On The Other Hand, COVID Vaccines Linked to A Small Number Of Functional Neurological Disorders
Written by Steven Hansen
The U.S. new cases 7-day rolling average are 13.5 % HIGHER than the 7-day rolling average one week ago and U.S. deaths due to coronavirus are now 49.7 % HIGHER than the rolling average one week ago. Today’s posts include:
- U.S. Coronavirus New Cases are 199,606
- U.S. Coronavirus deaths are at 1,532
- F.D.A. Aims for Full Approval of Pfizer Covid Vaccine on Monday.
- The WHO’s Vaccine Misinformation
- Maker of Rapid Covid Tests Told Factory to Destroy Inventory
- A systematic review of in vitro studies evaluating the efficacy of mouth rinses on SARS-CoV-2
- CDC recommends travelers with high risk of Covid complications avoid cruises
- These Airlines Have Banned Fabric Face Masks on Planes
- Census numbers suggested 19 million white people disappeared from the US. Here’s what really happened
- Flash recession could hit markets by the fall
include($_SERVER[‘DOCUMENT_ROOT’].’/pages/coronavirus1.htm’); ?>
Hospitalizations Are The Only Accurate Gauge
Hospitalizations historically appear to be little affected by weekends or holidays. The hospitalization growth rate trend continues to improve.
source: https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/covidnet/COVID19_3.html
Historically, hospitalization growth follows new case growth by one to two weeks.
As an analyst, I use the rate of growth to determine the trend. But, the size of the pandemic is growing in terms of real numbers – and if the rate of growth does not become negative – the pandemic will overwhelm all resources.
The graph below shows the rate of growth relative to the growth a week earlier updated through today [note that negative numbers mean the rolling averages are LOWER than the rolling averages one week ago]. As one can see, the rate of growth for new cases peaked in early December 2020 for Thanksgiving, and early January 2021 for end-of-year holidays – and it now shows that the coronavirus effect is improving.
In the scheme of things, new cases decline first, followed by hospitalizations, and then deaths. The potential fourth wave did not materialize likely due to immunizations.
Coronavirus and Recovery News You May Have Missed
F.D.A. Aims for Full Approval of Pfizer Covid Vaccine on Monday. – New York Times
The Food and Drug Administration is pushing to approve Pfizer-BioNTech’s two-dose Covid-19 vaccine on Monday, further expediting an earlier timeline for licensing the shot, according to people familiar with the agency’s planning.
Regulators were working to finish the process by Friday but were still working through a substantial amount of paperwork and negotiation with the company. The people familiar with the planning, who were not authorized to speak publicly about it, cautioned that the approval might slide beyond Monday if some components of the review need more time.
An F.D.A. spokeswoman declined to comment.
The agency had recently set an unofficial deadline for approval of around Labor Day.
The approval is expected to pave the way for a series of vaccination requirements by public and private organizations who were awaiting firmer regulatory backing before implementing mandates. Federal and state health officials are also hoping that an approved vaccine will draw interest from some Americans who have been hesitant to take one that was only authorized for emergency use, a phenomenon suggested by recent polling.
How does COVID-19 affect the brain? A troubling picture emerges. – National Geographic
Researchers find that people who only suffered mild infections can be plagued with life-altering and sometimes debilitating cognitive deficits.
Davis is among a large portion of COVID-19 patients—possibly as high as 30 percent, according an estimate from the National Institutes of Health—who suffer some type of neurological or psychiatric symptoms. Even more troubling is that for many of these individuals, like Davis, these cognitive issues can linger for weeks or months after the initial infection.
Last year, dozens of hospitals and healthcare systems across the country opened post-COVID clinics to help patients who had been admitted to intensive care units with severe COVID-19. But as the pandemic has dragged on, those clinics have filled with people who were never hospitalized but suffer lingering symptoms, including brain fog and other cognitive issues.
“The expectation was that all these people in the ICU were going to have really long protracted recovery periods,” says Walter Koroshetz, director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, part of the National Institutes of Health. “The big surprise was the people who never required hospitalization that are having persistent trouble.” Koroshetz is co-leading a study at NIH to understand why some COVID-19 patients recover faster than others and to learn the biological reasons why others don’t get well even months later.
A picture is starting to emerge of how COVID-19 causes these cognitive issues. What’s less clear is how many people will eventually recover and how many will be left with devastating long-term effects.
A year and a half later, Davis can only work a few hours a day because of lingering brain fog, short-term memory loss, and other cognitive issues. She’s seen a dozen or so medical specialists and has been diagnosed with post-viral dysautonomia, a nervous system disorder that causes dizziness, rapid heartbeat, and fast breathing when rising from sitting or lying down. It’s sometimes treated with fludrocortisone, a corticosteroid, or midodrine, a blood pressure drug.
“I’ve never experienced anything like this in my life,” Davis says. “Your body just it feels like it’s breaking down. You lose your sense of self.”
… In a study published July 15, Frontera and her colleagues screened for neurological problems in patients admitted to the hospital with severe COVID-19. Of 382 patients, 50 percent reported that they had impaired cognition and a diminished capacity to carry out daily activities, walk, or take care of themselves six months after being discharged. Of those who worked prior to being hospitalized, 47 percent could not return to their jobs six months later.
The researchers also found that a subset of the 382 COVID-19 patients who had no previous neurological syndromes experienced strokes and seizures while in the hospital. At the same time, individuals with a history of neurological problems were at higher risk for developing new ones while hospitalized with COVID-19, Frontera says. The findings underscore just how much damage COVID-19 can do to the nervous system, especially those who develop severe disease.
COVID Vaccines Linked to Functional Neurological Disorders – MedPage
Functional neurological disorders (FND) were found to be associated with COVID-19 vaccines, according to recent case reports.
Two cases of young women manifesting FND after COVID-19 vaccination were reported by Alfonso Fasano, MD, PhD, of the University of Toronto, and Antonio Daniele, MD, PhD, of Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Rome, in a letter to the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry.
Two other published reports showed probable FND precipitated by COVID-19 vaccine administration, highlighting that FND should be considered when assessing post-vaccine neurologic symptoms, wrote Matthew Butler, MD, of Kings College London in England, and co-authors in the Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience.
FND involves a disruption in normal brain mechanisms for controlling the body. It can be triggered by physical or emotional events including head injury, medical or surgical procedures, or vaccinations. People with FND may present with a range of neurological symptoms such as seizures, sensory abnormalities, gait or balance disturbance, or weakness. FND is distinct from feigning because patients perceive their symptoms as involuntary.
“We strongly encourage clinicians to be aware of the possibility for FND in response to SARS-CoV-2 vaccinations,” Butler told MedPage Today. “FND can be a serious and debilitating condition; however, it does not implicate any vaccine constituents and should not hamper ongoing vaccination efforts.”
“Making clinicians aware of this can benefit people with FND reactions to vaccines, as well as maintaining public confidence in the vaccine,” Butler added. “Rigorous causality assessments should occur when FND reactions are suspected.”
“Among the various adverse events which might be observed after COVID-19 vaccination, the occurrence of functional — once called psychogenic — neurological disorders might be a challenging issue for healthcare providers, media, and public opinion with a negative impact on vaccination campaigns,” noted Fasano and Daniele.
“In our view, FND following COVID-19 vaccination will not be a rare phenomenon and will be widely covered by the media, being interpreted as a direct consequence of the vaccine, as already seen in the past,” they wrote.
The first case from Fasano and Daniele involved a woman who presented with a short episode of generalized psychogenic non-epileptic seizures 20 minutes after receiving her second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. The event was followed by different episodes that included an inability to move her whole body. No post-ictal period followed these episodes, some of which were captured by video-electroencephalography and did not show any epileptic activity.
The WHO’s Vaccine Misinformation – Wall Street Journal
The World Health Organization wrongly accuses the U.S. of “vaccine nationalism.”
WHO Gets It Wrong Again
The World Health Organization on Wednesday condemned the U.S. and other wealthy countries such as Israel and Germany for ordering Covid booster shots for their own citizens. There’s insufficient evidence to support the need for third doses, WHO officials said while accusing wealthy countries of behaving selfishly by giving their own citizens added protection while billions around the world remain unvaccinated.
“The divide between the haves and have nots will only grow larger if manufacturers and leaders prioritize booster shots over supply to low- and middle-income countries,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. “Vaccine injustice is a shame on all humanity,” Wealthy countries are handing out “extra lifejackets to people who already have lifejackets,” and leaving others “to drown without a single lifejacket,” WHO official Dr. Mike Ryan complained.
This analogy doesn’t quite, well, hold water since the U.S. has already donated 110 million vaccines out of its supply to lower-income countries and contracted for another 500 million to donate—three times the 200 million boosters the Biden administration recently ordered for Americans. The administration has also pledged as much as $4 billion to the WHO-backed program Covax to buy vaccines for low-income countries, as a Journal editorial today explains. All told, the U.S. will end up donating more vaccines than it administers to its own citizens.
In any case, the WHO shouldn’t be lecturing the U.S. and other wealthy countries about their global public-health obligations. These are the same folks who praised China’s transparency during the early days of the pandemic and waited until mid-January to acknowledge evidence of human-to-human transmission. By that time the virus was spreading stealthily across Europe.
These Airlines Have Banned Fabric Face Masks on Planes – Yahoo
Face masks have become commonplace on airplanes — and are here to stay for quite a while — but not every airline allows every kind of mask.
This week, Finnair became the latest carrier to ban fabric face masks onboard, accepting only surgical masks, valve-free FFP2 or FFP3 respirator masks, and N95 masks, the company tweeted.
“The safety of our customers and employees is our first priority. Fabric masks are slightly less efficient at protecting people from infection than surgical masks,” the company wrote in a statement.
Finnair isn’t alone in banning cloth face masks. Air France and Lufthansa have each mandated medical masks be worn, prohibiting fabric masks and those with exhaust valves.
LATAM Airlines has also banned fabric and reusable face masks on domestic flights within Chile, allowing only surgical masks with three layers, KN95, and N95 masks. The carrier also requires doubling up on face masks for passengers connecting in Lima, even if they remain on board the aircraft.
While cloth face masks are generally allowed in the United States, several domestic carriers have restricted other kinds of face coverings with many banning features like exhaust valves. Delta Air Lines prohibits bandanas, scarves, masks with exhaust valves, and any masks with slits, punctures, or holes. Similarly, United Airlines bans bandanas and specifies a face shield alone is not considered adequate protection.
For its part, Southwest prohibits bandanas, scarves, ski masks, balaclavas, and single layer masks; American Airlines bans balaclavas, bandanas, exhaust valves, scarves, and gaiters; JetBlue doesn’t allow masks connected to tubing or battery-operated filters; and Hawaiian Airlines won’t accept scarves, ski masks, balaclavas, and bandanas.
Census numbers suggested 19 million white people disappeared from the US. Here’s what really happened – Washington Examiner
The U.S. population increased by nearly 23 million over the past decade, according to the Census Bureau, yet the white population dropped by 19 million, and the non-Hispanic white population dropped by 5 million. It’s not that white people are shrinking as a percentage of the population, but the raw number of people counted as “white” has gone down by millions.
What’s going on here?
he Associated Press reports it as the “white population shrinking,” but that’s pretty misleading. If you dig a tiny bit, it’s pretty clear this isn’t really a question of fewer white people so much as it’s a question of changing census questions.
White people are surely decreasing in their majority because of immigration, but the claim that the white population is shrinking in absolute terms is not really true.
If you count births and deaths, the non-Hispanic white population should have held still over the past decade. So, if it fell by 5 million, that suggests millions of people who identified as white in 2010 now identify as mixed-race or some nonwhite race.
It’s tricky to get hard data on all of this, in part because the Census Bureau last decade altered how it accounted for race when counting births. But the Anne Casey Foundation, a nonprofit group that advocates for children, has annual numbers divided by race and Hispanic origin of the mother. If we combine those numbers with the Census Bureau’s death numbers, we can get a rough estimate of the natural change in non-Hispanic white population in the United States.
About 2 million babies were born to non-Hispanic white mothers every year, according to the Anne Casey Foundation. About 2 million non-Hispanic white people died every year, according to the Census Bureau. Combine all these numbers, and from 2010 to 2019, you had just under 21 million non-Hispanic white births and just under 21 million non-Hispanic white deaths.
That is, non-Hispanic white people in America basically replaced themselves last decade.
Of course, being born to a white mother doesn’t make a baby white. So, maybe the drop in white population is just a matter of old white people dying and young white women having mixed-race babies? The problem with that theory is that the white-alone, non-Hispanic, under-10 population last decade fell by only 1.4 million, meaning that the changing demographics of babies can’t explain most of the decreasing white population.
What’s going on is really that the same individuals who counted as white last census count as “other” or “two or more races” in this census.
‘Flash recession’ could hit markets by the fall – Fox
Markets are acting like the global economy is headed for a slowdown, according to Bank of America.
Unprecedented amounts of fiscal and monetary stimulus have been unleashed into the global economy, yet reopening trades and other trades indicating increased appetite for risk-taking are seeing a W-shaped recovery, indicating momentum is petering out.
The tale of the tape is “recessionary,” wrote Michael Harnett, chief investment strategist at Bank of America, pointing to the action in U.S. Treasurys, commodities and global equity markets.
In the U.S., the yield curve when measured by the five-year and 30-year yields, fell to 110 basis points this week, the flattest in a year. A flatter yield curve indicates growth is likely to slow in the months ahead.
At the same time, global stock markets, excluding U.S. technology shares, are unchanged over the past eight months, according to Hartnett. Commodities like oil, copper and palladium, which benefit from a growing economy, have fallen up to 23% from their recent peaks.
… All of this sets the stage for the “rising risk of [an] autumn ‘flash recession” that is likely to be revealed in a sharp drop in global purchasing managers indexes, Hartnett wrote.
Hartnett warns investors of negative returns for stocks and says investors should own quality defensive names into year end. Still, his long-term secular view is that inflation will win out over deflation.
Analysts elsewhere on Wall Street are more optimistic.
Goldman Sachs earlier this month raised its year-end S&P 500 price target to 4,700, up from 4,300, due to its expectation of “stronger revenue growth and more pre-tax profit margin expansion.”
Maker of Rapid Covid Tests Told Factory to Destroy Inventory. – New York Times
One of the leading producers of rapid tests purged supplies and laid off workers as sales dwindled. Weeks later, the U.S. is facing a surge in infections with diminished capacity.
For weeks in June and July, workers at a Maine factory making one of America’s most popular rapid tests for Covid-19 were given a task that shocked them: take apart millions of the products they had worked so hard to create and stuff them into garbage bags.
Soon afterward, Andy Wilkinson, a site manager for Abbott Laboratories, the manufacturer, stood before rows of employees to announce layoffs. The company canceled contracts with suppliers and shuttered the only other plant making the test, in Illinois, dismissing a work force of 2,000. “The numbers are going down,” he told the workers of the demand for testing, saying it wasn’t their fault. “This is all about money.”
As virus cases in the U.S. plummeted this spring, so did Abbott’s Covid-testing sales. But now, amid a new surge in infections, steps the company took to eliminate stock and wind down manufacturing are proving untimely — hobbling efforts to expand screening as the highly contagious Delta strain rages across the country.
Demand for the 15-minute antigen test, BinaxNOW, is soaring again as people return to schools and offices. Yet Abbott has reportedly told thousands of newly interested companies that it cannot equip their testing programs in the near future. CVS, Rite Aid and Walgreens locations have been selling out of the at-home version, and Amazon shows shipping delays of up to three weeks. Abbott is scrambling to hire back hundreds of workers.
… Abbott’s decisions have ramifications even beyond the United States. Employees in Maine, many of them immigrants from African countries, were upset at having to discard what might have been donated. Other countries probably could have used the materials, according to Dr. Sergio Carmona, chief medical officer of FIND, a nonprofit that promotes access to diagnostics.
“This makes me feel sick,” he said of the destruction, noting that more than a dozen African nations have no domestic funds to buy Covid tests.
In an interview, Robert B. Ford, Abbott’s chief executive, argued that the discarded materials — finished test cards — should not be viewed as tests. Kits for sale also include swabs, liquid buffer and instructions.
“I would just caution in terms of using the word ‘destroy’ because it kind of gives a sense here that we’ve got all these tests that were in packages and we threw them away,” he added.
Asked why the materials needed to be thrown away, Mr. Ford cited a limited shelf life. But photographs of some of the estimated 8.6 million Abbott test cards that employees said were shredded show expiration dates that were more than seven months away.
A systematic review of in vitro studies evaluating the efficacy of mouth rinses on SARS-CoV-2 – News-Medical
A new study published in the Journal of Infection and Public Health aims to evaluate the current body of published in vitro research related to the efficacy of mouthwashes in preventing SARS-CoV-2 transmission.
To this end, the researchers retrieved a total of 162 titles, of which thirteen had a full-text review. However, only eight were included in this study.
This systematic review revealed the efficacy of molecules in different mouthwashes on SARS-COV-2. Among the tested mouthwashes, the Povidone Iodine (PVP-I) containing mouthwash was reported to be most effective against SARS-CoV-2.
… PVP-I
PVP-I is a bactericidal and virucidal agent that is effective against several members of betacoronavirus such as SARS-CoV and the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV). PVP-I affects the nucleic acid structures of these viruses and disrupts surface proteins to ultimately block viral binding to cells.
The studies considered in this review provided robust evidence that PVP-I can inactivate SARS-CoV-2, even after a brief 15-second contact and at low concentrations. This review also highlighted the cytotoxic effects associated with PVP-I. To this end, PVP-I appears to be toxic for the oral and nasal mucosa at a concentration higher than 2.5% and 5%, respectively.
Although commercially available mouthwashes containing PVP-I do not reach the aforementioned concentrations, this is one of the most important parameters that must be evaluated while developing new formulations. Importantly, PVP-I mouth rinse must be avoided by pregnant women and individuals who are allergic to iodine. Additionally, individuals with underlying thyroid disease or those who are receiving radioactive iodine therapy must refrain from PVP-I mouth rinse.
… One of the limitations of the current study is that several methodological aspects and comparison groups varied between the studies. However, the authors indicated that all the evidence from in vitro studies shows that PVP-I has higher antiviral activity compared to other commonly used molecules.
The researchers emphasized that more clinical studies must be conducted to validate the effectiveness of active ingredients present in mouthwashes discussed in this review.
CDC recommends travelers with high risk of Covid complications avoid cruises – CNBC
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday that travelers who are at high risk of severe complications from Covid-19 should avoid taking cruises, regardless of their vaccination status.
The updated guidance also recommended that travelers who are not fully vaccinated avoid taking cruises.
The new advice follows several coronavirus outbreaks that have been reported aboard cruise ships, according to the CDC.
In addition, although the agency is not putting in place the same type of masking requirements that exist for planes, trains and other public transportation, it suggested cruise passengers wear a face covering in shared spaces.
The following are foreign headlines with hyperlinks to the posts
Biden Vows to Bring Home Every American Who Wants to Leave Afghanistan
Experts fear rapid spread of COVID-19 in Afghanistan given Taliban’s hostility to vaccinations
UK’s Euro 2020 final spurred thousands of COVID-19 cases: officials
Vietnam Deploys Military to Get Food to People Trapped by COVID lockdowns. “We are asking people to stay where you are, not to go outside. Each home, company, factory should be an anti-virus fort,” a Vietnamese official said Friday.
The following additional national and state headlines with hyperlinks to the posts
15 Monoclonal Antibody Sites to Be Operational in Florida by Weekend
An ‘alarming’ new finding: Vaccinated people can spread Delta easily
Orlando Residents Asked to Reduce Water Use Amid Liquid Oxygen Shortage. A regional shortage of liquid oxygen linked to the surge in COVID-19 inpatient treatments is affecting the area’s treated water supplies.
hdiocese says it will not support religious exemptions from Covid vaccination.
Today’s Posts On Econintersect Showing Impact Of The Pandemic and Recovery With Hyperlinks
Putting Public Investment To Work
Do Rising Retirements During COVID Reflect Demographic Trends?
Unequal Burdens: Racial Differences In ICU Stress During The Third Wave Of COVID-19
Infographic Of The Day: The 5.7 Trillion Infrastructure Investment Gap
Lyme Disease, Contested Illness, And Evidence-Based Medicine
How COVID Affects Vaccinated And Unvaccinated People
Warning to Readers
The amount of politically biased articles on the internet continues. And studies and opinions of the experts continue to contradict other studies and expert opinions. Honestly, it is difficult to believe anything anymore.
I assemble this update daily – sifting through the posts on the internet. I try to avoid politically slanted posts. This daily blog is not an echo chamber for any party line – and will publish controversial topics unless there are clear reasons why the topic is false. And I usually publish conflicting topics. It is my job to provide information so that you have the facts necessary – and then it is up to readers to draw conclusions. It is not my job to sell any point of view.
include(“/home/aleta/public_html/files/ad_openx.htm”); ?>