HealthPublished at 10:00 am, August 8, 2022|Updated at 4:09 pm, August 8, 2022
Stock image
As children enter classrooms each fall, they are often joined by our perennial friend, drippy nose and head congestion. Yes, fall is just around the corner, and with it comes busy schedules as well as colds, flu and maybe a little COVID too.
When a cold or flu strikes, at best, a child does not feel, eat or sleep well causing both the child to miss school and the parent to miss work. At worst, a cold develops into something more and may precipitate a visit to your primary care physician. While adults typically get two to four colds a year, children average 6-8 a year. Between September and April, colds and the flu can seriously disrupt normal daily routines.
However, there are practical tips to help keep you and your family healthy this season. There are literally hundreds of viruses that cause cold and flu symptoms, but unlike bacterial infections, which are treated with antibiotics, there are no medications to kill the viruses that simply make us feel lousy.
The goal then becomes one of protecting ourselves from getting infected in the first place. Hand washing, hand washing and more hand washing are three simple steps to preventing a cold or flu. Because these little viruses can also become airborne with coughing and sneezing, people should also have a clean tissue to cough or sneeze into.
For example, the little girl who sits next to your child sneezes into her hand and then touches your childs pencil. A minute later, your child uses the pencil and then scratches her nose. She may have exposed her nasal cavity to a virus. It really is that simple.
Regular soap and water are fine. Because it is a virus and not bacteria, antibacterial soap is not necessary. Liquid hand sanitizers do a good job if soap and water are not available.
The first step in prevention is making sure to stop the contact spread of viruses by way of hygiene. The second step to preventing infection is immunizations including the flu vaccine. Everyone over the age of 6 months can get a flu shot, and most children over the age of 2 can get the nasal spray version.
Lastly, to keep your family in good health, this school year make sure to give their bodies the resources they need to fuel their immune system including nutrient-rich foods and an adequate amount of sleep.
Essential vitamins, minerals, proteins, and carbs in a healthy diet work to keep the immune system strong. Similarly, studies have shown that sleep-deprived individuals often have impaired immune systems. In general, toddlers and early elementary children require 11 to 13 hours of sleep, elementary school children need between 10 and 11 hours, tweens between 9 and 10, and teenagers and adults between 8 and 9.
As the children head back to the books this fall, be sure to have them wash their hands, schedule well visits to receive the recommended immunizations, eat a healthy balanced diet and get plenty of sleep. If someone catches a cold, stay home, rest and recover.
If you or a loved one is in need of a primary care physician, the Portneuf Primary Care team is taking new patients. Visit PortneufMedicalGroup.org or call (208) 239-DOCS.
The coronavirus is a respiratory virus, and it makes us sick by latching onto the cells in our upper respiratory tract, including our nose and throat. It should come as no surprise, then, that scientists are working on a nasal COVID-19 vaccine to stop the disease right where it starts.
The current injectable vaccines including Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson in the US have proved to be wildly effective at preventing severe disease and have saved roughly 20 million lives globally during the pandemic, according to an estimateby researchers at the Imperial College London. (The newly authorized Novavax would've been left out of this equation.) But as we learned during the delta surge last summer, the available vaccines do not block all COVID-19 infections, especially as the virus mutates into more contagious forms.
Researchers propose that nasal vaccines, however, may stand a better chance of blocking infections and making people less contagious by working in the mucosa (the lining of the nose). Dr. Joel Ernst, professor of medicine and chief of the division of experimental medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, explained some of the benefits to CNET's Abrar Al-Heeti.
"A nasal vaccine will induce an immune response all over the body too, but it's actually concentrated in the upper respiratory tract where the COVID virus, the SARS-COV2 virus, enters," Ernst said.
Nasal vaccines (coined "nasal spritzes" by Scientific American) have other benefits, including being easier to administer (there's no needle hazard or needle learning curve) and offering a more palatable approach to immunity for the approximately one out of 10 Americans with a needle phobia.
There is no nasal COVID-19 vaccine up for authorization on the US market right now, but research looks promising. There are numerous nasal COVID-19 vaccines in development, according to Ernst, but most are very early in the trial stage. One study done on mice from the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases found that thepotency of nasal vaccinationwaned at about the same rate as the potency of mRNA vaccination (Moderna and Pfizer). But nasal vaccines started working faster than the injectable vaccines.
And the road to a nasal COVID-19 vaccine being accepted has already been partly smoothed over by the nasal flu vaccine on the market, FluMist Quadrivalent.
Ernst said that many researchers are looking at nasal vaccines as boosters, and they carry some production challenges. But the future of nasal COVID-19 vaccines looks fairly bright.
Besides development challenges, the fact that most people now have some immunity to COVID-19 either through vaccination or infection makes it difficult to test an entirely new vaccine in clinical trials, Ernst explained. While we might need to wait a year or two for clinical trials and authorization in order for nasal vaccines to hit the market: "I think the prospects are pretty good that we're going to have nasal vaccines," Ernst said.
The information contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as health or medical advice. Always consult a physician or other qualified health provider regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition or health objectives.
Last Thursday, the Biden administration officially declared the rapidly growing monkeypox outbreak to be a national public health emergency (PHE). Its a declaration that the virus represents a significant risk to Americans and frees up resources to address that threat:
The declaration by Xavier Becerra, President Bidens health secretary, marks just the fifth such national emergency since 2001, and comes as the country remains in a state of emergency over the coronavirus pandemic. The World Health Organization declared a global health emergency over the outbreak late last month.
Mr. Becerras announcement, at an afternoon news briefing where he was joined by a raft of other top health officials, gives federal agencies power to quickly direct money toward developing and evaluating vaccines and drugs, to gain access to emergency funding and to hire additional workers to help manage the outbreak, which began in May.
Currently, there have been over 6,000 cases of monkeypox reported in the US, and its hard not to get a feeling of, as Yogi Berras delightfully twisted term described, dj vu all over again, after the declaration by the World Health Organization (WHO) that COVID-19 had become a pandemic nearly two and a half years ago. What do I mean? Youd think that after all this time dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic the US would be prepared if another pathogen arose with the potential to become pandemic itself, but the response to the monkeypox outbreak has thus far shattered that expectation, as this New York Times article suggests:
Supplies of the monkeypox vaccine, called Jynneos, have been severely constrained, and the administration has been criticized for moving too slowly to expand the number of doses. Less than a decade ago, the United States had 20 million Jynneos doses; by May, the vast majority of them had expired.
In echoes of the early coronavirus response, tests have been difficult to obtain, surveillance has been spotty and it has been challenging to get an accurate count of cases. The administration has also been faulted for not doing enough to educate people in the L.G.B.T.Q. community, who are at high risk, before gay pride celebrations in June.
We have 5 percent of the worlds population and 25 percent of the worlds cases, said Dr. Carlos del Rio, an infectious disease physician at Emory University in Atlanta. That, to me, honestly, is a failure. We were caught sleeping at the wheel.
Of course, monkeypox is a different disease than COVID-19. Whereas COVID-19 was a brand new disease caused by a new coronavirus to which the population was immunologically naive, monkeypox has been around for a while. Even so, back in May, when the first cases in the US were making the news, Dr. Novella expressed much the same sentiment as I am now:
Now, outbreaks understandably make people a little twitchy. I remember in February 2020 the voices of reason were saying about COVID (myself included) that we should be concerned, but its too early to panic. I dont know if in retrospect that struck the right tone (without Monday morning quarterbacking), but it feels like we are in the same place now with the monkeypox.
However we deal with monkeypox (and right now Im not particularly optimistic about our government response), the disease, showing up so soon after COVID-19 while the COVID-19 pandemic is still raging, provides an excellent teachable moment about conspiracy theories and antivaccine misinformation. Why? Because the very same conspiracy theories that arose about COVID-19 (in some cases slightly modified) are showing up about monkeypox, thus demonstrating that truly there is, as I like to say, nothing new under the sun in terms of conspiracy theories about disease outbreaks and vaccines.
First, however, what is monkeypox?
As I mentioned, in contrast to COVID-19, monkeypox is not a new disease. Its been around for a while and is relatively known. The monkeypox virus itself is a member of the Orthopoxvirus genus in the family Poxviridae, the same genus as the smallpox virus, to which it is closely related. Fortunately, monkeypox is less contagious and produces less serious disease than smallpox, which, before vaccination eliminated it in the 1970s, had long been a scourge of humanity, with traces of smallpox having been found in the head of the 3,000 year old mummy of Pharaoh Ramses V. For example, smallpox killed roughly one-third of those infected with it and often left survivors with horrible scars from the pox lesions on the skin that were characteristic of the disease. Since the eradication of smallpox was officially declared in 1980, monkeypox has emerged as the most important orthopoxvirus for public health.
In terms of symptoms, monkeypox causes fever, headache, lymphadenopathy, and then the characteristic pox rash with skin eruptions, which can number from a few to thousands, to the point that in especially severe cases sections of skin can slough off. The overall disease course usually lasts between 2-4 weeks, with poorer outcomes in those with underlying immune deficiencies, and potential complications include secondary infections, bronchopneumonia, sepsis, encephalitis, and infection of the cornea with ensuing loss of vision. The WHO reports that in modern times the case fatality ratio is around 3-6%.
A zoonotic disease, monkeypox can infect a number of animal species besides monkeys and human, including rope squirrels, tree squirrels, Gambian pouched rats, dormice, non-human primates and other species. Before the current outbreak, the disease had been mostly confined to central and West Africa, with a history dating back to 1970:
Human monkeypox was first identified in humans in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in a 9-month-old boy in a region where smallpox had been eliminated in 1968. Since then, most cases have been reported from rural, rainforest regions of the Congo Basin, particularly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and human cases have increasingly been reported from across central and west Africa.
Since 1970, human cases of monkeypox have been reported in 11 African countries: Benin, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Cote dIvoire, Liberia, Nigeria, the Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone and South Sudan. The true burden of monkeypox is not known. For example, in 199697, an outbreak was reported in the Democratic Republic of the Congo with a lower case fatality ratio and a higher attack rate than usual. A concurrent outbreak of chickenpox (caused by the varicella virus, which is not an orthopoxvirus) and monkeypox was found, which could explain real or apparent changes in transmission dynamics in this case. Since 2017, Nigeria has experienced a large outbreak, with over 500 suspected cases and over 200 confirmed cases and a case fatality ratio of approximately 3%. Cases continue to be reported until today.
However, the disease has been found outside of Africa dating back two decades, as in 2003 the first outbreak in the US occurred and was linked to contact with infected pet prairie dogs. Monkeypox has also been reported in travelers from Africa to Israel, the United Kingdom, and Singapore before the most recent outbreak.
As far as transmission, fortunately monkeypox is far less transmissible than SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, is. Its mode of transmission is also different in that its primary mode of spread appears not to be respiratory but rather, as the WHO notes, through close contact with respiratory secretions, skin lesions of an infected person or recently contaminated objects. In the current outbreak, sexual contact, particularly sex between males, is the primary mode of transmission:
Right now, about 98% of monkeypox cases are in queer and gay folks and our sexual networks. Of course, that includes trans and non-binary folks, says Joseph Osmundson, a biologist at New York University who identifies as queer and is helping to lead the effort to stop the outbreak.
Sexual contact is not the only way monkeypox is spread, points out infectious disease doctor Susan McLellan at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas. But she agrees with Osmundson: It is by far the most likely way in this current outbreak, so far.
Epidemiological data for the outbreak in Western Europe and the United States makes that clear, she says. Were not detecting many cases in kids and individuals who arent sexually active. Were detecting cases mostly in individuals from networks with a lot of sexual encounters.
As several scientists have pointed out, although its mode of transmission is primarily through sex, monkeypox as it is spreading now is not just a sexually transmitted disease. Its possible to get the disease through other means, such as face-to-face interactions and touching contaminated objects, but these routes of transmission are very rare and likely require quite prolonged contact.
Fortunately, those of us old enough to have been vaccinated against smallpox likely have some protection, and there is a vaccine against monkeypox. Unfortunately, that vaccine is not yet nearly as widely available as it should be.
On to the conspiracy theories
As I pointed out when COVID-19 first hit, every time there is an outbreak of a new disease (or even a not-so-new disease), conspiracy theories declaring the outbreak to have been due to release from a laboratory, either accidental or intentional, of the pathogen responsible arise. These conspiracy theories arose for HIV/AIDS, Ebola, and the H1N1 pandemic, among others, and they appeared with a vengeance after COVID-19.
Indeed, I love to point out that the very first lab leak conspiracy theory that I encountered about COVID-19 came from James Lyons-Weiler in February 2020. Lyons-Weiler appeared on Del Bigtrees video show and claimed to have broken the coronavirus code. In brief, he reported that he had found in the just-published nucleotide sequence of SARS-CoV-2 sequences from an artificial plasmid commonly used in molecular biology research to express protein from genes and to transfer genes from one vector to another. Naturally, because he is an antivaxxer, Lyons-Weiler claimed that this sequence came from a failed effort to make a vaccine against the original SARS virus that caused a major outbreak in 2002, thus letting him conveniently link a conspiracy theory that the coronavirus had been engineered in a lab with a chance to blame vaccines for the virus. If true, obviously, that would be strong evidence that SARS-CoV-2 had been engineered. However, for someone who before turning antivax crank had run bioinformatics core facilities Lyons-Weiler made a lot of rookie mistakes, and his analysis did not show what he claimed that it did, as I described in gory detail. Unfortunately, lab leak conspiracy theories about the origins of SARS-CoV-2 still proliferate and have been weaponized to great effect by conspiracy theorists, even though recent evidence strongly suggests a natural origin for the virus.
It should therefore be no surprise at all that soon after monkeypox started making the news conspiracy theorists claimed that it had escaped from a laboratory. They even blame the Wuhan Institute of Virology, just as lab leak conspiracy theorists blame the same institute for COVID-19 using similar distortions of science, with Tweets like this:
For instance, two weeks ago The Jimmy Dore Show aired a segment titled Wuhan Lab Was Experimenting On Monkeypox Before Outbreak, while John Campbell, someone who seemed semi-reasonable early on in the pandemic but long ago turned into a total COVID-19 crank, had posted a YouTube video about how the NIH and the WIV had been working on monkeypox, pointing to this NIH grant and a recent paper, Efficient assembly of a large fragment of monkeypox virus genome as a qPCR template using dual-selection based transformation-associated recombination.
As described at FactCheck.org:
Jimmy Dore, a frequent purveyor of misinformation on The Jimmy Dore Show on YouTube, produced a segment on July 20 with the headline, Wuhan Lab Was Experimenting On Monkeypox Before Outbreak.
During the segment, Dore showed a video of Dr. John Campbell, a retired nurse educator, discussing monkeypox and the Chinese study.
Campbell says in the video that the National Institute of Health and the Wuhan Institute of Virology were conducting experiments with monkeypox prior to the outbreak and misleadingly suggests viewers may draw some parallels between the origins of the monkeypox outbreak and the origins of SARS-CoV-2.
After playing a clip of Campbell saying the NIH and the Wuhan Institute had been studying monkeypox before the outbreak, Dore asked, What are the odds of that?
Dore continued, whenever theres a new outbreak now, 50/50 chance it was started in the Wuhan Lab funded by Dr. Fauci and the NIH, referring to Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Kurt Metzger, a comedian and Dores partner on the show, added, not even a different virology lab accident, the same one.
As I like to say, humans are pattern-forming animals, and were especially good at imputing causation from a pattern when that causation agrees with what we already believe.
I looked up the study, andsurprise!it shows nothing like what Dore and Campbell claim that it shows. First of all, the scientists didnt create a whole monkeypox genome, only a portion of it and then only to use to test a method known as transformation-associated recombination, which is used to assemble large pieces of DNA. Also, the monkeypox sequence used to assemble the partial genome is different from that of the monkeypox virus now circulating. The current outbreak is due to the West African clade virus while the viral sequence used in the research belongs to the Congo Basin clade.
Unsurprisingly, with the war in Ukraine raging, conspiracy theorists promoting pro-Russian narratives claiming that Ukraine had a number of bioweapon labs quickly pivoted to claiming that monkeypox had escaped from a Ukrainian lab, with headlines like ECDC Bombshell: Monkeypox Outbreak Appears To Have Leaked From Ukraine Lab and Tweets like this:
There is, of course, as usual zero evidence to support this claim, which is based on an anonymous source claiming knowledge of what the European Centers For Disease Control has concluded. Lets just put it this way:
Richard Ebright, board of governors professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University in New Jersey and a figure who has voiced lots of support for the COVID lab leak theory, echoed the point. All indications are that the monkeypox outbreak involves a natural monkeypox virus, he told Newsweek.
Ive tangled with Ebright on Twitter before over lab leak conspiracy theories about SARs-CoV-2, and hes a total conspiracy theorist. If he thinks your claim of a lab leak origin for monkeypox is nonsense, youve really wandered far into conspiracyland. The Ukrainian lab leak conspiracy theory is totally fake news, even more ridiculous than the claim that monkeypox came from WIV.
Same as it ever was, though. There is nothing new under the sun, including
Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, a documentary called Plandemic went viral. Its primary claim was of a massive conspiracy theory in which the entire pandemic was actually plannedPlandemic, get it?all in order for the global elite to enslave us all with vaccines and pharmaceuticals. It was followed by Plandemic 2, in which Mikki Willis wove a conspiracy theory implicating an October 2019 pandemic preparation exercise held by Johns Hopkins Universitys Center for Health Security in partnership with the World Economic Forum and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that had envisioned a pandemic due to a fast-spreading coronavirus. The whole narrative involved linking together disparate events in a misleading manner to imply an overarching conspiracy that the current coronavirus pandemic had been planned.
In some cases, the plandemic conspiracy theory got really wild. In one version, it involved aliens teaming up with the global elite to release a two-stage bioweapon (COVID-19 and the vaccine, naturally) to cause global depopulation to about 10% of the current number of humans alive on the planet, all so that the aliens and elite could profit. I kid you not.
Cue May 2022 and monkeypox in the NY Post:
An eerily accurate simulation exercise at the Munich Security Conference in March 2021 centered on a monkeypox outbreak and had the rare and potentially deadly hypothetical disease starting exactly when the real one did.
The Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), a non-profit founded by US media mogul Ted Turner and former Democratic Sen. Sam Nunn, gathered a panel of 19 experts including government officials from the US and China, representatives from the World Health Organization and the UN, and researchers from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and major pharma companies to game out responses to a 12 Monkeys-like bioterror attack.
The fictional scenario, sponsored by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and his Open Philanthropies non-profit, hinged on the secret release of a lab-enhanced monkeypox virus that eventually killed 271 million people in a worldwide 19-month pandemic.
Sound familiar? It involves a lot of the same players, in particular includingof course!Bill Gates. The main twist is that this conspiracy theory seems to have originated (or at least spread widely) in China on its social media platform Weibo before making the jump to the West, likely as a response to all the lab leak conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and the WIV:
A 2021 report on biosecurity preparedness planning by a US non-government organization, Nuclear Threat Initiative, which included a scenario of a monkeypox pandemic, has been taken out of context to suggest that the US government knew the outbreak was coming.
Nationalist influencer Shu Chang, who has 6.41 million Weibo followers, deliberately misconstrued the report and posted that it showed a plan by the US to leak bioengineered monkeypox virus.
There is, of course, no evidence that this exercise is any indication that the monkeypox outbreak was planned any more than the Johns Hopkins University/Gates Foundation exercise in 2019 was evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic was planned. Health experts and authorities plan for pandemics, and when they do they pick scenarios that seem plausible and likely. Given the SARS outbreak 20 years ago, in 2019 a coronavirus seemed most likely as the next big pathogen to cause a pandemic. Monkeypox has been simmering for years and in 2021 seemed like the next viral threat:
The risks posed by monkeypox, according to the NTI, have been well documented for years and cases have been on the increase, making it an obvious virus to choose for this workshop.
Outbreaks of infection are a fact of life, so an organisation predicting and planning for them is not in itself suspicious.
Same as it ever wasagain.
Going back to James Lyons-Weiler and his attempt to blame COVID-19 on a failed attempt to develop a SARS vaccine, I also cant help but add that the very earliest COVID-19 conspiracy theory I encountered, way back in January 2020, was that COVID-19 arose in Wuhan because the Chinese had ordered more influenza vaccines in fall 2019 than they normally would. This conspiracy theory then mutated into a version in which the flu vaccine was falsely blamed for increasing ones chances of getting COVID-19, a claim that persists.
Fast forward to spring and summer 2022, when, to the surprise of no one who has paid attention to antivaccine conspiracy theories over the years, COVID-19 vaccines are being blamed for the monkeypox outbreak, because of course they are. This conspiracy theory tends to take one of two flavors. The first is a claim that the chimpanzee adenovirus vector used in the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine is how monkeypox arose. The second is a more general claim not unlike the conspiracy theories about the flu vaccine and COVID-19 that COVID-19 vaccines weaken the immune system to make people susceptible to monkey pox.
Examples of the first can easily be found on social media:
Molecular biologists, virologists, and others with significant knowledge of molecular biology and virology are likely cringing at how obviously these claims are nonsense (as did I). However, the percentage of the population with sufficient scientific knowledge to immediately recognize these memes and posts as utter bullshit (there is no other word) is, alas, small. So they sound credible. Adenovirus and monkeypox are not just different viruses, theyre very different viruses, and the one used for vaccines is genetically engineered so that it is unable to replicate. Adenovirus-based vaccines use the virus as a tool to induce cells to make the desired antigen, in the case of COVID-19 vaccines the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. The only viral proteins made are those absolutely necessary for the vector to serve its purpose of entering cells and forcing them to make the protein from the DNA code inserted into the virus genome. Also, not all of the adenovirus-based vaccines use the chimpanzee version of the adenovirus.
Finally, I particularly like this statement in a more general debunking of this claim:
Meedan added: It should be noted that chimpanzees are not monkeys.
Chimpanzees are from a group of primates known as great apes, see here.
The second version of blaming monkeypox on COVID-19 vaccines posits an immune suppression due to the vaccine that supposedly laid the groundwork for monkeypox to flourish. More recently, antivaxxers have also tried to blame COVID-19 vaccines for polio, but thats a secondary claim:
Antivaxxer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is pushing this narrative on his Childrens Health Defense website:
Twitter last week censored Shmuel Shapira, M.D., MPH, for suggesting a connection between the monkeypox outbreak and mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, according to a Kanekoas Newsletter Substack post published Wednesday.
Shapira, who said he was injured after receiving his third dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, said Twitter demanded he remove a tweet that said:
Monkey pox cases were rare for years. During the last years a single case was documented in Israel. It is well established the mRNA vaccines affect the natural immune system. A monkey pox outbreak following massive covid vaccination: *Is not a coincidence.
Shapira is a full professor of medical administration at Hebrew University and served as director of Israels Institute for Biological Research from 2013-2021.
Again, none of this should come as any surprise to anyone whos followed the antivaccine movement for a long time. The claim that vaccines either suppress the immune system or cause autoimmune disease by cranking it up too muchantivaxxers can never make up their minds and craft their narrative depending on what they want to blame vaccines forare oldie-moldy vaccine tropes.
It turns out that a lot of those claiming that monkeypox arose because COVID-19 vaccines had suppressed the immune systems of those who got them tend to cite two recent papers, one in The Lancet and one in Food and Chemical Toxicology, which they misrepresent as evidence that COVID-19 vaccines cause immunosuppression. The second one is easy to deal with. Its by Stephanie Seneff, Greg Nigh, Anthony M. Kyriakopoulos, and Peter A. McCullough, and I discussed it in great detail when it was published in April, also noting that Seneff has been an antivax conspiracy theorist for a long time and that McCullough went full COVID-19 and antivax conspiracy theorist early in the pandemic. Both have been featured multiple times in this very blog, with Seneff having achieved her prominence back in 2015 when she predicted that GMOs would render half of all children autistic by 2025, which is now less than two and a half years away. (Early in the pandemic, she even blamed e-cigs and biofuels for COVID-19.) Lets just say that that review article was an excellent example of Gish galloping and the use of a scientific review article published in a dodgy journal as antivax disinformation.
The first article was indeed published in The Lancet and is a retrospective cohort study from Sweden published in February. Its conclusion was that COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness waned over several months but that effectiveness against severe COVID-19 was better maintained. Thats it. It said nothing about immunosuppression due to the vaccine at all, but that didnt stop Tucker Carlson from finding a comment that falsely claimed that the study did show immunosuppression from the vaccine:
Carlson cited a comment a Japanese physician, Dr. Kenji Yamamoto, published in a different journal, which claimed the Lancet paper showed that immune function among vaccinated individuals 8 months after the administration of two doses of COVID-19 vaccine was lower than that among the unvaccinated individuals.
After suggesting that the Lancet paper hid a major finding, Carlson pointed to one piece of data in table 3 of the paper for viewers to check themselves. Among people around the age of 80 who have been double vaccinated that would include people like Joe Biden the per capita rate of medical incidences, including hospitalizations or death, is nearly twice as high as the rate of serious incidence for the unvaccinated, he said.
Carlson added that the Lancet paper also includes a chart showing negative vaccine efficacy for all ages after eight months for all participants in the study.
Carlson, however, is distorting cherry-picked data from the paper.
The paper we have published [does] not show any of the claims Carlson made, lead author Dr. Peter Nordstrm told us in an email, because they were not statistically significant. The findings that are statistically significant and the conclusions of the paper are presented in the summary of the paper, he added.
Also:
As for the Japanese physician who claimed the Lancet data showed that immune function among vaccinated individuals 8 months after the administration of two doses of COVID-19 vaccine was lower than that among the unvaccinated individuals, Jewell said he found nothing to support that in the Lancet paper, as it also appears to be an erroneous interpretation of figure 2.
Yamamotos comment shows a misunderstanding of the figure, and it also incorrectly generalizes a specific and expected decline in immunity to the coronavirus over time following vaccination with a general decline in immunity to all things. There is no evidence of that in the Lancet paper, nor anywhere else.
This is, of course, a typical antivax technique. They love to cherry pick one line of one figure or table in a paper, especially when its unadjusted data, and misrepresent it to mean what they want it to mean.
Again, same as it ever was.
I had thought about taking just one of the conspiracy theories about monkeypox and doing a deep dive into it, explaining in my usual painful level of detail why its a conspiracy theory. However, as I tried to decide which one to examine, it occurred to me that monkeypox is, as I said at the beginning of this post, an excellent teachable moment to explain again how there is nothing new under the sun in the world of disease and antivaccine conspiracy theories. Just as COVID-19 conspiracy theories were rehashed and repurposed versions of older antivax conspiracy theories, monkeypox conspiracy theories are so rehashed from COVID-19 conspiracy theories that in many cases theyre the same damned conspiracy theory.
The point is this. Once you start seeing the patterns, youll recognize the conspiracy theories. There is nothing new under the sun in antivax conspiracy land (or any conspiracyland, for that matter). It is, as David Byrne once sang, the same as it ever was and Yogi Berra once described as dj vu all over again. Whats different is that these conspiracy theories have far more power and influence than ever before.
Same as it ever was.
For the third summer in a row, school leaders are facing the question of what if anything theyre going to do to stop the spread of Covid-19 when students return to classrooms.
One thing is clear: Almost none of them will be requiring vaccines.
Just 31 percent of children between 5 and 11 in the US have been fully vaccinated, and 61 percent of 12- to 17-year-olds have been. (Only about 3 percent of children under 5 had received a first dose by July 20.)
Still, no state in the country is planning to require student vaccinations, a marked turnaround from where things seemed to be headed last winter, when multiple states and school districts suggested vaccine mandates were coming soon. Only Washington, DC, has announced a mandatory school vaccine policy this fall, for students 12 and older.
Other mitigation measures from masks to ventilation may also be on their way out. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will likely soon recommend easing school testing, quarantine, and social distancing requirements, CNN reported last week. (Many schools often disregarded CDC guidelines, but the update is a sign of how expectations have shifted.)
Burbio, a company that specializes in aggregating school calendars, reported that so far, the vast majority of school districts it tracks nationwide will not be requiring masks this fall. And a June CDC study found just under 40 percent of American public schools had replaced or upgraded their HVAC systems to provide improved ventilation.
For the last three years, school requirements closed or open? masks on or off? have been a battleground in the culture war over Covid-19. Fear of wading back into the polarized fights over vaccination is one reason school leaders have backed away from requiring the shots. So is the fact that vaccines for children under 12 are not yet fully approved by the FDA.
But an even bigger factor might be mass indifference: American adults are more hesitant to vaccinate their kids, especially younger kids, than they were to get shots themselves. And no influential health group or federal agency is pushing states to require them to do so.
In October 2021, Californias Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom was the first in the nation to announce a planned Covid-19 vaccine mandate for K-12 students once the FDA had fully approved the shots. He said at the time that it could take effect as early as January.
Some school districts in the state tried to impose vaccine mandates that would take effect even earlier. Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest in the nation, announced in September 2021 that students 12 and older must be fully vaccinated by December 19, or switch to online schooling. In Oakland, California, the school board passed a similar vaccine requirement in late September for eligible students, with a deadline of January 1. The Pfizer vaccine for 16- and 17-year-olds had been fully approved in August, while the shots for 12- to 15-year-olds were still under FDAs emergency use authorization.
By December 2021, facing both political and legal pressure, school leaders pushed back the vaccine mandates to the start of the 2022-23 school year. LAUSD board president Kelly Gonez has said their decision was not about conceding to a vocal minority of anti-vaxxers, although those who oppose mandatory Covid vaccines hailed the delay as a victory.
But as 2022 continued, pressure for youth Covid-19 vaccines declined. A state lawmaker in California who had introduced a bill to require Covid-19 vaccines for K-12 students withdrew it in April, saying that focus needed to be on ensuring access to the vaccine. The same week, the California Department of Public Health announced it would no longer add the Covid-19 vaccine to its list of mandated childhood vaccines for public schools because they had not all yet received full FDA approval. The earliest the requirement would take effect, they said, was July 2023. Individual school districts like Los Angeles followed suit.
A California health department spokesperson told Vox that the state was waiting to ensure sufficient time for successful implementation of new vaccine requirements. As of last month, the vaccines are now fully approved for ages 12 and up, but not yet for younger children. The California health agency also said even after all the shots receive full approval, officials would still take into consideration other health group recommendations before issuing a new mandate.
Louisiana, likewise, retreated on a student vaccine mandate Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards announced last November. New Orleans Public Schools is the only district in the state to require students to be vaccinated against Covid-19, though policy enforcement has been mixed. New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who said in January he was considering a student vaccine mandate for the fall, quietly dropped the idea, scaling it back to a requirement for students participating in certain sports and other high-risk extracurriculars like choir.
The California situation illustrates the several factors at play in schools reluctance to require vaccines.
One issue is the lack of full FDA approval for vaccines for younger children. The US Supreme Court has endorsed states authority to require student vaccines, but many policymakers were wary of testing that legal authority for Covid-19 shots that had only received emergency use authorization. (The Justice Department issued a memo last summer saying schools could legally do this, but the threat of defending those decisions in court was both real and unappealing.)
As a result, even once youth vaccines became available, leaders hesitated to require them without full FDA approval. But now the FDA has fully approved vaccines for teens and adolescents, and that still hasnt led states or districts to require the shots for older kids.
Policymakers are also wrestling with the fact that the virus is much less deadly for children compared to adults. (Approximately 1,180 of the more than 1 million Americans who have died of the virus were 17 or younger, though health experts stress vaccination can still help protect against these rare outcomes.) Kids can also catch the virus in school and spread it back at home to their more vulnerable parents and grandparents, but that risk became easier to tolerate once adult vaccines were approved.
Most school districts were wary of igniting another public school culture war battle at a time when students were still struggling to regain academic and social skills lost during the pandemic. On the eve of the anniversary of the January 6 riot, former President Donald Trump blasted President Joe Biden for supposed talk that his administration might enforce a vaccine mandate for school children and urged MAGA nation to rise up against any such requirements. (The Biden administration has not publicly discussed any student vaccine mandate.)
Conservative law firms were also helping to mount legal challenges against proposed Covid-19 vaccine requirements, and groups fighting mask and vaccine mandates have insisted there is no reason to vaccinate kids to protect more vulnerable populations.
Polling also indicated that many parents were not eager to have their kids get the shots, and administrators felt hesitant to impose any rules that could keep vulnerable students particularly Black and Latino students out of in-person learning for even longer than they already endured.
The Covid-19 Vaccine Monitor, run by the Kaiser Family Foundation, reported recently that parents intentions to vaccinate their older children have remained relatively steady since the start of the year: About six in 10 parents of those aged 12-17 say their child has been vaccinated (57 percent); about 30 percent say they will definitely not get their teen vaccinated. Eight percent said they will only vaccinate their child if required.
Covid vaccination uptake is even lower among children ages 5-11, and nearly half of parents of that age group either say they will only get them vaccinated if required to do so (10 percent) or say they definitely wont (37 percent).
While all demographic groups in the KFF study expressed concerns about long-term effects and side effects, Black and Hispanic parents also voiced more concerns over the logistics of getting their kids vaccinated.
Jeremy Singer, an education policy researcher who has been studying Covid-19 school reopenings, said its notable that resistance to youth Covid-19 vaccine requirements is present in nearly all school districts. One reason why, he said, may be what school districts are hearing from parents and community members.
District leaders may still be feeling risk-averse, but at this point the riskier thing for them could be to impose an unpopular mandate, he said.
In January 2022, Singer and his colleagues surveyed Detroit parents on whether they supported or opposed various health measures. Parents expressed overwhelming support for almost every measure ... except vaccine mandates for staff and especially students, for which there was a lot more ambivalence, he said of their findings, which are not yet published.
Back in February, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona wrote in a letter to schools, The #1 tool we have available right now to make sure our schools remain safe and open for all students is vaccination, and encouraged schools to provide information and host clinics. But the department has stopped short of encouraging schools to require the shots. Elaine Quesinberry, a spokesperson for the Education Department, referred Voxs questions about student Covid-19 vaccines to the CDC, and the CDC did not return a request for comment.
The CDCs last updated schools guidance, posted in late May, does not recommend schools require the shot, though encourages schools doing targeted outreach to promote it. A White House spokesperson declined earlier this year to say if Biden would support schools requiring Covid-19 vaccines for students if the vaccines had received full FDA approval.
Susan Martin, a spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics, referred Vox to their policy statement recommending Covid-19 vaccines for all eligible children, and their interim guidance on safe schools, which says Covid vaccination and boosters should be encouraged.
Even teacher unions which were influential in shaping school reopening decisions in the 2020-21 school year have not staked out youth vaccination as a dealbreaker for safe in-person learning. An NEA spokesperson said, Our position on vaccines have not been changed or updated at this point and referred Vox to a position statement published in December 2020, which said parents should follow vaccine guidelines from the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Back in October 2021, the last time the American Federation of Teachers released a formal statement on youth vaccines, president Randi Weingarten said vaccine approval will be critical to keeping our kids safe and healthy, and making sure our schools stay open and remain safe and welcoming for all. In a statement to Vox, Weingarten said the group is awaiting full authorization by the FDA to inform requirements for kids but in the meantime we must ensure the other guardrails, including revamped ventilation, are in place.
The big exception is in the nations capital. In late December, Washington, DC, councilmembers voted overwhelmingly in favor of legislation requiring all eligible students to get vaccinated against Covid-19.
The bill set a vaccination deadline for March 1, 2022, though enforcement was delayed until the start of the 2022-23 school year, a concession to help keep students in school. At the time, just over 60 percent of DC young people ages 12-17 had received their two shots.
Last month the city announced it would move forward with its back-to-school vaccination policy, requiring Covid-19 vaccines for all students ages 12 and older within the first 20 school days. DC is also ramping up outreach and enforcement for its other required youth vaccinations like measles and mumps which the city didnt enforce strictly last year, and students fell behind on.
I think one thing that is important to know in terms of how DC is moving forward is were not just talking about the Covid vaccination, we are having a conversation about routine child immunization, and the Covid vaccine just happens to be a part of the series where kids need to get caught up, said Christina Henderson, a DC councilmember and the lead sponsor of the bill requiring Covid-19 vaccines for students.
Henderson said their effort this year involves more concerted help from pediatricians, school leaders, and public health officials, to stress the importance of vaccination and to relay the evidence that millions of young people by now have safely received the shots.
Henderson pointed to the recent case of an unvaccinated 20-year-old with polio, and stressed that this is not the time to waver on the importance of pediatric vaccination. We also know mandates work, she added, noting that while many teen athletes were initially ambivalent about getting vaccinated, following DC Mayor Muriel Bowsers vaccination requirement to participate in sports last September, even hesitant students got their shots.
The Washington Post reported in late July that about 85 percent of DC students ages 12-15 have been vaccinated against Covid-19, but just 60 percent of Black children in that age range have been.
If one school has a high unvaccinated rate of students, then we will bring a mobile vaccine clinic there, Henderson said. We are not going to assume that parents are purposely saying I dont want to get my child covered. It might just be they were away all summer and didnt know about it, or didnt have time.
Kathryn Lynch-Morin, a spokesperson for DCs Office of the State Superintendent of Education, told Vox that city agencies have been coordinating closely with schools to support them with technical assistance, guidance, and outreach to families.
Our children belong in school with their friends and teachers who care about them, she said. But, we know if an outbreak of one of these serious or deadly diseases were to occur, it could have a harmful impact on our children, families, and staff. We also know that vaccinations save lives.
The global monkeypox outbreak is occurring in the gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with multiple male partners. Currently, the risk of contracting monkeypox for the public remains very low.
Vaccination is an important prevention strategy to contain the outbreak. Nonetheless, the supply of monkeypox vaccines continues to be low compared to demand nationwide. However, the region does continue to receive its allocation of monkeypox vaccine from the California Department of Public Health.
Currently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention primarily recommends the monkeypox vaccine for people exposed to someone who has been diagnosed with confirmed or probable monkeypox infection and persons with immunocompromising conditions who are at greater risk of developing severe disease or complications if they contract the virus.
The 1,550 vaccine doses distributed this week reflect the vaccines allocated, not what remains in stock. Vaccines can be found at the following healthcare systems, federally qualified health centers and clinics by appointment only:
County Public Health Centers and STD clinics also have about 300 doses of vaccine available by appointment only, as well.
Of the 1,550 doses being distributed this week, almost all are to the healthcare providers and clinics above, as well as a county reserve for close contacts of confirmed or probable cases.
Testing is widely available through healthcare providers and involves using a swab to sample suspect skin lesions. People with no healthcare provider, who need testing, can call 2-1-1 to be referred to a provider. 2-1-1 is not presently providing vaccination appointments.
The monkeypox vaccine is a two-dose series, administered 28 days apart. Following guidance from the California Department of Public Health, given the low supply of vaccine, the County is presently recommending that first doses be administered to as many eligible people as possible. One dose of the monkeypox vaccine is 80% effective. Second doses will be administered when more vaccine is available.
Our goal is to get one dose into as many peoples eligible arms as possible, said Wilma Wooten, M.D., M.P.H., County public health officer. When we get more vaccine, we can start giving second doses for even higher efficacy.
Since late May, the County has received 4,687 doses of monkeypox vaccine. Of those, 3,251 have been distributed and 2,267 have been administered. The number administered might be higher because it takes a few days for the vaccine registry to be updated. As more doses are allotted to the region, the County will expand distribution.
For more information about monkeypox, visitthe Countys monkeypoxwebsite, which is updated at about 4 p.m. each weekday afternoon. To receive text messages about monkeypox, text COSD MONKEYPOX to 468-311.
Eyegene said on Tuesday that it signed an agreement to develop a Japanese encephalitis virus gene-recombinant vaccine with financial support from the Korea Health Industry Development Institute (KHIDI).
The research and development cost is estimated to be 200 million won ($150,000), and the state agency will provide 150 million won, it said
This is not the first time that KHIDI has selected EyeGene to develop a Japanese encephalitis vaccine. The company conducted the immune-enhanced pentameric gene-recombinant Japanese encephalitis vaccine development study with the Catholic University of Korea from October 2020 to March 2022.
"Through this project, we will derive candidate substances for the gene-recombinant Japanese encephalitis virus vaccine, including the immune enhancer system, produce non-clinical prototypes, and evaluate the non-GLP non-clinical toxicity and effectiveness, a company official said.
The official added that the company would conduct follow-up studies to establish mass-production processes, good manufacturing practice (GMP) production, and good laboratory practice (GLP) non-clinical tests."
The vaccine immune enhancer system developed by this study is a technology applicable to various vaccines. According to the company, it can be further developed in combination with various vaccine antigens using recombinant protein antigens.
EyeGene said the company has also been conducting a study on the efficacy and effectiveness of its shingles vaccine, EG-HZ, with the governments support of 100 million won since July.
"Recently, vaccinations for shingles prevention are recommended both at home and abroad, and the need for homegrown vaccines to replace imported treatments is increasing, the company official said. We plan to strengthen competitiveness in this field by performing additional efficacy, safety, and stability assessment of our shingles vaccine."
EyeGene is pushing to license its shingles vaccine (EG-HZ) with foreign vaccine companies.
Japan from mid-October plans to administer a new type of vaccine in booster shots designed to protect people from the Omicron variant of the novel coronavirus, the health ministry said.
The bivalent vaccine will be made available to people who have received two doses of existing vaccines, starting with elderly people and those with underlying health conditions, according to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.
The central government, working together with local governments, will start preparations to eventually provide bivalent vaccine inoculations to the entire population.
The policy to use the new vaccine was approved at a ministry meeting on Aug. 8.
The ministry, based on the opinions of an advisory panel on responding to COVID-19, also decided to issue a recommendation in early September at the earliest that parents should make utmost efforts to vaccinate their children aged 5 through11 under the Preventive Vaccination Law. But the ministry will not make such inoculations compulsory.
The bivalent vaccine is designed to defend against BA.1, an Omicron subvariant, and an early strain of the novel coronavirus.
Pfizer Inc. and Moderna Inc. have been developing their versions of the bivalent vaccine.
Trial runs reportedly showed that the new vaccine is more effective than existing vaccines in producing neutralizing antibodies that can defend against an array of Omicron variants.
The U.S. companies said their new vaccines also offer better protection against BA.5, the Omicron subvariant that is now the dominant strain in Japan.
According to the results of clinical trials, the ministry estimates that the inoculation interval for the bivalent vaccine is about five months.
Pfizer on Aug. 8 applied for Japanese government approval for its bivalent vaccine. If granted regulatory approval, the new vaccine could be imported starting in September, according to the ministry.
Ministry officials said they expect no problems in securing enough doses of the new vaccine for all people who have received two shots of existing vaccines.
Japan is currently providing booster shots for certain segments of the population, including second boosters for health care workers and those 60 or older.
Some members of the expert panel urged the ministry to advise the population not to pass up the available vaccines because of the anticipated arrival of the new vaccine.
The existing vaccines now provide a certain degree of protection against the spread of the novel coronavirus, one of the members said. People should be fully informed not to shun them when they come at hand.
The ministry approved inoculations of children 5 through11 after it became clear that current types of vaccines can help to defend this age group against the Omicron family to some extent.
Data presented to the panel meeting on Aug. 8 showed that children in this age group have a low likelihood of developing serious symptoms during the two months after their second doses.
In addition, about 80 percent of infected children could avoid hospitalization if they are vaccinated, the panel said.
The panel also said no signs have been detected that raise concerns about the safety of the vaccines as long as their possible side effects are monitored.
Many panel members endorsed the ministrys recommendation to vaccinate this age group, noting that the number of infections among children has increased in recent months, and some are being listed in serious condition.
Children, in fact, represented a significant percentage of new COVID-19 cases in July, according to the ministry.
Children under 10 accounted for 14 percent of the new infections, while those aged 10 to 19 made up 16 percent of the total last month.
The University of Houston-Downtown (UHD) is the second-largest university in Houston and has served the educational needs of the nations fourth-largest city since 1974.
As one of four distinct public universities in the University of Houston System, UHD is a comprehensive, four-year university led by President Loren J. Blanchard. Annually, UHD educates more than 15,000 students, boasts more than 61,000 alumni, and offers 46 bachelors degrees, 11 masters degrees, and 17 fully online programs within four colleges: Marilyn Davies College of Business, College of Humanities & Social Sciences, College of Public Service, and College of Sciences & Technology.
For the fourth consecutive year, U.S. News & World Report ranks UHD among universities across the nation for Best Online Criminal Justice Programs(No. 27and No.15 for Veterans) and Best Online Bachelors Programs.
UHD has the most affordable tuition among four-year universities in Houston and one of the lowest in Texas. U.S. Newsranked the University amongTop Performers on Social Mobilityand awarded UHD aNo. 1 rankingas the most diverse institution of higher education in the southern region of the U.S.The Universityis noted nationally as a Hispanic-Serving Institution, Minority-Serving Institution, and Military Friendly School. For more on the University of Houston-Downtown, visitwww.uhd.edu.
As concern about how to curb monkeypox continuesat a global level, the first few thousand vaccines against the disease have reached Victoria.
Unlike COVID-19 jabs, uptake of the monkeypox vaccine is not being widely encouraged, but rather directed at particular groups who are at highrisk of contracting the virus.
So far, there have been 22 cases of monkeypox in Victoria, with seven of those remaining active.
Most have been returned travellers, but one case resulted from local transmission.
Here's what we know about how the rollout will look.
Victoria has been allocated 3,500 doses of the third generation JYNNEOSsmallpoxvaccine, which is one of two smallpox vaccines approved for use in Australia.
Due to high demand for the vaccine globally, supply is quite limited.
A complete vaccination requires two doses, delivered at least 28 days apart via injection, preferably into the upper arm.
Advice from Australia's federal health department suggests that, although the vaccine is most effective when given prior to infection, vaccination within 14 days of exposure to monkeypox is expected to reduce the severity of the illness.
Receiving the vaccine within four days of exposure provides the highest chance of avoiding monkeypox altogether.
A similarrollout of the vaccine has begunin New South Wales this week, with the state allocated 5,500 doses.
Although the vaccines are being organised by the Commonwealth, it is up to individual states and territories to decide how to allocate doses based on local risk factors.
Victorian Health Minister Mary-Anne Thomas said the arrival of thefirst trancheof vaccinesfrom the Commonwealth was welcome, and the delivery of more was due later in the year.
Monkeypox can be picked up by anyone who has prolonged contact with another person with the virus, but at the moment the outbreak has disproportionately been affecting men who have sex with men.
Initial symptoms of monkeypoxcan include:
Symptoms are usually followed by a distinctive rash that may appear on the face, genitalia, inside the mouth, palms of the hands and soles of the feet.
The disease spreads between peoplethrough skin-to-skin contact, contact with infected surfaces oritems and respiratory droplets.
While health authorities wait for more supply, strict eligibility criteria for the vaccine have been decided.
MsThomas said vaccines would be "distributed to the people who need them most as quickly as possible".
Thismeans that, at this stage, those eligible are high-risk close contacts of existing monkeypox cases, lab workers analysing specimens from monkeypox cases,sexually active HIV positive or negative gay or bisexual menas well as sex workers with high-risk clients.
Men who have sex with men including cis and transgendermen who fulfil additional criteria set out by the health department will also be eligible.
The vaccine will be rolled out at a handful of Melbourne health clinics, and the Victorian health department's advice for those eligible in regional areas is that the vaccine may be available via a local public health unit.
Thoseclinics earmarked to be part of the rollout are the Melbourne Sexual Health Centre, Thorne Harbour Health, Northside Clinic, Collins Street Medical Centre and Prahran Market Clinic.
Those people eligible to be vaccinated due to their exposure to a confirmed monkeypox case will have their vaccination organisedby health authorities.
At the end of July, Australia's Chief Medical Officer labelled the increasing presence of monkeypox in the country a "communicable disease incident of national significance".
That move followed the World Health Organization's declaration that the spread of the virus to more than 70 countries represented a global "public health emergency".
The disease has beenassociated with west and central African countries since it was first detected in but, since May, it has spread around the world.
There have been more than 26,000 cases reported across the world, with the majority in the US and Europe.
