Tag: pandemic

Getting flu and COVID shot together still reasonable amid safety review of potential stroke risk: Experts

Older adults who received last year’s COVID booster and a high-dose version of the flu vaccine in the same visit may have a potential increased risk of stroke, according to a new FDA-funded study.

Experts urged that the results were preliminary and may be explained by other factors such as the fact that older adults are already at a higher risk for stroke due to their age.

“There is no need for panic, and emphatically no need to stop giving COVID and flu shots at the same time to older adults,” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of California, San Francisco, while he reiterated that more research is needed.

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How Pfizer Hid Nearly 80% of COVID Vaccine Trial Deaths From Regulators

Pfizer-BioNTech delayed reporting vaccine-associated deaths among BNT162b2 clinical trial participants until after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the product.

The vaccine makers also failed to account for a large number of subjects who dropped out of the trial.

Together, these strategies kept regulators and the public ignorant of a 3.7-fold increase in cardiac deaths among subjects who received the vaccine, according to analysis in the International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research.

The authors of the paper described it as a “forensic analysis,” defined by the U.S. National Institute for Standards and Technology as “the use of scientific methods or expertise to investigate crimes or examine evidence that might be presented in a court of law.”

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FDA finds potential ‘safety signal’ of seizures in 2-5 yr olds after getting Covid-19 shots

A new preprint study led by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has detected a potential “safety signal” for seizures and convulsions in young children after receiving the monovalent Pfizer or Moderna mRNA Covid-19 vaccines.

Researchers observed the condition in children ages 2-4 for the Pfizer vaccine, and ages 2-5 for the Moderna vaccine.

The total number of cases was 72, with over 50% meeting the definition for febrile seizures.

The median time between vaccination and seizures or convulsions was two days, with 32% occurring the day of or the day after vaccination. All seizures and convulsions took place within seven days of vaccination.

The signal emerged through near real-time surveillance of more than 4 million vaccinated children.

The researchers of the preprint study cautioned that the results “should be interpreted carefully given study limitations.”

The study also identified a myocarditis/pericarditis safety signal in mostly male children 12-17 years old.

However, since each of these conditions were a “known adverse outcome,” according to the researchers, they did not conduct any further follow-up.

Data for the study were collected through health claims records from CVS Health, Optum and Carelon Research, which participate in the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, and supplemented with data from state and local immunization information systems databases.

The study covered reports through January, February or March of this year — as little as 6 months after the approval of vaccinations for younger children.

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COVID-19 Vaccines ‘May Trigger’ Rheumatic Inflammatory Diseases: Study

A new review suggests that COVID vaccines “may trigger” rheumatic immune-mediated inflammatory diseases, including arthritis, vasculitis, lupus, and adult-onset Still’s disease.

On average, patients developed rheumatic diseases 11 days after vaccine administration, according to the study. Seventy-five (over 27 percent) of these patients experienced total disease remission, and about 50 percent improved following treatment. Eight were admitted to intensive care, and two died from their symptoms.

“The short time span between COVID-19 vaccine administration and the onset of R-IMIDs suggests the potential possibility of a cause-and-effect relationship,” the authors wrote.

Rheumatic immune-mediated inflammatory diseases (R-IMIDs) involve inflammation that manifests in the joints, tendons, muscles, and bones due to an unknown cause.

The study, led by researchers from the National Health Service in the United Kingdom, examined 271 participants from 190 case studies published worldwide.

Over 80 percent of the patients developed symptoms after their first or second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, and most were treated and improved with corticosteroids.

Almost 57 percent of the injured patients received the Pfizer vaccine, nearly a quarter received the AstraZeneca vaccine, and 12 percent of the rheumatic diseases manifested after the administration of the Moderna vaccine.

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The COVID Bailout of State and Local Governments Was Unnecessary

Two years after Congress authorized a hugely expensive bailout of state and local governments as part of a COVID-era emergency spending bill, most of the money still hadn’t been spent.

Perhaps the bailout wasn’t even needed in the first place?

In a new report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that states (including Washington, D.C.) had spent just 45 percent of the funding they had received through the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds program, a $350 billion line item within the $2 trillion American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), which passed in March 2021. Local governments had reported spending just 38 percent of their funds received through the same program.

Those figures are based on mandatory reports filed quarterly with the Treasury and reflect spending through the end of March 2023, two years after the bailout was approved by Congress.

“The new GAO study confirms that the ARPA spending was not needed,” Chris Edwards, chair of fiscal studies at the Cato Institute, tells Reason. “By the fall of 2020, it was clear that the states were in good fiscal shape and not facing Armageddon as many policymakers were claiming. They did not need federal handouts.”

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Hydroxychloroquine Reduces COVID-19 Mortality, Study Finds

People who took hydroxychloroquine in combination with another drug while hospitalized with COVID-19 were less likely to die than those who didn’t, according to a new study.

Hydroxychloroquine, which is widely used against malaria and arthritis, was given to hundreds of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in Belgium. Thousands of others didn’t receive the drug.

Researchers examined records from 352 adults hospitalized in AZ Groeninge Hospital in Kortrijk, Belgium. All patients tested positive for COVID-19 or had results from CT scans that suggested COVID-19 was present. Patients received hydroxychloroquine alone or with azithromycin, an antibiotic. They were scanned before and after treatment.

Researchers compared the results of the record analysis with a control group of 3,533 people hospitalized across Belgium with COVID-19 from March 14, 2020, to May 24, 2020. The people didn’t receive hydroxychloroquine but did receive standard of care.

Twenty-eight days following the diagnosis of COVID-19, 59 people treated with hydroxychloroquine had died. The mortality percentage, or 16.7 percent, was lower than the 25.9 percentage in the control group.

Researchers found patients who received hydroxychloroquine were more likely to survive even after adjusting for age and other factors.

“Our study suggests that, despite the controversy surrounding its use, treatment with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin remains a viable option,” Dr. Gert Meeus, a nephrologist with AZ Groeninge Hospital, and other researchers wrote.

The study was published by the journal New Microbes and New Infections. Limitations include the retrospective nature of the study and differences between the treatment and control groups, including the former being younger on average. Authors declared no conflicts of interest or funding.

The research adds to a mixed dataset on hydroxychloroquine against COVID-19.

Some other studies have found that hydroxychloroquine recipients were less likely to die, including a study that analyzed records from a health system in Michigan. Many of the positive findings concerned hydroxychloroquine in combination with azithromycin.

Others have found little or no evidence that hydroxychloroquine affects COVID-19, including a U.S.-government funded study across 34 hospitals.

Hydroxychloroquine is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration but the agency has warned since mid-2020 against using it for COVID-19. Belgian regulators rescinded authorization for hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 in June 2020.

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California Quietly Repeals Restrictions on Doctors’ COVID-19 Advice

California legislators last month quietly repealed a 2022 law that authorized disciplinary action against doctors, including loss of their medical licenses, when they share COVID-19 “misinformation” with their patients. The law, A.B. 2098, defined that ambiguous and highly contested category of speech as “false information that is contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus contrary to the standard of care.”

Not sure what that means? Neither were the California physicians who challenged the law on First Amendment grounds in two separate lawsuits. They argued that the state’s amorphous definition of prohibited medical advice was bound to have a chilling impact on constitutionally protected speech.

In McDonald v. Lawson, which the Liberty Justice Center (LJC) filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California on October 4, 2022, Judge Fred Slaughter declined to issue a preliminary injunction, concluding in a December 28 order that A.B. 2098 was probably constitutional. Four weeks later in Høeg v. Newsom, which the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California on November 2, Judge William B. Shubb reached the opposite conclusion.

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Will Rand Paul get an apology from Dr. Fauci after NIH’s latest admission?

In the summer of 2021 , Americans saw something unusual: Dr. Anthony Fauci on tilt.

“Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly. And I want to say that officially,” said the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director. “I totally resent the lie you are now propagating.”

Fauci’s comments were made during one of his testier exchanges with Rand Paul , the Kentucky senator whom he had sparred with in a series of congressional hearings on the National Institutes of Health’s funding of risky “gain-of-function” research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The truth would emerge slowly over the next two years.

In a pair of letters sent to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce in October 2021, NIH conceded that funding provided to the nonprofit organization EcoHealth Alliance had indeed resulted in an “unexpected result”: An enhanced coronavirus from bats that had been created through a partnership with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Francis Collins, then the director of NIH, which oversees NIAID, claimed the letters were sent “to set the record straight” on the controversial research. In reality, NIH sent the letters a month after the Intercept published documents revealing NIH had funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab.

The Fauci-Paul feud seems like history today. Fauci is no longer the director of NIAID and no longer on TV every day. Perhaps that’s why new evidence showing that Paul’s instincts were correct has garnered so little attention.

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Dozens of Death Certificates List COVID-19 Vaccination as Cause of Death

Dozens of people were killed by COVID-19 vaccines in the United States, death certificates show.

COVID-19 vaccination is listed on 26 death certificates across five states, an Epoch Times review found.

That includes a 78-year-old Minnesota man who died on Jan. 5, 2021. The man suffered sudden cardiac death just 10 hours after receiving a second COVID-19 vaccine dose.

Certifiers listed COVID-19 vaccination on part one of some certificates. According to guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), part one of a certificate is for causes that lead directly to death.

In other instances, the vaccination was listed in part two. That part is for “other significant conditions that contributed to the death,” according to instructions from the CDC for medical examiners and coroners.

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CDC Journal And Five Others Rejected Key Paper On COVID Vaccines, Heart Inflammation

Six medical journals rejected a key paper on COVID-19 vaccines and heart inflammation, a condition the vaccines cause, according to documents reviewed by The Epoch Times.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s journal, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), was one of them.

CDC officials falsely told the paper’s authors that the paper did not add anything to a previously published CDC report, which estimated more COVID-19 hospitalizations would be prevented than cases of heart inflammation, or myocarditis, caused.

“I ran this by the MMWR lead editorial staff members; they felt that while the report was interesting, they did not feel that there was anything that was not already relayed,” Dr. Jacqueline Gindler, one of the officials, said in an Aug. 10, 2021, email.

The CDC a month earlier in a non-peer-reviewed paper estimated that among males aged 12 to 17, one million second Pfizer doses would cause up to 69 myocarditis cases but prevent some 5,700 COVID-19 cases and 215 COVID-19 hospitalizations.

The new paper clarified the risk-benefit calculus by separating children without serious underlying conditions such as obesity from children with one or more of the problems. It broke down the age group into two parts, 12- to 15 and 16- to 17. And it subtracted incidental hospitalizations, or hospitalizations where people test positive for COVID-19 but are actually being treated for other conditions.

The researchers estimated, using similar methods as the CDC, that one million doses would cause more cardiac adverse events in healthy boys than COVID-19 hospitalizations prevented. Among boys aged 12 to 15 without comorbidities, they calculated up to 6.1 times more adverse events among the vaccinated.

Both the CDC and the new paper utilized reports to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), which the CDC co-manages.

Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg, one of the paper’s co-authors, said that the CDC’s position that the paper did not add anything “was laughable.”

“What we added was stratification for non high-risk vs high-risk children, which was new,” Dr. Hoeg told The Epoch Times in an email. “We also reported a higher rate in 12-17 year olds than CDC had been reporting in males after dose two. Finally we removed incidental COVID-19 hospitalizations, when estimating potential vaccine benefits, which CDC had not been doing up to that point.”

Benjamin Hayes, a CDC spokesman who answered a query sent to Dr. Gindler, told The Epoch Times in an email that MMWR had to be “highly selective” due to receiving many submissions during the pandemic.

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