the rest of the vaccine doses, worrying that this may be a larger problem than just one batch.
In an interview with Slate, a left-wing news outlet, Tinglong Dai, an associate professor of operations management at Johns Hopkins University Carey Business School, discussed the news of contaminated vaccines.
“What we know is that we have this one large batch of a Johnson & Johnson vaccine: 15 million doses. That’s enough to vaccinate 7 percent of the U.S. adult population. That’s the number to vaccinate the entire state of Maryland, plus West Virginia, plus a few other states. And it had been thrown away,” says Dai. “And so the FDA and the Biden administration has asked Johnson & Johnson to step up its supervision of Emergent BioSolutions. And this factory in Baltimore, which hasn’t been authorized by the FDA yet—its authorization process will be delayed.”
When asked whether this issue is unusual, Dai responded:
“Well, it’s not normal. This is an error—but this has happened before. I study flu vaccines; this does happen from time to time. Flu vaccine manufacturers want to deliver on time, but the FDA doesn’t tell them what to produce until February or March. The production of a flu vaccine takes, like, six months. So sometimes those flu vaccine manufacturers start production even before they learn what to produce. So then what they produce ends up being different from what the FDA asked them to produce, and they have to throw it away. And that happens every couple of years. The other scenario I can think of is the case of 2004 when there was this factory in the U.K. producing flu vaccines. The inspectors found a serious contamination; they had this bacteria level more than 1,000 times the accepted level. So they shut down the whole factory and destroyed everything. That led to a major shortage of flu vaccines for that year.”
Dai was also unsure of how exactly this could have happened.
“We have no clue. Maybe they got the leveling wrong,” Dai stated. “Or maybe they didn’t train their people enough. Emergent BioSolutions is a small company, and they’re hiring very aggressively. When hiring people, you also have to keep in mind the training and all kinds of regulations and compliance. But we just haven’t heard any details. So we need them to tell us exactly what happened on the factory floor.”
A team led by scientists in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has identified nine potential new COVID-19 treatments, including three that are already approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for treating other diseases.
The team, whose findings were published in Cell Reports, screened thousands of existing drugs and drug-like molecules for their ability to inhibit the replication of the COVID-19-causing coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. In contrast to many prior studies, the screens tested the molecules for anti-coronaviral activity in a variety of cell types, including human airway-lining cells that are similar to the ones principally affected in COVID-19.
Of the nine drugs found to reduce SARS-CoV-2 replication in respiratory cells, three already have FDA approval: the transplant-rejection drug cyclosporine, the cancer drug dacomitinib, and the antibiotic salinomycin. These could be rapidly tested in human volunteers and COVID-19 patients.
And therein lies the biggest problem with the FDA and other government agencies that that set standards for products for human consumption, accepted levels of contamination. Things like flour can legally contain "accepted" levels of thing like rat shit. Tuna is allowed to have an "accepted" amount of mercury. There are also accepted levels of such thing like lead, arsenic and other toxins.Originally Posted by Phil B.
Hospitals are seeing more and more younger adults in their 30s and 40s admitted with severe cases of Covid-19, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Wednesday.
"Data suggests this is all happening as we are seeing increasing prevalence of variants, with 52 jurisdictions now reporting cases of variants of concern," Walensky said at a press briefing on the pandemic.
Scientists say new variants of the coronavirus are more transmittable and some of them may be more lethal as well, resulting in more severe cases.
The highly contagious B.1.1.7 variant from the United Kingdom has become the dominant strain circulating in the United States, Walensky said.
Walensky previously warned that traveling for spring break could lead to another rise in cases, especially in Florida where the variant was rapidly spreading.
Surprise Surprise Florida
Governor Dipstick
US Begins Study of Allergic Reactions to COVID Vaccines
The National Institutes of Health announced Wednesday that it has begun a clinical trial to determine the risk of allergic reactions to Moderna’s and Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccines.
Investigators will look into whether allergic reactions are more frequent in people who are “highly allergic or have a mast cell disorder” than in people who do not have allergies, according to a news release from NIH.
The study will also investigate the “biological mechanism” behind systemic allergic reactions to better understand what factors put someone at more risk.
A little too late to put the genie back in the bottle!
“The public understandably has been concerned about reports of rare, severe allergic reactions to the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a statement.
“The information gathered during this trial will help doctors advise people who are highly allergic or have a mast cell disorder about the risks and benefits of receiving these two vaccines. However, for most people, the benefits of COVID-19 vaccination far outweigh the risks.”
The study will be made up of 3,400 adults who will be divided into groups and receive the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, the Moderna vaccine or a placebo followed by one of the two vaccines.
Additionally, 60 percent of participants must have a history of severe allergic reactions or a mast cell disorder diagnosis.
The study’s results are expected to be released toward the end of summer.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that having a severe allergic reaction, such as anaphylaxis, after receiving the COVID-19 vaccination is rare.
Approximately 21 cases of anaphylaxis were reported among the 1.8 million people who received Pfizer’s vaccine in December, according to the CDC.
Health care providers have been instructed to monitor patients for 15 minutes after they receive the jab. Patients with a history of allergic reactions should be watched for 30 minutes.
Alkis Togias, chief of NIAID’s Allergy, Asthma and Airway Biology Branch, said the agency became interested in allergic reactions after reactions were categorized as anaphylaxis.
“We are a little bit concerned that people who have had a lot of allergies who have had reactions like this to all kinds of things, not just vaccines, may be afraid to get vaccinated now,” Togias told CNBC in December.
“We just don’t want that to happen. We want to find a way for them to get vaccinated,”
Former President Donald Trump’s coronavirus vaccine czar, Noncef Slaoui, mentioned the upcoming study while it was in its planning stages in December.
“There is now advanced planning for a study in highly allergic individuals in clinical trials to test the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines and try to understand the immune mechanisms that are underpinning any reactions,” he said.
Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines have been authorized for emergency use but have not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
What many people do not understand is that Moderna’s, Pfizer’s and J&J's COVID-19 vaccines do not contain any virus either living or dead like most vaccines do. They contains certain proteins that the virus uses to attach to cells. The vaccines train the body's immune to attack and destroy those proteins. but a lot of food allergies are allergies to specific proteins found in the food.
Ontario, Canada's largest province by population and economy, starts a 30 day lockdown effective midnight today due to sharply rising COVID-19 B117 variant cases.
‘Hunker down’: Business dealt a blow in Ontario stay-at-home order
Ontario has announced a province-wide stay-at-home order that goes into effect Thursday.
The province announced the move Wednesday amid rising daily case counts, attempting to help curb the spread of COVID-19 in the province.
The stay-at-home order falls under the state of emergency declaration. On Wednesday, Ford said this will remain in effect for at least four weeks.
“Unless it’s for an essential reason, please stay home because the situation is extremely serious and we just need to hunker down right now, we need to limit mobility,” said Premier Doug Ford in a Wednesday press conference.
The order, which requires every Ontario resident to remain at home except for essential purposes, will halt in-store service for non-essential retailers, while allowing curbside pickup, delivery and online sales. Big-box stores will face new restrictions that limit them to only selling essential items.
... Michigan is heading towards the same fate soon.
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