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The Most Influential Spreader of Coronavirus Misinformation On-line

The Most Influential Spreader of Coronavirus Misinformation Online

For the past ten years, Dr. Mercola built a huge company to promote natural health regimens, spread and benefit from anti-vaccination content, said researchers who studied its network. In 2017, he filed an affidavit claiming his net worth was “over $ 100 million”.

And instead of saying directly online that vaccines aren’t working, Dr. Mercola’s posts often ask specific questions about her safety and discuss studies that other doctors have refuted. Facebook and Twitter have allowed some of its posts to be kept cautious, and companies have struggled to establish rules to remove nuanced posts.

“He was breathed new life through social media, which he cleverly and ruthlessly exploited to captivate people,” said Imran Ahmed, director of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which investigates misinformation and hate speech. His “Disinformation Dozen” report has been quoted in Congressional hearings and by the White House.

In an email, Dr. Mercola, it is “quite strange for me that I am being referred to as number 1 in disseminating misinformation”. Some of his Facebook posts were only liked by hundreds of people, he said, so he didn’t understand “how the relatively small number of shares in Biden’s multi-billion dollar vaccination campaign could so devastate”.

The efforts against him are political, added Dr. Mercola added, accusing the White House of “illegal censorship through collusion with social media companies.”

He did not elaborate on whether his claims about the coronavirus were real. “I am the lead author of a peer-reviewed publication on vitamin D and the risk of Covid-19 and I have the right to inform the public by sharing my medical research,” he said. He failed to identify the publication, and The Times was unable to verify his claim.

Updated

July 24, 2021, 10:55 a.m. ET

Dr. Mercola is from Chicago and started a small private practice 1985 in Schaumburg, Illinois. He switched to naturopathy in the 1990s and opened his main website Mercola.com to share his treatments, cures and advice. The website urges people to “take control of your health”.

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Work flexibility ‘right here to remain’ in post-Covid world, says director at three Fortune 500 firms

Work flexibility ‘here to stay’ in post-Covid world, says director at three Fortune 500 companies

Companies are monitoring the spread of the delta Covid variant as they adapt return-to-office plans and prioritize giving flexibility to employees, a board member at three Fortune 500 companies told CNBC on Friday.

“I believe there’s going to continue to be hybrid offerings. … Flexibility is here to stay, especially if you want to be competitive for talent,” said Shellye Archambeau, a director at Verizon, Nordstrom and Roper Technologies. She’s also a former CEO of MetricStream, which makes governance, risk management and compliance software.

Archambeau said that business’ reopening concerns are being driven by the highly transmissible delta variant, first discovered in India. It’s now the dominant strain of Covid in the United States and causing cases and deaths to increase again, particularly across largely unvaccinated communities.

“Companies are watching the data very carefully,” Archambeau said. “What I’m seeing is they’re trying to remain flexible, creating the optionality for employees to come back to work but still watching the numbers and how the rates are going.”

Archambeau’s remarks come as major companies try to figure out how to safely return to the office.

Few companies are mandating employees to be fully vaccinated before returning to the office, Archambeau said. Instead, she said companies are strongly encouraging and trying to make it easier for employees to get vaccinated, even making it voluntary to return to the office and encouraging mask-wearing and physical distancing protocols for unvaccinated workers.

According to a survey conducted in April by Arizona State University with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, more than 60% of companies in the U.S. will require proof of vaccination from their employees while 44% will require all employees to get vaccinated and 31% will encourage vaccinations.

Archambeau, a strategic advisor to the president of ASU, said that peer pressure will soon begin to play a bigger role in pushing employees to get vaccinated.

More employees may also return to the office when children get vaccinated, allowing them to continually go to school, participate in in-person activities and rely on child-care services.

“I think as time goes through, companies are absolutely strongly encouraging employees to be vaccinated,” Archambeau said. “The way in which they’ll be able to work, the kinds of roles they’ll be able to play, I think, in time will be affected by whether they’re vaccinated or not. … People will want to be vaccinated in order to actually do well within the company.”

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They Waited, They Anxious, They Stalled. This Week, They Acquired the Shot.

They Waited, They Worried, They Stalled. This Week, They Got the Shot.

CHICAGO – They admitted they could have shown up months ago. Many were content to finally do the right thing. Some grumbled that they had no other choice.

In a single day last week, more than half a million people in the United States flocked to high schools, pharmacies, and buses being converted into mobile clinics. Then they rolled up their sleeves and got their coronavirus vaccines.

These are the Americans who are being vaccinated at this moment of the pandemic: the reluctant, the fearful, the hesitant.

In dozens of interviews Thursday in eight states, at vaccination clinics, drug stores, and pop-up mobile sites, Americans who had finally arrived for their vaccinations offered a snapshot of a nation at a crossroads – facing a new surge in the virus but just slowly embrace the vaccines that might stop it.

The people who are being vaccinated now are not among the eager crowds that rushed to early appointments. But even they are not decidedly against vaccinations in the group.

Instead, they occupy a middle ground: they have been unwilling to get a coronavirus vaccine for months until something or someone – a stubborn family member, a job requirement, a growing sense that the shot was safe – convinced them otherwise.

How many people ultimately join this group and how quickly could determine the course of the coronavirus in the United States.

Some of the newly vaccinated said they made the decision abruptly, even casually, after months of inactivity. A woman in Portland, Oregon waited for an inducement before getting her syringe, and when she heard a pop-up clinic at a farmers market were giving out $ 150 gift certificates, she decided it was time . A 60-year-old man in Los Angeles came over spontaneously to be vaccinated when he noticed that, for once, there was no line in a clinic. One construction worker said his work schedule made it difficult to get the shot.

Many people said they arrived after strong pressure from family or friends for a vaccine.

“‘You’re going to die. Get the Covid vaccine,” Grace Carper, 15, recently told her mother, Nikki White of Urbandale, Iowa, as they discussed when they would get their vaccinations. Ms. White, 38, woke up on Thursday up and said she would. “If you want to get your vaccine, get up,” Ms. White said to her daughter, who was looking forward to the vaccination, and the couple went to a Hy-Vee supermarket together.

Others were moved by practical considerations: plans to attend college that required students to be vaccinated, a desire to hang out with high school classmates, or a job requiring unvaccinated staff to wear masks. Their responses suggest that mandates or increased restrictions on the unvaccinated, increasingly debated by employers and government officials, could make a significant difference.

Audrey Sliker, 18, of Southington, Connecticut, said she was given a chance because the New York governor announced that all students attending the State University of New York schools were required to do so. She plans to be a newbie at SUNY Cobleskill this fall.

“I just don’t like needles in general,” she said, walking out of a white tent that housed a mobile vaccination center in Middlefield, Conn. “So it’s more like, ‘Do I have to get them?'”

Many of the respondents described their decisions in personal, somewhat complicated terms.

Willie Pullen, 71, was nibbling on a bag of popcorn as he left a vaccination center in Chicago, one of the few people to show up that day. He wasn’t exactly against the vaccines. Almost everyone in his life was already vaccinated, he said, and although he was at greater risk because of his age, he believed he was healthy and strong enough to think about it for a while.

What drove him to a high school on the West Side of Chicago where free vaccines were being given was the illness of an aging friend’s mother. Mr. Pullen wanted to visit her. He felt it was irresponsible to do this without vaccination.

“I persevered,” said Mr. Pullen. “I had reservations about the safety of the vaccine and the government that is doing it. I just wanted to wait and see. “

The campaign to vaccinate Americans across the board against the coronavirus began with a roaring, high-energy surge earlier this year as millions of people were vaccinated every day and coveted vaccination dates were celebrated with happy selfies on social media. Efforts peaked on April 13 when an average of 3.38 million doses were administered in the United States. The Biden government aims to have 70 percent of American adults at least partially vaccinated by July 4th.

Updated

July 23, 2021, 10:06 p.m. ET

But the vaccinations have been falling steadily since mid-April and have remained on a plateau in the last few weeks. Weeks after the July 4th benchmark passed, effort has now decreased, distributing an average of about 537,000 doses per day – a decrease of about 84 percent from the high.

About 68.7 percent of American adults have received at least one injection. Conservative commentators and politicians have questioned the safety of the three vaccines the Food and Drug Administration has approved for emergency use, and in some parts of the country opposition to vaccination is politically linked. An analysis of the New York Times vaccine and voter records in each county of the United States found that both willingness to receive a coronavirus vaccine and actual vaccination rates in counties where a majority of residents voted to re-elect has, on average, Donald J. Trump votes lower.

Despite the delayed vaccination efforts, there are indications that alarming headlines about a new surge in coronavirus cases and the highly contagious Delta variant could lead more Americans to consider vaccination. On Friday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said there had been “encouraging data” showing that the five states with the highest case numbers – Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri and Nevada – also had higher vaccination rates.

In Florida, a Sarasota County clinic was quiet, a brightly lit waiting area full of mostly empty chairs. Several people came in, often no more than an hour or two in an hour. Lately they are vaccinating fewer than 30 people a day there.

Elysia Emanuele, 42, paralegal, came for an injection. One factor in her decision was the rising number of cases in the state, which she watched with concern.

“If everything went smoothly, if we’d shut down and do what we had to do and it was seemingly wiped out,” she said, “I think I probably would have gotten the vaccine less.”

In the shadow of a freeway underpass in South Los Angeles, volunteers and potential vaccinees attempted to chat over the roar of passing cars.

Ronald Gilbert, 60, said he doesn’t really believe in vaccines and has never been a fan of needles, but with an increase in cases he argued that “it is better to be on the safe side”.

Understand the state of vaccine mandates in the United States

“I feel better now if I do this seriously,” he said. “I’m going to run like a rooster, chest up, like, ‘Do you have the vaccine? I got the vaccine. ‘”

News of the Delta variant also changed the mind of Josue Lopez, 33, who hadn’t planned on getting a vaccine after his entire family tested positive for the coronavirus in December.

“I thought I was immune, but with this variant, if it’s more dangerous, it might not be enough,” he said. “Even now, I’m not sure it’s safe.”

At a vaccination site at Malcolm X College in Chicago, Sabina Richter, one of the workers there, said it used to be easy to find people to get injected. More recently, they had to offer incentives: passes to an amusement park in the northern suburbs and Lollapalooza.

“Some people come in and still hesitate,” she said. “We have to fight for each of them.”

Cherie Lockhart, an employee at a Milwaukee care facility for the elderly and disabled, said she was concerned about the vaccines because she didn’t trust a medical system she believed had always treated blacks differently.

She was not a vaccine opponent, she said, but just hesitated until she could be reassured. Her mother finally won her over.

“My mom has never steered me wrong,” said Ms. Lockhart, 35. “She said, ‘I feel like this is right in my heart.’ So I prayed about it. And finally I went with my guide light. “

Many of the people who checked for vaccinations said they wanted to see how the vaccines affected the Americans who were rushing to get them early.

“I know people who got it and they didn’t get sick, that’s why,” said Lisa Thomas, 45, a home nurse from Portland, Ore. “I haven’t heard of any case that anyone has been injured.” of it, and there is a lot to benefit from. “

For Cindy Adams, who works for a Des Moines insurance company, the requirement of her job, as an unvaccinated person, was wearing a mask that forced her to go to the Polk County Health Department’s driving clinic for her first dose of Pfizer BioNTech vaccine.

Ms. Adams, 52, said she was concerned about possible long-term effects of the vaccines. But now her husband, children, and most of her extended family have been vaccinated, as have most of their staff.

“I’m just sick of wearing the mask,” said Ms. Adams. “We had an event yesterday and I had to wear it for five hours because I was with a lot of people. And I was sick of it.

“Everyone else is healthy and hasn’t had any serious side effects, so I decided to join the crowd.”

Julie Bosman reported from Chicago. The coverage included Matt Craig from Los Angeles, Elizabeth Djinis from Sarasota, Florida, Timmy Facciola from Middlefield, Connecticut, Ann Hinga Klein from Des Moines, Emily Shetler from Portland, Oregon, and Dan Simmons from Milwaukee.

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Covid circumstances are rising once more in all 50 states throughout U.S. as delta variant tightens its grip

Covid cases are rising again in all 50 states across U.S. as delta variant tightens its grip

Covid cases are on the rise in all 50 states and the District of Columbia as the Delta variant spreads rapidly in the US and the virus once again tightens its grip.

The U.S. reports an average of about 43,700 new cases per day over the past week – well below pandemic highs but up 65% in the past seven days and nearly three times what it was two weeks ago, data compiled by Johns Hopkins University were indicates. Cases hit a 15-month low in late June before starting to rise again as fewer people were vaccinated and the more contagious Delta variant caught on in the country.

Vaccination rates peaked in April, at more than 3 million vaccinations per day, but have declined significantly in recent months to around 530,000 per day, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Florida and Nevada reported the highest daily average of new cases per capita for the past week, all of which are at least twice the US rate.

Each of these states also have vaccination rates below statewide levels, with the largest gap visible in Louisiana, where 47.7% of the eligible population ages 12 and older received vaccination or more, compared with 65.9% across the country.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, hospital admissions for Covid patients have increased by 32% compared to a week ago. The number of daily Covid deaths, which typically lag a few weeks or more behind a surge in case numbers, has increased, but not at the same pace as cases or hospitalizations. Many Americans who are most susceptible to the virus now also have some level of protection, with 89% of seniors having at least one vaccination.

“The death toll has not increased because we have done an incredible job to fully vaccinate the populations most likely to die from Covid-19, especially those over 65 and nursing home residents,” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California at San Francisco, said in an interview. “The deaths are also lagging behind the infection rate in some cases, but I also assume that the death rate will not change.”

The overwhelming majority of severe Covid cases – 97% of hospital admissions and 99.5% of Covid deaths – occur in those who are not vaccinated, U.S. surgeon general Vivek Murthy told reporters at a White House briefing Thursday .

President Joe Biden and CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky have both described the current state of the outbreak as “a pandemic of the unvaccinated”.

US officials are urging Americans to get vaccinated against the Delta variant, which Walensky says is one of the most contagious respiratory diseases scientists have ever seen. With 68.6% of the adult population at least partially vaccinated, the US still hasn’t met Biden’s July fourth goal of 70% of Americans 18 years of age and older to receive one or more vaccinations.

The variant is highly contagious, mainly because people infected with the Delta strain can carry up to 1,000 times more virus in their nasal passages than those infected with the original strain, according to new data.

“The Delta variant is more aggressive and much more transmissible than previously circulating strains,” Walensky told reporters at a briefing Thursday. “It’s one of the most contagious respiratory viruses we know and that I’ve seen in my 20-year career.”

Local officials across the country are now asking Americans to return to wearing masks indoors. Several California and Nevada counties are now advising all residents to wear masks in public indoor spaces, regardless of whether they are vaccinated or not. Local leaders in at least three other states have reintroduced mask mandates, issued face-covering recommendations, or threatened the return of strict public health limits for all residents – despite CDC guidelines that vaccinated individuals do not use these protocols in most settings must follow.

“The easiest and best and most effective way to prevent a new variant from emerging and destroy the existing Delta variant is to get everyone vaccinated,” said Dr. White House Chief Medical Officer Anthony Fauci in an interview with CNBC on Wednesday.

– CNBC’s Bob Towey contributed to the coverage.

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Biden Officers Now Count on Weak People to Want Booster Pictures

Biden Officials Now Expect Vulnerable Americans to Need Booster Shots

WASHINGTON – Biden government health officials increasingly believe that vulnerable populations will need a booster dose even as research continues into how long coronavirus vaccines will remain effective.

Senior officials now say they believe that people over 65 or with compromised immune systems will most likely need a third vaccination from Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna, two vaccines based on the same technology that were used to vaccinate the vast majority of Americans until now. That’s a significant shift from a few weeks ago when the government said there wasn’t enough evidence to support boosters.

On Thursday, a key official with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the agency is looking into ways to give immune-compromised patients a third dose before regulators expand emergency approval for coronavirus vaccines, a move soon for Pfizer vaccination could be done.

Dr. Amanda Cohn, the chief medical officer of the CDC’s immunization division, told an agency advisory committee that officials are “actively seeking ways” to give certain people access to booster vaccinations “sooner than any possible change in government decisions”.

“So stay tuned,” she added.

The growing consensus within the government that at least some Americans need a booster dose is in part to do with research suggesting that the Pfizer vaccine is less effective against the coronavirus after about six months. More than half of those fully vaccinated in the United States to date have received Pfizer’s vaccine in two doses three weeks apart.

Pfizer’s ongoing global study of its clinical trial participants shows the vaccine’s effectiveness against symptomatic infections drops from a peak of 95 percent to 84 percent four to six months after the second dose, the company said.

Data from the Israeli government, which has fully vaccinated more than half of its population with doses of Pfizer since January, also suggests a downward trend in efficacy over time, though administrative officials view these data cautiously due to the large margin of error.

The latest figures from the Israeli Ministry of Health, released later this week, suggest that Pfizer’s vaccine was only 39 percent effective in preventing infections in the country in late June and early July, compared with 95 percent from January through April.

The vaccine remained more than 90 percent effective in preventing serious illnesses and almost as effective in preventing hospital stays. Israel began offering a third dose of Pfizer to citizens with severely compromised immune systems on July 12th.

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, who heads the infectious diseases division of the National Institutes of Health, said he was surprised at the apparently steep drop in the effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine suggested by the Israeli data. He said he wanted to compare it to data the CDC has collected from cohorts of thousands of people in the United States. “People raise their eyebrows a little,” he said.

While other questions abound, senior administrative officials said it was becoming increasingly clear that the vaccines would not provide unlimited immunity to the virus and that at least some people might need booster sessions nine months after their first vaccination. The government has already purchased more than enough vaccine to deliver the third dose of Pfizer and Moderna and has been quietly preparing to step up distribution efforts if necessary.

With so little data left public, many health officials and experts have spoken cautiously about booster vaccinations. Dr. Paul A. Offit, a member of the Food and Drug Administration’s external advisory committee of vaccine experts, said an increase in mild or moderate cases of Covid-19 in people who have been vaccinated does not necessarily mean that a booster is needed.

“The goal of this vaccine is not to prevent mild or mild, moderate infectious diseases,” he said. “The aim is to prevent hospitalization until death. At the moment this vaccine has withstood that. “

Updated

July 23, 2021, 10:06 p.m. ET

An early prospect of a third dose could also act as a deterrent against vaccination, warn other health experts. If Americans feel that immunity to the vaccines is short-lived, they are less likely to get their first vaccination.

“We don’t want people to believe that the vaccines are not effective when you talk about booster vaccinations,” said Dr. Fauci at a hearing before Congress on Tuesday. “You are highly effective.”

Among vaccine manufacturers, Pfizer has been particularly proactive in sharing its data with the government. But the government was stunned by the company’s public announcement earlier this month that it was planning to seek emergency FDA approval for a booster vaccination.

The company said early data from its booster study showed neutralizing antibody levels in clinical trial participants who received a third dose six months after the second was five to 10 times higher than those in recipients who received two doses.

Fearing that the American public would get the wrong news, the FDA and CDC responded with an unusual public statement: “Americans who have been fully vaccinated don’t need a booster right now.” They added, “We are prepared for booster doses, if and when science shows they are needed. “

Ordinarily, the FDA would approve the use of a booster, perhaps after a meeting of its external advisory committee. Then the CDC, which has its own advisory committee, would have to officially recommend it, said Dr. Offit.

Understand the state of vaccine mandates in the United States

But if the FDA fully licensed a vaccine, doctors would have much more leeway to prescribe a booster to their patients. Some health experts believe Pfizer could get this approval by fall this year.

At the CDC advisory board meeting on Thursday, Dr. Cohn, the medical director of the vaccines division, suggested that it might be possible to offer booster shots to people with compromised immune systems through a trial study or other means without waiting for the FDA

Dr. Camille Kotton, an infectious disease expert at Massachusetts General Hospital, told the panel that some patients, especially those who are more educated or “able to look after their own health care,” manage to get a third dose on their own, despite lack of green light from the government.

“Many took matters into their own hands,” she says. “I’m worried they might do this unattended,” she said, while the doctors’ hands are tied due to the lack of regulatory approval.

According to the CDC, people with a weakened immune system make up 2.7 percent of the population and include cancer, organ or stem cell transplants or HIV.

At the Senate Health Committee hearing Tuesday, several senators questioned administration health officials about how quickly they would act on the booster issue. Senator Mitt Romney, a Republican from Utah, said he was unhappy that officials couldn’t come up with a better schedule.

Senator Richard M. Burr, a Republican from North Carolina, noted that Israel is already offering a third chance to some of its most vulnerable citizens. “Why don’t we make the same decisions?” he asked.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the CDC, testified that scientists studied the effectiveness of the vaccines in tens of thousands of people, including nursing home residents and more than 5,000 key workers.

“Fortunately, we expect this to wear off, not go down,” she said of her effectiveness. “As we see that fade, we will – this will be our time to act.”

Pfizer is expected to soon publish its clinical studies on immunity declining and the benefits of booster shoots in articles in a peer-reviewed journal. Moderna hasn’t released any data on booster studies, officials said.

Johnson & Johnson’s single-use vaccine has so far played a minor role in the country’s vaccination campaign. Clinical trial data on the mode of action of this two-shot vaccine is expected next month.

Noah Weiland contributed the reporting.

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American Ballet Theatre government director on fall return after Covid halt

American Ballet Theatre executive director on fall return after Covid halt

The American Ballet Theater – the country’s national ballet company – has announced that it will return to the stage in New York City this October, a year after indoor performances were suspended due to Covid.

“We can’t wait to see ABT in the Lincoln Center theaters that are our home,” Kara Medoff Barnett, ABT’s Executive Director, told CNBC’s Worldwide Exchange on Friday. “We know our New York fans are excited to see ABT performers back on stage.”

ABT has just completed a cross-country tour that took 20 of its 84 dancers along with 28 support crews to eight different states. The company has performed at socially distant outdoor venues, and Barnett said it will learn from the protocols it developed this summer to ensure a safe indoor season this fall.

“We want to continue our commitment to the safety of our artists, staff and viewers,” said Barnett. “That was certainly the most important thing when we planned our outdoor tour to keep the audience out while we have the summer sun.”

American Ballet Theater dancers perform the company premiere of “La Follia Variations,” choreographed by Lauren Lovette and costumes by Victor Glemaud, during a dress rehearsal for the American Ballet Theater’s production of “Uniting in Movement” at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts, Costa Mesa on Thursday, April 22, 2021.

Leonard Ortiz | MediaNews Group | Orange County Register via Getty Images

Since its last fall season in 2019, ABT has had to cancel its personal appearances and switch to digital programs, like many ballet companies across the country and worldwide.

Barnett said the pandemic was a time of adjustment and learning for the entire company. “We always think, especially in the last year and a half, what is Plan B, Plan C,” she added. “We are agile in more ways than one.”

During Lincoln Center season, which occurs the last two weeks of October, performances may require proof of vaccination or a negative Covid test, depending on guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The tickets will be refunded by 12 noon on the day of the performance if there are last-minute changes for spectators.

“We work very closely with our Lincoln Center venues. We work very closely with our medical advisor. And we are determined to find ways that we can continue the mission of this company, which has been bringing extraordinary art to audiences for 81 years.” can track. ” “Barnett told CNBC.

Performances this season include the classical ballet “Giselle” as well as three of the 22 works developed over the past year while the dancers have been divided into 11 creative bubbles.

“We’re bringing three of the works that were created in these residential bubbles to the New York audience to have their live premieres on stage,” said Barnett. “They had digital premieres, they had outdoor premieres all over the country – but now we’re bringing them to Lincoln Center.”

The “ABT Across America” ​​performances, which ended on Wednesday in New York City, were mostly free. But for a company that generated 36% of its revenue from ticket sales in 2018, the return of a full program is essential to future success and longevity.

Barnett isn’t worried about the recovery period and says she is very optimistic about the demand for live performances. “I think there is so much pent-up demand for the performing arts, so much pent-up demand for joint activities and experiences and the joy of celebrating together. In fact, I think we can assume we have the biggest audience we’ve had “seen in years.”

“We had 6,000 people, 8,000 people in these parks watching ballet under the stars,” added Barnett, referring to the cross-country tour. “I think the audience is ready, they missed us and they really want to come back.”

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Israeli Knowledge Suggests Potential Waning in Effectiveness of Pfizer Vaccine

Israeli Data Suggests Possible Waning in Effectiveness of Pfizer Vaccine

As Israel struggles with a new surge of coronavirus cases, its health ministry reported on Thursday that although effectiveness of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine remains high against severe illness, its protection against infection by the coronavirus may have diminished significantly compared with this winter and early spring.

Analyzing the government’s national health statistics, researchers estimated that the Pfizer shot was just 39 percent effective against preventing infection in the country in late June and early July, compared with 95 percent from January to early April. In both time periods, however, the shot was more than 90 percent effective in preventing severe disease.

Israeli scientists cautioned that the new study is much smaller than the first and that it measured cases in a narrower window of time. As a result, a much larger range of uncertainties flank their estimates, which could also be skewed by a variety of other factors.

Dr. Ran Balicer, the chairman of Israel’s Covid-19 National Expert Advisory Panel, said that the challenges of making accurate estimates of vaccine effectiveness were “immense.” He said that more careful analysis of the raw data was needed to understand what is going on.

“I think that data should be taken very cautiously because of small numbers,” said Eran Segal, a biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science who is a consultant to the Israeli government on vaccines.

Nevertheless, the new estimates are raising concern both in Israel and elsewhere, including the United States, that the vaccine might be losing some of its effectiveness. Possible reasons include the rise of the highly contagious Delta variant or a waning of protection from the shots over time.

Israel launched an aggressive campaign with the Pfizer vaccine in January, and the country has achieved one of the highest vaccination rates in the world, with 58 percent of the population fully vaccinated. At the start of the campaign, government researchers began estimating how much the shot reduced people’s risk of getting Covid-19.

They published their results in May, based on records from Jan. 24 to April 3: They estimated that the vaccine was 95 percent effective in preventing infection from the coronavirus in the country. In other words, the risk of getting Covid-19 was nearly 100 percent reduced in vaccinated people compared to unvaccinated ones. The researchers also estimated that the vaccine was 97.5 percent effective against severe disease.

From a peak of over 8,600 cases a day in January, cases plummeted in the following months until only a few dozen people were testing positive on a daily basis across Israel. The vaccine most likely played a part in that drop, along with the tight restrictions that the government imposed on travel and meetings.

Israel began relaxing its restrictions in the spring. In late June, the cases surged again. Now, over a thousand people are testing positive each day, leading Israel to restore some restrictions this week.

Updated 

July 23, 2021, 2:47 p.m. ET

Some of the people that tested positive for the coronavirus in the new surge were fully vaccinated. Epidemiologists had expected such breakthrough infections, as they do with all vaccines.

Researchers at the Ministry of Health took another look at the effectiveness of the vaccine, limiting their analysis to the surge from June 6 to July 3. In that period, they estimated, the effectiveness of the vaccine at preventing infections was down to 64 percent.

More recently, they ran another analysis. This time, they looked at cases between June 20 and July 17. In that period, they estimated, the vaccine’s effectiveness was even lower: just 39 percent against infection.

Still, they estimated that the vaccine’s effectiveness against serious disease remained high, at 91.4 percent.

If a vaccine has an effectiveness of 39 percent that does not mean that 61 percent of people who got vaccinated were infected by the coronavirus. Instead, it means the risk of getting infected is 39 percent less among vaccinated people compared to unvaccinated. So even at that lower percentage, the data shows that vaccinated people have significantly less risk of getting infected than unvaccinated people.

The small number of people in the latest study means that the true effectiveness might be lower or higher. Making the numbers even more uncertain is the fact that the new surge has not yet spread evenly across the whole country. Travelers who have picked up the highly contagious Delta variant have brought it back to neighborhoods where vaccination rates are relatively high.

Understand the State of Vaccine Mandates in the U.S.

The new outbreaks have yet to swamp communities of Orthodox Jews or Arab Israelis, where vaccination rates are lower. That imbalance may make the vaccine seem less effective than it really is.

Also, the ages of people vaccinated vary significantly during the different time periods studied. For example, the people who got their vaccines in January were different than those who got them in April in one major respect: They were over 60. If more people who got vaccinated in January are now getting infected, it may not have to do with the vaccine itself, but with their advanced age — or some other factor that researchers have yet to take into consideration.

Still, the new estimates have prompted some researchers to ponder what might be happening to the vaccines. The Delta variant grew more common in Israel in June, raising the possibility that it might be good at evading the vaccine.

In Britain, where Delta began surging earlier in the year, researchers estimated the effectiveness of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against the variant, based on a review of everyone in the United Kingdom who got vaccinated up till May 16. On Wednesday, they reported in the New England Journal of Medicine that it is 88 percent effective against symptomatic Covid-19.

Another possibility is that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is gradually becoming less potent. The Ministry of Health researchers found that people who were inoculated in January were having breakthrough infections at a greater rate than people vaccinated in April.

If the vaccine is indeed waning after six months, the implications can be enormous. It can influence the Israeli government’s current deliberations about whether to give people a third shot. Dr. Segal says that if the vaccines are indeed losing some of their potency, then it might be wise to roll out boosters to fight the Delta-driven outbreak.

“If a third booster is safe and if it seems that it really would give a benefit, I think this is something we should definitely do as quickly as possible,” he said.

Dr. Balicer, who is also the chief innovation officer at Clalit Health Services, said that he and his colleagues are working on their own study on the effectiveness of the vaccine in Israel, using Clalit’s health care records to take into account such confounding factors.

“I think there is definitely some waning, but not as much as hypothesized based on the crude data, and it’s not just waning to blame,” Dr. Balicer said. “We are now trying to figure it out in a clean way.”

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Pfizer Covid vaccine 39% efficient in Israel, prevents extreme sickness

Pfizer Covid vaccine 39% effective in Israel, prevents severe illness

People will be given a dose of the Pfizer BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine at a Covid-19 mass vaccination center on Rabin Square in Tel Aviv, Israel on Monday January 4, 2020.

Kobi Wolf | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Pfizer and BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine is only 39% effective in Israel, where the Delta variant is the dominant strain, but still offers strong protection against serious illness and hospitalization, according to a new report from the country’s health ministry.

The efficacy figure, based on an unspecified number of people between June 20 and July 17, is down from a previous estimate of 64% two weeks ago and is in conflict with data from the UK that showed the Vaccination was 88% effective against symptoms, disease caused by the variant.

However, the two-dose vaccine still works very well in preventing serious illness, showing 88% effectiveness against hospitalization and 91% effectiveness against serious illness, according to Israeli data released Thursday.

“We have to keep in mind that these vaccines can become less effective over time,” said Dr. Isaac Bogoch, professor of infectious diseases at the University of Toronto.

He stressed that the syringes are still highly effective in preventing serious infections and helping hospital systems not get overwhelmed in the colder months. “We are still in the Covid era and anything can happen,” he said.

“We have to be prepared and we have to be agile that at some point people will need a booster,” he added. “This close monitoring, which is happening in places like Israel, the UK and other parts of the world, will be very helpful in moving policy forward when and when we need boosters.”

The Delta variant, which is already present in more than 104 countries, worries US health officials as they detect more breakthrough infections in fully vaccinated people, even though they are milder.

The Chief Medical Officer of the White House, Dr. Anthony Fauci said people who are fully vaccinated should consider wearing masks indoors as a precaution against the rapidly spreading variant in the US

“Of course we don’t want to see that,” said Fauci on Wednesday, referring to the so-called breakthrough infections. “This virus is very different from the viruses and variants that we have previously experienced. It has an exceptional ability to transmit from person to person.”

Dr. Paul Offit, who advises the FDA on Covid vaccines, said that while the vaccines still offer great protection against serious illness and death, they may not work as well against mild cases or the transmission of the disease to others.

He urged more Americans to get vaccinated, saying Delta was a highly contagious virus and the vaccinations would help people get seriously ill. Currently, less than half of the US population is fully vaccinated, according to data compiled by the CDC.

“This is rich and fertile soil for the virus to continue to reproduce and keep creating variants that may become increasingly resistant to vaccines or natural infections,” he said.

The report from Israel, which began vaccinating its people before many other countries, is likely to back up the arguments made by drug manufacturers that people will eventually need to be given a booster to protect themselves from new variants.

Pfizer said earlier this month that immunity is waning from its two-dose vaccine and is now planning to seek approval from the Food and Drug Administration for a booster dose. However, federal officials say that fully vaccinated Americans do not currently require additional vaccinations.

In a statement to CNBC, Pfizer said it remains confident that its two-dose regimen will protect against the coronavirus and its variants.

Still, it said a third dose might help after analysis from its Phase III study showed a decrease in effectiveness against symptomatic infections after four to six months.

“Initial data from a third dose of the current vaccine shows that a booster dose given at least 6 months after the second dose induces high neutralization titers against wild-type and beta that are 5 to 10 times higher than after two primary doses. “Said the company.

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Testing Britney Spears: Restoring Rights Can Be Uncommon and Tough

Testing Britney Spears: Restoring Rights Can Be Rare and Difficult

Her voice quaking with anger and despair, the pop star Britney Spears has asked repeatedly in court to be freed from the conservatorship that has controlled her money and personal life for 13 years. What’s more, she asked the judge to sever the arrangement without making her undergo a psychological evaluation.

It’s a demand that legal experts say is unlikely to be granted. The mental health assessment is usually the pole star in a constellation of evidence that a judge considers in deciding whether to restore independence.

Its underlying purpose is to determine whether the conditions that led to the imposition of the conservatorship have stabilized or been resolved.

The evaluation process, which uneasily melds mental health criteria with legal standards, illustrates why the exit from strict oversight is difficult and rare. State laws are often ambiguous. And their application can vary from county to county, judge to judge, case to case.

Yes and no. A judge looks for what, in law, is called “capacity.” The term generally refers to benchmarks in a person’s functional and cognitive ability as well as their vulnerability to harm or coercion.

Under California law, which governs Ms. Spears’s case, a person deemed to have capacity can articulate risks and benefits in making decisions about medical care, wills, marriage and contracts (such as hiring a lawyer), and can feed, clothe and shelter themselves.

Annette Swain, a Los Angeles psychologist who does neuropsychological assessments, said that because someone doesn’t always show good judgment, it doesn’t mean they lack capacity. “We all can make bad decisions at many points in our lives,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean that we should have our rights taken away.”

Even so, Ms. Spears’s professional and financial successes do not directly speak to whether she has regained “legal mental capacity,” which she was found to lack in 2008, after a series of public breakdowns, breathlessly captured by the media. At that time, a judge ruled that Ms. Spears, who did not appear in court, was so fragile that a conservatorship was warranted.

Judges authorize conservatorships usually for one of three broad categories: a severe psychiatric breakdown; a chronic, worsening condition like dementia; or an intellectual or physical disability that critically impairs function.

Markers indicating a person has regained capacity appear to set a low bar. But in practice, the bar can be quite high.

“‘Restored to capacity’ before the psychotic break? Or the age the person is now? That expression is fraught with importing value judgment,” said Robert Dinerstein, a disability rights law professor at American University.

Records detailing grounds for the petition from Ms. Spears’s father, Jamie Spears, to become his daughter’s conservator are sealed. A few factors suggest the judge at the outset regarded the situation as serious. She appointed conservators to oversee Ms. Spears’s personal life as well as finances. She also ruled that Ms. Spears could not hire her own lawyer, though a lawyer the singer consulted at the time said he thought she was capable of that.

Earlier this month, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Brenda Penny said Ms. Spears could retain her own counsel.

Yes. Some states, like California, detail basic functional abilities. Others do not. Colorado acknowledges modern advances like “appropriate and reasonably available technological assistance.” Illinois looks for “mental deterioration, physical incapacity, mental illness, developmental disability, gambling, idleness, debauchery, excessive use of intoxicants or drugs.”

Sally Hurme of the National Guardianship Association noted: “You could be found to be incapacitated in one state but not in another.”

Ideally, a forensic psychiatrist or a psychologist with expertise in neuropsychological assessments. But some states just specify “physician.” Psychiatrists tend to place greater weight on diagnoses; psychologists emphasize tests that measure cognitive abilities. Each reviews medical records and interviews family, friends and others.

Assessments can extend over several days. They range widely in depth and duration.

Eric Freitag, who conducts neuropsychological assessments in the Bay Area, said he prefers interviewing people at home where they are often more at ease, and where he can evaluate the environment. He asks about financial literacy: bill-paying, health insurance, even counting out change.

Assessing safety is key. Dr. Freitag will ask what the person would do if a fire broke out. “I’d call my daughter,” one of his subjects replied.

Ms. Spears has not been able to choose her evaluators in the past because the conservator has the power to make those decisions. However, if she moves to dissolve the conservatorship, she can select the evaluator, to help build her case. If the conservator, her father, opposes her petition and objects to her selection, he could nominate a candidate to perform an additional assessment. Ms. Spears would likely pick up both tabs as costs of the conservatorship.

To avoid a bitter battle of experts and the appearance that an assessor hired by either camp would be inherently biased — plus the strain of two evaluations on Ms. Spears — the judge could try to get both sides to agree to an independent, court-appointed doctor.

Many states explicitly say that a diagnosis of a severe mental health disorder is not, on its own, evidence that a person should remain in conservatorship.

Stuart Zimring, an attorney in Los Angeles County who specializes in elderlaw and special needs trusts, noted that he once represented a physician with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder who was under a conservatorship. The doctor’s rights were eventually restored after he proved he was attending counseling sessions and taking medication.

“It was a joyous day when the conservatorship was terminated,” said Mr. Zimring. “He got to practice medicine again, under supervision.”

The association between the diagnosis of a severe mental disorder and a determination of incapacity troubles Dr. Swain, the Los Angeles psychologist.

“Whatever they ended up diagnosing Britney Spears with, was it of such severity that she did not understand the decisions that she had to make, that she could not provide adequate self-care?” she asked. “Where do you draw that line? It’s a moving target.”

No, but judges usually do.

In most states, when a judge approves a conservatorship, which constrains a person’s autonomy, the evidence has to be “clear and convincing,” a rigorous standard just below the standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

But when a conservatee wants those rights restored, many experts believe the standard should be more lenient.

Some states indeed apply a lower standard to end a conservatorship. In California, a judge can do so by finding it is more likely than not (“preponderance of evidence”) that the conservatee has capacity. But some states say that the evidence to earn a ticket out still has to be “clear and convincing.”

Most states do not even set a standard.

“There’s an underlying assumption that if you can get the process right, everything would be fine and we wouldn’t be depriving people of rights,” said Jennifer Mathis, deputy legal director of the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law. “Our take is that the process is fundamentally broken and that we shouldn’t be using guardianship in so many cases.”

Yes and no. “Judges are haunted by people they have had in front of them who have been released and disaster happens,” said Victoria Haneman, a trusts and estates law professor at Creighton University. “So they take a conservative approach to freedom.”

Describing the Kafkaesque conundrum of conservatorship, Zoe Brennan-Krohn, a disabilities rights lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, said: “If she’s doing great, the system is working and should continue. If she is making choices others disagree with, then she’s unreliable and she needs the system.”

Or, as Kristin Booth Glen, a former New York State judge who oversaw such cases and now works to reform the system, put it, “Conservatorship and guardianship are like roach motels: you can check in but you can’t check out.”

At times. Judge Glen once approved the termination of a guardianship of a young woman originally deemed to have the mental acuity of a 7-year-old. After three years of thoughtful interventions, the woman, since married and raising two children, had become able to participate fully in her life. She relied on a team for “supported decision making,” which Judge Glen called “a less restrictive alternate to the Draconian loss of liberty” of guardianship.

A supported decision-making approach has been hailed by the Uniform Law Commission, which drafts model statutes. It has said judges should seek “the least restrictive alternative” to conservatorship.

To date, only Washington and Maine have fully adopted the commission’s recommended model.

Samantha Stark contributed reporting.

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How India is doing now after delta variant unfold

How India is doing now after delta variant spread

A health worker preparing the Covid vaccination syringe for a beneficiary at a vaccination center in Mandir Marg on July 21, 2021 in New Delhi, India.

Hindustan times | Hindustan times | Getty Images

The Delta variant was first discovered in India last October and resulted in a massive second wave of Covid-19 cases in the country.

Since then, the highly contagious strain has spread around the world.

The variant has usurped the previously dominant alpha variant, which was first discovered in Great Britain last fall, and triggered further waves of infections in Europe and a threatening increase in cases in the USA

In fact, the delta variant now accounts for 83% of all sequenced cases in the US, the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Rochelle Walensky said Tuesday, a dramatic 50% increase the week of July 3rd means.

The World Health Organization has already warned that due to the estimated transmission benefit of the Delta variant, “it is expected to quickly overtake other variants and become the dominant circulating line” in the coming months.

In its latest weekly report on Wednesday, the WHO found that the prevalence of Delta among the specimens sequenced in the past four weeks in many countries worldwide including Australia, Bangladesh, Botswana, China, Denmark, India, Indonesia, Israel, Portugal, Russia , Singapore, South Africa and the UK

WHO map showing the global prevalence of variants

World Health Organization

But what about India, where the Delta variant first appeared in October?

The situation is still bad, data shows, but not as bad as it was when the second wave peaked in the country, when the daily new cases were above 400,000. On May 7, India reported a staggering 414,188 new infections and several thousand deaths.

Fortunately, cases have decreased significantly since then. On Thursday, India reported 41,383 new coronavirus infections and 507 new deaths, the Indian Ministry of Health tweeted the data.

The seven-day average of 38,548 new cases every day is a 3% decrease from the previous average, according to data from Johns Hopkins University and Our World in Data.

Meanwhile, the percentage change in the number of newly confirmed cases in the past seven days (compared to the number in the previous seven days) is sharp in parts of Europe and the United States.

In France, the percentage change in the number of new cases over the past seven days is 223% in France, 112% in Italy, while the percentage change in Germany is 50%. In the US, the percentage change over the past seven days is 58% higher than the previous seven-day period.

Nevertheless, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, India has the second highest number of registered Covid cases worldwide with over 31.2 million cases and almost 419,000 deaths, after the US.

During the first wave of the pandemic, India went into a nationwide lockdown in March 2020, which was only lifted in June last year with a series of easings over the following summer months.

However, when the second (and much tougher) wave hit in early 2021, Prime Minister Narendra Modi defied pressure to re-impose a national lockdown and left the responsibility to individual states as to whether they should reintroduce restrictions instead. A member of Modi’s economic advisory council defended the Modi government when it came under pressure in May, telling CNBC that state governments should have the final say on social restrictions.

Additionally, in order to tackle its Covid crisis, India has stopped exporting Covid vaccines (it makes a domestic version of AstraZeneca University Oxford called “Covishield”) and is not expected to resume exports until the end of the year the year.

Public health experts told the FT in late May that regional lockdowns, decreased social interaction and increasing levels of antibodies to Covid in the general population are helping to lower the infection rate in India. Vaccinations have also helped continue the downward trend in cases.

Exposure to Covid during the second wave was illustrated in the latest data showing the prevalence of antibodies to Covid in the general population.

A national blood serum poll that performed antibody tests (known as the Sero Poll) was released Tuesday and showed that two-thirds of the Indian population have antibodies to Covid, Reuters reported, although about 400 million of India’s 1.36 billion People did not have antibodies, the survey found.

Monitoring one of the largest vaccination campaigns in the world (India needs to vaccinate around a billion adults) is no easy task and the overall vaccination rate remains sluggish compared to other countries around the world.

Our World in Data figures show that 87.5 million people (around 6.3% of the total population, including children) are fully vaccinated, while 330.2 million people have received at least one dose of people who are fully vaccinated.

Inside together

On Tuesday, Modi expressed concern about a “significant” number of health care workers and frontline workers who have still not been vaccinated despite the vaccination program launched more than six months ago.

In a press release released by the government in which senior officials briefed on the Covid situation in India, Modi also spoke of the need to “remain vigilant about the situation in different countries,” noting that “mutations make this disease very unpredictable. and so we must all stand together and fight this disease. “

Chandrakant Lahariya, a New Delhi-based doctor who is also an expert on vaccines, public order and health systems, told CNBC that India is not out of the woods yet.

“The results of the fourth national sero survey … confirm what many had suspected: 67.6% of the total population and 62% of those who have not been vaccinated have developed antibodies (against Covid). Almost all age groups over 6 years have antibodies. This shows the extent of the virus spread in the second wave, “he noted.

“We know that [the] The vaccination rate is lower than expected and the Covid-compatible behavior is not optimal. With 400 million of the population still vulnerable, it would be like inviting the next wave ahead of time to abandon our vigilance. India needs to be fully prepared for each subsequent wave. What is happening in Indonesia, Vietnam or Great Britain is an alarm bell that no country can lose its vigilance and [that they] have to do everything in their arsenal, “he added.

The emergence of several significant varieties of concerns around the world (such as alpha, beta and delta), which then become widespread, “reaffirms how connected we are in this pandemic,” Lahariya continued.

“This is a reminder that we must view the challenges of a pandemic as one global community. It reminds us that we need all interventions and vaccine availability as our shared responsibility safe ‘must be repeated until it is understood at all levels, “he said.

Lahariya believed that more variants would emerge as the pandemic progressed. “We should be prepared for further variants until the pandemic is declared over.” Nobody knows where these variants will appear next.