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Girl, 90, Walked Six Miles within the Snow for a Vaccine

Woman, 90, Walked Six Miles in the Snow for a Vaccine

To get her coronavirus vaccination last weekend, 90-year-old Frances H. Goldman reached an exceptional length: six miles. On foot.

It was too snowy to drive at 8:00 a.m. on Sunday when Ms. Goldman took out her walking sticks, dusted her snowshoes, and set off from her Seattle home on View Ridge. She made her way to the Burke-Gilman Trail on the outskirts of town, where it meandered south along a series of old railroad tracks. Then she crossed the residential streets of Laurelhurst to reach Seattle Children’s Hospital.

It was a quiet walk, said Mrs. Goldman. People were short. She caught a glimpse of Lake Washington through falling snow. It would have been more difficult, she said, had she not had a bad hip replaced last year.

In the hospital, about three miles and an hour from home, she received the shock. Then she bundled herself up again and went back the way she had come.

It was an extraordinary effort – but it wasn’t the extent. Ms. Goldman, who was eligible for a vaccine last month, had already tried everything to secure an appointment. She had made repeated phone calls and visited the websites of local pharmacies, hospitals and state health departments without success. She hired a daughter in New York and a friend in Arizona to find an appointment.

Finally, a visit to the Seattle Children’s Hospital website on Friday yielded results.

“Lo and behold, a whole list of times has surfaced,” she said in a telephone interview on Wednesday. “I couldn’t believe my eyes. I got my glasses to make sure I saw them properly. “

Then came the snow that would ultimately fall more than 10 inches on one of the snowiest Seattle weekends ever recorded. Mrs. Goldman was cautious about driving on hilly, unploughed roads and decided to walk to the hospital. On Saturday, she took a test walk to get a feel for how long the trip might take.

And on Sunday she went all the way to the hospital to get her vaccine.

The appointment went smoothly, she said. And it had special meaning to Ms. Goldman, because she could remember the joy of national celebrations in 1955 when another important vaccine was developed.

“I can remember the time when the polio vaccine was introduced,” Ms. Goldman said. She was a young mother at the time, and polio affected tens of thousands of children, sometimes resulting in paralysis or death. She recalls taking her children to get the vaccine at a school where she lived in Cincinnati.

This vaccine rollout “was done in a very organized way and made a huge difference in the way people can live in the summer – not only did people not get sick, but they didn’t have to live with the threat of getting sick . “

This time Ms. Goldman was disappointed with the vaccine distribution. “There’s no excuse for doing it the way it was,” she said. “It was disorganized. Completely disorganized. “

Seattle is just one of many places in the United States where residents have struggled to get access to the vaccine.

“There just aren’t enough vaccines across the state and nation,” said Sharon Bogan, a spokeswoman for the Seattle and King Counties Department of Health. “Even under the best of circumstances, we knew this would take time. We know eligible residents like Ms. Goldman have trouble accessing appointments due to limited availability of the vaccine. “

Its rollout in Washington state has been hampered by technology failures, equity bottlenecks, and persistent supply and demand imbalances. State officials have worked hard to put in place the infrastructure necessary to plan and vaccinate the millions of people who are already eligible.

And while similar stories have played out across the country, vaccine distribution in the US is slowly improving. President Biden said this week that any American who wanted a Covid-19 vaccination should have a vaccination by the end of July, but also warned that the logistics of distribution would continue to cause difficulties.

In King County, health officials grappling with limited supplies have worked to ensure the vaccine is administered fairly, according to Ms. Bogan. “We are focusing our efforts on those eligible high-risk individuals who are not affiliated with a doctor or the healthcare system and are establishing locations to reach older adults in communities disproportionately affected by Covid-19,” she said.

Ms. Goldman is expected to receive her second dose of vaccine next month. She plans to go.

And when it’s all over, she hopes to be able to take people back into her home, to resume volunteering at a nearby arboretum, and to hold onto her new great-grandchild, whom she hasn’t touched at all.

She is on the phone a lot at the moment – her long journey has been covered by numerous local and national news agencies. The attention, she said, has not bothered her so far.

“I hope it will inspire people to get their shots,” she said. “I think it’s important for the whole country.”

Sheelagh McNeill contributed to the research.

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J&J doesn’t have massive stock of doses, Biden official says

J&J does not have large inventory of doses, Biden official says

Illustration of the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine

Given Ruvic | Reuters

Johnson & Johnson will not hold a “large inventory” of its Covid-19 vaccine until regulatory approval expected this month, President Joe Biden’s Covid tsar said Wednesday.

Jeff Zients said the government has learned in recent weeks that J&J will only manufacture “a few million” doses if its single vaccine is likely to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

Federal and state health officials expected vaccine supplies to increase rapidly once the J&J emergency vaccine was approved. The FDA scheduled a meeting of its Advisory Committee on Vaccines and Related Biological Products on February 26th to discuss the vaccine. The US could approve the vaccine the next day.

J&J currently has a contract with the U.S. government to deliver 100 million doses of its vaccine by the end of June, said Zients, the president’s Covid-19 response coordinator. Assuming the vaccine is approved, the Biden government will work with J&J to increase supply as soon as possible. US officials hope many of these cans will be available in the first few months of their introduction.

“We are doing everything we can to work with the company and accelerate the delivery schedule,” Zients told reporters during a White House press conference on the pandemic.

The news comes as the Biden government works to increase the supply of cans after states complained that demand for the shots was rapidly exceeding supply. Around 39.7 million out of roughly 331 million Americans have received at least their first dose of Pfizer’s or Moderna’s two-dose vaccines, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And 15 million of those people have already got their second shot.

Biden announced Thursday that the US has received 100 million more doses of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine and 100 million more of the Moderna vaccine, bringing the total US supply to 600 million doses. Since the vaccines require two doses, a total of 600 million doses would be enough to vaccinate 300 million Americans.

On Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki announced that the Biden administration is increasing the number of Covid-19 vaccine doses sent weekly to states, shipping 13.5 million doses this week and doubling the number of pharmacies sold to pharmacies.

Dr. Anthony Fauci said Tuesday that most Americans will have access to a Covid-19 vaccine by mid to late May or early June, a slight delay compared to previous predictions made in late March and April.

The White House chief medical officer said the federal government expects J&J to “significantly increase” starting doses.

“I’m a little disappointed that the number of doses we’re getting early from J&J is relatively small, but as we get further into spring there will be more and more,” said Fauci.

Meanwhile, Pfizer and Moderna are looking into whether their vaccines can prevent transmission of the virus, he said on Wednesday, adding that early studies point in a “favorable direction”.

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My Mom Died After I Was 7. I’m Grieving 37 Years Later.

My Mother Died When I Was 7. I’m Grieving 37 Years Later.

February 17, 2021

Delayed grief is sometimes triggered by an event later in life, experts say.

I’m in my basement looking for a file when I come across the cards and pictures – a small Manila envelope with my mother’s remains. She died in April 1983 at the age of 30 in an apartment in Van Nuys, California. I don’t even know the exact date.

My brother and I were told that her biker friend, a guy named Eddie, found her dead in the shower. I was 7

I lived with my grandparents, my federal guardians in my mother’s absence, in a town 15 minutes outside of Boston. After school and on many weekends I was also looked after by my foster mother Esther. The state paid to help my grandparents. It was also the state that had removed my brother and me from the apartment we shared with my mother Denise just before my first birthday. Denise was addicted.

As I later learned, her fall in the shower actually happened during a seizure caused by constant drug use. She died of an overdose.

Back in the present, I pondered the relics: a letter my mother wrote to me and my brother, another to my grandmother just before my mother was about to enter the rehab she never made it to, a picture of her on her 21st birthday and some things from high school. The pieces of my mother’s life are spread out in front of me like a jumbled puzzle. I wipe my eyes and am surprised to find tears. I never cry for my mom so I wonder why now? I am a 44 year old woman, mother of four children. The woman, whom I never actually called “Mama”, has been dead for more than 37 years. That is longer than she was alive.

A few days later, while reading an article online, I come across a term that is new to me: delayed grief. It is a grief response that occurs later, not at the time of loss, and is sometimes triggered by an event where I discover the artifacts in my mother’s life.

Hope Edelman, author of The AfterGrief: Finding Your Way Down the Arc of Loss, said it was not surprising that meeting my mother as an adult elicited a grief response through her belongings. Ms. Edelman has been writing about grief for over 20 years after losing her own mother at 17.

I read these letters when my mother first sent them to me in 1983 and have seen the pictures before. But the loss feels different now. I understand her death as a mother and not as her daughter. I understand the grief she must have felt without her children. The Strawberry Shortcake card, which arrived shortly before my birthday, said, “I love you very much.” She signed the card with two more declarations of love and X and O until she ran out of white space. I felt disappointed when I read it.

“You mourned all that you could then,” said Ms. Edelman. “We rethink loss and understand it differently at different times in our lives.”

Ms. Edelman said that certain milestones or life events cause complicated heartache to bubble back into the air. Andrea Warnick, a Toronto and Guelph, Ontario-based psychotherapist who specializes in grief therapy, refers to it as outbursts of grief.

Nadine Melhem, associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh Medical School, has studied childhood grief related to the sudden death of parents. She said the nature of the relationship with the person who died has proven to be an important factor in people’s grief. Additional losses and prolonged stressors could trigger grief, she said, which could certainly have been a reason for my most recent grief reaction.

As the world grapples with the Covid-19 pandemic, many people are losing loved ones without being able to be with them at the end of their lives, or in some cases even seeing their bodies for a while after death. The pandemic also affects funeral and memorial rituals, which usually celebrate a person’s life.

Dr. Melhem said she expected complicated or prolonged grief responses from a subset of those grieving over a loss from the pandemic. She is conducting an online study that looks at stress and grief responses in people who have lost someone to Covid-19. Among the sample of 7,353 respondents, she found that 55 percent of those who lost someone to the coronavirus reported intense grief responses that could predict continued, relentless grief in the future. Interestingly, similar rates have been reported for both adolescents and adults.

Ms. Edelman said that children’s initial grieving process is influenced by the way people around them deal with their grief. When my mother died, my grandmother plowed through her loss by checking boxes on her to-do list. Hull on delta flight. Funeral mass. Thank you cards. She believed overcoming loss meant being strong.

Dr. Melhem agreed, saying that her research found that the grief of surviving parents or caregivers is an important factor in predicting children’s grief responses, as it can affect “whether there is an environment that eases grief”.

Mrs. Warnick said my grandmother might have tried to protect me from grief. What I remember in the days and months after my mother passed away was my own guilt for grieving for her. Whenever I cried for the woman who attacked me, I was afraid that the women who stayed behind to raise me, my grandmother and foster mother, would feel hurt. I also didn’t feel I had the right to mourn a woman I didn’t know.

My grief lacked validity. In fact, there was typically even less support for the grieving process in the early 1980s than there is today, especially for children.

Dr. Melhem said that when I was a kid, research didn’t pay much attention to grief in research. When she and her colleagues published a study on survivors in 2011, she said she had not only filled a gap in grief research, but also how grief in children presented itself and progressed over time. Additionally, a study she and her colleagues published in 2018 shed light on the impact childhood grief can have on a child’s mental health.

We have come a long way in understanding and processing grief for many types of loss. I finally understand the relevance of my grief, past and present. I took the liberty of mourning.

“Grief is a very healthy experience and we have every right to it,” said Ms. Warnick.

Nicole Johnson is a freelance writer working on a memoir about addiction, abandonment, and the pop culture that shaped her GenX childhood.

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Prioritizing instructor vaccinations might be a problem till scarcity is resolved, Biden official says

Prioritizing teacher vaccinations will be a challenge until shortage is resolved, Biden official says

Prioritizing teachers in the distribution of Covid vaccines will continue to be a challenge until more doses become available, Andy Slavitt, senior advisor to the White House’s Covid-19 response team, said Wednesday.

President Joe Biden has made reopening the country’s schools for personal teaching a top priority.

On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published new guidelines that teachers shouldn’t be vaccinated to safely reopen schools, but that states should give teachers priority access to Covid vaccines.

Slavitt said governors had “tough decisions” to make to juggle vaccine distribution to groups like seniors, nursing home workers and teachers.

“We are trying to support them with science as much as possible, but until the shortage is fixed we will still have these challenges,” Slavitt told CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith”.

The question of whether teachers should be vaccinated before returning to class has been a focus in the debate on reopening in-person teaching.

Vice President Kamala Harris said on the Today Show Wednesday morning, “Teachers should be priority.”

During a briefing on Wednesday, White House Chief Covid-19 Coordinator Jeff Zients said that while Biden and Harris believe that frontline teachers and other frontline staff should be on the front lines to get vaccines, they both do The CDC agree that vaccination of teachers “is not a requirement for schools to reopen.”

The CDC guidelines also recommend that schools adapt their reopening plans to the severity of the outbreak in their communities. The agency also recommends schools maintain “essential elements” of personal learning, including wearing masks, exercising physical distancing, and monitoring the spread in the area.

“If that were easy, it would be done,” Slavitt told CNBC. “We’re focused on how we get kids and teachers back to school – not if we should, but how. And that’s the CDC plan, in my opinion.”

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U.Ok. Approves Examine That Will Intentionally Infect Volunteers With Coronavirus

U.K. Approves Study That Will Deliberately Infect Volunteers With Coronavirus

LONDON – In the coming weeks a small, carefully selected group of volunteers is expected to arrive on the 11th floor of a London hospital to learn what the rest of the 7.8 billion people around the world have tried to avoid: coronavirus infection .

Tiny droplets of the virus are given into their noses as part of a plan approved by UK regulators on Wednesday to intentionally infect unvaccinated volunteers with the coronavirus.

The scientists hope to eventually expose vaccinated people to the virus to compare the effectiveness of different vaccines. Before doing so, however, the project’s supporters must expose unvaccinated volunteers to determine the lowest dose of the virus that will reliably infect them.

Up to 90 people could take part in the study, but the number could be fewer if researchers can determine the correct dose with fewer volunteers.

By controlling the amount of virus people are exposed to and monitoring it from the time they are infected, scientists hope to discover things about how the immune system reacts to the coronavirus that would be impossible outside of a laboratory – and devise ways to do it directly to infect comparing the effectiveness of treatments and vaccines.

“We will learn a lot about the immunology of the virus,” said Peter Openshaw, a professor at Imperial College London who was involved in the study, on Wednesday. He added that the study would be able to “not only accelerate understanding of diseases caused by infections, but also accelerate the discovery of new therapies and vaccines”.

The idea of ​​such a study, dubbed the Human Challenge Challenge, has been hotly debated since the early months of the pandemic.

In the past, scientists have deliberately exposed volunteers to diseases such as typhoid and cholera to test vaccines. But infected people could be cured of these diseases. Covid-19 has no known cure, which puts the scientists responsible for the UK study into largely unknown ethical territory.

To ensure participants do not get seriously ill, the UK study will be limited to young, healthy volunteers aged 18 to 30 years.

But these types of patients also had severe Covid 19 cases, and the long-term consequences of an infection are also largely unknown. Age restrictions can also make it difficult to extrapolate the results to older adults or people with pre-existing medical conditions, whose immune responses may differ, and who are the target audience for treatments and vaccines.

“It will be a limited study,” said Ian Jones, professor of virology at the University of Reading, who is not part of the study. “And you could argue that, by definition, it won’t investigate those where it is most important to know what is going on.”

Currently the only part of the study that has been officially approved by UK regulators is the experiment to determine the lowest dose of virus needed to infect humans.

After exposure to the virus, participants will be isolated in hospital for two weeks. They will be paid £ 4,500, or about $ 6,200, for this one year worth of scheduled follow-up appointments. The researchers said this would compensate people for their absence from work or family without creating too much economic incentive for people to participate.

When the idea of ​​human challenge experimentation first came out last year, some scientists saw it as a way to cut the crucial time in the race to identify a vaccine. Unlike large clinical trials where scientists wait for vaccinated people to encounter the virus in their communities, researchers in this project might infect people who were vaccinated on purpose.

With multiple vaccines approved, the goals of this human challenge study are slightly different.

For now, researchers will be exposing people to the version of the virus that has been spreading across the UK since last spring, rather than the contagious and potentially more deadly variant that has caught on more recently. But eventually, they said, they could give people experimental vaccines to combat the effects of new, more worrisome variants, and then expose them to those versions of the virus.

You could also directly compare different vaccine doses and dosing intervals for the same vaccine.

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New York’s Cuomo says amusement parks, summer time camps can reopen

New York's Cuomo says amusement parks, summer camps can reopen

People ride a tandem bike wearing face masks along the Coney Island boardwalk in Brooklyn, New York as coronavirus disease (COVID-19) lags on May 4, 2020.

Shannon Stapleton | Reuters

New York is pushing ahead with reopening more businesses after seeing a drop in post-vacation Covid-19 cases. However, the governor said the state is “keeping an eye” on problematic variants of the virus that could reverse its progress.

Indoor family entertainment centers such as arcades, trampoline parks and laser tag facilities are allowed to reopen from March 26 at a 25% capacity with additional precautions such as social distancing, wearing masks and frequent cleaning, Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Wednesday.

Outdoor amusement parks can reopen on April 9 with 33% capacity and similar requirements, and parents can plan for the summer camps to return overnight sometime in June, the Democratic governor said on a call with reporters.

“That won’t happen until June,” said Cuomo to the summer camps, “and we hope that the current development remains until June – keep an eye on these interesting variants. But they can plan a reopening.”

The governor has gradually started lifting restrictions on businesses in recent weeks as the state rolls in more doses of Covid vaccines and cases continue to decline due to a post-holiday spike.

According to a CNBC analysis of data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, the state reports a weekly average of 7,949 cases of Covid per day, a decrease of more than 8% from the previous week and the lowest since early December.

Last week, Cuomo said major stadiums and arenas in New York will reopen in late February with the necessary testing ahead of time, a strategy the state “wants to lead the way” with. At the weekend, New York restaurants were allowed to reopen their indoor restaurants with a capacity of 25%.

However, new and highly contagious Covid-19 variants could reverse New York’s progress or hinder its planned reopening. The governor said the state has now identified 82 Covid-19 cases with variant B.1.1.7 first identified in the UK in December, with 12 cases added since Saturday. He said most of these new cases were found in the New York City area.

Federal health officials have repeatedly asked Americans to remain vigilant amid the highly contagious varieties first found in the UK, South Africa and Brazil.

So far, the US has identified at least 1,277 Covid-19 cases with variant B.1.1.7 discovered in South Africa, 19 of variant B.1.351 discovered in South Africa and 3 cases of variant P.1 in Brazil according to the latest data from the CDC.

“I think we should assume that the next wave of case growth, as far as we have it, will happen with B.1.1.7 and I think everyone needs to be even more careful.” Andy Slavitt, a senior advisor to White House Covid, told MSNBC on Monday.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Wednesday that nationwide Covid cases have declined for five consecutive weeks and new hospitalizations have also declined since early January.

However, the spread of communicable variants of coronavirus could “jeopardize the progress we have made over the past month if we lose our vigilance,” Walensky said during a press conference for the Covid Response Team at the White House.

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Covid-Linked Syndrome in Kids Is Rising, and Instances Are Extra Extreme

Covid-Linked Syndrome in Children Is Growing, and Cases Are More Severe

“We’re getting more of these MIS-C kids now, but this time it just seems like a higher percentage of them are really seriously ill,” said Dr. Roberta DeBiasi, Infectious Disease Director at Children’s National Hospital in Washington. DC During the first wave of the hospital, roughly half of the patients needed intensive care treatment, but now 80 to 90 percent do.

The reasons are unclear. The surge follows the general surge in Covid cases in the US after the winter holiday season, and more cases can simply increase the likelihood of serious illnesses occurring. So far, there is no evidence that newer coronavirus variants are responsible, and experts say it is too early to speculate on the effects of variants on the syndrome.

The condition remains rare. The latest numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show 2,060 cases in 48 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, including 30 deaths. The mean age was 9 years, but infants up to 20 years of age were affected. The data, which are not complete until mid-December, show that the case rate has increased since mid-October.

While most young people, including those who became critically ill, survived in relatively healthy condition and went home, doctors are not sure if they will experience persistent heart or other problems.

“We really don’t know what’s going to happen in the long run,” said Dr. Jean Ballweg, Medical Director of Pediatric Heart Transplant and Advanced Heart Failure at the Children’s Hospital and Medical Center in Omaha, Neb., Where April through October. The hospital treated about two cases a month, about 30 percent of them in intensive care. That rose to 10 cases in December and 12 in January, with 60 percent requiring intensive care – most of the ventilators needed. “Obviously they seem sicker,” she said.

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5 issues to know earlier than the inventory market opens Feb 17, 2021

5 things to know before the stock market opens Feb 17, 2021

Here are the top news, trends, and analysis investors need to get their trading day started:

1. Stocks open flat after Dow closed on another record

The Wall Street sign can be seen in front of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York on February 16, 2021.

Brendan McDermid | Reuters

US stock futures remained stable on Wednesday as Wall Street remained on track for its best monthly performance since November. In a mixed session on Tuesday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed with another record. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq broke their two-day winning streak with small losses and fell from the record closings of the previous session.

On Wednesday’s economic calendar, the Department of Commerce’s January retail sales report showed a 5.3% increase, defeating estimates of a 1.2% increase. A month after Congress approved an additional $ 900 billion Covid stimulus package on top of the $ 2.2 trillion it approved in early 2020, buyers were armed with $ 600 checks to give them a Variety of goods bought.

Regardless of this, the labor ministry’s producer price index rose by 1.3% in January, again well above the estimates that had called for an increase of 0.4%.

The 10-year government bond yield rose over 1.3% on Wednesday after strong retail sales and January PPI heightened fears of possible inflation during the post-Covid economic recovery.

2. Bitcoin hits a new high, topping $ 51,000 for the first time

Omar Marques | LightRocket | Getty Images

Bitcoin cracked $ 51,000 to hit a new all-time high on Wednesday. Big financial companies seem to be getting excited about Bitcoin after Tesla and other companies showed support for the cryptocurrency. Bitcoin’s recent rally recalls its massive surge to nearly $ 20,000 in 2017, which was followed by an 80% plunge the following year. However, the world’s largest cryptocurrency has since seen a violent comeback, more than quadrupling in 2020 and gaining over 70% this year.

3. Here are Warren Buffett-led Berkshire stock moves for the past quarter

Warren Buffett

Gerry Miller | CNBC

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway bought $ 4.1 billion in Chevron and $ 8.6 billion in Verizon shares in the fourth quarter, according to the conglomerate’s most recent 13-F filing with the SEC . Berkshire also sold its stakes in drug companies Pfizer and JPMorgan Chase, while reducing its position in Wells Fargo. Apple is still the largest holding, but Berkshire has further scaled back its lucrative position in the company, slashing it by about 6%.

4. Elon Musk’s SpaceX valuation jumps to around $ 74 billion

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk stands at the base of a prototype Starship rocket at the company’s facility in Boca Chica, Texas.

Steve Jurvetson on flickr

SpaceX closed another large round of equity financing last week for $ 850 million, the financing people told CNBC. The company’s valuation rose 60% from the previous round in August to around $ 74 billion. Elon Musk, who also co-founded Tesla, saw insiders and existing investors in his commercial space company selling an additional $ 750 million in a secondary transaction, one respondent said. SpaceX did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

5. Millions in Texas are still without power as new storms strike

Pike Electric Service Trucks line up after a snow storm in Fort Worth, Texas on February 16, 2021. Winter Storm Uri has historically brought cold weather and power outages to Texas as storms with a mixture of freezing temperatures and precipitation swept across 26 states.

Ron Jenkins | Getty Images

Millions of Texas residents were still in the dark Wednesday with no indication of when their service might return when another winter storm hit the southern portion of the nation. A total of 2 to 3 million customers in the US energy capital were without electricity two days after the historic snowfall, and the single-digit temperatures led to an increase in the demand for electricity for heating.

The wholesale prices for electricity and natural gas have risen in the last few days. However, natural gas futures fell early Wednesday. U.S. oil prices continued their spike on Wednesday, gaining more than 1%, rising to over $ 61 a barrel, a level not seen since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.

– The Associated Press contributed to this report. Follow all developments on Wall Street in real time with CNBC Pro’s live market blog. Find out about the latest pandemics on our coronavirus blog.

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How one can Purchase a Actual N95 Masks On-line

How to Buy a Real N95 Mask Online

A year into the coronavirus pandemic, buying a high-performance medical mask online remains downright insane.

The most sought-after mask to protect against Covid-19 was the N95, the gold standard for pandemic protection, as it sits tight and filters out 95 percent of the particles in the air. Then there is the KN95 from China, a mask for medical personnel that also offers high filtration and sits a little looser.

But these masks were anything but easy to buy on the Internet. When the pandemic hit last year, they were immediately in short supply as healthcare workers and governments rushed to get them. The demand was so great that a gray market emerged for them.

But even after the range has improved, it is often not easy to find authentic N95s and KN95s online. This is because there are only a few brand manufacturers. Hence, it can be difficult to know which of the dozen of manufacturers are reliable. And counterfeiters continue to flood the market, even on trusted websites like Amazon.

The result is often frustration when wearing a high performance mask is more important than ever. Last week, federal health officials stressed that we must all have tight-fitting masks because of the rapidly spreading coronavirus variants.

“People don’t know what is legitimate and they don’t know which suppliers are legitimate,” said Anne Miller, executive director of Project N95, a nonprofit that helps people buy coronavirus protection equipment. “We have had this problem since the pandemic began.”

I recently spent hours comparing masks online and almost bought a pack of fakes on Amazon. Fortunately, I avoided falling into the trap and ended up finding legitimate, high quality masks from a trusted online retailer.

Along the way, I learned a lot about how to spot fraudulent mask lists and how to circumvent fake reviews. Here’s how to use real medical masks that will protect you and your loved ones.

My journey began on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website. There I found diagrams of N95 and KN95 masks that the agency tested, including the make, model number, and filtration efficiency.

After some reading, I learned about the tradeoffs between the two types of masks. The N95’s usually have straps that are strapped across the back of the head, which makes them snug-fitting. It can be uncomfortable to wear for long periods of time.

The KN95, approved by the Food and Drug Administration for emergency medical personnel, have ear loops for a tight fit that is slightly more comfortable than an N95. The disadvantage is that a little more air escapes from the KN95 than from the N95.

If you are frequently in high risk areas like hospitals, N95s may be more suitable. However, if you only need a protective mask for occasional use, e.g. B. an occasional visit to the grocery store, KN95 is likely sufficient.

After doing my research, I decided that a KN95 mask from Powecom, a Chinese brand, would be best for my purposes. The mask achieved a filtration efficiency of 99 percent in the CDC tests.

From there I went to Amazon, where I buy everything from dog food to batteries during the pandemic. Then things went wrong.

When I typed “Powecom KN95” into Amazon’s search box, the masks immediately showed up with a rating of 4.5 stars. I quickly clicked “Add to Cart”.

But before checking out, I scrolled down to read the reviews. There were roughly 130 – including a handful of one-star reviews from aggrieved buyers who said the masks were most likely counterfeit. I emptied my shopping cart.

How did I almost buy a fake? Saoud Khalifah, the founder of Fakespot, a company that offers tools to detect fake offers and reviews online, said a third party was likely to have taken control of product offerings and sold fakes to make quick money.

“It’s a bit of a wild west,” he said. “The normal consumers who shop at Amazon do not know that they have just bought a counterfeit mask. This is the biggest critical problem: you think it’s real and all of a sudden you get sick. “

Mr Khalifah presented other examples of questionable masks sold on Amazon:

  • A pack of 50 masks was featured on Amazon as the # 1 new release in women’s fashion scarves this week. Obviously, masks aren’t scarves, which was a giveaway for something wrong. The listing description also replaced all the letters A with accented characters. This was a technique that was used to bypass Amazon’s fraud detection systems, Khalifah said. Amazon removed the list after calling about it.

  • Another pack of 20 masks looked attractive and was described as approved by the CDC. It even had positive reviews with an average of 4.4 stars. However, the reviews indicated that most of the customers received the masks for free, which was likely an incentive to leave positive feedback. A lukewarm review from someone who paid for the product found the masks to be “thin and very, very large.”

  • Mr. Khalifah’s software also found that another pack of 100 masks that had unanimous five-star ratings had reviewers in the past for other brands.

Amazon said in a statement that it bans the sale of counterfeit products and is investing to ensure its guidelines are followed. There were specific guidelines for N95 and KN95 masks, including a procedure for reviewing inventory and taking action for those who have sold counterfeits.

Amazon also said it looked at the questionable Powecom mask I almost bought, as well as the mask advertised as a scarf. There was no evidence that the pack of 20 masks was counterfeit and no comment on the pack of 100 masks.

Mr Khalifah warned that the fakes he spotted on Amazon might as well be found on websites of other large retailers like Walmart and eBay, where third-party sellers can ship products. In order to buy authentic masks, I should be less traditional when shopping online.

Armed with this advice, I continued my search for the Powecom mask.

I visited the manufacturer’s website for steps to verify the authenticity of a mask. To do this, a barcode on the packaging had to be scanned with a telephone camera. I then did a web search for the mask that took me to bonafidemasks.com, an online retailer that shows records that it is an authorized distributor of Powecom masks in the United States.

That was more reassuring. So I ordered a pack of 100 for $ 99. When the package arrived in the mail, I scanned the barcodes to confirm their authenticity. You were the real deal.

Another way I could have gone was to order masks directly from the manufacturer. Verified mask manufacturers like DemeTech in Miami and Prestige Ameritech in Texas sell N95 through their websites.

However, ordering directly from a manufacturer is associated with other challenges. Often times, one has to buy a large amount to reduce costs.

What if you just want to buy a few to try on? Ms. Miller’s Nonprofit Project N95 buys bulk orders of masks and disassembles them so people can buy smaller batches. “It’s a very careful process,” she said.

In earnest.

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Health

Elizabeth Holmes resists authorities efforts to element her CEO life-style

Elizabeth Holmes resists government efforts to detail her CEO lifestyle

Elizabeth Holmes, founder and former executive director of Theranos, arrives for a hearing in the U.S. District Court in the Federal Building of Robert F. Peckham in San Jose, California on Monday, November 4, 2019.

Yichuan Cao | NurPhoto | Getty Images

Elizabeth Holmes’ attorneys strongly opposed the government’s attempts to describe her flamboyant lifestyle in front of a jury, saying the move “risks creating class bias” that are irrelevant to her criminal trial.

Holmes, who faces a dozen fraud charges, earned a salary and accomplishments commensurate with her position as CEO of Theranos, her attorneys wrote in court documents filed late Tuesday.

The government has argued that Holmes’ high-flying lifestyle was fueled by their fraud.

Your lawyers say this is just wrong.

They write that the evidence says nothing about their motive. “If so, a CEO could be said to have a motive for cheating. Rather, the real value of the evidence to the government is to paint a (misleading) picture of Ms. Holmes as a woman, fashion, one prioritized luxury lifestyle and fame and invited a referendum on startup and corporate culture. “

Introducing details of Holmes’ expenses, her lawyers wrote, would be a waste of time, adding that her so-called luxury travel accommodations appear to be approved by the Theranos board and justified by a full itinerary.

“Evidence of the purchase of expensive clothing, makeup, self-care products, and other goods (none of which are allegedly beyond their means) that the government is seeking to introduce through otherwise irrelevant emails from Ms. Holmes’ staff to assistants does not constitute a motive for fraud firm, “wrote Holmes’ lawyers, adding that instead they” are trying to ignite by invoking stereotypes of class and gender “.

Holmes often wore a black turtleneck, an image she cultivated in the print and broadcast media. Her attorneys point out that much of her clothing was bought for work events, adding, “The government ignores the criticism of Ms. Holmes for wearing the same outfit every day.”

Holmes’ attorneys argue that their motive for making money as CEO is “a proposal that can apply to anyone, poor or rich”.

Last month, prosecutors said the fact that Holmes received a variety of benefits, both tangible and intangible, “tends to show that she wanted to cheat in order to obtain those benefits”.

Holmes, a Stanford dropout, had a six-figure salary and a billion dollar stake in Theranos until the company closed in 2018.

One of the issues that emerged in the extensive government files was that Holmes was more motivated by money and fame than revolutionizing the healthcare industry.