Samples from early Wuhan COVID patients were genetically modified Henipa, one of two types of virus sent from a Canadian lab
Written by Steven Hansen
The U.S. new cases 7-day rolling average are 8.3 % HIGHER than the 7-day rolling average one week ago and U.S. deaths due to coronavirus are now 60.3 % HIGHER than the rolling average one week ago. Today’s posts include:
- U.S. Coronavirus New Cases are 150,004
- U.S. Coronavirus deaths are at 1,406
- Pfizer CEO says a vaccine-resistant coronavirus variant is likely to emerge
- New CDC studies point to waning immunity from vaccines
- While a natural infection may induce maturation of antibodies with broader activity than a vaccine does, a natural infection can also kill you
- ADE Is Still Not a Problem With COVID Vaccines
- Israel’s Grim COVID Data Suggests Vaccines Alone Won’t Stop Pandemic
- Vaccines are less protective against Delta infection but still reduce risk by two-thirds, CDC study shows
- Are We Jumping the Gun on COVID Boosters?
- J&J Says A Booster Shot For Its Vaccine May Have Big Benefits
- COVID-19 hospitalizations 29 times more likely in unvaccinated individuals, CDC study suggests
- Biden receives ‘inconclusive’ intelligence report on COVID-19 origins
- Will pandemic disruptions jump-start productivity growth?
- Now that Pfizer’s vaccine has full-FDA approval, will more companies announce mandates?
- COVID-19 Vaccines 66% Effective Against Delta Variant
- Pediatric Covid hospitalizations surge to highest on record in U.S. as doctors brace for more
- New Zealand: Delta strain like ‘a whole new virus’ as cases rise
- Plus Many More Headlines …
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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
ADE Is Still Not a Problem With COVID Vaccines – MedPage
Conspiracy theories about antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) with COVID-19 vaccines are swirling yet again, apparently due to a letter to the editor and a controversial talk by a physician at a school board meeting.
That’s despite the fact that there’s absolutely no evidence of the condition occurring as hundreds of millions of people around the world have been vaccinated.
“If COVID-19 vaccines caused ADE, people who are vaccinated against COVID-19 would have more severe disease,” Nada Fadul, MD, an infectious diseases physician with Nebraska Medicine, said in a statement. “This is not happening. On the contrary, people who are vaccinated typically have very mild disease or none at all. In fact, the majority of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. are people who aren’t fully vaccinated.”
Dan Stock, MD, a physician in Indiana, claimed during a school board meeting 2 weeks ago that the summer surge of infections was due to ADE resulting from vaccination (essentially, the idea with ADE is that certain antibodies actually make it easier for viruses to get inside cells). Around the same time, a letter to the editor was published in the Journal of Infection that proposed the Delta variant was posing new challenges with ADE.
Derek Lowe, a biotech blogger for Science Translational Medicine, noted that the letter by Nouara Yahi, PhD, of Aix-Marseille University in France, and colleagues, is purely theoretical, with no experimental evidence to support their molecular modeling.
Yahi and colleagues theorized a new potential mechanism for binding enhancement with the Delta variant, but the idea wasn’t even tested in vitro, Lowe warned, noting that their work does attempt to build on a reputable paper by Dapeng Li, PhD, of the Duke Human Vaccine Institute, and colleagues published as a preprint in February, and published online in Cell in June.
The Li paper demonstrated some in vitro evidence of ADE with both neutralizing and non-neutralizing antibodies against the receptor-binding domain and the N-terminal domain of the original strain of the virus, Lowe said. However, Li and colleagues did not see any evidence of ADE in animal models with these antibodies.
“Indeed, antibodies that showed ADE in the cell culture models still protected primates from viral replication when they were challenged by the actual virus,” Lowe wrote.
He said the Yahi paper “is not aligned with reality,” and that any such theory would “have to be confirmed by experimental data before [it] can be taken seriously.”
“There are a great number of things that look plausible in such simulations that do not translate to reality,” Lowe said.
He cautioned that an earlier paper from the same authors — also computational, with no experimental data — offered an explanation of how the debunked treatments azithromycin and hydroxychloroquine work together in synthesis against COVID-19.
Pfizer CEO says a vaccine-resistant coronavirus variant is ‘likely’ to emerge – Business Insider
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla told Fox News on Tuesday that he believed it was “likely” a vaccine-resistant coronavirus variant would eventually emerge.
“Every time that a variant appears in the world, our scientists are getting their hands around it,” Bourla said. “And they are researching to see if this variant can escape the protection of our vaccine.
“We haven’t identified any yet, but we believe that it is likely that one day, one of them will emerge.”
Bourla added that Pfizer could produce new versions of its vaccine to combat a variant within three months of its discovery.
“We have built a process that within 95 days from the day that we identify a variant as a variant of concern, we will be able to have a vaccine tailor-made against this variant,” Bourla said.
This is not the first time this concern of vaccine evasion has been brought up, but experts’ opinions are split.
“These vaccines operate really well in protecting us from severe disease and death, but the big concern is that the next variant that might emerge — just a few mutations, potentially, away — could potentially evade our vaccines,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said in a July 27 press briefing.
The UK government’s advisory panel, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, said higher rates of virus circulation and transmission were creating “more opportunities for new variants to emerge.”
The CDC estimated 93% of US states were at a “high level of community transmission” as of Monday. New daily cases have more than quadrupled in the past month.
But Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, told the Telegraph that the possibility of a vaccine-resistant strain was unlikely.
“It would require so many mutations in the spike protein that this virus wouldn’t ‘work’ anymore,” Rasmussen said.
Differences in COVID antibody responses emerge – Medical Xpress
Hope for a future without fear of COVID-19 comes down to circulating antibodies and memory B cells. Unlike circulating antibodies, which peak soon after vaccination or infection only to fade a few months later, memory B cells can stick around to prevent severe disease for decades. And they evolve over time, learning to produce successively more potent “memory antibodies” that are better at neutralizing the virus and more capable of adapting to variants.
Vaccination produces greater amounts of circulating antibodies than natural infection. But a new study suggests that not all memory B cells are created equal. While vaccination gives rise to memory B cells that evolve over a few weeks, natural infection births memory B cells that continue to evolve over several months, producing highly potent antibodies adept at eliminating even viral variants.
The findings highlight an advantage bestowed by natural infection rather than vaccination, but the authors caution that the benefits of stronger memory B cells do not outweigh the risk of disability and death from COVID-19.
“While a natural infection may induce maturation of antibodies with broader activity than a vaccine does, a natural infection can also kill you,” says Michel C. Nussenzweig, the Zanvil A. Cohn and Ralph M. Steinman professor and head of Rockefeller’s Laboratory of Molecular Immunology. “A vaccine won’t do that, and in fact, protects against the risk of serious illness or death from infection.”
New Zealand: Delta strain like ‘a whole new virus’ as cases rise – Al Jazeera
New Zealand has recorded 41 new COVID-19 cases, taking the total number of infections in the country to 148, the Director-General of Health Chief Ashley Bloomfield said as she declared that containing the spread of the Delta variant is “like dealing with a whole new virus”.
Of the new cases, 38 are in Auckland and three in the capital Wellington, Bloomfield said at a news conference on Tuesday.
The youngest case is reportedly an infant.
The majority of confirmed cases in the outbreak are of Samoan ethnicity linked to the Samoan Assembly Of God Church.
According to reports, there are 58 confirmed cases linked to the church. This included both people at the service and household close contacts.
Bloomfield was quoted by the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper as saying that he had spoken with Australia’s Department of Health Secretary Professor Dr Brendan Murphy on Monday about the nature of the Delta variant.
He agreed with Murphy that “combating Delta in the community is like dealing with a whole new virus”.
“That is our experience in New Zealand, too. Delta is unlike our previous experience, it is, as we know, highly infectious and transmissible, and as we have seen, spreads rapidly.”
According to reports, genome sequencing conducted on the first case reported in Auckland was linked to a traveller, who had returned from Sydney, Australia.
On Monday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern had ordered the extension of the country’s lockdown until Friday, when it will be revisited based depending on the emergence of new cases.
Vaccine effectiveness against Covid-19 infection dropped from 91% to 66% once the Delta variant accounted for the majority of circulating virus, according to a study published Tuesday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“While we did see a reduction in the protection of the Covid-19 vaccine against the Delta variant, it’s still two-thirds reduction of risk,” lead author Ashley Fowlkes, an epidemiologist for CDC Covid-19 Emergency Response, told CNN on Tuesday.
The study is in line with others from the US and around the world showing Delta’s increased tendency to cause largely minor infections among fully vaccinated people. Still, the effectiveness of vaccines against severe disease — including hospitalization and death — has remained high against all known variants.
The current study does not cover disease severity, however. Instead, the new paper is the latest chapter in an ongoing study that has been following “health care personnel, first responders, and other essential and frontline workers” who receive weekly PCR tests in eight locations across six US states. The vast majority are vaccinated.
The study’s reliance on regular, weekly testing makes it possible to capture a more complete picture of Covid-19 infections in a group, since people with mild or no symptoms may be less likely to get tested overall. In the official vaccine trials, efficacy was calculated against symptomatic Covid-19 — not all infections.
Still, the authors warn there is some uncertainty in these estimates, in part because they found relatively few infections in the first place. During the months when Delta was predominant, researchers found 19 infections among 488 unvaccinated people, and 24 infections among 2,352 fully vaccinated people.
New CDC studies point to waning immunity from vaccines. – Politico
Two new studies from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show fully vaccinated Americans’ immunity to Covid-19 is waning as the more-transmissible Delta variant continues to spread across the country.
One study, which focused on frontline health care workers, found that vaccine effectiveness declined by nearly thirty percentage points since the Delta variant became the dominant strain in the U.S. The analysis also concluded that the Covid-19 vaccines were 80 percent effective in preventing infection among the frontline health care workers.
The CDC cautioned in its report that the vaccine effectiveness “might also be declining as time since vaccination increases and because of poor precision in estimates due to limited number of weeks of observation.”
The second study examined 43,000 Los Angeles residents age 16 and older. It found that 25 percent of new infections from May to July were in fully vaccinated individuals, while 71 percent occurred in unvaccinated people. The study also showed that the hospitalization rate was significantly lower for fully vaccinated people than for unvaccinated people.
The publication of the studies comes a week after the agency released its first three reports on vaccine efficacy, the Delta variant and breakthrough infections. One of those analyses showed that vaccine effectiveness among adults in New York declined from 91.7 percent in early May to 79.8 percent by late July.
Both recent sets of CDC studies show that breakthrough infections in vaccinated people are still rare. But they also add to growing evidence that protection from Covid-19 shots lessens over time, which agency officials say supports their recommendation that Americans receive booster shots eight months after their initial vaccination.
[editor’s note: also read A Quarter of All Los Angeles County COVID Patients Were Fully Vaccinated and Covid protection for the fully vaccinated is waning, UK study finds]
Are We Jumping the Gun on COVID Boosters? – MedPage
Over the last week, the topic of COVID-19 booster shots — a third dose of mRNA vaccine for healthy Americans — has been thrust into the spotlight. The surgeon general, CDC director, Anthony Fauci, MD, and President Biden have announced that they wish for boosters to be available by late September for healthy adults who are 8 months out from their original two-dose series. While this will be contingent on an FDA evaluation to determine the “safety and effectiveness of the third dose,” a clear path forward has already been set. And just like everything else throughout the course of the pandemic, the choice has been made with a dearth of data and an abundance of political pressure.
Diminishing vaccine effectiveness supposedly makes the case for boosters. But there are two big questions here: First, what is current vaccine effectiveness? And second, what justifies boosters? Let’s consider these in turn.
What Is Vaccine Effectiveness Now?
We have to be honest, many vaccine effectiveness studies are poorly done. All studies compare the rate of getting a breakthrough infection among vaccinated people against the rate of infection in unvaccinated people. But there are some issues with this approach. First, as time goes on, more unvaccinated people have had and recovered from COVID-19 (and these individuals may be less likely to go on to get a shot). This means that their risk of getting COVID-19 a second time is far less than the typical unvaccinated person who has never been sick. Even if vaccines “work” as well as before, this factor alone will result in the appearance of diminishing vaccine effectiveness.
Second, the order of vaccination in all nations is non-random. The folks who got vaccinated first are often the oldest and most vulnerable people with frailty and senescent immune systems. Vaccine effectiveness after 6 months, 8 months, and 12 months increasingly compares older, frailer people who got vaccinated first against unvaccinated people. These older people may always have a slightly higher risk of breakthrough infections. This bias will also give the false appearance of diminishing vaccine effectiveness.
A third consideration: We’re looking at vaccine effectiveness, but for what? People don’t want to get severely ill from SARS-CoV-2 and don’t want to die, but it might be too much to ask that vaccines prevent the nucleotide sequence of SARS-CoV-2 from ever being in your nose. In other words, vaccine effectiveness against severe disease may be much higher than vaccine effectiveness against asymptomatic or mild infection. This matters a great deal — if the vaccines continue to be highly effective against risk of severe illness and death, is it really worth boosting people in the U.S. right now?
And putting this all together, the best estimates of vaccine effectiveness do, in fact, still show high protection against severe disease and death.
[editor’s note: this post deserves a full read]
J&J Says A Booster Shot For Its Vaccine May Have Big Benefits – NPR
Johnson & Johnson says it has evidence that people who received its one-shot COVID-19 vaccine could benefit from a booster shot after six months.
The pharmaceutical giant said in a news release Wednesday that when it gave participants in a study a second jab of its coronavirus vaccine after six months, their antibody levels were nine times higher than 28 days after their first dose.
The data suggests that an additional shot might serve as a booster if the vaccine’s effectiveness begins to wane.
“We have established that a single shot of our COVID-19 vaccine generates strong and robust immune responses that are durable and persistent through eight months,” said Mathai Mammen, global head of Janssen Research & Development, Johnson & Johnson, in a statement.
“With these new data, we also see that a booster dose of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine further increases antibody responses among study participants who had previously received our vaccine,” he added.
The data have not yet been published in a scientific journal or reviewed by other researchers.
[editor’s note: also read Johnson & Johnson said a second booster dose of its single-dose vaccine generated a sharp increase in spike-binding antibodies.]
Biden receives ‘inconclusive’ intelligence report on COVID-19 origins – NY Post
A classified US intelligence report delivered to President Biden was inconclusive about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the widely pushed theory that the virus jumped from animals to humans — due to a lack of information from China, where the deadly bug emerged in Wuhan.
The intelligence community was unable to reach a solid conclusion on whether the virus had jumped to humans via bats or escaped a research facility in the central China city, two US officials familiar with the matter told the Washington Post.
In May, the president ordered intelligence agencies to produce a report “that could bring us closer to a definitive conclusion” on the origins of a pandemic that has killed more than 4 million people worldwide and wreaked havoc on national economies.
But after an exhaustive 90-day effort, intelligence officials fell short of a consensus, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the report is not yet public. They said parts of it could be declassified in the coming days.
When Biden ordered the probe, he said US intelligence agencies were divided over “two likely scenarios” — that the virus emanated from animals or a lab.
The commander-in-chief disclosed that two agencies leaned toward the theory that the bug emerged from human contact with an infected animal, while a third leaned toward the lab accident theory.
The Trump administration brought the lab-leak theory to the fore, after it was initially deemed “extremely unlikely” by the World Health Organization and panned widely in the mainstream media.
However, in a stunning reversal earlier this month, Dr. Peter Ben Embarek, who led a team of international scientists on a WHO mission to China in January, admitted he now considers the possibility a “probable hypothesis.”
Beijing has repeatedly denied the hypothesis — but refused to allow international investigators to conduct a more thorough probe.
Meanwhile, in June, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines warned that the agencies might not solve the mystery, according to the Washington Post.
“We’re hoping to find a smoking gun,” Haines told Yahoo News, but “it’s challenging to do that. It might happen, but it might not.”
Haines told the news outlet that the review involved dozens of analysts and intelligence officials in various agencies — and said she deployed “red cells,” or groups to make sure the intelligence would be studied from every angle.
Another official told the Washington Post that the intelligence community is “not necessarily best equipped to solve this problem,” which is essentially a science matter.
[editor’s note: also read China goes on offensive ahead of US intel report on coronavirus origins and China Warns U.S. of ‘Counterattack’ if COVID Origin Report Blames Nation]
An American scientist has found that samples from early Wuhan COVID-19 patients show the presence of a genetically modified Henipah virus.
Henipah was one of two types of virus sent to China by scientists of Chinese origin from a Canadian laboratory at the center of the controversy in collaboration with scientists and Chinese military researchers. It is not clear whether the virus detected in the Chinese samples is related to samples sent by the Canadian laboratory, which were shipped in late March 2019.
The discovery was confirmed to The Epoch Times by another qualified scientist.
The evidence first came from Seattle-based physician-scientist and former Stanford University School of Medicine faculty member Dr. Steven Quay, who looked at early COVID-19 samples uploaded by scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). Shortly after, China notified the World Health Organization about the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2.
Quay says that while other scientists around the world were more interested in examining the genome of SARS-CoV-2 in samples uploaded by WIV scientists, he wanted to see what else was in samples collected from patients.
So he collaborated with a few other scientists to analyze the sequences from the samples.
“We started fishing the inside for strange things,” Quay told The Epoch Times.
What they found, they say, is the result of the possibility of contamination from various experiments in the lab making its way into the sample, as well as evidence of the Henipah virus.
“We found out genetic manipulation of Nipah virus, which is more lethal than Ebola.” Nipah is a type of Henipah virus.
The Epoch Times asked Joe Wang, PhD, who formerly led a vaccine development program for SARS in Canada with one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies, to verify the finding. Wang is currently the president of NTD Television Canada, the sister company of The Epoch Times in Canada.
After examining the evidence, Wang said he was able to replicate Quay’s findings on the Henipah virus. He explains that there was potential for genetic manipulation of the virus for vaccine development purposes.
[editor’s note: the Epoch post is behind a paywall – this is why the Nation post was used]
It Finally Peaked: The Delta Of Delta Turns Negative – ZeroHedge
Ten days ago we said that, according to Morgan Stanley calculations, the Delta wave will peak in 1-2 weeks. Well, golf clap to Morgan Stanley’s Matthew Harrison who, with uncanny precision, was spot on and exactly at the midpoint of “1-2 weeks later” the ascent of Delta variant new cases in the US has now peaked, and it’s all downhill from here.
According to Bank of America’s Hans Mikkelsen, evidence – such as the University of Washington’s IHME model – suggests “the US is now past the peak level of daily COVID-19 infections caused primarily by the Delta variant.”
To be sure, there are a few caveats here: while daily new cases – a subset of new infections – also showed a small decline yesterday (to 147,294 from 147,550 the prior day on a 7-day average basis), BofA warns that this data is noisier due to varying levels testing activity and potentially Hurricane Henri.
But even the “much cleaner data” for number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 confirms that the peak is now in the rearview mirror: while the number rose “just” 7.8% the past week which, due to its lagged nature and very rapid pace of decline, Mikkelsen notes that this “is consistent with the US being past peak level infections.”
Moreover the recent one-percentage point decline in the COVID-19 test positive rate to 9.32% – another indicator that the US is now past peak level infections – highlights one driver of high daily case counts is merely more testing activity.
[editor’s note: I have believed this COVID wave would peak around the end of August. However, the new case count has not stopped rising yet but is coming close. Also read New case reports are leveling off globally despite the U.S. surge, the W.H.O. says.]
Will pandemic disruptions jump-start productivity growth? – The Conference Board
A recent pickup in total factor productivity growth could potentially reverse a decade-long trend. Total factor productivity (TFP), a measure of economic efficiency and innovation, is projected to grow by 0.3 percent globally and 2.4 percent in the United States in 2021, following contractions of 1.9 and 0.8 percent in 2020, respectively.
While the post-pandemic recovery in economic growth rates has been robust, to maintain or surpass the growth performance of the past decade, productivity growth must be higher than it has been so far. Global demographic trends underlying a shrinking labor supply are returning and are compounded by disruptions resulting from the legacy of the pandemic. These trends limit the potential growth performance of economies around the world, including the United States. What would alter the productivity trends? On the one hand, increased adoption of digital technologies could lead to a productivity revival and counteract demographic trends leading to slow economic growth. Slow labor supply growth and labor shortages could spur companies to focus more on innovation through accelerating automation and digital transformation. On the other hand, the global pandemic has disrupted human capital accumulation and exacerbated inequalities in labor markets across the world, leading to increased risks of ‘scarring’ effects on workers which dampens total factor productivity gains. Furthermore, a disorderly exit from government stimulus measures may lead to a surge in bankruptcies across the economy, hitting not just the least productive firms, but also, more productive ones.
The rapid technological developments since the global financial crisis of 2008-2009 did not fully translate into commensurate economic output. An already weak productivity growth environment was followed by a sudden loss in output and productivity amid the pandemic induced recession. While it’s still too early to tell, early data suggest pandemic related disruptions could set the stage for a productivity revival for the US economy and indeed for the global economy.
Now that Pfizer’s vaccine has full-FDA approval, will more companies announce mandates? – Challenger, Gray & Christmas
“Certainly, full approval gives companies and institutions cover to enact mandates for their workers, and it will likely spur many vaccine-hesitant Americans to get the shots. However, an ongoing labor shortage and vocal political contingent against vaccinations may give companies pause to announce full-on mandates,” said Andrew Challenger, Senior Vice President of global outplacement and business and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which has followed company plans since the start of the pandemic.
“More likely, the approval will give companies more fodder to convince their workers to get vaccinated,” he added.
In a survey conducted in July among 191 companies of various sizes and industries nationwide, 2.65% of companies said they would mandate the vaccine, down from 3% in March.
“The business case for vaccination is to avoid outbreaks, especially those that cause work stoppages. Companies may decide mandates will deter sorely-needed applicants, which could also lead to work delays,” he said.
“On the other hand, companies might use the full-approval and subsequent mandate as recruitment tools or to encourage existing talent to return to in-person work, another pressing issue facing leaders,” he added.
[editor’s note: this came as a media advisory so there is no link]
COVID-19 hospitalizations 29 times more likely in unvaccinated individuals, CDC study suggests – News-Medical
As the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), continues to spread globally, countries to race to vaccinate as much of their populations as possible.
Getting inoculated against SARS-CoV-2 protects against getting severe COVID-19 or being hospitalized. In a new study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), scientists noted that unvaccinated individuals are 29 times more likely to be hospitalized due to COVID-19 than those who were vaccinated.
The study, which appeared in CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), highlights the importance of getting vaccinated against COVID-19. Efforts to enhance COVID-19 vaccination coverage, in combination with other infection control measures, are crucial to prevent COVID-19-related hospitalizations and deaths.
CDC: COVID-19 Vaccines 66% Effective Against Delta Variant – WebMD
Vaccine effectiveness against COVID-19 infection dropped from about 91% to 66% once the Delta variant became the dominant strain in the U.S., according to a new study published Tuesday by the CDC.
The decline points to the highly contagious nature of the Delta variant and underscores the importance of vaccination to prevent severe disease, hospitalization and death, the study authors wrote.
“While we did see a reduction in the protection of the COVID-19 vaccine against the Delta variant, it’s still two-thirds reduction of risk,” Ashley Fowlkes, the lead author and an epidemiologist for the CDC’s COVID-19 Emergency Response, told CNN.
The latest update is part of an ongoing study that follows health care workers, first responders and essential workers who undergo weekly testing in eight locations across six states. The weekly testing helps researchers to better track the rates of people who develop mild or no symptoms and may be less likely to get tested overall, CNN reported.
Among the 4,217 participations, 3,483 — or 83% — were vaccinated. About 65% received the Pfizer vaccine, 33% received the Moderna doses and 2% received the Johnson & Johnson shot. Between December 2020 and April 2021, the vaccines were about 90% effective in preventing symptomatic and asymptomatic infections.
Between April and August, the Delta variant became more dominant and the efficacy began to drop, though there were still few infections. Researchers found 19 infections among 488 unvaccinated people, and about 95% were symptomatic. They also found 24 infections among 2,352 fully vaccinated people, and 75% were symptomatic. The study didn’t include details about the type or severity of symptoms.
“It’s still a very powerful vaccine,” Fowlkes told CNN. “But we are also looking towards continuing to use masks for a little bit longer.”
Israel’s Grim COVID Data Suggests Vaccines Alone Won’t Stop Pandemic – Newsweek
COVID case data from Israel suggests that vaccination alone is not enough to completely halt the pandemic, experts have told Newsweek.
Scientists around the world have closely watched Israel to see how vaccinations could affect the pandemic, since the country launched a rapid vaccination campaign in December 2020. This saw more than half of its population fully vaccinated as early as March this year.
Yet Israel currently has one of the worst rates of biweekly COVID cases per million people in the world as the country battles the delta variant, according to figures collected by OurWorldInData as of August 24.
Breakthrough cases are also a matter of concern. Earlier this month, Science magazine reported that 514 Israelis were hospitalized with COVID as of August 15, that 59 percent of these had been fully vaccinated, and that the vast majority of these fully vaccinated people were aged 60 or older.
Newsweek was unable to get confirmation from Israel’s health ministry regarding current data on how vaccinated people have fared in terms of deaths or the seriousness of their condition compared to unvaccinated people—but the severity of the cases in hospitalized patients brings the purported mildness of breakthrough cases to the fore.
Uri Shalit, a bioinformatician at the Israel Institute of Technology, told Science that “most of the hospitalized patients are actually vaccinated.”
The figures come as breakthrough cases, particularly in regards to the delta variant, are a topic of concern.
… Alexander Edwards, associate professor in biomedical technology at the University of Reading, U.K., echoed the point.
Vaccines are not 100 percent effective, and Edwards told Newsweek that they “are not a silver bullet” and “cannot be expected to eliminate public health problems caused by infections.”
“Instead,” he said, “they remain a vital tool—in fact a solid gold tool—but other tools are still essential.”
This is where non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) come into play—methods to control the virus without using medicine such as vaccines or antibody treatments—according to Dr. Edward Hutchinson, senior lecturer at the Center for Virus Research at the University of Glasgow, U.K.
Pediatric Covid hospitalizations surge to highest on record in U.S. as doctors brace for more – CNBC
Children are now being hospitalized in record numbers across the United States, and doctors are warning that it could get worse as schools begin to reopen and the swift-moving coronavirus delta variant drives cases higher.
New Covid hospital admissions for kids have reached their highest levels since the U.S. started tracking pediatric cases about a year ago, peaking at an average of 303 new admissions per day over the week ended Aug. 22, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data shows.
Since most students aren’t old enough to get the shots, doctors and epidemiologists say they fear the surge in Covid hospitalizations could get worse unless more kids get vaccinated and school districts mandate masks and other safety precautions in class.
“It is scary to see the number and severity of Covid-19 cases rising in children with the delta variant and so many kids still left unprotected,” said Dr. Nusheen Ameenuddin, a community pediatrician at the Mayo Clinic. “The pandemic never stopped, and unfortunately, it only takes one lit match to reignite the inferno.”
The following are foreign headlines with hyperlinks to the posts
India Approves Further Trials for First Homegrown mRNA COVID-19 Shot
Israel’s COVID-19 Vaccine Boosters Show Signs of Taming Delta
Biden said that he planned to stick to his Aug. 31 deadline for military withdrawal but was willing to adjust “should that become necessary.”
The Taliban said they would no longer allow Afghan citizens to reach the airport. (Today’s “The Daily” is about the ongoing evacuation.)
Two House members secretly flew to Kabul on an unauthorized oversight mission.
First US troops have started leaving Afghanistan as Biden decides not to extend withdrawal deadline.
We’re downgrading China’s growth and currency as challenges mount.
One-Third of Japanese COVID Patients Unable to Find Hospital Bed
McDonald’s runs out of milkshakes as supply chain woes grip the UK
The following additional national and state headlines with hyperlinks to the posts
More than half of Florida’s students now go to schools mandating masks in defiance of DeSantis
Ohio State University, Goldman Sachs and Disney Cruise Line announced vaccine mandates.
U.S. intelligence agencies delivered a classified report to Biden on the virus’s origins.
‘Alarming’ Number of Pregnant Women Admitted to Alabama ICUs
Forget The Fed & Jackson Hole: Treasury Is About To Unleash $500 Billion Quantitative Tightening.
Largest US Food Distributor Having Trouble Keeping Shelves Stocked; Price Shock Imminent
Defense Secretary Orders US Troops to Quickly Get Vaccinated Against COVID-19
COVID has hit this small Texas town so hard that the schools closed and then the town shut down.
The Ohio legislature is considering a bill that would bar employers in the state from instituting vaccine mandates for their employees. (Associated Press)
Ohio State University, meanwhile, just announced a vaccine mandate for students, faculty, and staff members.
Oregon governor Kate Brown (D) has instituted an outdoor mask mandate in most public outdoor settings.
In New York state, Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) said she would institute a mask mandate for students and require staff to be vaccinated or tested weekly.
Compared to other wealthy countries, the U.S. has many more unvaccinated seniors in certain areas, making the surge from the Delta variant worse than it otherwise would be.
U.S. Economic Recovery Lost Momentum in August Dragged by Services Slowdown
Unvaccinated Delta Employees Face $200 Monthly Surcharge
Georgia School District Has Over 3 Percent of Students in Quarantine
NY Adds 12K COVID Deaths to Total as State Uses CDC Data Eschewed by Cuomo
Delta Air Lines to Fine Employees $200 a Month if They Don’t Get Vaccinated
Chicago will require city workers to be vaccinated, the mayor says.
Today’s Posts On Econintersect Showing Impact Of The Pandemic and Recovery With Hyperlinks
July 2021 Trucking Data Again Slows
July 2021 Coincident Indices Generally Show Strong Growth Continues
Headline Durable Goods New Orders Marginally Slowed In July 2021
Pacific Island Airlines: Flying On Empty?
Asset Values Surged During The K-Shaped Recovery, Driving Wealth Gains Higher
Fiscal Austerity Intensifies The Increase In Inequality After Pandemics
What Does Full FDA Approval Of A Vaccine Do If Its Already Authorized For Emergency Use?
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.
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