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California To Require All Schoolchildren To Get COVID-19 Shots

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday announced the nation’s first coronavirus vaccination mandate for schoolchildren, a plan that will have all elementary through high school students get the shots once the vaccine gains final approval from the U.S. government for different age groups.

The government has fully approved the COVID-19 vaccine for those 16 and over but only granted an emergency authorization for anyone 12 to 15. Once federal regulators fully approve the vaccine for that group, the state will require students in seventh through 12th grades to get vaccinated in both public and private schools, Newsom’s office said.

The state will require the COVID-19 vaccine for students in kindergarten through sixth grade only after the federal government has given final approval for anyone 5 to 11.

The announcement comes as infections in most of California have dropped markedly in the last month. But Newsom has been emboldened after easily defeating a recall effort last month following a campaign where he emphasized his commitment to vaccine mandates to end the pandemic.

In Los Angeles County — the nation’s largest, with more than 10 million residents — just 1.7% of people tested for the virus have it and daily infections are down by half in the last month, when most kids went back to school.

“These numbers are amazingly low given that 3,000-plus schools are now open countywide,” county Health Director Barbara Ferrer said Thursday.

She noted that though the number of outbreaks in schools has increased slightly in recent weeks, the overall number is small and largely related to youth sports.

The state’s vaccine mandate would take effect the semester after the federal government grants final approval. If it comes in January, then the mandate would take effect in July.

Students would be granted religious and medical exemptions, but the rules for how the state would apply those exemptions have not been written yet. Any student who refuses to take the vaccine would be forced to complete an independent study course at home.

Until now, Newsom had left the decision on student vaccine mandates to local school districts, leading to a variety of different orders across some of the state’s largest districts.

Los Angeles and Oakland Unified have mandated all students over 12 to be vaccinated, but Oakland’s order has not set a deadline for when students must comply. LA set a deadline of Jan. 20.

Earlier this week, the San Diego Unified school board approved a mandate that staff and students age 16 and older be fully vaccinated by Dec. 20.

Newsom has made it a point of pride to be the first in the nation to issue a variety of pandemic-related school mandates.

In August, California became the first state in the U.S. to require all teachers and staff in K-12 public and private schools to get vaccinated or undergo weekly COVID-19 testing. Newsom also issued a school mask mandate earlier in the summer for indoor classes that applies to all teachers and students.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bc-us-vi ... 7c855eb575

That is how you fight the spread of COVID. Now the Anti-vaxxers are breathing a sigh of relief since they home school their kids as the way of the lord said to them. :sarcasm:
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

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Justice Brett Kavanaugh Tests Positive For COVID-19

Justice Brett Kavanaugh tested positive for COVID-19 on Thursday, according to a statement from the Supreme Court.

Kavanaugh tested positive Thursday evening during a routine test ahead of an event Friday morning where Justice Amy Coney Barrett is set to take an oath of office. Kavanaugh and his wife will not attend the ceremony due to the positive test.

Kavanaugh has been fully vaccinated since January and currently has no symptoms, according to the court. His wife and kids have tested negative and are fully vaccinated.

The positive test comes days before the start of the Supreme Court’s new session. The court said Kavanaugh and the other justices all tested negative Monday morning.

Some breakthrough cases — where vaccinated people get infected with COVID-19 — are to be expected, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But vaccines offer protection from severe illness, and significantly reduce the likelihood of hospitalization and death.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/justice- ... 640eb38638

Damnit, He has been vaccinated. I was hoping he would follow TFG recommendation and inject bleach.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

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Yes, CA is adding the COVID vaccine to the list of required vaccines for school age children like polio, MMR, TDaP... For Pfizer to get full approval for 16 and under will probably be some time in 2022. Pfizer is expected to have EUA from the FDA for ages 5 to 11 by the end of this month.

Yes, Kavanaugh was vaccinated in January, I expect all the justices were vaccinated at that time even though they were doing business via video conferencing. This term they are back to face to face meetings and oral arguments in the SCOTUS bldg.

700,000 dead from COVID, that's about 1/3 of the population of my county.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

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Former President Donald Trump has revealed which COVID-19 vaccine he received before leaving the White House. Well, I got the Pfizer and I would have been very happy with any of them," Trump told Yahoo Finance Live in a wide-ranging interview.
Trump contracted COVID last fall at the height of the 2020 presidential campaign.

"I had it, recovered from it pretty well. I don't think I had it like the press, like the media said, you know, they would try to make it difficult," the former president said. "It's not pleasant, but I had it."

He and his wife Melania, who also recovered from COVID last fall, received their vaccinations shortly before leaving Washington in January, but waited until last March to disclose that.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/donald-t ... 03879.html

He didn't say if they were getting the booster, I expect they will.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

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Newer variants of the coronavirus like Alpha and Delta are highly contagious, infecting far more people than the original virus. Two new studies offer a possible explanation: The virus is evolving to spread more efficiently through air.

The realization that the coronavirus is airborne indoors transformed efforts to contain the pandemic last year, igniting fiery debates about masks, social distancing and ventilation in public spaces.

Most researchers now agree that the coronavirus is mostly transmitted through large droplets that quickly sink to the floor and through much smaller ones, called aerosols, that can float over longer distances indoors and settle directly into the lungs, where the virus is most harmful.

The new studies don’t fundamentally change that view. But the findings signal the need for better masks in some situations, and indicate that the virus is changing in ways that make it more formidable.

“This is not an Armageddon scenario,” said Vincent Munster, a virologist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who led one of the new studies. “It is like a modification of the virus to more efficient transmission, which is something I think we all kind of expected, and we now see it happening in real time.”
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/10/02 ... gh-the-air
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

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Column: New evidence undermines the COVID lab-leak theory — but the press keeps pushing it

When it comes to the pandemic, pseudoscience has outweighed real science at almost every turn. One of the best examples of that is the unsupported assertion that the virus causing COVID-19 escaped from a Chinese laboratory.

Despite mounting evidence that the virus reached humans through natural pathways — from infected animals such as bats — the lab-leak hypothesis recently jumped back into the news, thanks to CNN, the investigative news site the Intercept, and the Atlantic.

All treat the idea that the virus escaped from a lab credulously. They downplay or entirely ignore the latest scientific findings that support the theory that the virus' origin can be found in the animal kingdom — the view accepted by a preponderance of experts in virology.

It's a likely probability that this one originated from animals as well. But the possibility also remains that the virus leaked from a lab.

CNN's Sanjay Gupta overstates the lab leak theory

This is known as the zoonotic theory, from the term for a disease that can be transmitted from animals to humans.

We've reported before on the near absence of evidence for a lab leak, whether or not it's the product of a deliberate act.

Ever since the lab-leak claim first emerged during the Trump administration, where it was part of a White House information campaign demonizing China, one of the arguments in its favor has been that evidence for a zoonotic origin has also been spotty.

That argument has never been quite true — virologists know that animals have been the source of most of the viral diseases afflicting humanity — but it has become weaker than ever over the last year.

The question of the origin of COVID-19 isn't of merely academic interest. The answer could guide the world's preparation for future pandemics; if the virus emerged from a laboratory, then improving lab safety measures will be prioritized. If scientific opinion continues to coalesce around animal-to-human transmission, that will underscore the importance of regulating contact between humans and wildlife.

To put it another way, if we focus on the wrong answer, the right measures won't be taken. In a real sense, humankind's future depends on not being distracted by an unsupported, politically motivated claim about Chinese labs.

Before examining the flaws in the CNN, Intercept and Atlantic treatments, let's look at what's been published recently about the zoonotic path.

For context, keep in mind that the earliest cluster of COVID-19 cases, in late 2019, was identified in the environs of the Huanan seafood market in the Chinese metropolis of Wuhan. Lab-leak theorists find this significant, because it's 7.5 miles from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which does research on bat viruses.

A earlier this month chiefly by researchers at France's Institut Pasteur and under consideration for publication in a Nature journal, however, reports that three viruses were found in bats living in caves in northern Laos with features very similar to SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19.

, those viruses are "more similar to SARS-CoV-2 than any known viruses."

, posted in late August by researchers from the Wuhan lab, reports on viruses found in rats also with features similar to those that make SARS-CoV-2 infectious in humans. present evidence that the virus jumped from animals to humans at more than one animal market in Wuhan, not just the Huanan seafood market.

Given that these so-called wet markets have long been suspected as transmission points of viruses from animals to humans because they sell potentially infected animals, that makes the laboratory origin vastly less likely, according to a co-author of one of the papers.

"That a laboratory leak would find its way to the very place where you would expect to find a zoonotic transmission is quite unlikely," Joel Wertheim, an associate professor at UC San Diego's medical school, told me. "To have it find its way to multiple markets, the exact place where you would expect to see the introduction, is unbelievably unlikely."

As virologist Robert F. Garry of Tulane, one of Wertheim's co-authors, told Nature, the finding is of the lab-leak hypothesis.

Garry and Wertheim are among the 21 expert co-authors of of virological findings on the origins of COVID-19. The review concludes, "There is currently no evidence that SARS-CoV-2 has a laboratory origin."

Now let's look at the recent reporting in support of the lab-leak theory.

On Sept. 19, CNN aired an hourlong documentary entitled Hosted by the channel's star science anchor, Sanjay Gupta, the program carries the veneer of an evenhanded approach.

Proponents of the zoonotic origin theory are given airtime, including Kristian Andersen of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla and Peter Daszak, a prominent grant maker in the virology field.

But so are proponents of the lab-leak theory. They include Alina Chan, a researcher at the Broad Institute, a biomedical research center, and Josh Rogin, a Washington Post columnist. Neither has any experience in virology. Chan is co-writing a book about COVID's origins that is expected to feature the lab-leak theory prominently, a fact not mentioned by CNN.

Yet at the top of the hour, referring to the common pattern of viruses jumping from animals to humans, Gupta says, "It's a likely probability that this one originated from animals as well. But the possibility also remains that the virus leaked from a lab."

By posing these two theories as simply two equally plausible solutions to a mystery, CNN glosses over the fact that the virological community regards the animal origin as vastly more likely than a lab leak. In fact, the two hypotheses are miles apart in credibility.

One of the program's chief targets is a report by a World Health Organization team issued in early 2021 that found spillover from an animal host to be "likely to very likely" and a laboratory incident an "extremely unlikely pathway."

Gupta calls the WHO report "the only scientific study of COVID's origins to date." That's not remotely accurate. There have been countless scientific studies, both before the WHO report and since. Indeed, Gupta mentions one of them, and colleagues, published in March 2020. That paper termed the lab-leak theory "a speculative incomplete hypothesis with no credible evidence.”

Much of the rest of the CNN program is filled with speculation about the Wuhan Institute, typically presented with portentous music on the soundtrack, suggesting subliminally that something sinister is going on there. The absence of information from the institute or the Chinese government is generally taken as tantamount to an admission of guilt.

"Over the course of 2020," Gupta declares, "more and more revelations emerged related to the Wuhan Institute of Virology."

One of these revelations concerned three staff members who reportedly sought hospital treatment for a flu-like illness in November 2019, before the COVID pandemic emerged.

Nothing has ever transpired to suggest these workers had COVID — November is flu season, after all. That they sought treatment at a hospital is immaterial, since it is well-known that for primary care, which residents of other countries would tend to receive in a doctor's office.

A CNN reporter appearing on air overstated the case, saying the patients were "hospitalized with an unknown illness." There has been no evidence that they were admitted to the hospital or that their illness was "unknown."

CNN doesn't bring its audience up to date on any of the latest research supporting the zoonotic theory, though it was published well before the air date and superseded what Gupta described as "the only scientific study" of COVID origins.

More recently, the based on a leaked document — a grant proposal submitted in 2018 by Daszak's organization, the EcoHealth Alliance, to the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA.

The proposal, for a laboratory manipulation of a virus related to SARS, the viral disease that caused an outbreak of pulmonary disease in China in 2003. DARPA rejected the proposal, however, and there's no evidence that it was submitted to, much less approved by, any other funding body.

"Many questions remain about the proposal, including whether any of the research described in it was completed," the Intercept acknowledged.

Commentators on the Intercept's disclosure have displayed, perhaps in spite of themselves, that they lack the courage of their own convictions. In an article published Sept. 24, the Atlantic, unable or unwilling to delve into what the Intercept's document actually meant, if anything, settled for declaring that it made the lab-leak debate "even messier."

The magazine's Daniel Engber and Adam Federman wrote: "Does the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic have an unnatural origin? The answer hasn’t changed: probably not. But we have learned something quite disturbing in the past few days, simply from how and when this information came to light."

By pretending that the debate itself is important, as if both sides have something to offer, they manage to report on a claim that has no substance. The approach also protects journalists from their persistent fear of landing on the wrong side of things — the authors give themselves a defense in the event that the lab-leak hypothesis turns out to be true, as unlikely as that is. If that happens, they can point to their lily-livered observations and say, "See, we knew it all along."

In this debate, however, the zoonotic camp has evidence and the lab-leak camp nothing to offer but innuendo.

Here's the true state of the discussion. There is no evidence that the virus leaked from the Wuhan laboratory or any other lab. There is no evidence that the Wuhan lab was working with a bat virus that had anything but a very distant resemblance to SARS-CoV-2. Viruses that resemble it much more closely have been found in natural settings a thousand miles from Wuhan, as the crow, or bat, flies.

Evidence that artificial manipulation of a virus gave rise to SARS-CoV-2 has faded, as scientists find more evidence that features of SARS-CoV-2 thought to be unnatural occur in nature. Meanwhile, evidence for zoonotic transmission is constantly accumulating. No one who reports on the issue without acknowledging these two trends should be trusted.
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/column-eviden ... 58105.html

Just what has been expected. Nature will find a way.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

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Garry and Wertheim are among the 21 expert co-authors of a "critical review" of virological findings on the origins of COVID-19. The review concludes, "There is currently no evidence that SARS-CoV-2 has a laboratory origin."
And there are experts on the other side arguing it was caused by a lab leak. It's Michael Hiltzik's column, his opinion. US intelligence agencies are divided over whether it has an animal origin or it leaked from the WIV lab and we're not getting any help from China. China destroyed any evidence at the outdoor market in Wuhan and probably destroyed evidence in the virology lab. China news media is saying that it leaked from Ft Detrick, MD.

It's become politicized like everything else. Maybe 50-100 years from now someone will get access to all the information and solve the mystery.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

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Hawaii authorities arrested two people from California for submitting fake COVID-19 test results to avoid a mandatory traveler quarantine meant to curb the virus’ spread in the islands.

A 34-year-old man and a 33-year-old woman uploaded falsified negative test results into the Hawaii Safe Travels portal and arrived in Lihue on an American Airlines flight from Los Angeles earlier this week, Kauai police said.

After they were arrested, they were released pending investigation and caught a flight back to Los Angeles.

The woman declined to comment Friday, but the man couldn’t immediately be reached.

Travelers entering Hawaii must quarantine for 10 days unless they have been fully vaccinated in the United States or test negative for COVID-19 before departing for the islands.

Hawaii authorities have been arresting people who violate travel rules, including a woman from Illinois investigators said uploaded a fake vaccination card that misspelled Moderna as "Maderna."
https://www.ktvu.com/news/travelers-fro ... st-results
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

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Research conducted in Southern California has confirmed the dramatic erosion of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine’s protection against “breakthrough” coronavirus infections.

The new study, one of the largest and longest to track the effectiveness of a vaccine in Americans, found that the vaccine’s ability to protect against infection stood at 88% in its first month, then fell to 47% after just five months.

But even as the Delta variant became the predominant strain across the Southland, the vaccine’s effectiveness at preventing COVID-19 hospitalizations held steady at close to 90% for as long as six months. What’s more, it maintained that power across vaccine recipients of all age groups.


The study, funded by Pfizer and published Monday in the [British medical] journal Lancet, also provides strong new evidence that the waning immunity against infection probably would have been seen with or without the arrival of the Delta variant.

The researchers, led by infectious disease epidemiologist Sara Tartof of Kaiser Permanente Southern California, drew on several findings to conclude the Delta variant was not the driving factor in the vaccine’s waning efficacy against infection. Instead, the passage of time appeared to be the key to a vaccinated person’s resurgent vulnerability.

For starters, Tartof and her colleagues found that a fresh inoculation with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine protected just as well against an infection with the Delta variant as it did against infection with other versions of the coronavirus.

Second, the vaccine’s ability to keep vaccinated people out of the hospital remained high across a span of time when the Delta variant gained ground in Southern California.

And third, breakthrough infections were more closely linked to the amount of time that had lapsed since vaccination than they were to the particular viral variant involved.


By showing that waning immunity, not the Delta variant, was the likely reason for the rise in breakthrough infections, the study suggests it may not be necessary to reformulate a Pfizer-BioNTech booster that specifically targets Delta. For now, at least, a third shot identical to the first two would probably extend the vaccine’s early record of protection against all strains, including Delta, Tartof said.

The Southern California research scoured the medical records of 3,436,957 patients ages 12 and older who were enrolled in Kaiser Permanente Southern California’s healthcare system between mid-December and early August. Close to 2.3 million of them remained unvaccinated during that period, while just over 1 million received two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, now known as Comirnaty.

The rates of SARS-CoV-2 infection, as well as of hospitalization for COVID-19, were tallied for both groups of patients and compared for as long as six months.

The protection provided by Comirnaty beyond six months has been an open question, hinted at only by Israeli studies that suggest COVID-19 hospitalization rates rise in those above 60 years of age.

In another recent study, researchers from Emory University and Stanford found that six months after being inoculated with Comirnaty, roughly half of 56 young and middle-aged adults had no detectable neutralizing antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The reduced immunity was particularly dramatic against the coronavirus variants Delta, Beta and Mu.

In another recent study, researchers from Emory University and Stanford found that six months after being inoculated with Comirnaty, roughly half of 56 young and middle-aged adults had no detectable neutralizing antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The reduced immunity was particularly dramatic against the coronavirus variants Delta, Beta and Mu.
https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2 ... ltas-fault
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

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I'll be eligible at the end of this week and will certainly get a booster. We are still seeing over 100 new Covid-19 cases every day.

Over 30,000 new cases every year and some call that normal and acceptable.

Nine or ten additional deaths a day, over 3000 additional deaths a year and some call that normal and acceptable.
To be vintage it must be older than me!
The next gun I buy will be the next to last gun I ever buy. PROMISE!
jim

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'Entirely Unsurprising': Merck Slammed for 4,000% Markup of Taxpayer-Funded Covid Drug

The New Jersey-based pharmaceutical giant Merck is facing accusations of price gouging after it charged the U.S. over $700 per patient for a taxpayer-funded coronavirus treatment that, according to research, costs just $17.74 to produce.

Last week, Merck announced plans to request emergency federal authorization for molnupiravir after a late-stage clinical trial showed that a five-day course of the antiviral drug cut the risk of Covid-19 hospitalization or death in half in patients with mild-to-moderate cases.

The same day Merck unveiled the results of the trial and White House officials hailed the drug as another possible tool against Covid-19, the New York Times reported that "the federal government has placed advance orders for 1.7 million courses of treatment, at a price of about $700 per patient"—far more than the estimated cost of manufacturing the drug.

According to an analysis by Melissa Barber of Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and Dzintars Gotham of King’s College Hospital in London, "the cost of production for molnupiravir capsules is US$1.74 per unit, or US$17.74 per five-day regimen."

"Adding an allowance for 10% profit margin and taxes in India, we arrive at an estimated sustainable generic price of US$1.96 per capsule or US$19.99 per five-day regimen," the researchers concluded.

Dean Baker, a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, noted that the $712 price-per-course price the U.S. government paid for molnupiravir amounts to a roughly 4,000% markup.

Quartz's Annalisa Merelli reported last week that with Merck expecting to produce 10 million courses of molnupiravir before the end of 2021, the company "could bring in revenue up to $7 billion."

"This would make it, in only a few weeks, one of the 10 most lucrative drugs ever," Merelli observed.

If authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, molnupiravir—which Merck developed in partnership with the Miami-based firm Ridgeback Biotherapeutics—would be the first antiviral pill approved to treat Covid-19, potentially a major breakthrough in the fight against the global pandemic.

But it's unclear how accessible the treatment will be for people in the U.S. and around the world, given its cost and Merck's monopoly control over production. Numerous countries, including Singapore and Thailand, are already racing to secure access to the drug.

"Governments must break Merck's monopolies so generic companies can expand supply and slash prices globally," said Asia Russell, executive director of Health GAP.

Heidi Chow of the Jubilee Debt Campaign decried the $700-per-patient price the U.S. government paid for molnupiravir as "another example of Big Pharma reaping billions from public investment into research by charging extortionate, rip-off prices for lifesaving Covid drugs."

"This is why we need to waive patents on all Covid treatments and vaccines," said Chow.

As The Intercept's Sharon Lerner reported Tuesday, molnupiravir was developed with the help of tens of millions of dollars in U.S. government funding.

"The Defense Threat Reduction Agency, a division of the Department of Defense, provided more than $10 million of funding in 2013 and 2015 to Emory University," from which Ridgeback licensed the drug in 2020, Lerner noted. "The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, also provided Emory with more than $19 million in additional grants."

In addition to slamming Merck for selling the drug to the U.S. at a price 40 times higher than the cost of production, public health advocates stressed the Biden administration has an obligation to ensure that the treatment is made widely available and affordable to all.

"The public funded this drug, and therefore the public has some rights, including the rights you have it available under reasonable terms," Luis Gil Abinader, a senior researcher at Knowledge Ecology International, told The Intercept.

Abinader pointed to the federal government's so-called "march in" rights under the Bayh-Dole Act. That law, enacted in 1980, allows the government to intervene and license a federally funded drug to a third party if the manufacturer fails to make the medicine "available to the public on reasonable terms." The U.S. government has never exercised its march in rights to drive down the cost of a drug.

"The pressure for march-in rights around this drug is going to be huge," Abinader said of molnupiravir. "When the Biden administration negotiates another supply agreement with Merck, they should probably leverage those rights in order to get a better price."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/ ... covid-drug

This is what we need laws that forbid these high profits on any drug that was developed using any federally funded research money including basic research and development.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

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tonguengroover wrote: Wed Oct 06, 2021 4:05 pm In order to get the wonder pill one has to get a covid test done within a certain time period and the drug has to be immediately available. I don't see that happening anytime soon.
It will be misused just like Ivermectin, but at least it won't kill you so far as we know.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

3374
Texas schools have reported more coronavirus cases in two months than they did in the entire 2020-21 school year

Students in Texas public schools are facing another year upturned by COVID-19 as the highly contagious delta variant spreads, mask mandates are inconsistent and children under 12 cannot yet be vaccinated against the virus.

Two months into this school year, the number of reported coronavirus cases among students has surpassed the total from the entire 2020-21 school year. Schools are prohibited from taking precautions such as requiring masks, though some are fighting the governor’s order banning mask mandates. Far more students are on campus, since most districts do not have a remote learning option.

Every Friday, the Texas Education Agency releases COVID-19 case counts for students and staff, as reported by the state’s school districts. Here is the latest situation for the week ending Sunday, Oct. 3:

State data on school cases is incomplete and likely an undercount. TEA suppresses some districts’ case counts to protect student privacy, and not all districts report student and staff cases to the state, despite agency guidance requiring otherwise. The agency also retroactively updates its data from previous weeks as more districts report cases.

Some large districts, such as Houston and Dallas, have not consistently reported cases to the state since TEA started tracking COVID-19 data on Aug. 2 for this school year. Many districts publish a COVID-19 dashboard that shows cases, and TEA recommends families check for the latest data there.

Entire districts, including Angleton and Lumberton, have closed temporarily without reporting cases to the state. These districts don’t necessarily report their closures, either, since they are not required to do so. TEA informally tracks closures based on media and district reports, said Frank Ward, an agency spokesperson.

Going into the school year, districts had fewer options to slow the spread of the virus and keep students and staff safe.

Last year, school districts were permitted to require masks. This year, Gov. Greg Abbott has tried to prohibit mask mandates in schools. After remaining silent on the issue for weeks, TEA quietly updated its guidance last week to say school districts can’t require masks, which has drawn a federal investigation for possibly violating the rights of students with disabilities. Still, some districts have continued to contest or ignore the ban.

Before the school year began, the state did not fund online options. Instead, school districts either used federal relief dollars or dug deep into their budgets to provide remote programming for families.

But now, some families and districts may find relief, as Abbott recently signed into law Senate Bill 15, which expands and funds virtual learning. While advocates for the law say it is a step in the right direction, it excludes students who failed the STAAR test.

In the last school year, almost 40% of students did not pass their math assessment, and nearly a third didn’t pass reading. Those who failed were disproportionately Black and Hispanic.
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/09/17 ... -19-cases/

Thanks to Gov. Moe and his cohorts Lt. Gov. Larry and AG Curly this is not a good time to be a student or an educator in Texas Public Schools. Also due to Trumpers it sin't any better in the Private or Charter schools.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

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According to most recent data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more people are receiving a booster dose of a Covid-19 vaccine each day than are getting their first shot or are becoming fully vaccinated each day.

CDC data now shows more than six million fully vaccinated Americans have received a booster dose of a Covid-19 vaccine. An average of 390,444 people are getting a booster shot each day, while only 288,105 people are starting their vaccination series each day and 276,539 people are becoming fully vaccinated each day.

Current recommendations from the CDC are that people over 65, people who have a health condition putting them at greater risk of severe disease if they do get a breakthrough infection or people who face a greater risk of contracting Covid-19 while at work or in their living circumstances can receive a booster dose. A booster dose is currently only authorized for those who received a full series of Pfizer's Covid-19 vaccination. Plus, certain people who are immune compromised are authorized for a third dose, although it's not technically considered a booster because it's likely they did not fully respond to the first two doses.

While Biden administration officials have stressed that booster doses are important in addition to increasing the number of Americans vaccinated with the initial series of shots, booster dose administration rates have outpaced the number of people starting vaccination since October 1.

"Vaccinating the unvaccinated remains the top priority, including through vaccination requirements," White House Covid-19 Response Coordinator Jeff Zients said Wednesday in a White House Covid-19 Response Team briefing.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/07/health/b ... index.html


Los Angeles leaders on Wednesday approved one of the nation’s strictest vaccine mandates — a sweeping measure that would require the shots for everyone entering bars, restaurants, nail salons, gyms or even a Lakers game.

The City Council voted 11-2 in favor of the ordinance that will require proof of full vaccination by Nov. 4.

The move came after the council postponed a vote last week to deal with concerns ranging from who could be fined for violations to whether employees could end up in fist-fights when they have to serve as vaccine door monitors.

Some critics charge that a mandate would amount to segregation of those who cannot or refuse to be vaccinated. Others call it unenforceable.

Business trade groups have said the city mandate will sow confusion because Los Angeles County’s own vaccine rules — which apply both in Los Angeles and in surrounding communities — are less sweeping.

However, council members generally support the ordinance, which is intended to reduce the risk of new COVID-19 surges. The nation’s second-most populous city faced a huge rise in infections and hospitalizations last winter and a smaller surge this summer linked to the spread of the highly contagious delta variant.

Mayor Eric Garcetti expressed his support for a vaccine measure last week, saying: “I don’t want to bury another city employee, police officer, firefighter.”

The ordinance would require people to be fully vaccinated to enter indoor public spaces including shopping malls, restaurants, bars, gyms, sports arenas, museums, spas, nail salons, indoor city facilities and other locations. Current eligibility includes people age 12 and up.

Negative coronavirus tests within 72 hours of entry to those places would be required for people with religious or medical exemptions for vaccinations.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/lo ... e-n1280897


A growing number of medical facilities across the country are directing coveted organ donations to patients who have been vaccinated against COVID-19, pushing people who remain unvaccinated down or even off of transplantation waitlists.

The thinking behind this move is simple: With transmission of the pandemic coronavirus still high in the US, unvaccinated transplant candidates face an extremely high risk of COVID-19, which poses a danger to them and imperils the usefulness of the scarce, life-saving organs.

Receiving a transplanted organ requires patients to take immunosuppressant drugs that will prevent their bodies from rejecting the new organ as foreign. But this immune suppression also makes the recipients highly susceptible to becoming infected with the pandemic coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, and developing severe COVID-19. Some experts estimate that transplant recipients' risk of dying from COVID-19 is as high as 20 to 30 percent.

Odds of survival have long been factored into prioritizing who will get donated organs. And requiring vaccinations against devastating infectious diseases is also standard. Organ recipients are already generally required to be vaccinated against hepatitis A, hepatitis B, influenza, and tetanus, among others diseases.
The reality of unvaccinated patients getting kicked off some organ waitlists recently made headlines with the story of an unvaccinated Colorado woman named Leilani Lutali. UCHealth in Denver denied Lutali's kidney transplant surgery because she was unvaccinated and informed her in a letter that she would be listed as "inactivated" on a kidney transplant waiting list if she didn't get a first vaccine dose within 30 days. Lutali, who told the Associated Press that she is a born-again Christian without a denomination, says she objects to the vaccines on religious grounds. With the national patchwork of vaccine requirements for transplant patients, Lutali is now seeking a transplant in another state, such as Texas or Florida, in facilities that do not require COVID-19 vaccination.

"I feel like I’m being coerced into not being able to wait and see and that I have to take the shot if I want this lifesaving transplant,” Lutali told Kaiser Health News.

The outlet noted that there are nearly 107,000 people waiting for organs in the US—more than 90,000 of them are, like Lutali, waiting for a kidney. Dozens of people in need of various organs die each day while waiting, KHN reported.

“We mandate hepatitis and influenza vaccines, and nobody has an issue with that,” Dr. Kapilkumar Patel, director of the lung transplant program at Tampa General Hospital in Florida, told KHN. “And now we have this one vaccination that can save lives and make an impact on the post-transplant recovery phase. And we have this huge uproar from the public.”
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10 ... waitlists/
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

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