Tag: vaccines

246 vaccinated residents diagnosed with COVID; 3 dead, Michigan reports

As many as 246 Michigan residents considered fully vaccinated against COVID-19 were later diagnosed with the virus, and three have died, state officials confirmed Monday.

The cases were reported between Jan. 1 and March 31, and the 246 had a positive test 14 or more days after the last dose in the vaccine series, said Lynn Sutfin, a spokeswoman for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, in an email.

“Some of these individuals may ultimately be excluded from this list due to continuing to test positive from a recent infection prior to being fully vaccinated,” she said.

“These cases are undergoing further review to determine if they meet other CDC criteria for determination of potential breakthrough, including the absence of a positive antigen or PCR test less than 45 days prior to the post-vaccination positive test. In general, these persons have been more likely to be asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic compared with vaccinated persons.”

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Oxford halts trial of AstraZeneca COVID vaccine in children and teenagers over blood-clotting issue

The University of Oxford has paused administering doses of the COVID-19 vaccine it developed with AstraZeneca PLC AZN, -0.63%AZN, +0.15% in a small U.K. study aimed at evaluating its safety and effectiveness in children and teenagers, to wait for further information on rare blood-clotting issues that have been found in a small group of adults that received it, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. The trial was started in mid-February and involves more than 200 young people aged 6 to 17 years old, the paper said. It cited an Oxford spokesman as saying that the trial had not found any safety issues, but that broader concerns and a review of the vaccine by regulators in the U.K. and European Unions were behind the move. The European Medicines Agency said earlier it expects to update the public on its investigation of the blood-clotting issue later this week.

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Clear link between AstraZeneca vaccine and rare blood clots in brain, EMA official tells paper

There is a link between AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine and very rare blood clots in the brain but the possible causes are still unknown, a senior official for the European Medicines Agency (EMA) said in an interview published on Tuesday.

However, the EMA later said in a statement that its review of the vaccine was ongoing and it expected to announce its findings on Wednesday or Thursday. An AstraZeneca spokesman declined to comment on the matter.

“In my opinion, we can now say it, it is clear that there is an association (of the brain blood clots) with the vaccine. However, we still do not know what causes this reaction,” Marco Cavaleri, chair of the vaccine evaulation team at the EMA, told Italian daily Il Messagero.

Cavaleri provided no evidence to support his comment.

The EMA has repeatedly said the benefits of the AstraZeneca shot outweigh the risks as it investigates 44 reports of an extremely rare brain clotting ailment known as cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) out of 9.2 million people in the European Economic Area who have received the vaccine.

The World Health Organization has also backed the vaccine.

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Facebook ‘corrects’ woman’s complaint vaccine ‘is killing me,’ then she dies

Facebook, which routinely adds its editorial comments to posts with which it disagrees, recently “fact-checked” a woman’s complaint about her reaction to a coronavirus vaccine.

Desiree Penrod, 25, said on Facebook after getting vaccinated in early March: “The vaccine is killing me today. My arm hurts, beyond exhausted, headache, stomach cramps and earaches.”

Penrod also posted: “Multiple people told me that I looked pale today. Yesterday, I was fine but today it’s taking its toll on me.”

Facebook, citing the World Health Organization, added a disclaimer to a post by Penrose, “COVID-19 vaccines go through many tests for safety and effectiveness before they’re approved.”

A week later, Penrod died. Her obituary said she “passed away unexpectedly.”

Facebook’s editorial comment citing the WHO provided a link to the international organization, whose investigation into the origin of COVID-19 has been criticized because of China’s control of it.

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Why The Push Is On To Make Pandemic Life “Permanent”

One year after Americans were ordered to close down society for “two weeks to flatten the curve,” Bloomberg columnist Andreas Kluth warned, “We Must Start Planning for a Permanent Pandemic.”

Because new variants of SARS-COV-2 are impervious to existing vaccines, says Kluth, and pharmaceutical companies will never be able to develop new vaccines fast enough to keep up, we will never be able to get “back to normal.”

“Get back to normal” means recovering the relative liberty we had in our already overregulated, pre-Covid lives. This is just the latest in a long series of crises that always seem to lead our wise rulers to the same conclusion: we just cannot afford freedom anymore.

Covid-19 certainly wasn’t the beginning. Americans were told “the world changed” after 9/11. Basic pillars of the American system, like the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, were too antiquated to deal with the “new threat of terrorism.” Warrantless surveillance of our phone, e-mail, and financial records and physical searches of our persons without probable cause of a crime became the norm. A few principled civil libertarians dissented, but the public largely complied without protest.

“Keep us safe,” they told the government, no matter the cost in dollars or liberty.

Perhaps seeing how willingly the public rolled over for the political right during the “War on Terror,” authoritarians on the left turbocharged their own war on “climate change.” Previously interested in merely significantly raising taxes and heavily regulating industry, they now wish to ban all sorts of things, including air travel, gasoline-powered cars, and even eating meat.

Since Covid-19, however, even the freedom to assemble and see each other’s faces may be permanently banned to help the government “keep us safe.”

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CNN “Expert” – Government should give you freedom only if you get the COVID vaccine

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a significant update to travel guidance for people who are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 which eliminates some testing and quarantine recommendations.

Fully vaccinated people can travel at low risk to themselves, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Friday, but travel still isn’t recommended at this time because of rising numbers of coronavirus cases.

The agency said that as long as coronavirus precautions are taken, including mask wearing, fully vaccinated people can travel within the United States without getting tested for Covid-19 before or self-quarantining after.

For international travel, fully vaccinated people don’t need a Covid-19 test prior to travel — unless it is required by the destination — and do not need to self-quarantine after returning to the United States. They should still have a negative Covid-19 test before boarding a flight to the US, and a follow up test three to five days after their return, the CDC noted.

However, the agency isn’t rushing to ‘let’ us have too much freedom. It seems travel is still not recommended even for those vaccinated:

…Walensky maintained that “CDC is not recommending travel at this time due to the rising number of cases” in the U.S.

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Hawaii Unveils COVID Passports For Inter-Island Travel

Vaccination passports are being pitched as the new “golden ticket” in a dystopic post-COVID world if you want to travel – now that the recovery is on its way. 

Countries in Europe are already requiring travelers to use vaccine passports – usually taking the form of certificates or digital cards of past COVID tests and vaccination history – an idea catching on in tourist nations like Thailand and the Caribbean. But also, much closer to home, Hawaii state officials are considering steps to implement vaccine passports for inter-island travel and likely one day require, to some degree, out of state travelers to have a health passport to revive the local economy that has sustained severe economic damage in its tourism and travel industry. 

Local news KHON2 said state officials could soon roll out a health passport app that details vaccination history. Lt. Gov. Josh Green confirmed an app is in development called “First Vitals.” Officials have discouraged inter-island travel as the U.S.’s only archipelago state composed of eight islands in the North Pacific Ocean was forced to deal with a massive influx of travelers from outside the state during the pandemic. Many folks who flocked to Hawaii were escaping the pandemic or took advantage of cheap flights. 

Like existing COVID passes issued by other countries, Hawaii’s vaccine passport will provide officials with a QR code to authenticate the users’ vaccination history. 

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