SHREVEPORT, La. - ThePride in the Park Family Festivalreturned toBetty Virginia Park onSaturday, Sept. 10.
Hosted by PACE, the festival celebratedthe lives of Northwest Louisianas LGBTQ community.
The Center of Excellence for Emerging Threats (CEVT) at LSU Health Shreveport was on-hand to offer community COVID-19 vaccinations to those ages 5 and up. The CEVT also offered monkeypox vaccines onsite for individuals who meet vaccine criteria.
Also in attendance at the event were Shreveport mayoral candidates, Tracy Mendels and LeVette Fuller.
The park was teeming with food trucks, entertainers, vendors, and other festivities throughout the day.
As the 2022-2023 school year begins, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) urges parents and guardians to get their children vaccinated against COVID-19. DHS also encourages anyone planning to attend in-person classes at a college or university to stay up to date on their COVID-19 vaccines.
Our mission as we approach the school year is to ensure that every student and our dedicated educators and staff can stay safe, healthy, and in school, said DHS Deputy Secretary Deb Standridge. A critical part of making this possible is ensuring that everyone is vaccinated against COVID-19. Even as new variants emerge, the COVID-19 vaccines continue to do their job of preventing serious illness that can lead to hospitalization and even death. We urge all parents and guardians to help protect our school communities and protect their children against the virus.
Everyone 6 months and older is eligible to receive vaccination against COVID-19. Nearly 389,000 Wisconsin school-age youth ages 5 to 17 have already received their primary series of a COVID-19 vaccine. However, approximately 75% of Wisconsin 5-to-11-year-olds and about 40% of 12-to-17-year-olds are not fully vaccinated against COVID-19. COVID-19 vaccines remain available to all Wisconsinites at no cost.
Over the course of the pandemic, many children fell behind on their routine childhood vaccinations. Back-to-school time is an ideal opportunity to get caught up on those vaccines and get the COVID-19 vaccine, too, said Bureau of Communicable Disease Director Traci DeSalvo. Cooler fall weather, schools being in session, and the coming winter mean people will spend more time inside and in closer proximity to each other. Vaccination remains the best way to prevent a surge in COVID-19 cases and a disruption in our schools, universities and lives.
In addition to vaccination, DHS and schools statewide continue to prepare to keep kids safe and healthy during the upcoming school year. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has released updated COVID-19 Operational Guidance for K-12 Schools and Early Care and Education Programs(link is external). DHS supports the updated CDC guidance and encourages each school or school district to closely monitor the COVID-19 Community Levels in their county, along with vaccination rates, illness among students, teachers, and staff, outbreaks, and the age of students served by the school, and adjust their policies as necessary.
Parents, guardians, and students are encouraged to take actions to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 this school year by:
Staying up to date with COVID-19 vaccinations by ensuring all family members have received their recommended vaccine and booster doses.
Staying prepared by knowing the COVID-19 community levels in your area and how to access testing services. Many schools statewide will once again offer COVID-19 testing services and every U.S. household remains eligible to receive free at-home tests that can be ordered online at covid.gov. Many health insurers will also cover as many as eight free at-home tests per person each month. Check with your health insurer about how to get reimbursed.
Taking action if exposed to COVID-19 by monitoring for symptoms, wearing a mask around others indoors, and getting tested on day five following exposure.
Staying home when sick with COVID-19 or any other illness to prevent spreading it to others.
DHS will continue to offer support programs for schools and early childhood education facilities as the school year begins, including access to mobile vaccination clinics, a K-12 COVID-19 testing program, and stockpile of personal protective equipment (PPE) that includes child-size masks. During the 2021-2022 school year, the states K-12 COVID-19 Testing Program supported participating schools and districts in administering more than 800,000 tests to students and staff. In addition, DHS provided schools with approximately 1.4 million pieces of PPE, such as gloves and masks.
LEONARDTOWN, MD (September 9, 2022) By amendedauthorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the St. Marys County Health Department (SMCHD) will now offer the new bivalent formulations of the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines for use as a single booster dose at least two months following primary or prior booster vaccination. The bivalent vaccines are administered after the original series has already been completed.
The updated booster is a formula that both boosts immunity against the original coronavirus strain and protects against the newer Omicron variants that account for most of the current cases. The Moderna bivalent COVID-19 vaccine is authorized for use as a single booster dose in individuals 18 years of age and older. The Pfizer-BioNTech bivalent COVID-19 vaccine is authorized for use as a single booster dose in individuals 12 years of age and older.
These updated vaccines will enhance protection against COVID-19 and its variants, including the newer Omicron strains that are circulating and causing both new and repeat infections, said Dr. Meena Brewster, St. Marys County Health Officer. As new variants of the virus emerge, we expect vaccines will be updated similarly to how we update the flu vaccine. This should help community members better protect themselves from severe illness and infection.
For more information or to make a vaccine appointment, please visit:smchd.org/covid-19-vaccineand select the patient age group for available clinic dates.
Call SMCHD at (301) 475-4330 for questions or assistance making an appointment over the phone. Please review theallergy guidanceand theFAQs for SMCHD COVID-19 Vaccinationbefore registering for a vaccine appointment. COVID-19 vaccines are also available through primary care offices and local pharmacies.
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A team of nine experts from Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and other top universities has published paradigm-shifting research about the efficacy and safety of the COVID-19 vaccines and why mandating vaccines for college students is unethical.
This 50-page study, which was published on The Social Science Research Network at the end of August, analyzed CDC and industry-sponsored data on vaccine adverse events, and concluded that mandates for COVID-19 boosters for young people may cause 18 to 98 actual serious adverse events for each COVID-19 infection-related hospitalization theoretically prevented.
The paper is co-authored by Dr. Stefan Baral, an epidemiology professor at Johns Hopkins University; surgeon Martin Adel Makary, M.D., a professor at Johns Hopkins known for his books exposing medical malfeasance, including Unaccountable: What Hospitals Wont Tell You and How Transparency Can Revolutionize Heath Care; and Dr. Vinayak Prasad, a hematologist-oncologist, who is a professor in the UCSF Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, as well as the author of over 350 academic and peer-reviewed articles.
But among this team of high-profile international experts who authored this paper, perhaps the most notable is Salmaan Keshavjee, M.D., Ph.D., current Director of the Harvard Medical School Center for Global Health Delivery, and professor of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Keshavjee has also worked extensively with Partners In Health, a Boston-based non-profit co-founded by the late Dr. Paul Farmer, on treating drug-resistant tuberculosis, according to his online biography.
As the study pointed out, students at universities in America, Canada, and Mexico are being told they must have a third dose of the vaccines against COVID-19 or be disenrolled. Unvaccinated high school students who are just starting college are also being told the COVID-19 vaccines are mandatory for attendance.
These mandates are widespread. There are currently 15 states which continue to honor philosophical (personal belief) exemptions, and 44 states and Washington, D.C. allow religious exemptions to vaccines. But even in these states, private universities are telling parents they will not accept state-recognized vaccine exemptions.
Based on personal interviews with some half a dozen families, The Epoch Times has learned that administrators at some colleges and universities are informing students that they have their own university-employed medical teams to scrutinize the medical exemptions submitted by students and signed by private doctors. These doctors, families are being told, will decide whether the health reasons given are medically valid.
Though rarely reported on in the mainstream media, COVID-19 vaccine boosters have been generating a lot of controversy.
While some countries are quietly compensating people for devastating vaccine injuries, and other countries are limiting COVID-19 vaccine recommendations, the United States is now recommending children 12 and older get Pfizer-BioNTechs Omicron-specific booster, and young adults over the age of 18 get Modernas updated shot.
At the same time, public health authorities in Canada are suggesting Canadians will need COVID-19 vaccines every 90 days.
Against a backdrop of confusing and often changing public health recommendations and booster fatigue, the authors of this new paper argue that university booster mandates are unethical. They give five specific reasons for this bold claim:
1) Lack of policymaking transparency. The scientists pointed out that no formal and scientifically rigorous risk-benefit analysis of whether boosters are helpful in preventing severe infections and hospitalizations exists for young adults.
2) Expected harm. A look at the currently available data shows that mandates will result in what the authors call a net expected harm to young people. This expected harm will exceed the potential benefit from the boosters.
3) Lack of efficacy. The vaccines have not effectively prevented transmission of COVID-19. Given how poorly they workthe authors call this modest and transient effectivenessthe expected harms caused by the boosters likely outweigh any benefits to public health.
4) No recourse for vaccine-injured young adults. Forcing vaccination as a prerequisite to attend college is especially problematic because young people injured by these vaccines will likely not be able to receive compensation for these injuries.
5) Harm to society. Mandates, the authors insisted, ostracize unvaccinated young adults, excluding them from education and university employment opportunities. Coerced vaccination entails major infringements to free choice of occupation and freedom of association, the scientists wrote, especially when mandates are not supported by compelling public health justification.
The consequences of non-compliance include being unenrolled, losing internet privileges, losing access to the gym and other athletic facilities, and being kicked out of campus housing, among other things. These punitive approaches, according to the authors, have resulted in unnecessary psychosocial stress, reputation damage, loss of income, and fear of being deported, to name just a few.
The lack of effectiveness of the vaccines is a major concern to these researchers. Based on their analysis of the public data provided to the CDC, they estimated that between 22,000 and 30,000 previously uninfected young adults would need to be boosted with an mRNA vaccine to prevent just a single hospitalization.
However, this estimate does not take into account the protection conferred by a previous infection. So, the authors insisted, this should be considered a conservative and optimistic assessment of benefit.
In other words, the mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 are essentially useless.
But the documented lack of efficacy is only part of the problem. The researchers further found that per every one COVID-19 hospitalization prevented in young adults who had not previously been infected with COVID-19, the data show that 18 to 98 serious adverse events will be caused by the vaccinations themselves.
These events include up to three times as many booster-associated myocarditis in young men than hospitalizations prevented, and as many as 3,234 cases of other side effects so serious that they interfere with normal daily activities.
At a regional hospital in South Carolina, the desk clerk sported a button that read: Im Vaccinated Against COVID-19 with a big black check mark on it.
What about the boosters? a hospital visitor asked. Its starting to seem like we need too many shots.
It does seem like a lot, the clerk agreed. Its hard to know what to do. But she did have some advice for the visitor: Just keep reading and educating yourself, so you can make an informed decision.
This new paper is essential reading for anyone trying to decide if they need more vaccines. The authors concluded their study with a call to action. Policymakers must stop mandates for young adults immediately, be sure that those who have already been injured by these vaccines are compensated for the suffering caused by mandates, and openly conduct and share the results of risk-benefit analyses of the vaccines for various age groups.
These measures are necessary, the authors argued, to begin what will be a long process of rebuilding trust in public health.
The two co-first authors, Dr. Kevin Bardosh and Dr. Allison Krug, both thanked their families for supporting them to publicly debate Covid-19 vaccine mandates in the acknowledgments section of the paper.
As we wrote in May, an increasing number of scientists and medical doctors are speaking out about the dubious efficacy and disturbing safety issues surrounding theses fast-tracked COVID-19 vaccines. They do so fully aware of the personal and professional risks involved. They deserve our encouragement and support.
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. Epoch Health welcomes professional discussion and friendly debate. To submit an opinion piece, please follow these guidelines and submit through our form here.
NEW YORK (AP) U.S. officials are considering broadening recommendations for who gets vaccinated against monkeypox, possibly to include many men with HIV or those recently diagnosed with other sexually transmitted diseases.
Driving the discussion is a study released Thursday showing that a higher-than-expected share of monkeypox infections are in people with other sexually transmitted infections.
READ MORE: What are monkeypox symptoms? Heres what you need to know
Dr. John T. Brooks, chief medical officer for the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions monkeypox outbreak response, said the report represents a call to action.
Brooks told The Associated Press on Thursday that he expected vaccine recommendations to expand and that the White House, together with CDC, are working on a plan for what that will look like.
Currently, the CDC recommends the vaccine to people who are a close contact of someone who has monkeypox; people who know a sexual partner was diagnosed in the past two weeks; and gay or bisexual men who had multiple sexual partners in the last two weeks in an area with known virus spread.
Shots are also recommended for health care workers at high risk of exposure.
The vast majority of monkeypox cases are in men who have sex with men who reported close contact with an infected person during sex. But the new CDC report suggested infections in people with HIV and other STDs may be a bigger issue than previously realized.
The report looked at about 2,000 monkeypox cases from four states and four cities from mid-May to late July.
It found 38% of those with monkeypox infections had been diagnosed with HIV, far higher than their share of the population among men who have sex with men.
The study also found that 41% of monkeypox patients had been diagnosed with an STD in the preceding year. And about 10% of those patients had been diagnosed with three or more different STDs in the prior year.
READ MORE: The COVID lessons the U.S. still needs to learn to tackle monkeypox
There were racial differences. More than 60% of Black Americans with monkeypox had HIV, compared with 41% of Hispanic people, 28% of whites and 22% of Asians.
Jason Farley, an infectious disease expert at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, said men of color who have sex with men should be at the front of the line for monkeypox vaccine doses. Within those racial and ethnic groups, the next priority should be anyone living with HIV or was recently diagnosed with a STD, he said.
The study has several limitations, including that the data may not be nationally representative, the authors said.
Brooks said the findings could lead to vaccines being recommended for people with recent STD infections, people with HIV, people taking pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) medications to prevent HIV infection and, possibly, sex workers.
Discussions of expanding eligibility will have to take into account supply of the two-dose vaccine. And any substantial expansion of monkeypox vaccination recommendations may also be subject to review by CDCs outside vaccine advisers, health officials say.
Also on Thursday, the CDC sent a letter to state and local health departments that said federal funds for HIV and STD prevention can also now be used against monkeypox. Cases in the U.S. seem to be declining, officials say.
PTI
Melbourne, September 9
The recommended vaccinia virus (VACV)-based vaccines will mount a robust immune response against the monkeypox virus observed in the current outbreak, according to a study.
Vaccinia virus is a large, complex, enveloped virus belonging to the poxvirus family.
Since the new virus was first observed in early May, over 52,000 cases have been confirmed in more than 90 countries and regions, the researchers said.
The team undertook genomic research to find out if the genetic mutations observed in monkeypox virus observed in the current outbreak (MPXV-2022) may affect vaccine-induced immune responses against the disease.
"Specific VACV-based vaccines have demonstrated high efficacy against monkeypox viruses in the past and are considered an important outbreak control measure," said Matthew McKay, from the University of Melbourne, Australia.
"However, given this is a novel monkeypox virus, we still lack scientific data on how well human immune responses triggered by VACV-based vaccines will recognise MPXV-2022 and provide protection against the disease," McKay said.
The study, published recently in the journal Viruses, evaluated the genetic similarities and differences between VACV and MPXV-2022, specifically within the protein regions that are targeted by vaccine-induced neutralising antibodies or T cells.
"While we identified a small number of distinct mutations in MPXV-2022, our study more broadly demonstrates that VACV and MPXV-2022 are highly genetically similar in the regions targeted by the immune system through vaccination," McKay explained.
"Based on our analysis, we anticipate that the immune responses generated by VACV-based vaccines would continue to do a good job of recognising and responding to MPXV-2022, as was the case for monkeypox viruses in the past," said Professor Ahmed Abdul Quadeer, from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
"Our data lends further support to the use of vaccines being recommended globally for combating MPXV-2022, Quadeer said.
The World Health Organisation has recommended primary preventive vaccination against the new monkeypox virus, which is also known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, for individuals at high risk of exposure.
"While bringing together sequencing and immunological data provides evidence to anticipate a strong immune response, clinical studies are required to determine the exact efficacy of these vaccines against MPXV-2022," McKay added.
#monkeypox
A health care worker administers a dose of the JYNNEOS Monkeypox vaccine at a pop-up vaccination clinic in Los Angeles, California, on August 9, 2022.
Patrick T. Fallon | AFP | Getty Images
Los Angeles health officials are investigating the death of a person who had monkeypox.
Dr. Rita Singhal, director of disease control in Los Angeles County, said it's not clear what role monkeypox may have played in the person's death. Officials do not have additional details at this time, Singhal said.
"This is one of two deaths in the United States that are currently under investigation to determine whether monkeypox was a contributing cause of death," Singhal told reporters during a press conference Thursday.
Health officials in Texas last month reported the death of an adult in the Houston area who was diagnosed with monkeypox. The individual had a severely compromised immune system, according to health officials.
Monkeypox is rarely fatal, but people with weak immune systems are at higher risk of severe disease. The virus causes a painful rash that resembles blisters or pimples.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in a report published Thursday, found that 38% of 2,000 patients diagnosed with monkeypox from May to July were HIV positive. People who have monkeypox and HIV were hospitalized more often than those who did not have HIV, according to the study.
Read CNBC's latest global health coverage:
The U.S. is trying to contain the largest monkeypox outbreak in the world, with more than 21,000 cases across all 50 states, Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico, according to the CDC.
Nine monkeypox deaths have been confirmed worldwide since the outbreak began, according to CDC data. Deaths have occurred in Belgium, Brazil, Cuba, the Central African Republic, Ecuador, Ghana, India, Nigeria and Spain.
More than 56,000 monkeypox cases have been reported across 96 countries since the outbreak began, according to CDC data.
Monkeypox is primarily found to be spreading during sex among gay and bisexual men, though anyone can get monkeypox through close contact with someone who is infected or via contaminated materials like towels and bedsheets.
Federal health officials said this week that the outbreak appears to be slowing as vaccines, testing and treatments have become more widely available. Demetre Daskalakis, deputy head of the White House monkeypox response team, said it took 25 days for cases to double in August compared to eight days in July.
The U.S. has administered more than 460,000 monkeypox vaccine doses to date. About 1.6 million gay and bisexual men who have HIV or who are taking medication to reduce their risk of contracting HIV face the highest risk from monkeypox, according to CDC.
The monkeypox vaccine, Jynneos, is administered in two doses 28 days apart. CDC officials say it's crucial for people at risk to receive the second shot. It takes two weeks after the second dose for the immune system to reach its peak response.
The monkeypox outbreak is disproportionately affecting those who identify as LGBTQ+, which is why as vaccines roll out, so are the vaccine marketing plans.
COLUMBUS, Ohio The monkeypox outbreak is disproportionately affecting those who identify as LGBTQ+. Thats why as vaccines roll out, so are the vaccine marketing plans.
Healthcare providers are trying to reach those at risk without damaging public perception. Its a fine line to walk, largely because the audience is a community that has been in a similar situation before.
Doctors from Equitas Health joined 150 organizations around the country in August, demanding a more culturally humble and urgent response from the government to monkeypox.
Yes, the mortality rate is low, but we're still having an unprecedented number of cases, said Dr. Rhea Debussy, who leads public policy efforts for Equitas Health. The way public health issues emerge, [it] is not something that is uncommon for one population to be disproportionately affected and then for it to become an issue for a much larger population."
This virus opens a painful wound for the LGBTQ+ community with similarities to the HIV epidemic in the 1980s when a mysterious virus was claiming lives and dignity.
Along with a death sentence, stigma defined what it meant to have HIV or AIDS, said Dr. Ronald Bayer of Columbia University.
Bayer's research focuses on social justice related to AIDS. He studies why, for 15 years, no effective treatments were available.
With monkeypox, a vaccine is available. But the challenge is reaching those who are at-risk without implying the community it most affects is unclean, vulnerable or promiscuous.
Theres a huge component of making sure you're being intentional with your marketing efforts and making sure you're communicating that something like monkeypox is not something that can only affect men who have sex with men or trans, non-binary gender-expansive folks. But based on the data we have now, that is who is being disproportionately affected, at this time, Debussy said.
Dr. Shane Jeffers with Mount Carmel Medical Group said he simply tries to arm his patients with information.
I had an 80-year-old woman ask me about getting that vaccine here recently. People don't know how it's spread. It's mostly through close contact, mostly sexual. It takes a lot of friction to really spread monkeypox. So you're not going to pick it up on the cart at the grocery store like a lot of people think, Jeffers said.
Jeffers said that those who are eligible should make an appointment and get the vaccine as soon as possible.
To learn more about how Equitas is responding to the outbreak, head over to the Equitas website. For more information about the vaccine, head over to the Columbus Public Health website.
I thought it was a gay disease tho. I love boxden but some of yall disgust me with how homophobic yall are. I swear like two days ago there was a post with a gay man who had monkey pox and yall was joking and insinuating thats what he gets for living his life the way he does. Yall are fu*ked up. I hope this is enough proof to show all of Yall, this aint no gay disease. Dont compare it to AIDS because straight people like Eazy E and Magic got aids.
A lot of yall are despicable because you lack empathy. IDGAF if someone gay or not, the truth is, no one should have to deal with Monkey Pox or any kindof STI/STD/Virus. Btw no im not gay, im a married man and been married for many years to my wife, but I have friends and family members who are gay and I dont want this to happen to any of them. The idea that me or my wife could catch it by touching someones belonging is scary. Its not my business what they do in the bedroom, but some of yall have a whole life dedicated/obsessed to what others do in the bedroom and it really makes me question yall, and yall disgust me.
Anyone can have monkey pox, be careful out there. Slap away insecure imbeciles.
