We need that reminder of when Trump gave that national televised speech about covid. He said, don't be afraid of it, it's a small flu. While he's vax and takes a helicopter to one of the best hospitals in the world.
WSJ editorial board. Rochelle Walensky’s Finest Hour The CDC chief made the right call on Covid Sept. 24, 2021 6:52 pm ET The Biden Administration’s booster vaccine plan has been messy and confusing, but at least it arrived at the right outcome. Credit to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Rochelle Walensky late Thursday for overruling the agency’s outside advisers and backing a broad booster rollout. Last month White House officials and agency heads said they planned to make boosters available on Sept. 20. They were right to prepare, but boosters hadn’t been cleared by the Food and Drug Administration. Two senior career FDA officials told reporters they are leaving the agency because they disagreed with the White House booster plan. Resignation is an honorable path if you can’t support a policy, but that doesn’t mean the dissenters are right. The preponderance of evidence supports boosters. Vaccine efficacy against infections has declined significantly for people who were vaccinated early this winter. Israel’s experience over the summer showed that more breakthrough infections were resulting in severe illness. Some experts say boosters aren’t needed since vaccines still appear to be 80% or so effective against hospitalization. But some people with breakthrough cases are getting very sick even if they don’t land in the hospital. Others want to protect against the risk of long Covid or transmitting the virus to family. An FDA outside panel last week hedged by backing boosters only for those over age 65 or at “high risk.” FDA Acting Commissioner Janet Woodcock on Wednesday endorsed this recommendation, but she defined “high risk” broadly to include workers who might have higher Covid exposure. But experts on a CDC advisory panel on Thursday disagreed with her decision. Some said young, healthy people were at low risk for severe illness, so boosters weren’t necessary. Others worried that recommending boosters broadly would send the message that vaccines didn’t work. But the CDC’s job is to make decisions based on public health costs and benefits, and our guess is that tens of millions who are vaccinated will want booster shots as breakthrough cases increase. Dr. Walensky overruled the CDC advisers and affirmed Dr. Woodcock’s recommendation, which is broad enough that most people who want a booster should be able to get one. The government will leave individuals to assess their own benefits and risks. “As CDC Director, it is my job to recognize where our actions can have the greatest impact. At CDC, we are tasked with analyzing complex, often imperfect data to make concrete recommendations that optimize health,” Dr. Walensky wrote in a statement. “In a pandemic, even with uncertainty, we must take actions that we anticipate will do the greatest good.” She’s right. The added protection against breakthrough infections will help the country get through what could be a rough winter. Experts predict that flu and other respiratory viruses will be more prevalent this year. Breakthrough infections could exacerbate the strain on the healthcare system and swell demand for monoclonal antibody therapies, which the Administration has been rationing. A booster shot costs the government $20 compared to $2,100 for a monoclonal antibody treatment. A non-ICU Covid hospitalization costs $33,525. Add the health and economic benefits of fewer infections, and the cost-benefit analysis seems clear. The CDC has made many mistakes during the pandemic, but Dr. Walensky made the right call on boosters.
NYT Editorial Board https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/25/opinion/sunday/covid-booster-shots-fda-cdc.html This Is No Way to End a Pandemic Sept. 25, 2021 By The Editorial Board The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom. A year ago, before any Covid vaccine had been authorized for use, former President Donald Trump all but promised that a shot would be available before Election Day. When Food and Drug Administration regulators suggested that he was mistaken, he accused them of deliberately slow-walking their authorizations in an attempt to influence the coming election — and threatened to override them. At least some segments of the public were outraged: It was not the first time Mr. Trump had interfered with the agency, and health officials warned that his careless remarks would undermine vaccine confidence. The F.D.A. responded forcefully, tightening its review criteria and communicating directly with the public about the changes. The agency’s commissioner, Dr. Stephen Hahn, engaged in a standoff with the president who appointed him, and in the end, public safety was placed above political expedience. This year, it’s President Biden who has gotten ahead of the F.D.A., announcing a plan to make Covid booster shots available to all vaccinated Americans long before the agency finished its evaluations of the nation’s three authorized vaccines. Rather than push back against this maneuver, acting F.D.A. Commissioner Dr. Janet Woodcock endorsed it. Two of the agency’s top vaccine regulators resigned in protest, taking with them a wealth of knowledge and experience that will be both urgently needed and difficult to replace in the months ahead. The kerfuffle has once again undermined an agency that is supposed to be the regulatory gold standard not just in the United States but around the world. To be sure, the F.D.A. is not the only entity grappling with confusion and contradiction. The world’s largest vaccine makers say they will soon have enough shots to inoculate just about the entire global population, but they can’t seem to get those doses to the lower-income countries that need them most. The leaders of the world’s richest countries, including the United States, say they are committed to global vaccine equity and have collectively pledged to donate hundreds of millions of doses to lower-income countries. But it is not entirely clear how those countries’ current or projected supplies measure up against their promises to share. It would be good to know the extent to which any booster initiative will undermine the quest for global vaccine equity, but critics say it’s almost impossible to determine how many more doses could immediately go to lower-income nations. “That’s an important question,” says Dr. Jen Kates, a vaccine policy expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “There’s very little transparency around it, though.” Ending the pandemic will require a string of carefully calibrated trade-offs: between vaccinating children in one country and higher-risk groups everywhere else, between giving boosters in wealthy nations and spreading vaccine abundance, between stockpiling and sharing. Most of those trade-offs will require a more functional regulatory apparatus than we’ve seen so far. The F.D.A. has determined that for the Pfizer vaccine, at least, boosters are warranted only for people older than 65, the immunocompromised and those whose work or living arrangements place them at higher risk of exposure. Mr. Biden and his team, including Dr. Woodcock, softened their booster messaging in response, agreeing to offer the extra shots only to people for whom the F.D.A. has authorized them and insisting its plans were always contingent upon agency approval. Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s advisory panel disagrees with the F.D.A.’s assessment and says boosters are not yet indicated for people who face a higher risk of exposure but a low likelihood of severe illness. In yet another unusual move, the C.D.C.’s chief, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, has overruled her own advisory group and sided with the F.D.A. The case for Mr. Biden’s booster program is shaky. Most doctors agree that the additional shot makes sense for older and immunocompromised people, who face a higher risk of serious illness if they suffer a breakthrough infection. Yet the data suggests and experts have argued that hardly any hospitalizations or deaths will be prevented by giving boosters to other groups like frontline workers, because their risk is so low to begin with. Still, health officials across the country report that people are clamoring for boosters, and according to data from the C.D.C., more than a million people have already gotten one — in many cases by lying about their vaccination status, experts say. The administration’s misfire leaves little confidence in its ability to navigate a coming roster of crucial decisions — about whether to authorize shots for young children or boosters for those who received the Moderna or Johnson & Johnson vaccines. It does not help that nearly nine months into Mr. Biden’s term, the F.D.A. still does not have a permanent commissioner. As both of Mr. Trump’s commissioners demonstrated, a permanent commissioner has a huge influence on the agency’s agenda and the tone and tenor of its work. Whether the F.D.A. kowtows to or resists political interference, how firm the agency is with the industries it regulates, what its priorities are in any given year — are all determined in large part by the person steering the ship. Mr. Biden has yet to even nominate someone for the job. Dr. Woodcock has hardly inspired confidence in the meantime. Not only did she pre-empt and undermine her regulators by supporting Mr. Biden’s booster plan, but this year she also presided over the approval of a highly dubious Alzheimer’s medication, against the advice of her agency’s own advisory committee. That decision triggered a backlash and resignations, as well as an investigation. It’s become common to say that the F.D.A. is moving too slowly, given the magnitude of the Covid crisis and that it should, for example, approve or authorize shots for children much more quickly than it has. But speed is not the agency’s biggest failing. In fact, given how underfunded and understaffed the agency is in normal times, one could argue that speed is not its fault at all. It takes real investment and sustained commitment for any agency to be fast and nimble in a crisis. The F.D.A. has had neither for many years now. A much bigger problem is the agency’s lack of transparency. Regulators expanded and prolonged the pediatric clinical trials without any real explanation and in a manner that left even their supporters confused and uncertain. It’s difficult to know whether that decision was warranted without more information on why it was made in the first place. It’s also difficult to say whether Mr. Biden’s latest booster plan will undercut his recent pledge to help vaccinate 70 percent of the world’s population by this time next year. Mr. Biden has pledged to donate more than a billion shots to that effort. But Politico reported that the push for boosters in the United States was motivated as much by concerns over vaccine supply as by worries about waning vaccine effectiveness. World leaders and U.S. regulators know the best way to prevent serious illness and death and to end the pandemic altogether: by getting shots in arms, especially the arms of those who have not had any shots at all. Now they need to more forcefully act on that knowledge. A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 26, 2021, Section SR, Page 6 of the New York edition with the headline: This Is No Way to End a Pandemic.
Remember when the UK said let's the dice roll and shoot for immunity through a natural infection? They quickly abandoned that. But now it seems they are again doing that for children. The rate of infection among children has skyrocketed. https://nation.cymru/news/teenage-c...-government-to-reinstate-school-restrictions/ “In fact, 1.9% (around 1 in 50) of that entire age group has tested positive in the last week. That is 2,424 more than the previous week, and over 3 times more than the peak in December. Those figures are astronomical.” “Schools are objectively not safe under the current rules, and this trajectory is not sustainable, so I would like to ask @Jeremy_Miles and @Eluned_Morgan what their plan is to bring these numbers down. Please make schools safe again. “If I was in charge, I would: • Make masks mandatory in class again. It worked in the spring, so why was it stopped? • Bring back self-isolation for the entire household of a confirmed Covid case. • Require close contacts (NOT whole bubbles) to self-isolate again. “I find it difficult to look at these numbers and not think that the Welsh (and UK) Government are deliberately infecting children. I get that the new rules are designed to minimise disruption to education, but education is being severely distupted by children catching Covid. “Schools at the moment are huge spreading vectors for the virus, but they don’t have to be. If the Welsh Government brings back most of the rules we had before summer, schools will be made safer, and less disrupted, than they are now. Sort it out.” https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/09/25/lisa-s25.html On September 16, just two weeks after state schools in England formally reopened, it was announced that over 100,000 children were absent with a confirmed or suspected COVID infection. Some 59,000 had a confirmed COVID-19 infection and another 45,000 had suspected cases. One in every 100 secondary school pupils is ill with the disease. Children of secondary school age have the highest rate of COVID infections, followed by primary school children. Close to 90 children in the UK have already been killed by COVID-19 and an estimated 38,000 aged 2–16 are currently living with Long COVID.
LOL. Apparently the gov has been genociding children all these years by mandating vaccinations in school.
They use words they don't know the meaning of to oppose principles not grounded by science. The messaging is deliberate for a target audience
Alaska also under statewide crisis standards of care (aka as, let the very sick die, care for the less sick). Fake news for some though. Alaska Gov. Dunleavy activates statewide crisis standards of care to help COVID-overwhelmed hospitals (adn.com) Alaska is activating crisis standards of care for the entire state and bringing in contracted health workers as staff shortages and influx of COVID-19 patients make it difficult for hospitals to operate normally. Gov. Mike Dunleavy and top health officials announced the hospital support on Wednesday, the same day Alaska’s new single-day cases hit another record as the highly infectious delta variant drives infections. A combination of short staffing and high numbers of COVID-19 patients is overwhelming medical facilities in Anchorage, Mat-Su and Fairbanks. Rural hospitals say they struggle to transfer patients to urban centers for higher care. At least one patient died recently when a bed in Anchorage wasn’t available. ‘Active misinformation campaigns’ The briefing from state officials came amid a politically charged climate where some Alaskans, including elected officials, challenge public health messaging as false. Viewers on a Facebook livestream of Wednesday’s briefing peaked at about 1,350 people. Several responded to the statements from Dunleavy and others with unsubstantiated misinformation about unproven COVID-19 treatments, the vaccine and the state of the pandemic. Others simply said “fake numbers,” “lies,” and “propaganda,” as health officials outlined the dire situation playing out across the state. Vaccination remains the single best way to prevent severe illness and hospitalization from the virus, said the state’s chief medical officer, Dr. Anne Zink. Two-thirds of the new cases reported Wednesday are going to get sick, miss work, maybe need treatment at the emergency room or worse. Zink urged Alaskans to not be “distracted by other treatment options such as ivermectin that has not shown benefit for COVID-19 at this time” and instead get proven treatment like monoclonal antibodies. “Kindness and compassion are important to all, especially to our health care workers who are committed to providing care to all Alaskans,” Zink continued. “There’s active misinformation campaigns about health ... and about treatment options, so please speak to your health care provider if you have questions.”
Anyone else see any irony when a retrumplican comments on a minority being blamed for society's ills?
This is what the libs in here want. Damn losers, bunch of sheep with no minds to think for yourselves.
Where is this from? Is there a link to this mask mandate? This photo was taken in the White House, which is also a residence and not simply an office.
