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2021-07-19 at 10:37 PM UTC
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2021-07-20 at 1:48 PM UTCDonald Trump's latest dangerous vaccine pronouncement
Analysis by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large
The numbers are deeply worrisome.
Covid-19 cases -- fueled by the fast-spreading Delta variant -- have nearly tripled over the past three weeks. Every state in the country has seen an increase in cases.
It is, by any measure, a fraught moment in the 16-month fight against the virus. People need to get vaccinated or run the very real risk of getting the Delta variant.
At moments like these, leaders matter. What our elected officials say (and do) about vaccines matter -- they model behavior that, ideally, people follow.
Enter Donald Trump.
"Joe Biden kept talking about how good of a job he's doing on the distribution of the Vaccine that was developed by Operation Warp Speed or, quite simply, the Trump Administration," the 45th president said in a statement released via his Save America PAC on Sunday. "He's not doing well at all. He's way behind schedule, and people are refusing to take the Vaccine because they don't trust his Administration, they don't trust the Election results, and they certainly don't trust the Fake News, which is refusing to tell the Truth."
That statement is -- and I am not exaggerating at all here -- the opposite of what leadership looks like.
The whole statement is bad, but this line stands out for the damage it will do to the efforts to get more people vaccinated:
"People are refusing to take the Vaccine because they don't trust his Administration, they don't trust the Election results, and they certainly don't trust the Fake News, which is refusing to tell the Truth."
In that single line, the former president of the United States, who is, without any question the most influential person in the Republican Party today, affirms the totally misguided doubts people have about receiving the highly effective Covid-19 vaccine while painting the vaccine push in a partisan light with the comparison to the 2020 election.
In short: It's a remarkably dangerous thing for anyone to say -- much less a former president. That Trump said it in the midst of a surge in cases -- fueled almost exclusively by unvaccinated people living in areas that he won in 2020 -- makes it even worse.
Leadership is about saying and doing the best things for everyone -- not just you. And, at times, doing the best/right thing for everyone means that it will not be the best thing for you personally. It's about the "we," not the "me."
Trump has never, ever been willing or able to understand that. He is remarkably self-focused, concerned entirely and only with how events impact his life -- or, more accurately, how he can use facts (and bend them) to make him look like the smartest and savviest guy in the room, the hero of every story.
That includes Covid-19 -- and the effort to vaccinate enough people to achieve herd immunity (and thereby protect those who are not able to get vaccines for medical and other reasons).
Trump is SO obsessed with a) taking credit for the vaccine and b) disparaging the man who beat him in 2020 that he can't (or won't) see the damage he is doing by telling an already skeptical bloc of people -- many of whom voted for him in the last election -- that Biden and the media are not to be trusted.
It's an important reminder that the damage Trump has done to the country is not a finished product. His self-centeredness continues to create chaos and uncertainty in a situation -- the vaccine saves lives! -- where there should be very little. -
2021-07-20 at 1:58 PM UTCstill not getting the shot
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2021-07-20 at 7:26 PM UTC
Originally posted by stl1 Covid-19 cases – fueled by the fast-spreading Delta variant – have nearly tripled over the past three weeks. Every state in the country has seen an increase in cases.
Why doesn't Biden do something?
What an evil scumbag.
He's up to 198,000 dead now.
https://freebeacon.com/coronavirus/biden-covid-death-tracker/
Considering that it's summer and that he has the vaccine and various medications that have been found to be effective at his disposal, he's doing an even worse job than I did. -
2021-07-20 at 7:34 PM UTC
Originally posted by aldra have a look at israel's vaccination and infection rates - them specifically because they're probably the most densely vaccinated population on earth, save maybe the orthodox
how do they test people for covid ?
by pcr or antigen detection.
isnt the vaccine suppose to make people appear as if they have the virus and make their body full of virus parts ?
dont the vaccine cause false positives ? -
2021-07-20 at 8:16 PM UTC
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2021-07-20 at 9:12 PM UTCThe Demoncraps and their Communist handlers aren't done with the fake pandemic yet. Not by a long shot.
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2021-07-20 at 9:49 PM UTCThe Mary Sue
Sen. Rand Paul Again Destroyed by Dr. Fauci’s Testimony and It’s What He Deserves
Lyra Hale
You know it’s a good day when Dr. Anthony Fauci destroys Sen. Rand Paul on live television. The latter has been peddling this false narrative—no, the Senator has been straight-up lying as a means of getting the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to admit that they played a crucial role in the development of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, which they haven’t done at all.
Dr. Fauci, who is the White House chief medical advisor and the director of NIH, was testifying before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. And in discussing the origins of COVID-19, Paul showed all of us his hand and how he knows basically nothing about virology, by doubling down on a conspiracy theory that COVID-19 was a result of gain-of-function research.
According to The Hill, Paul said, “the NIH funded illegal gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology” that supposedly, in turn, created a dangerous and transmissible virus with the capability of infecting humans. This isn’t the first time that Paul has made this accusation, and it won’t be the last if we know anything about Paul and his insistence that there is some big conspiracy when it comes to COVID-19.
And on Tuesday, Paul took it a step too far, making Fauci snap in a way I’ve never seen him do before. Honestly, Fauci looked a bit angry, which isn’t a bad thing considering the circumstances. Give me a chance here to explain. According to News Medical, “Gain-of-function research refers to the serial passaging of microorganisms to increase their transmissibility, virulence, immunogenicity, and host tropism by applying selective pressure to a culture.”
So Paul is basically going around telling people that the CODID-19 virus originated in Wuhan, China as a result of the funding that the NIH had given a lab there and that the lives lost around the world are on Fauci’s shoulders. Who wouldn’t get mad at something like that and come at Paul just as hard as he was coming down on Fauci? I know I would, and don’t know anyone that could keep a poker face when confronted by such accusations.
Personally, I feel like Paul didn’t think that Fauci would defend himself, and if he did, he would show the world how unfit he is for leading the NIH. But instead, all I’ve seen is people stanning Fauci and his responses like when he said, “I’ve never lied before Congress & I don’t retract that statement…you don’t know what you’re doing.” That was followed up with, “I totally resent the lie that you are now propagating … you are implying that what we did was responsible for the deaths of individuals. I totally resent that, and if anybody is lying here, senator, it is you.”
It only gets better from there on out. Fauci made it abundantly clear that if there’s anyone that’s been lying here it’s Paul by leaps and bounds, and that, “This is a pattern that Sen. Paul has been doing now at multiple hearings, based on no reality.” You can’t survive that. Pack up your bags, Paul, and go and hide away in the forest because you were absolutely destroyed by Fauci.
And I’m not the only one who thinks that Sen. Rand Paul was absolutely demolished by Dr. Fauci.
To watch video: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/sen-rand-paul-again-destroyed-by-dr-fauci-s-testimony-and-it-s-what-he-deserves/ar-AAMnbEB?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531 -
2021-07-20 at 9:51 PM UTC
Originally posted by stl1 The Mary Sue
Sen. Rand Paul Again Destroyed by Dr. Fauci’s Testimony and It’s What He Deserves
Lyra Hale
You know it’s a good day when Dr. Anthony Fauci destroys Sen. Rand Paul on live television. The latter has been peddling this false narrative—no, the Senator has been straight-up lying as a means of getting the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to admit that they played a crucial role in the development of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, which they haven’t done at all.
Dr. Fauci, who is the White House chief medical advisor and the director of NIH, was testifying before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. And in discussing the origins of COVID-19, Paul showed all of us his hand and how he knows basically nothing about virology, by doubling down on a conspiracy theory that COVID-19 was a result of gain-of-function research.
According to The Hill, Paul said, “the NIH funded illegal gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology” that supposedly, in turn, created a dangerous and transmissible virus with the capability of infecting humans. This isn’t the first time that Paul has made this accusation, and it won’t be the last if we know anything about Paul and his insistence that there is some big conspiracy when it comes to COVID-19.
And on Tuesday, Paul took it a step too far, making Fauci snap in a way I’ve never seen him do before. Honestly, Fauci looked a bit angry, which isn’t a bad thing considering the circumstances. Give me a chance here to explain. According to News Medical, “Gain-of-function research refers to the serial passaging of microorganisms to increase their transmissibility, virulence, immunogenicity, and host tropism by applying selective pressure to a culture.”
So Paul is basically going around telling people that the CODID-19 virus originated in Wuhan, China as a result of the funding that the NIH had given a lab there and that the lives lost around the world are on Fauci’s shoulders. Who wouldn’t get mad at something like that and come at Paul just as hard as he was coming down on Fauci? I know I would, and don’t know anyone that could keep a poker face when confronted by such accusations.
Personally, I feel like Paul didn’t think that Fauci would defend himself, and if he did, he would show the world how unfit he is for leading the NIH. But instead, all I’ve seen is people stanning Fauci and his responses like when he said, “I’ve never lied before Congress & I don’t retract that statement…you don’t know what you’re doing.” That was followed up with, “I totally resent the lie that you are now propagating … you are implying that what we did was responsible for the deaths of individuals. I totally resent that, and if anybody is lying here, senator, it is you.”
It only gets better from there on out. Fauci made it abundantly clear that if there’s anyone that’s been lying here it’s Paul by leaps and bounds, and that, “This is a pattern that Sen. Paul has been doing now at multiple hearings, based on no reality.” You can’t survive that. Pack up your bags, Paul, and go and hide away in the forest because you were absolutely destroyed by Fauci.
And I’m not the only one who thinks that Sen. Rand Paul was absolutely demolished by Dr. Fauci.
Fauci - the director of the NIH, which authorised and paid for the gain of function research in Wuhan.
You people are absurd and you people are sick in the head to be praising some guy who is responsible for 4 million deaths. -
2021-07-20 at 10:06 PM UTCBill Gates, Fauci, Tedros Adhanom, The Johns Hopkins Society, The World Economic Forum (Klaus Schwab)... they all work directly for the globalists and the New World Order.
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2021-07-21 at 9:11 PM UTCCOVID-19 cases in US triple over 2 weeks amid misinformation
By HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH and JIM SALTER, Associated Press
MISSION, Kan. (AP) — COVID-19 cases tripled in the U.S. over two weeks amid an onslaught of vaccine misinformation that is straining hospitals, exhausting doctors and pushing clergy into the fray.
“Our staff, they are frustrated," said Chad Neilsen, director of infection prevention at UF Health Jacksonville, a Florida hospital that is canceling elective surgeries and procedures after the number of mostly unvaccinated COVID-19 inpatients at its two campuses jumped to 134, up from a low of 16 in mid-May.
“They are tired. They are thinking this is déjà vu all over again, and there is some anger because we know that this is a largely preventable situation, and people are not taking advantage of the vaccine.”
Across the U.S., the seven-day rolling average for daily new cases rose over the past two weeks to more than 37,000 on Tuesday, up from less than 13,700 on July 6, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Health officials blame the delta variant and slowing vaccination rates. Just 56.2% of Americans have gotten at least one dose of the vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In Louisiana, health officials reported 5,388 new COVID-19 cases Wednesday — the third-highest daily count since the beginning of the pandemic in early 2020. Hospitalizations for the disease rose to 844 statewide, up more than 600 since mid-June.
Utah reported having 295 people hospitalized due to the virus, the highest number since February. The state has averaged about 622 confirmed cases per day over the last week, about triple the infection rate at its lowest point in early June. Health data shows the surge is almost entirely connected to unvaccinated people.
“It is like seeing the car wreck before it happens,” said Dr. James Williams, a clinical associate professor of emergency medicine at Texas Tech, who has recently started treating more COVID-19 patients. “None of us want to go through this again.”
He said the patients are younger — many in their 20s, 30s and 40s — and overwhelmingly unvaccinated.
As lead pastor of one of Missouri’s largest churches, Jeremy Johnson has heard the reasons congregants don’t want the COVID-19 vaccine. He wants them to know it’s not only OK to get vaccinated, it’s what the Bible urges.
“I think there is a big influence of fear,” said Johnson, whose Springfield-based church also has a campus in Nixa and another about to open in Republic. “A fear of trusting something apart from scripture, a fear of trusting something apart from a political party they’re more comfortable following. A fear of trusting in science. We hear that: ‘I trust in God, not science.’ But the truth is science and God are not something you have to choose between.”
Now many churches in southwestern Missouri, like Johnson’s Assembly of God-affiliated North Point Church, are hosting vaccination clinics. Meanwhile, about 200 church leaders have signed onto a statement urging Christians to get vaccinated, and on Wednesday announced a follow-up public service campaign.
Opposition to vaccination is especially strong among white evangelical Protestants, who make up more than one-third of Missouri’s residents, according to a 2019 report by the Pew Research Center.
“We found that the faith community is very influential, very trusted, and to me that is one of the answers as to how you get your vaccination rates up,” said Ken McClure, mayor of Springfield.
The two hospitals in his city are teeming with patients, reaching record and near-record pandemic highs. Steve Edwards, who is the CEO of CoxHealth in Springfield, tweeted that the hospital has brought in 175 traveling nurses and has 46 more scheduled to arrive by Monday.
“Grateful for the help," wrote Edwards, who previously tweeted that anyone spreading misinformation about the vaccine should “shut up."
Jacob Burmood, a 40-year-old Kansas City, Missouri, artist, said his mother has been promoting vaccine conspiracy theories even though her husband — Burmood's stepfather — is hospitalized on a ventilator in Springfield.
“It is really, really sad, and it is really frustrating," he said.
Burmood recalled how his mother had recently fallen ill and "was trying to tell me that vaccinated people got her sick, and it wasn’t even COVID. I just shut her down. I said, ‘Mom, I can’t talk to you about conspiracy theories right now.’ ... You need to go to a hospital. You are going to die.”
His mother, who is in her 70s, has since recovered.
In New York City, workers in city-run hospitals and health clinics will be required to get vaccinated or get tested weekly as officials battle a rise in COVID-19 cases, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Wednesday.
De Blasio’s order will not apply to teachers, police officers and other city employees, but it's part of the city’s intense focus on vaccinations amid an increase in delta variant infections.
The number of vaccine doses being given out daily in the city has dropped to less than 18,000, down from a peak of more than 100,000 in early April. About 65% of all adults are fully vaccinated, but the inoculation rate is around 25% among Black adults under age 45. About 45% of the workforce in the city’s public hospital system is Black.
Meanwhile, caseloads have been rising in the city for weeks, and health officials say the variant makes up about 7 in 10 cases they sequence.
“We need our health care workers to be vaccinated, and it’s getting dangerous with the delta variant,” de Blasio told CNN.
Back in Louisiana, New Orleans officials weighed a possible revival of at least some of the mitigation efforts that had been eased as the disease was waning.
Mayor LaToya Cantrell and the city’s top health official, Dr. Jennifer Avegno, were expected to make an announcement later Wednesday. On Tuesday, Cantrell spokesman Beau Tidwell said “all options are on the table.” -
2021-07-21 at 9:23 PM UTCI actually think Biden should quit pussyfooting around with people who don't want the vaccine. The evidence is overwhelming in that we now have a pandemic of the unvaccinated with no or almost no deaths of people from Covid who are fully vaccinated and 97% or so of Covid related hospitalizations are from the unvaccinated.
Biden should declare a national emergency and either require everyone needs to get stuck or incentivise people with rewards for getting the shot but for a limited time only to end before winter when everyone will be together indoors. Let's say you get $100 for getting the shot by a certain date but, after that date, you will have to pay $100 to get a shot. Hit 'em where it hurts. -
2021-07-21 at 9:45 PM UTC
Originally posted by stl1 COVID-19 cases in US triple over 2 weeks amid misinformation
By HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH and JIM SALTER, Associated Press
MISSION, Kan. (AP) — COVID-19 cases tripled in the U.S. over two weeks amid an onslaught of vaccine misinformation that is straining hospitals, exhausting doctors and pushing clergy into the fray.
“Our staff, they are frustrated," said Chad Neilsen, director of infection prevention at UF Health Jacksonville, a Florida hospital that is canceling elective surgeries and procedures after the number of mostly unvaccinated COVID-19 inpatients at its two campuses jumped to 134, up from a low of 16 in mid-May.
“They are tired. They are thinking this is déjà vu all over again, and there is some anger because we know that this is a largely preventable situation, and people are not taking advantage of the vaccine.”
Across the U.S., the seven-day rolling average for daily new cases rose over the past two weeks to more than 37,000 on Tuesday, up from less than 13,700 on July 6, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Health officials blame the delta variant and slowing vaccination rates. Just 56.2% of Americans have gotten at least one dose of the vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In Louisiana, health officials reported 5,388 new COVID-19 cases Wednesday — the third-highest daily count since the beginning of the pandemic in early 2020. Hospitalizations for the disease rose to 844 statewide, up more than 600 since mid-June.
Utah reported having 295 people hospitalized due to the virus, the highest number since February. The state has averaged about 622 confirmed cases per day over the last week, about triple the infection rate at its lowest point in early June. Health data shows the surge is almost entirely connected to unvaccinated people.
“It is like seeing the car wreck before it happens,” said Dr. James Williams, a clinical associate professor of emergency medicine at Texas Tech, who has recently started treating more COVID-19 patients. “None of us want to go through this again.”
He said the patients are younger — many in their 20s, 30s and 40s — and overwhelmingly unvaccinated.
As lead pastor of one of Missouri’s largest churches, Jeremy Johnson has heard the reasons congregants don’t want the COVID-19 vaccine. He wants them to know it’s not only OK to get vaccinated, it’s what the Bible urges.
“I think there is a big influence of fear,” said Johnson, whose Springfield-based church also has a campus in Nixa and another about to open in Republic. “A fear of trusting something apart from scripture, a fear of trusting something apart from a political party they’re more comfortable following. A fear of trusting in science. We hear that: ‘I trust in God, not science.’ But the truth is science and God are not something you have to choose between.”
Now many churches in southwestern Missouri, like Johnson’s Assembly of God-affiliated North Point Church, are hosting vaccination clinics. Meanwhile, about 200 church leaders have signed onto a statement urging Christians to get vaccinated, and on Wednesday announced a follow-up public service campaign.
Opposition to vaccination is especially strong among white evangelical Protestants, who make up more than one-third of Missouri’s residents, according to a 2019 report by the Pew Research Center.
“We found that the faith community is very influential, very trusted, and to me that is one of the answers as to how you get your vaccination rates up,” said Ken McClure, mayor of Springfield.
The two hospitals in his city are teeming with patients, reaching record and near-record pandemic highs. Steve Edwards, who is the CEO of CoxHealth in Springfield, tweeted that the hospital has brought in 175 traveling nurses and has 46 more scheduled to arrive by Monday.
“Grateful for the help," wrote Edwards, who previously tweeted that anyone spreading misinformation about the vaccine should “shut up."
Jacob Burmood, a 40-year-old Kansas City, Missouri, artist, said his mother has been promoting vaccine conspiracy theories even though her husband — Burmood's stepfather — is hospitalized on a ventilator in Springfield.
“It is really, really sad, and it is really frustrating," he said.
Burmood recalled how his mother had recently fallen ill and "was trying to tell me that vaccinated people got her sick, and it wasn’t even COVID. I just shut her down. I said, ‘Mom, I can’t talk to you about conspiracy theories right now.’ … You need to go to a hospital. You are going to die.”
His mother, who is in her 70s, has since recovered.
In New York City, workers in city-run hospitals and health clinics will be required to get vaccinated or get tested weekly as officials battle a rise in COVID-19 cases, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Wednesday.
De Blasio’s order will not apply to teachers, police officers and other city employees, but it's part of the city’s intense focus on vaccinations amid an increase in delta variant infections.
The number of vaccine doses being given out daily in the city has dropped to less than 18,000, down from a peak of more than 100,000 in early April. About 65% of all adults are fully vaccinated, but the inoculation rate is around 25% among Black adults under age 45. About 45% of the workforce in the city’s public hospital system is Black.
Meanwhile, caseloads have been rising in the city for weeks, and health officials say the variant makes up about 7 in 10 cases they sequence.
“We need our health care workers to be vaccinated, and it’s getting dangerous with the delta variant,” de Blasio told CNN.
Back in Louisiana, New Orleans officials weighed a possible revival of at least some of the mitigation efforts that had been eased as the disease was waning.
Mayor LaToya Cantrell and the city’s top health official, Dr. Jennifer Avegno, were expected to make an announcement later Wednesday. On Tuesday, Cantrell spokesman Beau Tidwell said “all options are on the table.”
That's due to Biden and Fauci. -
2021-07-21 at 9:45 PM UTC
Originally posted by stl1 I actually think Biden should quit pussyfooting around with people who don't want the vaccine. The evidence is overwhelming in that we now have a pandemic of the unvaccinated with no or almost no deaths of people from Covid who are fully vaccinated and 97% or so of Covid related hospitalizations are from the unvaccinated.
Biden should declare a national emergency and either require everyone needs to get stuck or incentivise people with rewards for getting the shot but for a limited time only to end before winter when everyone will be together indoors. Let's say you get $100 for getting the shot by a certain date but, after that date, you will have to pay $100 to get a shot. Hit 'em where it hurts.
Good idea. That'll teach those lazy blacks to take their medicine. -
2021-07-21 at 9:50 PM UTCBlacks would get a pass.
Only would apply to MAGAts. -
2021-07-21 at 9:51 PM UTC
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2021-07-21 at 9:52 PM UTCThe Washington Post
You got a coronavirus vaccine. But you still became infected. How did that happen?
Ben Guarino
Within the past week, positive coronavirus test results were delivered to at least three New York Yankees players, an Olympic gymnast alternate, multiple state lawmakers from Texas, a White House official and a staffer in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office. They also had this in common: All were fully immunized with coronavirus vaccines, their cases known as breakthrough infections.
The rash of such cases might suggest the coronavirus is regularly blasting by vaccinated people’s immune barriers. But these breakthrough infections are not surprising, nor do they suggest vaccines are widely failing.
“Breakthrough infections are to be expected, even when you have highly effective vaccines,” said Roy M. Gulick, chief of infectious disease at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York. To understand why is to understand what vaccines are, and are not, capable of.
This is a dynamic pandemic — scientific understanding of vaccines and the virus continues to evolve, as does the pathogen itself. It is uncertain exactly how rare breakthrough infections are. Ongoing clinical trials, following tens of thousands of vaccinated people for two years, will help determine that rate, said Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease doctor, in a Senate hearing this week.
Far more certain, based on clinical trials and real-world data, is that the three vaccines authorized by the Food and Drug Administration broadly protect people from the coronavirus’s harmful effects. The vaccines do this so well that doctors refer to them in almost rapturous terms.
“The vaccines are extraordinarily powerful and potent in working to prevent disease,” said Robert B. Darnell, a physician and biochemist at Rockefeller University in New York. “They’re incredibly good.”
That is not hype. Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, has become a malady of the unvaccinated.
“If you look at hospitalizations, over 97 percent of people entering are unvaccinated people,” Gulick said. Almost all of the U.S. patients who died recently from covid-19 were not immunized.
That appears to be true even as delta and other variants of concern spread, though future studies will further clarify how well vaccines stop variants.
“When you hear about a breakthrough infection, that doesn’t necessarily mean the vaccine is failing,” Fauci said. “It’s still holding true, particularly with regard to protection against severe disease leading to hospitalization and deaths.”
For now, the data that exist are promising.
Full immunization with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, a two-dose mRNA vaccine, is 88 percent effective at stopping the delta variant from causing symptoms, according to a study by the U.K. agency Public Health England. The other vaccine that uses mRNA technology, Moderna, probably offers this level of protection too, health experts told The Washington Post earlier this month. Although one study that has not gone through peer review recently found a diminished early response of the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine vs. delta in laboratory tests, other lab studies, such as a New England Journal of Medicine report published in July, indicate a J&J shot can provide a robust response against delta months after injection.
Variants are “roughly represented in the same frequencies” when comparing infections among the vaccinated with those among the unvaccinated, Gulick said, suggesting no variant yet emerged is exceptionally good at breaking through.
But, like all vaccines, the coronavirus shots are imperfect.
A misconception exists that vaccines transform us into totally immune beings, able to instantaneously smite any virus we encounter. Sten H. Vermund, an infectious-disease epidemiologist and dean of the Yale School of Public Health, likened this false idea to a bug zapper: “As soon as it touches my mucosa or skin or genital tract — boom, zap, it’s gone!” Not quite. Instead, Vermund said, vaccines are more similar to poisoned traps, into which a pest might fall, wriggle a bit, then perish from insecticide.
When immunized people are not tested frequently, it is possible many breakthrough infections are dismissed as mild colds or simply go unnoticed. If vaccinated people are tested repeatedly regardless of symptoms, as is the case for Olympians and baseball players, those tests can detect infections before they are defeated by immune systems. Such test results may show snapshots of weakly wriggling virus, to borrow from Vermund’s bug-trap analogy. The coronavirus vaccines almost always stop you from getting very sick, but they cannot always stop infection.
Not every infection progresses to covid-19. It is possible for the virus to exist in someone’s nose or mouth without causing the fatigue, aches, loss of smell or other ailments that characterize covid-19. This is what is known as an asymptomatic infection.
Breakthrough infections can be asymptomatic. They may also involve smaller amounts of virus, emerging data suggest. These infections are likely to be contained in the nose and upper respiratory tract, without harming lungs or other vital organs deeper within the body, according to Tulane University School of Medicine professor and physician Jay K. Kolls. This, he said, may have to do with how vaccines are delivered.
The coronavirus vaccines provoke the body into making several types of immune fighters, including antibodies that stop the virus from invading healthy cells and T cells that hunt and kill infected cells. Coronavirus shots are frequently given in arm muscles, and as a result these defenders are generated in nodes and organs nearby in the chest. A few days after a virus invades, those disease fighters can be summoned to the infection site to thwart the virus.
One type of antibody secreted in mucus membranes guards where the coronavirus enters in the nose and mouth, Kolls said. He hypothesizes that vaccines delivered through the nose — about half-a-dozen are in clinical trials — may be even better at preventing infection because they could stimulate and sustain antibody production right in the nasal cavity.
There is precedent for targeting the site where a pathogen enters. The first polio vaccine, which successfully stopped illness, was injected into muscle like the coronavirus vaccine is. But the oral polio vaccine developed a few years later more successfully prevented infection by blocking the poliovirus from infiltrating through the gut. This, for decades, was the go-to polio vaccine in the United States, until it was replaced by a refined version of the injected polio vaccine. That vaccine and the oral vaccine work equally well at preventing polio, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Estimating the total number of coronavirus breakthrough infections is difficult. Through the end of April, the CDC reported slightly more than 10,000 cases among 101 million fully vaccinated adults, which is about 1 case per 10,000 vaccinated people. But this is probably an undercount, CDC scientists said, because of its reliance on voluntary reports. It also reflects a time when the highly transmissible delta variant of the coronavirus was not yet in wide circulation in the United States.
It is clearer that severe breakthrough cases are extremely rare. Fewer than 5,500 hospitalizations and deaths among vaccinated people had been reported to the CDC as of July 12. The CDC has, since May, ceased reporting asymptomatic or mild breakthrough cases.
Vermund and two other researchers, in an editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association, recently called on the CDC to revive its surveillance of symptomatic breakthrough infections, even if those cases are not severe enough to cause hospitalization or death. This, Vermund said, could offer persuasive data to inspire confidence among the vaccine-hesitant and help track transmission among vaccinated people.
In a statement Friday, the CDC said it has several ways to investigate breakthrough cases, including in coordination with state and territorial health departments. The agency said that as more people are vaccinated, more breakthrough cases are expected.
Tracking vaccinated people via frequent screening can offer insight into the rate of breakthroughs. National Institutes of Health director Francis S. Collins, in a Washington Post Live appearance this week, said NIH has seen “an occasional breakthrough” among its 46,000 employees, most of whom are immunized.
“Those people aren’t very sick. They have mild symptoms. We have yet to see anybody really get in trouble,” Collins said.
At Rockefeller University, where faculty and staff are regularly tested, two out of more than 400 vaccinated employees had breakthrough infections, according to a recent report in the New England Journal of Medicine by Darnell and his colleagues.
The two employees developed what Darnell called “pretty classic covid-19 cases,” which included the loss of sense of smell and taste. Although one woman had high viral levels in her saliva, neither progressed to “hospital grade” covid. In fact, Darnell said both patients would have been fine without seeing a doctor.
Whether the breakthrough infection that involves symptoms could result in long covid remains unknown.
“We’re in a data-free zone here,” said Steven G. Deeks, an infectious-disease physician at the University of California at San Francisco who studies covid-19′s long-term effects. “We have no idea — none whatsoever — as to whether breakthrough infections will cause PASC,” he said, referring to post-acute sequelae of covid-19, the clinical name for long covid.
Deeks hypothesizes that long covid depends, in part, on the amount of virus present in the early stage of infection.
“One hopes that the virus load in people with breakthrough infections will generally be lower,” Deeks said. That, in turn, could mean a lower risk for developing long covid. -
2021-07-21 at 9:57 PM UTC
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2021-07-21 at 10:03 PM UTC
Originally posted by stl1 The Washington Post
You got a coronavirus vaccine. But you still became infected. How did that happen?
Ben Guarino
Within the past week, positive coronavirus test results were delivered to at least three New York Yankees players, an Olympic gymnast alternate, multiple state lawmakers from Texas, a White House official and a staffer in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office. They also had this in common: All were fully immunized with coronavirus vaccines, their cases known as breakthrough infections.
The rash of such cases might suggest the coronavirus is regularly blasting by vaccinated people’s immune barriers. But these breakthrough infections are not surprising, nor do they suggest vaccines are widely failing.
“Breakthrough infections are to be expected, even when you have highly effective vaccines,” said Roy M. Gulick, chief of infectious disease at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York. To understand why is to understand what vaccines are, and are not, capable of.
This is a dynamic pandemic — scientific understanding of vaccines and the virus continues to evolve, as does the pathogen itself. It is uncertain exactly how rare breakthrough infections are. Ongoing clinical trials, following tens of thousands of vaccinated people for two years, will help determine that rate, said Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease doctor, in a Senate hearing this week.
Far more certain, based on clinical trials and real-world data, is that the three vaccines authorized by the Food and Drug Administration broadly protect people from the coronavirus’s harmful effects. The vaccines do this so well that doctors refer to them in almost rapturous terms.
“The vaccines are extraordinarily powerful and potent in working to prevent disease,” said Robert B. Darnell, a physician and biochemist at Rockefeller University in New York. “They’re incredibly good.”
That is not hype. Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, has become a malady of the unvaccinated.
“If you look at hospitalizations, over 97 percent of people entering are unvaccinated people,” Gulick said. Almost all of the U.S. patients who died recently from covid-19 were not immunized.
That appears to be true even as delta and other variants of concern spread, though future studies will further clarify how well vaccines stop variants.
“When you hear about a breakthrough infection, that doesn’t necessarily mean the vaccine is failing,” Fauci said. “It’s still holding true, particularly with regard to protection against severe disease leading to hospitalization and deaths.”
For now, the data that exist are promising.
Full immunization with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, a two-dose mRNA vaccine, is 88 percent effective at stopping the delta variant from causing symptoms, according to a study by the U.K. agency Public Health England. The other vaccine that uses mRNA technology, Moderna, probably offers this level of protection too, health experts told The Washington Post earlier this month. Although one study that has not gone through peer review recently found a diminished early response of the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine vs. delta in laboratory tests, other lab studies, such as a New England Journal of Medicine report published in July, indicate a J&J shot can provide a robust response against delta months after injection.
Variants are “roughly represented in the same frequencies” when comparing infections among the vaccinated with those among the unvaccinated, Gulick said, suggesting no variant yet emerged is exceptionally good at breaking through.
But, like all vaccines, the coronavirus shots are imperfect.
A misconception exists that vaccines transform us into totally immune beings, able to instantaneously smite any virus we encounter. Sten H. Vermund, an infectious-disease epidemiologist and dean of the Yale School of Public Health, likened this false idea to a bug zapper: “As soon as it touches my mucosa or skin or genital tract — boom, zap, it’s gone!” Not quite. Instead, Vermund said, vaccines are more similar to poisoned traps, into which a pest might fall, wriggle a bit, then perish from insecticide.
When immunized people are not tested frequently, it is possible many breakthrough infections are dismissed as mild colds or simply go unnoticed. If vaccinated people are tested repeatedly regardless of symptoms, as is the case for Olympians and baseball players, those tests can detect infections before they are defeated by immune systems. Such test results may show snapshots of weakly wriggling virus, to borrow from Vermund’s bug-trap analogy. The coronavirus vaccines almost always stop you from getting very sick, but they cannot always stop infection.
Not every infection progresses to covid-19. It is possible for the virus to exist in someone’s nose or mouth without causing the fatigue, aches, loss of smell or other ailments that characterize covid-19. This is what is known as an asymptomatic infection.
Breakthrough infections can be asymptomatic. They may also involve smaller amounts of virus, emerging data suggest. These infections are likely to be contained in the nose and upper respiratory tract, without harming lungs or other vital organs deeper within the body, according to Tulane University School of Medicine professor and physician Jay K. Kolls. This, he said, may have to do with how vaccines are delivered.
The coronavirus vaccines provoke the body into making several types of immune fighters, including antibodies that stop the virus from invading healthy cells and T cells that hunt and kill infected cells. Coronavirus shots are frequently given in arm muscles, and as a result these defenders are generated in nodes and organs nearby in the chest. A few days after a virus invades, those disease fighters can be summoned to the infection site to thwart the virus.
One type of antibody secreted in mucus membranes guards where the coronavirus enters in the nose and mouth, Kolls said. He hypothesizes that vaccines delivered through the nose — about half-a-dozen are in clinical trials — may be even better at preventing infection because they could stimulate and sustain antibody production right in the nasal cavity.
There is precedent for targeting the site where a pathogen enters. The first polio vaccine, which successfully stopped illness, was injected into muscle like the coronavirus vaccine is. But the oral polio vaccine developed a few years later more successfully prevented infection by blocking the poliovirus from infiltrating through the gut. This, for decades, was the go-to polio vaccine in the United States, until it was replaced by a refined version of the injected polio vaccine. That vaccine and the oral vaccine work equally well at preventing polio, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Estimating the total number of coronavirus breakthrough infections is difficult. Through the end of April, the CDC reported slightly more than 10,000 cases among 101 million fully vaccinated adults, which is about 1 case per 10,000 vaccinated people. But this is probably an undercount, CDC scientists said, because of its reliance on voluntary reports. It also reflects a time when the highly transmissible delta variant of the coronavirus was not yet in wide circulation in the United States.
It is clearer that severe breakthrough cases are extremely rare. Fewer than 5,500 hospitalizations and deaths among vaccinated people had been reported to the CDC as of July 12. The CDC has, since May, ceased reporting asymptomatic or mild breakthrough cases.
Vermund and two other researchers, in an editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association, recently called on the CDC to revive its surveillance of symptomatic breakthrough infections, even if those cases are not severe enough to cause hospitalization or death. This, Vermund said, could offer persuasive data to inspire confidence among the vaccine-hesitant and help track transmission among vaccinated people.
In a statement Friday, the CDC said it has several ways to investigate breakthrough cases, including in coordination with state and territorial health departments. The agency said that as more people are vaccinated, more breakthrough cases are expected.
Tracking vaccinated people via frequent screening can offer insight into the rate of breakthroughs. National Institutes of Health director Francis S. Collins, in a Washington Post Live appearance this week, said NIH has seen “an occasional breakthrough” among its 46,000 employees, most of whom are immunized.
“Those people aren’t very sick. They have mild symptoms. We have yet to see anybody really get in trouble,” Collins said.
At Rockefeller University, where faculty and staff are regularly tested, two out of more than 400 vaccinated employees had breakthrough infections, according to a recent report in the New England Journal of Medicine by Darnell and his colleagues.
The two employees developed what Darnell called “pretty classic covid-19 cases,” which included the loss of sense of smell and taste. Although one woman had high viral levels in her saliva, neither progressed to “hospital grade” covid. In fact, Darnell said both patients would have been fine without seeing a doctor.
Whether the breakthrough infection that involves symptoms could result in long covid remains unknown.
“We’re in a data-free zone here,” said Steven G. Deeks, an infectious-disease physician at the University of California at San Francisco who studies covid-19′s long-term effects. “We have no idea — none whatsoever — as to whether breakthrough infections will cause PASC,” he said, referring to post-acute sequelae of covid-19, the clinical name for long covid.
Deeks hypothesizes that long covid depends, in part, on the amount of virus present in the early stage of infection.
“One hopes that the virus load in people with breakthrough infections will generally be lower,” Deeks said. That, in turn, could mean a lower risk for developing long covid.
TLDR: Covid is a mild flu like disease and it's time to stop worrying about it and move on with our lives.The following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire! -
2021-07-21 at 10:44 PM UTC
Imagine behaving like an evil bullying psychopath, then wondering why people don't trust you.
