#Apoorva Mandavilli

[ruthfeiertag]

The White House just announced that President Biden has contacted COVID. I wish him a speedy and complete recovery. Because the President has been fully vaccinated (and because he has access to levels of health care few of the rest of us enjoy), he is likely to be well again soon. But even a mild or asymptomatic case can lead to Long-COVID, and we should be protecting ourselves and each other from catching this corona virus and possibly developing a permanent, debilitating condition.

Apoorva Mandavilli, writing for the _New YorkTimes_, reminds us that “for some people with certain risk factors — age, pregnancy, chronic conditions or a compromised immune system — an infection may bring serious illness.”1

If you want to know what it’s like to live with a post-viral chronic illness, read the Tumblrs of people enduring them (see the tags below), particularly those of us living with myalgic encephalomyelitis (me/cfs), the condition closely aligned with Long-COVID. (“The illness [Long COVID] is similar to myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome [ME/CFS] as well as to persisting illnesses that can follow a wide variety of other infectious agents and following major traumatic injury.”2) And while some of us are more susceptible than others, ANYONE, no matter how young and healthy, can develop Long-haul COVID:

“Long COVID occurs more often in people who had severe COVID-19 illness, but anyone who gets COVID-19 can experience it, including children.”3

The CDC article also highlights the way that “Living with Long COVID can be difficult and isolating, especially when there are no immediate answers or solutions.” It does not describe the devastating possible “side effects” of losing the ability to work, to enjoy activities, to be independent, nor of the experiences of having doctors refuse to believe one’s condition is real, of the near-impossibility of getting to a doctor who specializes in post-viral diseases (and who won’t accept insurance)4, nor of the feeling of being an inconvenience or burden to those who care for us.

“In every age group, even a mild illness may trigger a lasting set of problems. Nearly 14 million Americans, or about 5.3 percent of adults, may now be living with long Covid, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”1

Wearing an N95 might not be the most comfortable fashion accessory, but putting one on when we will be among others can save lives and the meaningful existence of the people with whom we come in contact. The inconvenience is far less than the loss of income, health, and happiness Long-COVID can bring.

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1. Apoorva Mandavilli. “Long Covid and Vaccination: What You Need to Know,” _New York Times_, July 17, 2024, 6:03 p.m. ET

https://www.nytimes.com/article/long-covid-vaccine.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb

2. Anthony L. Komaroff and W. Ian Lipkin. “ME/CFS and Long COVID share similar symptoms and biological abnormalities: road map to the literature,” Front Med (Lausanne). 2023; 10: 1187163. Published online 2023 Jun 2. doi: 10.3389/fmed.2023.1187163

PMCID: PMC10278546PMID: 37342500

3. https://www.cdc.gov/covid/long-term-effects/?CDC_AAref_Val=https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects/index.html

4. “There are only a handful of specialists and clinical centers that specialize in ME/CFS around the country. Many of them do not take insurance and most have waiting lists that can be years long.” https://solvecfs.org/me-cfs-long-covid/patient-and-caregiver-resources/

[beardedmrbean]

Few in the media seemed eager to attend a ceremony last week in Washington, D.C., where the prestigious American Academy of Sciences and Letters was awarding its top intellectual freedom award.

The problem may have been the recipient: Stanford Professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.

Bhattacharya has spent years being vilified by the media over his dissenting views on the pandemic. As one of the signatories of the 2020 Great Barrington Declaration, he was canceled, censored, and even received death threats.

That open letter called on government officials and public health authorities to rethink the mandatory lockdowns and other extreme measures in light of past pandemics.

All the signatories became targets of an orthodoxy enforced by an alliance of political, corporate, media, and academic groups. Most were blocked on social media despite being accomplished scientists with expertise in this area.

It did not matter that positions once denounced as “conspiracy theories” have been recognized or embraced by many.

Some argued that there was no need to shut down schools, which has led to a crisis in mental illness among the young and the loss of critical years of education. Other nations heeded such advice with more limited shutdowns (including keeping schools open) and did not experience our losses.

Others argued that the virus’s origin was likely the Chinese research lab in Wuhan. That position was denounced by the Washington Post as a “debunked” coronavirus “conspiracy theory.” The New York Times Science and Health reporter Apoorva Mandavilli called any mention of the lab theory “racist.”

Federal agencies now support the lab theory as the most likely based on the scientific evidence.

The Biden administration tried to censor this Stanford doctor, but he won in court

Likewise, many questioned the efficacy of those blue surgical masks and supported natural immunity to the virus — both positions were later recognized by the government.

Others questioned the six-foot rule used to shut down many businesses as unsupported by science. In congressional testimony, Dr. Anthony Fauci recently admitted that the 6-foot rule “sort of just appeared” and “wasn’t based on data.” Yet not only did the rule result in heavily enforced rules (and meltdowns) in public areas, the media further ostracized dissenting critics.

Again, Fauci and other scientists did little to stand up for these scientists or call for free speech to be protected. As I discuss in my new book, “The Indispensable Right,” the result is that we never really had a national debate on many of these issues and the result of massive social and economic costs.

I spoke at the University of Chicago with Bhattacharya and other dissenting scientists in the front row a couple of years ago. After the event, I asked them how many had been welcomed back to their faculties or associations since the recognition of some of their positions.

They all said that they were still treated as pariahs for challenging the groupthink culture.

Now the scientific community is recognizing the courage shown by Bhattacharya and others with its annual Robert J. Zimmer Medal for Intellectual Freedom.

So what about all of those in government, academia, and the media who spent years hounding these scientists?

Universities shred their ethics to aid Biden’s social-media censorship

Biden Administration officials and Democratic members targeted Bhattacharya and demanded his censorship. For example, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) attacked  Bhattacharya and others who challenged the official narrative during the pandemic. Krishnamoorthi expressed outrage that the scientists were even allowed to testify as “a purveyor of COVID-19 misinformation.”

Journalists and columnists also supported the censorship and blacklisting of these scientists. In the Los Angeles Times, columnist Michael Hiltzik decried how “we’re living in an upside-down world” because Stanford allowed these scientists to speak at a scientific forum. He was outraged that, while “Bhattacharya’s name doesn’t appear in the event announcement,” he was an event organizer. Hiltzik also wrote a column titled “The COVID lab leak claim isn’t just an attack on science, but a threat to public health.” 

Then there are those lionized censors at Twitter who shadow-banned Bhattacharya. As former CEO Parag Agrawal generally explained, the “focus [was] less on thinking about free speech … [but[ who can be heard.”

None of this means that Bhattacharya or others were right in all of their views. Instead, many of the most influential voices in the media, government, and academia worked to prevent this discussion from occurring when it was most needed.

There is still a debate over Bhattacharya’s “herd immunity” theories, but there is little debate over the herd mentality used to cancel him.

The Academy was right to honor Bhattacharya. It is equally right to condemn all those who sought to silence a scientist who is now being praised for resisting their campaign to silence him and others.

[sataniccapitalist]

Experts warn bird flu poses ‘an existential threat’ to biodiversity, and a possible threat...

The current clade of H5N1 or bird flu is an "existential threat" to the world’s biodiversity, experts say. While it has infected more than 500 bird and mammal species on every continent except Australia, the number of human infections from the current clade (grouping) 2.3.4.4b is still comparatively small. U.S. dairy workers have recently become infected, and the virus could easily mutate to become more virulent, our guest says.

Joining the Mongabay Newscast to talk about it is Apoorva Mandavilli, a global health reporter for The New York Times. Mandavilli details what virologists and experts know about the human health risks associated with this latest clade, what nations are doing (or not doing) to help contain its spread, and why. She also details how environmental degradation and industrial agriculture help create the conditions for outbreaks like this to occur.

[p4557]

Trump’s Transition Team Head Says R.F.K. Jr. Converted Him to Vaccine Skeptic - The New York Times

Trump’s Transition Team Head Says R.F.K. Jr. Converted Him to Vaccine Skeptic

Howard Lutnick told CNN that he believed Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who could have a position in a possible Trump administration, was right about debunked vaccine claims.

Howard Lutnick, the head of Donald Trump’s potential transition team, echoed Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s views on vaccines in a CNN interview.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

By Maggie Astor and Apoorva Mandavilli

Oct. 31, 2024

Howard Lutnick, the head of the team planning former President Donald J. Trump’s potential White House transition, said on Wednesday that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had persuaded him to embrace Mr. Kennedy’s anti-vaccine claims, which have been widely debunked.

Mr. Trump has indicated that he might give Mr. Kennedy a position in his administration if he wins the election, something that could have profound implications for public health policy.

In an interview on CNN, Mr. Lutnick said he had spoken with Mr. Kennedy for two and a half hours this week, and repeated the false claim that childhood vaccines cause autism. That claim, usually proffered in relation to a vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella, stems from a 1998 study that was discredited and retracted.

He described Mr. Kennedy suggesting that vaccines had become unsafe because of a 1986 law shielding manufacturers from civil liability.

That law created a federal program to compensate people for adverse effects — which are very rare — as an alternative to liability for manufacturers. It did not change anything about safety and approval requirements for vaccines, which are extensively tested and must be approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

Mr. Lutnick, seemingly dismissing the testing and approval requirements, asked CNN’s Kaitlan Collins: “Why do you think vaccines are safe? There’s no product liability anymore.”

He also repeated a common anti-vaccine talking point that some vaccines might be safe, but children receive too many. The number of vaccines in the recommended schedule has increased as new vaccines have been developed and shown in clinical trials to be safe and effective, and as researchers and public health officials have determined the optimal number of doses. But vaccines have been streamlined over the same period, meaning that even as the number of shots has increased, the amount of antigens they contain has significantly decreased.

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Ms. Collins pushed back on Mr. Lutnick, emphasizing that vaccines are tested for safety, but he doubled down.

The Trump campaign denied a recent statement from Mr. Kennedy that he had been promised “control” of government health agencies, and in the CNN interview, Mr. Lutnick dismissed a suggestion that Mr. Kennedy would lead the Department of Health and Human Services. But he made clear that Mr. Kennedy’s views were likely to be influential in a Trump administration.

The criticism of the 1986 liability law was particularly notable because Casey Means, a doctor who is a contender to lead the F.D.A. if Mr. Trump wins, also condemned it in a recent newsletter. The law was intended to protect companies that were abandoning vaccine manufacturing because of frivolous lawsuits, and it compensates people who believe they have been harmed by vaccines without requiring them to prove fault on the part of the manufacturers.

Mr. Lutnick said Mr. Kennedy wanted access to data on vaccine safety — implying baselessly that it was being hidden — so he could prove vaccines were dangerous and compel companies to recall them.

“He wants the data so he can say these things are unsafe,” Mr. Lutnick said. “He says if you give me the data, all I want is the data, and I’ll take on the data and show that it’s not safe. And then if you pull the product liability, the companies will yank these vaccines right off of the markets.”

The day after Mr. Lutnick made his comments, an episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast was released in which JD Vance, Mr. Trump’s running mate, also expressed skepticism about vaccines in an interview recorded earlier this week.

“The moment where I really started to get red-pilled on the whole vax thing was, the sickest that I’ve been in the last 15 years by far was when I took the vaccine,” Mr. Vance said, referring to the original Covid vaccines and describing normal immune-response side effects that, though unpleasant, are not dangerous.

“Red-pilled” is a term used by some people on the far right, stemming from the movie “The Matrix,” to refer to accepting what they believe is a reality that shadowy elites don’t want them to know.

Maggie Astor covers politics for The Times, focusing on breaking news, policies, campaigns and how underrepresented or marginalized groups are affected by political systems. More about Maggie Astor

Apoorva Mandavilli is a reporter focused on science and global health. She was a part of the team that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of the pandemic. More about Apoorva Mandavilli

See more on: 2024 Elections: News, Polls and Analysis, Health and Human Services Department, Food and Drug Administration, Donald Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Kaitlan Collins

© 2024 The New York Times Company

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/31/us/politics/trump-rfk-jr-vaccine-skepticism.html#:~:text=SKIP%20TO%20CONTENT,Subscriptions

[stuartbramhall]

The Media Slowly Backpedals, As They Slowly Erase the False Narrative

Mark Oshinskie […] Media outlets and writers who fomented Coronamania have, over the past two years or so, been retreating slowly from the fear and loathing they began brewing up in March, 2020. They’ve calculated that a Covid-weary, distractable public won’t remember most of what they said earlier in the Scamdemic. Last Friday, in two, paired articles, New York Times writers Apoorva Mandavilli…

[antonio-velardo]

Antonio Velardo shares: Europe Faces a Measles Outbreak by Apoorva Mandavilli

By Apoorva Mandavilli When vaccinations begin to lag, as they did during the pandemic, measles is often the first disease to resurge. “It’s the canary in the coal mine,” one expert said. Published: January 24, 2024 at 02:10PM from NYT Health https://ift.tt/IUu9v43 via IFTTT

[sighphi]

New York Times Science Reporter Apoorva Mandavilli Makes One Direction E...

[ourquietman]

The number of deaths is the lowest since the pandemic began, and roughly one-tenth of the levels in January. Most virus fatalities now occur in adults older than 75. But the real toll will be apparent only at the end of the year, after the fall and winter’s respiratory blitz, experts said.

“We are in a very different place, but Covid is still a thing,” said Katelyn Jetelina, a public health expert and author of the widely read newsletter, “Your Local Epidemiologist.”

“I think we do the public a disservice by saying that it’s over and let’s move on, because it is going to be disruptive this winter, and it will cause a number of people to die,” she added. “That’s just not acceptable to the public health world, especially since it’s preventable.”

Apoorva Mandavilli in THE NEW YORK TIMES

[fuojbe-beowgi]

"Federal Officials Hatch a Three-Pronged Defense Against Another ‘Tripledemic’" by Apoorva Mandavilli via NYT Health https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/05/health/vaccines-rsv-covid-flu.html?partner=IFTTT

[studieesshow]

A Plea From Experts to Pregnant Women: Get Vaccinated Against Covid

By Apoorva Mandavilli Many expectant women have avoided the shots, unaware that the virus poses significant risks to the fetus — and to them. Published: December 8, 2022 at 09:03AM via NYT Health https://ift.tt/jWY02sR

[youreadwhatiread]

Just read it all the way to the end.

[wazafam]

By BY RONI CARYN RABIN, APOORVA MANDAVILLI, SHAWN HUBLER, JILL COWAN AND ANA FACIO-KRAJCER from Health in the New York Times-https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/06/30/world/covid-19-vaccine-coronavirus-updates/are-masks-coming-back-the-delta-variant-has-some-different-officials-rethinking-precautions?partner=IFTTT Are masks coming back? The Delta variant has some different officials rethinking precautions. New York Times

[saharanewsporn]

By BY APOORVA MANDAVILLI from en Español in the New York Times-https://ift.tt/3b1USaV El seguimiento de las cargas virales puede ayudar a gestionar mejor los recursos de hospitalización para los pacientes con coronavirus. ¿Qué tanto te contagiaste de coronavirus? New York Times

[outsidetheknow]

Why the New Coronavirus (Mostly) Spares Children So far, very few young children seem to be falling ill. The pattern was seen in outbreaks of SARS and MERS, too.. via NYT Health

[mostlysignssomeportents]

A covid vaccine for your airways

The covid vaccine picture is awfully confusing. The current vaccines are doing a great job of preventing serious illness (at least, for people who are boosted), but they’re not nearly so effective at preventing infection and transmission. What’s more, the new variants are more contagious and less likely to cause severe infection, but they also appear to confer less immunity against re-infection:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-01/fast-spreading-omicron-variant-less-likely-to-stop-reinfection

At the same time, vaccine apartheid continues to reign supreme over the globe: the WTO’s vaccine waiver initiative stalled in the face of opposition from Big Pharma and the Gates Foundation, and the world’s poorest people are forced to serve as reservoirs and incubators for new variants.

But there’s promising news that addresses both of these issues: new vaccines that are royalty free, that offer superior protection and don’t require the extreme cold-chain or even the skilled needlework of the mRNA vaccines.

Writing today in her Substack, Katelyn Jetelina writes about two vaccines she describes as “game-changers”: CORBEVAX and NVX-CoV2373 (AKA Novavax):

https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/two-underdog-but-game-changing-vaccines

Novavax uses techniques that have been proven out in some flu and HPV vaccines, and can be made rapidly and in bulk in moth cells. It combines a spike protein with “an immune-boosting compound from the soapbark tree,” and it had some very promising Phase III trials.

How promising? “An efficacy of 100% against moderate-to-severe disease with the original variant and 90% efficacy overall…highly effective against other variants of concern, like Delta, Beta, and Omicron.”

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2116185?query=featured_home

Novavax has already been approved for use in parts of the global south, including India and South Africa; it’s close to approval in the US, too (a production snag held up FDA approval).

Then there’s CORBEVAX, which was produced by Drs Maria Elena Bottazzi and Peter Hotez without pharma company backing. It’s a project that started 20 years ago, during the first SARS epidemic. Neither the Trump administration nor Biden’s have given them real financial support, so they’ve relied on the philanthropic arm of Tito’s Vodka (seriously) and other donors.

CORBEVAX is made in yeast cultures, like the Hepatatis B vaccine — a decades-old technique that’s cheap and highly reliable. CORBEVAX’s Stage III trials had 50% fewer adverse events than other vaccines, and yielded “>90% vaccine effectiveness and 80% effective against Delta.”

Best of all: it’s available without royalties — it’s “the world’s vaccine.” It’s already been licensed for manufacture in Indonesia, Bangladesh, South Africa and Botswana.

All of that is promising, but the most promising vaccine news I’ve found involves nasal vaccines, which “put protection exactly where it is needed to fend off the virus: the mucosal linings of the airways, where the coronavirus first lands.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/02/health/covid-vaccine-nasal.html?referringSource=articleShare

India’s Bharat Biotech (makers of Covaxin) have a promising nasal-spray vaccine that can be administered without injection. It’s just one of dozens of nasal vaccines in development around the world. The immunologists quoted in Apoorva Mandavilli’s NYT story are bullish on them as a booster for primary vaccines.

According to the article, introducing vaccines directly to the airway induces “immune memory cells and antibodies in the nose and throat.” That’s important because the antibodies created by intramuscular injections don’t propagate well to those parts of the body, which may be why vaccines prevent illness, but not infection.

Nasal sprays (and nebulizers, which can deliver vaccines to the entire airway, down to the bronchioles) induce IgA antibodies “that thrive on mucosal surfaces like the nose and throat [and] may wane more slowly.”

And here’s where it all comes together: Cuba is a biotech powerhouse with five vaccines under development, including a nasal spray. These vaccines are crushing it in Stage III tests. Cuba is ramping up production, on the island and overseas, and supplying vaccines to the whole Global South.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/28/somos-cuba/#omishambles

It’s a powerful curative to the racist lie — peddled by Big Pharma and its apologists like Howard Dean — that brown people in poor countries are too primitive to make vaccines and so we should let Big Pharma harvest all the gains from publicly funded mRNA research and dribble out vaccines to the 2.6 billion poorest people in the world:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/08/howard-dino/#the-scream

Image: Jeremy Sutcliffe (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/jmts/15694018524/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/jmts/16202590269/

CC BY: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

MathieuMD (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Polype_nasal.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

[antonio-velardo]

Antonio Velardo shares: Florida Health Official Calls for Halt to Covid Vaccines by Apoorva Mandavilli

By Apoorva Mandavilli Federal health officials and other experts have repeatedly sought to counter erroneous comments about the vaccines by Dr. Joseph Ladapo, Florida’s surgeon general. Published: January 3, 2024 at 10:45PM from NYT Health https://ift.tt/GiZPeJr via IFTTT