Podcast: Jennifer Attonito on Lessons Learned from the COVID-19 Vaccine Rollout In Florida Health Affairs
AUGUSTA A walk-in community vaccination clinic will open Tuesday at the Augusta Armory to offer vaccinations and boosters through at least the end of the month, following reports of people having trouble scheduling appointments.
No appointments are needed and vaccines will be provided on a drop-in basis at the Augusta Armory, which is located at 179 Western Ave.
The new clinic comes following a continuing surge in cases across the state, as the number COVID-19 patients hospitalized in Maine also rose to an all-time high. The ongoing surge has been fueled by the more contagious delta variant of the disease, health officials say.
In an email on Monday, Robert Long, communications director for the Maine Center for Disease Control & Prevention, said the clinic will offer free first, second, booster and pediatric doses of the Pfizer vaccine, as well as primary and booster doses of the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines.
Those seeking booster shots are asked to bring their vaccination cards with them. Those seeking vaccinations are asked to enter from the Airport Road access route.
The clinic will be open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday, and from noon to 7 p.m. on Thursday. For more information on hours for next week and the following weeks, visit the Maine CDCs webpage or call 888-445-4111. The site lists information on vaccine sites across the state by county, including which sites require appointments and upcoming single-day clinics.
Tuesdays opening will be considered a soft launch, and the official opening is slated for Wednesday, officials said.
The clinic is a joint effort of the Maine CDC, the Maine Emergency Management Agency and the Maine National Guard, with help from the city of Augusta, the Kennebec County Emergency Management Agency and other state agencies.
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"Ask the Expert" articles provide information and insights from MSU scientists, researchers and scholars about national and global issues, complex research and general-interest subjects based on their areas of academic expertise and study. They may feature historical information, background, research findings or offer tips.
Now that the COVID-19 vaccine is available for kids 5-11 years, parents across the country are making appointments. But their kids may not be as excited as they are about two shots just weeks apart.Jane Turner, a professor in the Department of Pediatrics and Human Development in the College of Human Medicine, offers some tips.
How can parents help their potentially shot-reluctant kids understand the importance of the COVID-19 vaccination?It is helpful for parents to explain to the child why they are getting the vaccine using words that the child can understand, such as, The vaccine will protect you from getting sick and keep you healthy. Older children may understand the concept of immunity: It helps your body build immunity to fight off infections. Most children are pleased to learn, too, that they are doing something good for the community for their friends and classmates.
The best source of advice on how to help your child is the American Academy of Pediatrics, which has an excellent website for parents.
For kids who are afraid of needles and/or shots, what can parents say or do to help ease those fears?
What kind of side effects are kids experiencing with the COVID-19 vaccine, and are those side effects in line with what adults have reported (fever, chills, achiness, etc. for up to 24hours after the vaccine)?
The most common side effect for children is a sore arm. Children can also experience fever, headache and fatigue but these side effects seem to be less common in children than adults. When I vaccinate children, I advise them to continue their usual activities including going to school unless they feel sick.I also advise them to move the arm where they got the vaccine and to drink plenty of fluids.
If so, should parents plan their child's vaccination dates around things like sports practices and school when being sick might be problematic?
I recommend parents schedule the vaccination for the earliest date available and dont worry too much about side effects. The side effects are usually mild, and the child can continue routine activities.Perhaps you should avoid getting the vaccine the day before a high-stakes exam in school or the football final playoffs.
Most young children dont have high-stakes activities. Missing a practice session for a sport or a day in school is trivial compared to getting sick with COVID or giving it to others.With the holidays coming and family gatherings on the near horizon, I recommend getting the vaccine as soon as possible.
Along the same lines, should parents warn their kids they might feel ill after vaccination?
I think parents can tell kids the truth about what to expect: Your arm will probably be sore for a day or two, and you may feel tired and even get a fever.Dont worry, you will feel better soon.
If a child does feel ill after vaccination, how should a parent explain those symptoms to them?
The explanation needs to be appropriate for the childs age and understanding. For the younger child: The vaccine is working and helping your body to be ready to protect you from getting sick; you will feel better soon. For the older child: Your body is responding to the medicine in the vaccine and is building immunity to keep you from getting sick from COVID.
Mixing mRNA, adenoviral, and spike-adjuvant vaccines for protection against COVID-19 The Lancet
The hippos, named Imani and Hermien, have shown no symptoms "other than runny noses," according to a news release from the zoo.
How the animals were exposed to the virus is unknown -- their caretakers have not shown any Covid-19 symptoms and all tested negative for the virus, the release said.
Imani, who is 14 years old, and Hermien, who is 41, are being kept in isolation for now and cannot be seen by visitors, the zoo said.
"To my knowledge, this is the first known contamination in this species. Globally, this virus has mostly been reported in great apes and felines," said the zoo's veterinarian Francis Vercammen, who oversaw their testing for the coronavirus.
Norwegian Cruise Lines Breakaway
Photo: Norwegian Cruise Lines
A Norwegian Cruise Line ship with at least 10 passengers and crew membersinfected with Covid-19docked Sunday in New Orleans, where health officials said they were trying to disembark people without worsening the spread of the coronavirus illness.
Local news outlets in New Orleans confirmed the Norwegian Breakaway had arrived in the city. The ship departed New Orleans on Nov. 28. The Louisiana Department of Health said in a late Saturday news release that over the past week, the ship made stops in Belize, Honduras and Mexico.
Norwegian Cruise Line issued a statement that confirmed a "handful of Covid-19 cases among guests and crew." The company said all of the identified cases involved people without symptoms of the illness.
Norwegian said it requires all passengers and crew members to have been vaccinated against the coronavirus prior to departure.
"We are testing all individuals on Norwegian Breakaway prior to disembarkation, as well as providing post-exposure and quarantine public health guidance by the (U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)," the company's statement said. "Any guests who have tested positive for COVID-19 will travel by personal vehicle to their personal residence or self-isolate in accommodations provided by the company."
The state health department which is working with the cruise line and state and local officials to contain the outbreak said at least 10 people on the ship tested positive for Covid-19. More than 3,200 people were on board the ship, officials said.
Some disembarking passengerstold WVUE-TVin New Orleans that they were notified about the positive cases on the ship, while others said they had no idea about the outbreak until being asked about it by a reporter.
"We didn't hear of this until we kind of heard you talking a second ago," said Don Canole, a passenger from North Carolina. "It would have been nice to have known. We would have taken maybe a few more precautions."
Passengers said they were tested for Covid-19 exposure on Saturday before disembarking Sunday. The cruise line also gave passengers take-home rapid tests as they left the ship, according to WVUE.
The company said no changes to scheduled future sailings on the Norwegian Breakaway are currently planned, and the ship was scheduled to depart again Sunday evening.
Cruise ships were an early source of outbreaks last year at the start of the coronavirus pandemic as some ships were rejected at ports and passengers were forced into quarantine. The CDC issued a no-sail order in March 2020, prompting a standstill that ended last June as cruise ships began to leave U.S. ports with new health and safety requirements.
Pete McGinn's COVID-19 diagnosis surprised him because his symptoms were mild. He was even more surprised to find out his infection was caused by a new variant: omicron.
"When I first heard it, I thought it was a supervillain," said McGinn, of Minneapolis, who tested positive for the virus after a recent trip to New York City for an anime convention. "It seems like a villain name to me and so I guess that kind of matches this since it's a virus."
The 30-year-old product analyst for UnitedHealth Group found out right before Thanksgiving that he had been infected with COVID-19. He said he was was asymptomatic, fully vaccinated and received a booster the first week of November.
McGinn's infection was one of the first cases involving the omicron variant to be identified in the United States, and he's spoken out about it over the weekend to theNew York Timesand other national media, because he didn't like "the stigma of COVID" and wanted to encourage others to take vaccinations seriously.
"I'm very pro-science, pro-vaccine," he said. "I do believe that the booster and getting the vaccine helps reduce the symptoms that I had. And I would definitely recommend anybody who, when they can, get the booster."
Omicron was first reported Nov. 24 in South Africa, where it spread quickly. The variant prompted another wave of pandemic uncertainty and some travel bans around the globe as researchers scrambled to find out more about it.
On Sunday, Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN's "State of the Union" that omicron appears less dangerous than the dominant delta variant, which is driving hospitalizations across the country. But he urged caution "before we make any determinations that it is less severe or it really doesn't cause any severe illness, comparable to delta," he said.
Health officials continue to say vaccination and boosters help protect against delta and other variants like omicron.
The Minnesota Department of Health announced Dec. 2 that its lab found omicron "from a Minnesota resident with recent travel history to New York City." The state's variant surveillance program made it so Minnesota was among the first states to discover the variant, now confirmed in a dozen states. California reported it first on Wednesday and Minnesota became the second confirmed state on Thursday.
After the health department released the info, McGinn said, he saw people were blaming the convention,Anime NYC 2021, and sharing anti-vaccine remarks.
"A lot of it was just like, 'See, vaccines don't work.' But in my opinion, they absolutely work because they reduce the amount of people who are in the hospital," he said, noting many people in the hospitals are unvaccinated. "You might still get COVID, but it reduces the symptoms based off my experience."
McGinn said 15 of the 30 people he socialized with during the convention which drew as many as 50,000 people also tested positive for COVID-19. All of his friends were fully vaccinated, he said.
Health officials haven't determined which variant they all had, he said, and he doesn't know exactly when he was infected. He believes it happened while outside the convention because most attendees were masked.
McGinn flew into New York City on Nov. 18 and returned Nov. 22. Before that, he had flown to Texas for a work trip on Nov. 10 and came back home to Minneapolis three or four days later, he said.
He had planned to spend Thanksgiving at his mother's home in the northern suburb of Champlin, but McGinn heard on Nov. 23 that one of his anime convention friends tested positive for COVID-19, with an asymptomatic case.
McGinn already had a rapid test at home and took it immediately. It came back positive. A test at the Minneapolis Convention Center later that night also came back positive, so he began to quarantine.
"That threw me for a loop because I really wasn't feeling sick," he said.
McGinn said he had a slight runny nose, a little cough that he thought was his asthma and he was exhausted but he figured that was from four days in New York City walking 15 miles a day around the convention and city with friends, dining and singing karaoke.
The Health Department called him for some routine contact tracing Nov. 29 or 30. But on Dec. 1, he said, he got another call from health officials saying he had the omicron variant.
They asked for names of the people he was with and where they lived, so those states' agencies could test for variants.
McGinn attributes his quick recovery and mild illness to his vaccination and booster. He said he was never concerned because he took the steps to protect himself and others.
"I honestly felt fine the entire time," he said. "I'm more interested in seeing the results, like if more people get this and their reaction to it."
Staff writer Jeremy Olson and the Associated Press contributed to this story.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) tweeted that every single year more than 600,000 people in the ... [+] US die from cancer and not a single school has closed. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
On Saturday morning, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene compared Covid-19 and cancer in a four-tweet thread. There was at least one itty bitty problem with the thread: Covid-19 and cancer are not the same thing.
Sure Covid-19 and cancer both start with the letter c. But so does cummerbund and camel. They are also both health issues but so is walking corpse syndrome. Nevertheless, as you can see in the following first two tweets of the thread, Taylor Greene brought Covid-19 and cancer together like hot dogs and peanut butter:
Taylor-Greene started the first tweet by saying, Every single year more than 600,000 people in the US die from cancer. OK, thats roughly true. According to the National Cancer Institute (NCI), in 2021, an estimated 608,570 people will die of cancer in the United States. So far so good then. No mention of space lasers, medical brown shirts or a June 31, 2021, deadline.
The second line her tweet stated, The country has never once shut down. Ok, thats kind of true as well. But isnt that like saying, The country has never once covered everyone completely in spaghetti sauce? Its a true statement but doesnt seem to follow from the first statement about cancer deaths.
The third line offered a little more of the same, Not a single school has closed. Again, this is true. But how could closing schools help fight cancer, especially when cancer rates tend to be much lower among school-aged children. Its not like the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) where school-aged children are very likely to carry and spread the virus to each other during school and then bring home the virus to infect their family members. Closing schools can thus prevent schools from becoming cauldrons to further fuel the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and the pandemic. By contrast, closing schools because of cancer deaths would be akin to putting a stick in your eye. It would serve no purpose except cause even more problems.
Her first tweet concluded with And every year, over 600,000 people, of all ages and all races, will continue to die from cancer. Yes, her tweet had already said something like that. So why repeat that? Does this have anything to do with closing schools? Unless Taylor Greene is somehow suggesting that cancer spreads like the Covid-19 coronavirus, through the air and casual contact?
Yikes, airborne transmission of cancer from spending just 15 minutes with someone with cancer? If cancer were to spread as quickly as the SARS-CoV-2, our society would be in serious, serious trouble. Youd see some really serious toilet paper hoarding then. Looks like writer Thor Benson would have no problems going into lockdown mode if that were the case:
Sure, air pollution, tobacco smokes, and other airborne substances may lead to cancer. But typically that takes many months or even years of exposure. Was Taylor Greene suggesting that there could somehow be cancer superspreader events like what happened at the White House with Covid-19 in 2020?
Before you jump to conclusions about how cancer may be spread actor, Angela Belcamino reminded everyone that things with skin cancer dont get quite that jumpy:
Many responses on Twitter to Taylor Greene emphasized that cancer is not contagious. That is in large part accurate. You are not going to get cancer by staying in the same room for an hour with a person who has cancer. To be fair, though, there are cancers that can be triggered by infectious pathogens. For example, human papilloma virus (HPV) infection can cause cervical, anal, penile, and oropharyngeal cancer. And HPV can be transmitted via sex, which by the way is not the same as sharing a bus with someone. There is no evidence that HPV can float in the air like the SARS-CoV-2.
The second tweet in Taylor Greens thread stated that Since #COVID19 tracking has started, 780,000+ people have died in 22 mo in the US, but more than 1 million still died of cancer. More have died in 2021 from covid than 2020 in spite of Gov mandated widespread vaccines, mass public masking, & trillions spent.
It is true that over 780,000 people in the U.S. have already died from Covid-19. In fact, reported Covid-19 deaths are probably underestimates since not everyone is getting tested for Covid-19. Nevertheless, its not clear though why citing the number of cancer deaths would make the large number of Covid-19 deaths any better. Wouldnt that be like telling a person, dont worry about your house being on fire because it is sitting on quicksand?
The first half of the second line in Taylor Greens second tweet is correct in that more people have died in 2021 than 2020 from Covid-19. However, the second half of the second tweet should prompt you to say, hold on a second. Deaths have been higher in 2021 probably in part because the pandemic has been going on a little longer in 2021 compared to 2020. While the pandemic didnt really pick up in the U.S. until March 2020, this year the pandemic was already in full swing as of January 1, 2021. Moreover, people seemed a lot more diligent with social distancing and face mask wearing earlier on during the pandemic in 2020. Through much of 2021, especially after mid-May, face mask use has become less and less widespread even though the pandemic has continued.
The availability of vaccines is one big thing thats different about 2021 compared to 2020. The Covid-19 vaccines probably have already saved numerous lives. The problem though is vaccination rates have not yet been high enough to make an even more dramatic difference. As of December 3, less than 60% of the U.S. population has been fully vaccinated against Covid-19, well below the 80%-plus herd immunity thresholds that are needed to break the transmission of the virus. Coupling these too low vaccination rates with premature relaxation of other Covid-19 precautions like face mask wearing has led to the Covid-19 death situation of 2021.
Many people are remaining vaccine-hesitant perhaps because they do not fully realize the threat of the Covid-19 coronavirus and the benefits of the vaccine. Continuing with Taylor Greenes suggestion that Covid-19 may be like cancer, the following tweet suggests that people would be quite willing to get cancer vaccine if offered one:
Now there isnt a vaccine against most cancers. One exception is the HPV vaccine, which can in turn cut down your risk of HPV-caused cancers like cervical and anal cancer.
Taylor Greenes third and fourth tweets in the thread were short on medical knowledge as well:
As seen above, Taylor Greene claimed that Covid predominately targets obese & older people. The Covid-19 coronavirus doesnt target anyone in particular. It doesnt weigh you or ask you your age before infecting you. If you have a nose or mouth and a respiratory tract, you can get infected. If you dont have such body parts, you may be a ficus plant. While those with obesity or those who are older may be more likely to have more severe outcomes from Covid-19, everyone is at risk for Covid-19 badness.
Taylor Greene also asserted that ivermectin is saving lives without the evidence that this is the case. As Ive covered previously for Forbes, ivermectin may help remove parasitic worms from your body, there just isnt enough scientific support for its use against Covid-19.
In case you couldnt tell from her cancer references, Taylor Greene is not a medical doctor or a scientist. Therefore, adapting the words of Alanis Morissettes song, isnt it ironic that she was tweeting that its time to take a different approach based on the facts and stop the politically driven mass hysteria. It is time for the U.S. to take a different approach and have politicians stop tweeting about how to deal with Covid-19. Real scientists, medical doctors, and public health experts should be leading the way and not politicians. At the very least, it should be people who can make it very clear that Covid-19 and cancer are not the same thing.
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Instruction
Oregon health officials are opening 11 high-volume COVID-19 vaccination clinics statewide, offering free walk-in-only shots in an effort to boost vaccination rates.
Some clinics, including one opening shop Sunday in Wood Village, will run only several days. The clinics will offer Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech and the Johnson & Johnson vaccines, as well as booster doses for people who have already been vaccinated and doses of the Pfizer shot for children five to 11. Insurance is not necessary, the Oregon Health Authority said. Many of the sites will have between 500 and 1,000 available doses per day, a health authority spokesperson said.
Here is a full list of health authority clinics open this month:
Multnomah County, Wood Village Multnomah Greyhound Park
Multnomah County, Gresham Winter Wonderland (former Kmart site)
Washington County, Pacific University
Washington County, Tektronix, Beaverton
Clackamas County, Abundant Life Church
Marion County, Oregon Health Authority Warehouse, 3455 Aumsville Hwy SE, Salem
Beginning Dec. 6:
Deschutes County Fairgrounds
Drive-through clinic
Jackson County Expo Center
Columbia County Fairgrounds
Baker County Fairgrounds
Union County, Union County Fairgrounds (4-H/Mt. Emily Building)
Fedor Zarkhin
