Tag: vaccines

Majority of mumps cases are among the vaccinated, CDC finds

Mumps cases continue to circulate in the U.S., largely among vaccinated people, including children.

Cases of mumps, once a common childhood illness, declined by more than 99 percent in the U.S. after a vaccine against the highly contagious respiratory infection was developed in 1967. Cases dropped to just 231 in 2003, down from more than 152,000 in 1968. But cases began climbing again in 2006, when 6,584 were reported, most of them in vaccinated people. 

According to the report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one-third of mumps cases in the U.S. from 2007 to 2019 were reported in children and adolescents. As many as 94 percent of those who contracted the illness had been vaccinated.

“Before that, large outbreaks of mumps among people who were fully vaccinated were not common, including among vaccinated children,” said Mariel Marlow, an epidemiologist at the CDC who led the new study. “But the disease symptoms are usually milder and complications are less frequent in vaccinated people.”

Experts aren’t sure why vaccinated people get mumps, but multiple factors appear to be affecting immunity in vaccinated people, including a lack of prior exposure to the virus, waning immunity and the circulation of genotypes the vaccine doesn’t contain. 

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In the wake of Austria’s drastic lockdown of unvaccinated people, EU chief calls for throwing out Nuremberg Code

Ursula Van Der Leyen, the head of the EU commission, told the press on Wednesday that she is in favour of scrapping the long-standing Nuremburg Code and forcing people to get vaccinated against COVID.

“Hey, it’s just the Nuremberg code. Only what we learned from the Nazi atrocities, not least those that were medical,” sarcastically notes esteemed professor, lecturer and podcaster Dr. Jordan Peterson.

In Austria, people over 12 who are not vaccinated are currently almost completely locked down, only allowed outside for absolutely essential tasks like food or medical appointments.

In an interview she gave to the BBC, the EU chief  said that it was “understandable and appropriate” to consider vaccine mandates, especially due to the new Omicron variant of COVID 19, which has been now detected in 12 different member nations of the EU.

“How we can encourage and potentially think about mandatory vaccination within the European Union? This needs discussion. This needs a common approach, but it is a discussion that I think has to be led,” commented Van Der Leyen to the BBC.

The WHO, however, has strongly encouraged countries not to enact travel bans because of Omicron, and further iterated that early data points to the fact that most Omicron cases are not severe. Most of the world’s governments are not paying attention to the WHO’s guidelines on this occasion, however.

The Nuremberg Code was enacted in 1947, immediately after the Second World War to prevent many of the egregious human rights abuses enacted by the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese during the war.

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Unvaccinated Nevada state workers to pay insurance surcharge

Nevada will be the first state to charge state workers enrolled in public employee health insurance plans a surcharge if they aren’t vaccinated.

The state Public Employees’ Benefit Program Board voted on Thursday to charge unvaccinated workers up to $55 per month to offset the costs of testing those who haven’t gotten shots are required to undergo in certain workplaces.

“This is pandemic has been shouldered on the burden of everyone. And now this particular burden — the testing — should be shouldered on the burden of those who refuse to (be vaccinated),” said DuAne Young, Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak’s policy director.

Surcharges for state workers and adult dependents on their plans will go into effect in July 2022.

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One in 44 U.S. children diagnosed with autism, new data suggests

New autism numbers released Thursday suggest more U.S. children are being diagnosed with the developmental condition and at younger ages.

In an analysis of 2018 data from nearly a dozen states, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that among 8-year-olds, 1 in 44 had been diagnosed with autism. That rate compares with 1 in 54 identified with autism in 2016.

U.S. autism numbers have been on the rise for several years, but experts believe that reflects more awareness and wider availability of services to treat the condition rather than a true increase in the number of affected children.

A separate CDC report released Thursday said that children were 50 percent more likely to be diagnosed with autism by age 4 in 2018 than in 2014.

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Twitter labels American Heart Association link as ‘unsafe’ over Covid vaccines

Twitter is flagging an American Heart Association website link as ‘unsafe’ after the organization published an abstract of research linking Covid-19 vaccines to heart disease.

The abstract of the study looking into a possible correlation between mRNA Covid shots and heart inflammation was published in one of the Association’s journals, Circulation, on November 16. The research points to a 14-point rise in the risk of acute coronary syndrome within five years in those who have been injected with this type of vaccine, concluding that the “mRNA vacs dramatically increase inflammation on the endothelium and T cell infiltration of cardiac muscle and may account for the observations of increased thrombosis, cardiomyopathy, and other vascular events following vaccination.”

It is worth noting, however, that while the American Heart Association did publish the abstract, it later attached an “expression of concern” to the study over “potential errors” in it. Among other things, it cites the author’s reliance on anecdotal data and a lack of statistical analyses. The Association warned the “abstract in its current version may not be reliable.” On top of that, the study has yet to be peer-reviewed.

Twitter’s ‘unsafe’ label was up until recently reserved for webpages thought to contain viruses and malware; its use has, however, now been extended to also cover cases where ‘misleading content’ is suspected.

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HR 550: House Passes Bill To Fund Federal Vaccination Database

Eighty House Republicans voted with Democrats on Tuesday to pass the Immunization Infrastructure Modernization Act, which if passed by the Senate and signed into law would fund a federal vaccination database.

According to the bill, also called  H. R. 550, the government would provide $400 million in taxpayer dollars to fund “immunization system data modernization and expansion,” a system otherwise defined as “a confidential, population-based, computerized database that records immunization doses administered by any health care provider to persons within the geographic area covered by that database.”

The text specifically outlines an expansion of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Public Health Department capabilities and the ability for state and local health departments, as well as public and private health care providers, to share health data with the federal government.

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Court Orders FDA To Comply With FOIA and Release Information On Pfizer Vaccine – First Batch of Documents Shows Over 1,200 Vaccine Deaths WITHIN FIRST 90 DAYS

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released the first batch of documents related to Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine after a federal judge ordered that they must comply with a massive Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that was filed by a government accountability group called Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency.

The esteemed group of more than 30 professors and scientists asked the federal government to share any and all data that factored into the agency’s hasty decision to grant Pfizer’s experimental mRNA vaccine an emergency use authorization (EUA) – which amounts to a trove of over 329,000 documents.

In a shameless effort to bury the information, the FDA challenged the FOIA request in court. After the agency was told that it must turn over the documents, Justice Department lawyers representing the FDA asked a federal judge to allow them an unthinkable 55 years to process the request, saying that they would be able to release just 500 pages a month.

In other words, Elon will make it to Mars way before the documents would be fully released – in the year 2076.

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In-N-Out Burger in LA apparently remaining defiant as restaurants aren’t checking customers’ proof of vaccination — a violation of citywide mandate

In-N-Out Burger restaurants in Los Angeles apparently are remaining defiant and not checking proof of COVID-19 vaccinations for customers who dine inside the iconic burger joints — a violation of the city’s mandate, which KCBS-TV reported is the strictest in America.

What are the details?

A reporter from the station, Tom Wait, visited five In-N-Outs across the city Tuesday night and found it was “business as usual,” with restaurant workers not once asking for vaccination proof from Wait, KCBS said.

At least one customer told the station he agrees with In-N-Out: “You have the right to eat here or not. It’s their business, not ours …”

KCBS said In-N-Out didn’t immediately respond to its request for comment.

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