Tag: pandemic

Republicans seek to make vaccine passports the next battle in the pandemic culture wars

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Republicans are opening a new front in the pandemic culture wars, attacking efforts by the Biden administration to develop guidelines for  coronavirusvaccination passports that businesses can use to determine who can safely participate in activities such as flights, concerts and indoor dining.

The issue has received an increasing amount of attention from some of the party’s most extreme members and conservative media figures, but it has also been seized on by Republican leaders like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is considered a potential 2024 presidential candidate.

“We are not supporting doing any vaccine passports in the state of Florida,” DeSantis said Monday. “It’s completely unacceptable for either the government or the private sector to impose upon you the requirement that you show proof of vaccine to just simply be able to participate in normal society.” Continue reading.

Rand Paul gets schooled by scientists — including one he cited — after lashing out at Anthony Fauci again

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“Sorry Dr Fauci and other fearmongers, new study shows vaccines and naturally acquired immunity DO effectively neutralize COVID variants. Good news for everyone but bureaucrats and petty tyrants!”

— Sen. Rand Paul in a tweet, March 21, 2021

That Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky often disagrees with infectious-disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci is well known.

Recently, the pair clashed at a Senate hearing when Paul, a Republican, argued against mask recommendations for people who have had covid-19 or have been vaccinated against it.

At the hearing, Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, pushed back against Paul’s characterization of wearing masks as “theater.” Continued caution is advised, Fauci said, as scientists study the new variants now circulating in the U.S. and other countries. Continue reading.

COVID-19’s fourth wave is hitting the US hard

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A fourth wave of coronavirus infections is beginning to mount in states across the nation as health experts and officials beg pandemic-exhausted Americans to stay vigilant.

The United States has reported an average of 65,000 new cases in the last seven days, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), up about 10,000 cases per day since the most recent nadir two weeks ago.

Those figures are well below the January apex of the third wave of infections, when a quarter-million people a day were testing positive for the virus.  Continue reading.

Trump targets Fauci, Birx in lengthy diatribe

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Former President Trump on Monday went on a tirade against Anthony Fauciand Deborah Birx, two of his former top medical advisers on the COVID-19 pandemic, excoriating their decisionmaking during his administration on the day after CNN aired previews of comments by the top government health experts.

Trump issued a lengthy statement in which he argued that he ignored both Fauci and Birx while in office as a benefit to the country and boasted that he was responsible for getting vaccines rapidly developed and approved.

“Based on their interviews, I felt it was time to speak up about Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx, two self-promoters trying to reinvent history to cover for their bad instincts and faulty recommendations, which I fortunately almost always overturned,” Trump said in a statement Monday. “They had bad policy decisions that would have left our country open to China and others, closed to reopening our economy, and years away from an approved vaccine—putting millions of lives at risk.” Continue reading.

Biden calls on states to keep mask mandates, pause reopenings

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President Biden on Monday urged state and local officials to reconsider lifting their coronavirus restrictions and to reinstate mask mandates that have lapsed as the U.S. faces an increase in cases.

“I’m reiterating my call for every governor, mayor and local leader to maintain and reinstate the mask mandate,” Biden said at an event intended to highlight the rapid increase in vaccine eligibility. “Please, this is not politics. Reinstate the mandate if you let it down.

Asked later if some states should pause reopening efforts, Biden said “yes.” Continue reading.

US death rate jumps by nearly 16 percent

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The death rate in the United States jumped by 15.9 percent between 2019 and 2020, fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a study released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday. 

The coronavirus was responsible for about one in ten deaths in the country in 2020, and was the third-leading cause of death, behind heart disease and cancer. 

Overall, COVID-19 was the underlying cause of about 345,000 deaths last year, and was a contributing cause for another roughly 32,000, which together is 11.3 percent of all deaths in the country last year, the CDC said.  Continue reading.

Pfizer says COVID vaccine was 100% effective in trial of children ages 12 to 15

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Pfizer and BioNTech announced Wednesday that their coronavirus vaccine was found to be 100% effective at protecting against COVID-19 in a trial of more than 2,200 children between the ages of 12 and 15.

The big picture: Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said the companies plan to submit clinical trial data to the FDA for emergency use authorization in the coming weeks, with the hope of vaccinations for adolescents beginning before the start of the next school year.

  • The trial’s data will also be submitted to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) for emergency use authorization. Continue reading.

CDC director warns of ‘impending doom’ on potential new COVID-19 surge

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The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Monday warned of “impending doom” over rising coronavirus cases, telling the public that even though vaccines are being rolled out quickly, a fourth surge could happen if people don’t start taking precautions.

“I’m going to lose the script, and I’m going to reflect on the recurring feeling I have of impending doom. We have so much to look forward to so much promise and potential of where we are, and so much reason for hope. But right now I’m scared,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said during a White House briefing Monday.

“We do not have the luxury of inaction,” Walensky added. Continue reading.

Feuds, fibs and finger-pointing: Trump officials say coronavirus response was worse than known

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‘That’s what bothers me every day’: Birx and others admit failures that hampered the White House response

Several top doctors in the Trump administration offered their most pointed and direct criticism of the government response to the coronavirus last year, with one of them arguing that hundreds of thousands of covid-19 deaths could have been prevented.

They also admitted their own missteps as part of a CNN special that aired Sunday night, saying that some Trump administration statements the White House fiercely defended last year were misleading or outright falsehoods.

“When we said there were millions of tests available, there weren’t, right?” said Brett Giroir, who served as the nation’s coronavirus testing czar, referencing the administration’s repeated claims in March 2020 that anyone who sought a coronavirus test could get one. “There were components of the test available, but not the full meal deal.” Continue reading.

Pfizer, Moderna vaccines are 90% effective after two doses in study of real-life conditions, CDC confirms

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Report on essential workers is one of the first to estimate protection against any infection, regardless of symptoms

The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines being deployed to fight the coronavirus pandemic are robustly effective in preventing infections in real-life conditions, according to a federal study released Monday that provides reassurance of protection for front-line workers in the United States.

In a study of about 4,000 health-care personnel, police, firefighters and other essential workers, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the vaccines reduced the risk of infection by 80 percent after one shot. Protection increased to 90 percent following the second dose. The findings are consistent with clinical trial results and studies showing strong effectiveness in Israel and the United Kingdom, and in initial studies of health-care workers at the UT Southwestern Medical Center and in Southern California.

The CDC report is significant, experts said, because it analyzed how well the vaccines worked among a diverse group of front-line working-age adults whose jobs make them more likely to be exposed to the virus and to spread it. Continue reading.