General Hospital actor fired over Covid vaccine mandate returns to TV show
Steve Burton is back on General Hospital, three years after being fired from the TV show for refusing to comply with its Covid-19 vaccination requirement. USA Today reports the 53-year-old actor is reprising his role as Jason Morgan, a criminal with mob ties, on the ABC soap opera. Burton said he was denied medical and religious exemptions for refusing to get the vaccine in 2021, but doesnt appear to harbor any bad blood. Today is the day! Are you ready? he said in an Instagram post on Monday, announcing his first show back.
Burton appeared on General Hospital off and on for 30 years, and still kept busy acting over the past two years. He appeared on Days of Our Lives and the spinoff miniseries Beyond Salem as Navy SEAL Harris Michaels. A spokesperson said Burtons character is expected to remain in the Days of Our Lives universe in the coming months.
Fellow General Hospital actor Ingo Rademacher, who had played Jasper Jax Jacks on the daytime soap from 1996 to 2021, sued over the vaccine mandate, but a Los Angeles judge reportedly sided with ABC in a June 2023 decision. Rademacher has not appeared in any television roles since, and said in November hes had some mental health struggles since being ousted from the show for my political views.
MORE BUZZ:
Buzz is a daily roundup of entertainment news about movies, TV, music and celebrities.
Specialty
Please choose I'm not a medical professional. Allergy and Immunology Anatomy Anesthesiology Cardiac/Thoracic/Vascular Surgery Cardiology Critical Care Dentistry Dermatology Diabetes and Endocrinology Emergency Medicine Epidemiology and Public Health Family Medicine Forensic Medicine Gastroenterology General Practice Genetics Geriatrics Health Policy Hematology HIV/AIDS Hospital-based Medicine I'm not a medical professional. Infectious Disease Integrative/Complementary Medicine Internal Medicine Internal Medicine-Pediatrics Medical Education and Simulation Medical Physics Medical Student Nephrology Neurological Surgery Neurology Nuclear Medicine Nutrition Obstetrics and Gynecology Occupational Health Oncology Ophthalmology Optometry Oral Medicine Orthopaedics Osteopathic Medicine Otolaryngology Pain Management Palliative Care Pathology Pediatrics Pediatric Surgery Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Plastic Surgery Podiatry Preventive Medicine Psychiatry Psychology Pulmonology Radiation Oncology Radiology Rheumatology Substance Use and Addiction Surgery Therapeutics Trauma Urology Miscellaneous
A man that police caught taking 217 doses of COVID vaccine has offered himself up to researchers for a study looking into what happens to the immune system after so many doses. The results offer surprising insight into these new mRNA vaccines.
In March 2022 a 62-year-old man in Germany was caught by police getting multiple COVID vaccine shots. It was suspected he had personally received more than 90 doses as a way of accumulating vaccination cards to sell to people that were avoiding the jab.
An investigation ultimately led to no criminal charges, however, a team of researchers from Friedrich-Alexander-Universitt Erlangen-Nrnberg were fascinated by the case. What exactly did this many COVID vaccinations do to a human immune system?
We learned about his case via newspaper articles, said Kilian Schober, an author on the newly published case study. We then contacted him and invited him to undergo various tests in Erlangen. He was very interested in doing so.
In chronicling his case, the man claimed to have received 217 COVID vaccinations, of which more than half could be verified by clinical records. The vast majority were mRNA doses, with a small amount of AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, and Sanofi also in the mix. All the doses spanned a total period of 29 months but most were clustered in a nine-month stretch from mid-2021.
One of the key things the researchers set out to look at was whether the man was suffering from what has been informally referred to as immune exhaustion'. As people around the world began to receive their third, fourth or fifth COVID vaccine dose, some researchers emerged to suggest hitting the immune system with the same antigen over short periods of time could actually be harmful. According to Schober, this idea comes from observations in patients suffering from chronic viral infections such as HIV.
That may be the case in a chronic infection such as HIV or Hepatitis B, that has regular flare-ups, noted Schober. There is an indication that certain types of immune cells, known as T-cells, then become fatigued, leading to them releasing fewer pro-inflammatory messenger substances.
So if this held true for multiple COVID vaccine doses then someone who received dozens of doses over a short period of time would surely display molecular signs of immune impairment. But it turns out, at least for this man, that was not the case.
Looking at blood work conducted both recently and over the last couple of years, the man showed extraordinarily high levels of antibodies and T-cells targeting SARS-CoV-2. Investigating more general T-cell responses to other antigens, the mans immune cells were as effective as any of the control cells. This suggests his immune system was not fatigued or exhausted and could fight off pathogens as well as any average person.
Perhaps even more striking, the researchers report the man displayed no negative side effects from any of his multiple vaccine doses even when he was receiving them daily for weeks on end. On top of that the man reported no history of ever being infected with SARS-CoV-2.
During the study, the man even received another COVID vaccine dose, at his insistence, in order to examine his acute immune response following all of his previous shots. He had an effective antibody response indicating the vaccine was still doing its job.
Schober is cautious to stress this doesnt mean we should all go out and get extra vaccine doses whenever we want. This is just a single case study, and an incredibly strange one at that. But what this story does tell us is that COVID vaccines are generally pretty safe and it is unlikely issues of immune exhaustion will arise after just a handful of doses.
The observation that no noticeable side effects were triggered in spite of this extraordinary hypervaccination indicates that the drugs have a good degree of tolerability, said Schober. Current research indicates that a three dose vaccination, coupled with regular top-up vaccines for vulnerable groups, remains the favored approach.
The new study was published in the journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
Source: FAU
A German man who voluntarily received 217 Covid 19 vaccines in the span of 29 months has experienced no negative health effects, according to researchers, although doctors still do not endorse hyper-vaccination to boost immunity. What do you think?
Looks like someone has Pfizer stock.
Sandra Bodnar, General Fireproofer
This Week's Most Viral News: March 8, 2024
Uh oh, now hes got to get 217 boosters!
Doug Rinaldo, Trivia Aggregator
Jeez, I cant imagine getting more than 150.
Cyrus Sprecher, unemployed
WTO members failed to reach consensus on whether to expand patent waiver agreed in 2022 | Extended proposal would include tests and treatments for COVID-19.
The World Trade Organizations (WTO) 13th Ministerial Conference (MC13) closed last week with members failing to reach an agreement on expanding the IP waiver on COVID-19 vaccines to include therapeutics and diagnostics.
MC13 took place in Abu Dhabi from February 26 to March 1, and its conclusion with a lack of consensus about extending the waiver of patent protection comes after years of discussion and heated debate surrounding the issue.
At a meeting of the TRIPS Council on February 13 ahead of the conference, members acknowledged that despite considerable efforts to support a fact- and evidence-based discussion on whether tests and treatments should be included in the waiver, no agreement had been reached.
Campaigners have been pushing for an extension of the agreement made at the 12th WTO Ministerial Conference (MC12) in June 2022, when members affirmed a partial waiver of patent protection for COVID-19 vaccines.
Before last months conference, the TRIPS Council said it would continue its work as directed by the ministerial declaration from MC12 to review and build on all the lessons learned and the challenges experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic, and to build effective solutions in case of future pandemics, in an expeditious manner.
Within this context, areas of interest were cited as the role of IP and, more specifically, voluntary licensing, technology transfer, the operation of the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP), geographical limitations of licences and the operation of Article 31(f) of the TRIPS Agreement.
Waiver expansion unnecessary and harmful
The Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys (CIPA) and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) have been vocal critics of the IP waiver, viewing it as undermining the value of innovation and competition.
In October last year, PhRMA issued a statement in response to a US International Trade Commission report on COVID-19 and the TRIPS Agreement, arguing that the pandemic was over and that there was an abundance of treatments.
TRIPS waiver expansion is unnecessary and would harm American workers, patients and innovation by handing over IP to foreign competitors. Its past time for the Biden administration and other world leaders to move beyond this ideological debate and focus on real global health challenges, PhRMA said.
Prank highlights double standard
On February 14, the Peoples Vaccine Alliancea coalition of organisations that supports equitable access to medical technologiesreleased a hoax statement, purportedly from US and EU delegations to the WTO, announcing that they had reversed their opposition to easing IP rules in future pandemics.
Brook Baker, professor at Northeastern University School of Law and senior policy analyst at Health GAP, criticised the blatant hypocrisy of the US and EU in failing to support expansion of the waiver.
We have pulled a prank to highlight this deadly double standard, he said.
If the Pandemic Accord doesnt include clear and comprehensive provisions allowing low- and middleincome countries to overcome Big Pharmas monopoly control over supply, price, and distribution of vaccines, medicines, and diagnostics, well see the savage inequity of COVID-19 and AIDS repeated in the next pandemic.
The deadline for deciding on extending the waiver was postponed indefinitely in December last year.
Did you enjoy reading this story? Sign up to our free daily newslettersand get stories sent like this straight to your inbox
Harvard University dropped its COVID-19 vaccination requirement on Tuesday after previously requiring students to get the vaccine, plus boosters.
Harvard University Health Services announced on its website Tuesday that it wouldnt require students to receive the coronavirus vaccination to attend the school.
Harvard University Health Services (HUHS) will no longer require students to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, the university wrote in an update. We strongly recommend that all members of the Harvard community stay up-to-date on COVID-19 vaccines, including boosters if eligible. Additionally, we continue to emphasize the benefits of wearing a high-quality face mask in crowded indoor settings and remaining at home if unwell. HUHS considers state and federal guidance, along with advice from the Universitys public health experts, in responding to COVID-19. We will continue to monitor public health data and will periodically review requirements.
A FAQ page on the health services website further states that incoming students for the 2024-2025 academic year wont be required to get the COVID-19 vaccine.
[RELATED: Rep. Foxx says Harvard has absolutely failed to comply with subpoena, handed over useless documents]
Harvard University previously dropped its COVID-19 vaccine booster requirement in May 2023, according to the Harvard Crimson.
Campus Reform has reached out to Harvard University for comment.
Two years ago, German doctors stumbled across news reports of a man being investigated for receiving scores of coronavirus vaccines with no medical explanation.
Then followed a flurry of speculation about what he had been up to. As it turned out, prosecutors were looking into whether he had been receiving so many extra doses as part of a scheme to collect stamped immunization cards that he could later sell to people who wanted to skirt vaccine mandates.
But to the doctors, the man was a medical anomaly, someone who had defied official recommendations and turned himself into a guinea pig for measuring the outer limits of an immune response. Last year, they asked prosecutors investigating his vaccine splurge to pass along a request: Would he like to join a research project?
Once prosecutors closed their fraud investigation without criminal charges, the man agreed.
By the time the doctors first saw him, the 62-year-old man had received 215 doses of coronavirus vaccine, they said. Flouting their pleas to stop, he received another two shots in the next months, expanding his immunological stockpile to a combined 217 doses of eight different Covid vaccine types over two and a half years.
After months of studying him, the doctors, led by Dr. Kilian Schober, an immunologist at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in the German state of Bavaria, reported their findings this week in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, a medical journal.
The man had seemingly never been infected with the coronavirus. He reported no vaccine side effects. And, most interestingly to the researchers, his repertoire of antibodies and immune cells was considerably larger than that of a typical vaccinated person, even if the precision of those immune responses remained effectively unchanged.
We are having trouble retrieving the article content.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit andlog intoyour Times account, orsubscribefor all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber?Log in.
Want all of The Times?Subscribe.
German researchers have examined a hypervaccinated man they say received more than 200 coronavirus shots without any noticeable side effects or harm to his immune system.
Their findings, published Monday in the Lancet Infectious Diseases, a medical journal, indicate that coronavirus vaccines have a good degree of tolerability, the researchers said, although they noted this was an isolated case of extraordinary hypervaccination.
The 62-year-old man came to researchers attention when German prosecutors opened up a fraud investigation, gathering evidence that he had obtained 130 coronavirus shots in a nine-month period far more than recommended by health authorities.
We learned about his case via newspaper articles, Kilian Schober, one of the studys authors, said in a statement. We then contacted him and invited him to undergo various tests. He was very interested in doing so.
The man agreed to provide blood samples, including new samples, the results from past blood tests and blood samples that had been frozen in recent years.
The man said he had received 217 vaccinations for private reasons. German authorities did not file criminal charges.
Going into the study, the researchers had speculated that having so many shots could cause his immune system to become fatigued. Vaccines create immune memory cells that are on standby, ready to rapidly activate the bodys defenses in the event of an infection.
But in fact, the researchers found that the man had more of these immune cells known as T-cells than a control group that had received the standard three-dose vaccine regimen. They also did not detect any fatigue in these cells, which they said were just as effective as those of people who had received a typical number of coronavirus shots.
Overall, we did not find any indication for a weaker immune response, rather the contrary, said Katharina Kocher, one of the lead authors of the study.
Even by the 217th vaccination, researchers say the shot still had an effect: The mans antibodies against the coronavirus increased significantly as a result. (Researchers say the man insisted on receiving another shot during the study. They took blood samples, which helped them determine how his immune system was responding.)
The researchers made it clear that despite their findings, they do not endorse hypervaccination as a strategy to enhance adaptive immunity.
Although they could not find any signs that the man had ever contracted the coronavirus, they said they werent able to establish a causal relationship between his hypervaccination regimen and avoiding infection.
More than 60 million people in Germany have been vaccinated against the coronavirus, and most of them have received several doses.
In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended last month that people 65 and older get a second dose of a coronavirus vaccine made available in the fall because they are at higher risk for severe disease from the virus.
Uptake since the CDC recommended that people age 5 and older get an updated vaccine has been low only about 22 percent of those 18 and older have received a dose of an updated vaccine. And only about 42 percent of those 65 and older have received a dose, The Washington Post previously reported.
Lena H. Sun contributed to this report
COVID-19 vaccines have been key to controlling the pandemic, but researchers in Germany report on one man who took the vaccination message to the extreme.
The subject of the research published in Lancet Infectious Diseases is a 62-year-old man from Magdeburg, Germany who claims to have received 217 COVID-19 vaccinations within about 2.5 years. (German prosecutors confirmed he received 130 shots in nine months during an investigation into fraud; ultimately, they did not file criminal charges.)
It's not clear why the man wanted so many vaccinations or how he obtained them. But after reading news reports of the man's story, scientists at Friedrich-Alexander-Universitt Erlangen-Nrnberg (FAU) became intrigued and wanted to study how the vaccinations affected his immune system. The manwho told researchers he hadn't experienced side effects from his shotsvolunteered to provide blood and saliva samples to the scientists and allowed them to mine his health records so that they could better understand what effect aggressively stimulating the immune system with a COVID-19 vaccine might have. Even during this analysis, the man requested and received an additional two COVID-19 shots, against the advice of the study researchers.
The mans extreme vaccination history provided a unique opportunity for scientists to see whether hyper-vaccination would positively or negatively affect the immune system's ability to respond to pathogens like viruses. It was unclear in which direction the 200 vaccinations would go, says Dr. Kilian Schober, the study's lead author and group leader at the Institute for Clinical Microbiology, Immunology, and Hygiene in Erlangen at FAU. Would these shots enhance his immune response"like we want to see with multiple vaccinations and booster shots"or perhaps damage it?
Read More: Why Older Adults Need Another COVID-19 Shot
Schober and the team compared the mans immune responsesmeasured by his blood antibody levels, the first line of defense against a virus, and T cell levels, which are responsible for the body's longer-term responseto those of a control group of 29 people who had received three COVID-19 shots.
Based on how the immune system works, Schober and his team thought that the man's immune response might mirror that of people with chronic infections, such as HIV or hepatitis B. In those conditions, in which the immune system is constantly stimulated, immune cells can become overwhelmed and start to mount weaker responses.
But that's not what they found. The man's antibody levels and a type of T cell called effector T cells were six times higher than those in the control group on average. Those high levels proved that his immune response was strong.
However, his level of memory T cellswhich are responsible for remembering viruses that a person has been infected with and replenishing the immune system's overall T-cell populationwere about the same as those in the control group. It made sense, says Schober, since memory T cells are reactivated when the body sees the same virus again. "But it was intriguing for us to actually see it in the data.
According to repeated negative tests for COVID-19, which the researchers confirmed by the fact that that his immune system showed no sign that it had dealt with the virus yet, says Schober, the man was likely never infected with SARS-CoV-2. Schober cautions, however, against assuming that his hyper-vaccinated status was responsible for protecting him.
The researchers concluded that overall, while the man's excessive vaccination history increased his antibody levels and apparently protected him from infection, hyper-activating his immune system did not seem to have a negative effect on his ability to mount an adequate response. At the same time, his extreme measures did not seem to afford him a level of super-immunity that distinguished his response dramatically from others who followed the recommended vaccination schedule. His immune system was neither positively nor negatively affected," says Schober.
Vaccines and immunisation
German man, who said he had vaccines for private reasons, suspected of selling certificates to people who didnt want jab
A German man who voluntarily received 217 coronavirus jabs over 29 months showed no signs of having been infected with the virus that causes Covid-19 and had not suffered from any vaccine-related side effects, according to a study published in the medical journal Lancet Infectious Diseases.
The 62-year-old, from Magdeburg, Germany, whom doctors described as hypervaccinated, said he had had the large number of vaccines for private reasons, according to the researchers from University of Erlangen-Nuremberg who examined him.
According to the news magazine Spiegel, the mans vaccine spree had sparked a criminal investigation against him for suspected fraud, after suspicions he had run a scam to sell the vaccine certificates to people who did not want to get the jab.
The initial reports relating to the study, which gave scant information, had sparked widespread speculation, with suggestions that the man was suffering from paranoid hypochondria, that he possibly had a needle fixation, or he was a doctor who might have been administering vaccines to patients himself. There were also questions as to whether he had financed the jabs out of his own pocket, or received medical authorisation to receive them.
Later reports confirmed the criminal investigation against the man, who was accused of getting so many doses in order to be able to collect the stamped and signed vaccination cards, which could then be forged and sold on to people who did not want to be vaccinated and so faced extensive restrictions at the height of the pandemic.
A public prosecutor in Magdeburg had opened an investigation into the fraud allegations but no criminal charges were actually filed, authorities confirmed to the researchers.
The academics contacted the man after reading about him in a newspaper report. He accepted their request to study his bodys response to the multiple jabs.
We then contacted him and invited him to undergo various tests in Erlangen, Dr Kilian Schober said. He was very interested in doing so.
They vaccinated him for the 217th time for the purpose of the study, the researchers said.
The research team said it had seen official confirmation for 134 of the vaccinations, which included eight different vaccines, including various mRNA vaccines. They looked at previous blood tests the man had given over multiple years and also examined blood samples as he went on to receive further vaccines.
Confirmation of 130 of the vaccines, within a nine-month timeframe, came from the public prosecutors investigation against the man, Spiegel reported.
The observation that no noticeable side effects were triggered in spite of this extraordinary hypervaccination indicates that the drugs have a good degree of tolerability, Schober said.
The researchers found that his immune system was fully functional.
Certain immune cells and antibodies against the virus that causes Covid-19 (Sars-CoV-2) were present in considerably higher levels compared with people who had received just three vaccines, the team reported.
Overall, we did not find any indication for a weaker immune response, rather the contrary, said one of the leading study authors, Katharina Kocher.
Further tests showed the reaction of the mans immune system to other viruses remained unchanged proof, the researchers said, that his immune system had not been damaged by having to respond to so many vaccinations.
The researchers said that even though further details about the man or his motives would not be made public, he had effectively served the common good by demonstrating how well tolerated the vaccines generally are. However, they warned the public against following the mans example, saying that excessive vaccinations were not in general advisable and could cause unpleasant and unnecessary side effects. The fact that the man who never contracted the coronavirus tolerated so many jabs so well did not mean that would translate into the rest of the population.
Prof Dr Andreas Radbruch, an immunologist and president of the European Federation of the Immunological Associations of Experts (EFIS), who was not involved in the study, said that hypervaccination would not increase a persons protection beyond the point at which their immunological memory was satiated.
The vaccine is absorbed by the antibodies before it can trigger an immune response. Beyond a certain level of concentration of antibodies, the immune system closes off and no more new antibodies are made, he told German media. Once someone has enough antibodies, you cannot increase their protection with further vaccinations.
Germanys standing commission on vaccination, Stiko, advises that a persons basic immunity is reached after three episodes of contact with a pathogen, such as one vaccine and two infections, or vice versa. In Germany, those considered at risk and everyone over the age of 60 is advised to get a top-up coronavirus vaccine every autumn.
{{topLeft}}
{{bottomLeft}}
{{topRight}}
{{bottomRight}}
{{.}}
One-timeMonthlyAnnual
Other
