Coronavirus, Monkeypox, and Other Contagious Diseases

[goldenvalley]

The judge that blocked a CDC order concerning cruise ships a year ago now has prevented the Navy from removing the commanding officer from a ship.  And he's a Bush the Elder appointee.

At this moment, the United States Navy is preparing to deploy a 10,000-ton warship carrying 320 officers and sailors, along with missiles, torpedoes, and a mounted artillery gun. This ship, known as a guided-missile destroyer, defends the United States and its allies on the seas. Although its next mission remains secret, it may bolster American military presence in Europe as Russian aggression pushes the continent into war. But the Navy cannot currently deploy this warship, because it has lost trust in its commanding officer, an anti-vaxxer who has repeatedly disobeyed lawful orders, misled superiors, and allegedly exposed dozens of his crew to COVID-19 due to a refusal to get tested.

The Navy wants to remove this officer, whom I’ll call John Doe, from command of the destroyer. But it can’t, because a single federal judge in Tampa has forbidden it. This judge has overruled multiple admirals and captains who assert, under oath, that deploying the ship with Doe in charge would imperil national security. He instead ordered the Navy, under threat of sanction, to keep this disobedient officer in charge of a $1.8 billion warship. The federal judiciary is quite literally preventing the nation from defending itself at sea.

That judge, Steven Douglas Merryday, is a George H.W. Bush nominee who sits on a federal trial court in Florida. He gained notoriety in 2021 after blocking a CDC order that limited cruise ship operations due to the pandemic. So, when the far-right Liberty Counsel sought to halt President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for the armed forces, they took their case to Merryday’s court. Predictably, they prevailed: In February, Merryday ruled that the mandate violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, siding with the plaintiffs, Navy Commander John Doe and Lieutenant Colonel Jane Smith. (I’ve applied these pseudonyms to the officers because the court granted them anonymity.)

But Merryday did not merely exempt Doe and Smith from the mandate. Rather, he handed down a sweeping restraining order that prohibited the Navy from taking any “adverse action” against the plaintiffs because of their unvaccinated status. Specifically, he barred the Navy from reassigning them for any reason whatsoever.

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act is the basis for this. We're seeing the unintended consequences of that legislation that is coming from judges deciding that there is no compelling interest in the government's regulation or that the regulation is not the least restrictive way of achieving the interest. It's looking as if the free exercise clause of the 1st Amendment is like the sacred 2nd Amendment...two things that override any societal interest that are alleged to burden those two rights.

I'm speculating here but if this officer were deployed in certain tropical places he was probably required to get vaccinations to deal with diseases unique to those places. And of course there are standard vaccinations required before children can go to public (and many times private) schools too.  Why is a Covid vaccine special in the minds of some people?   If a person is worried about vague claims that Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were based on fetal tissue they can always get J&J. 

[jackd]

Hopefully, the Navy has appealed. In the meantime, they could send a separate ship.

[Bact PhD]

I debated whether to put this gem here or in the “Florida Man” thread (bold mine).

www.gainesville.com/story/news/politics/2022/03/07/florida-surgeon-general-joseph-ladapo-recommending-against-covid-vaccine-healthy-kids/9411801002/

Defying guidance from the nation's top infectious disease and pediatric health experts, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo announced Monday that the state will become the first to recommend that healthy kids not get vaccinated for COVID-19. 

Ladapo made the announcement at the end of a roundtable discussion in West Palm Beach that Gov. Ron DeSantis convened to discuss "failures" in the response to COVID-19.

Florida “is going to be the first state to officially recommend against the COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children,” Ladapo said, without elaborating on the details or rationale for the decision.

Scary thing, his boss is likely to be re-elected this November.

[Bact PhD]

More bad news:

www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-07/brain-shrinkage-cognitive-decline-found-months-after-mild-covid

Even a mild case of Covid-19 can damage the brain and addle thinking, scientists found in a study that highlights the illness’s alarming impact on mental function.

Researchers identified Covid-associated brain damage months after infection, including in the region linked to smell, and shrinkage in size equivalent to as much as a decade of normal aging. The changes were linked to cognitive decline in the study, which was published Monday in the journal Nature.

The findings represent striking evidence of the virus’s impact on the central nervous system. More research will be required to understand whether the evidence from the Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging at the University of Oxford means Covid-19 will exacerbate the global burden of dementia -- which cost an estimated $1.3 trillion in the year the pandemic began -- and other neurodegenerative conditions.


“It is a very novel study with conclusive data,” said Avindra Nath, clinical director of the U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, who wasn’t involved in the research. “The findings are very intriguing, with important implications for the population at large.”

[snip]

To investigate changes in the brain, neuroscientist Gwenaelle Douaud and colleagues leveraged the world’s largest magnetic resonance imaging database. Initial MRI scans of the brains of 785 volunteers were taken before the pandemic began as part of U.K. Biobank research, which marries large-scale genomic and detailed clinical data for half a million people.

A subsequent scan was taken an average of 38 months later. By then, 401 participants had tested positive for Covid. The uninfected remainder served as a control group that was similar to the survivors in age, sex, and many risk factors, including blood pressure, obesity, smoking, socio-economic status and diabetes. The participants in the study, aged 51 to 81, were mostly Caucasian.

‘Quite Surprised’

“We were quite surprised to see some clear differences in how the brain had changed in the participants who have become infected,” Douaud said in an interview. Whether the effects persist, or can be partially reversed as neuronal networks repair, requires further investigation, she said. “The brain is ‘plastic’ and can heal itself.”

[LFC]

Even a mild case of Covid-19 can damage the brain and addle thinking, scientists found in a study that highlights the illness’s alarming impact on mental function.

Great, so it's creating a future supply of Republicans.

[pnwguy]

Mar 8, 2022 22:22:50 GMT LFC said:

Even a mild case of Covid-19 can damage the brain and addle thinking, scientists found in a study that highlights the illness’s alarming impact on mental function.

Great, so it's creating a future supply of Republicans.

I believe P.T. Barnum already covered this in a declaration years ago.

Somewhere in Trump Tower, Dumpster must have a shrine to Barnum where he prayed for decades.  

[LFC]

Probation? W...T...F?

A Redmond, Washington man was sentenced to just five years of probation and a $246,000 fine on Monday for selling his own homemade covid-19 vaccine, which he offered to inject during the earliest days of the pandemic. The judge admitted he could’ve sentenced the man to jail time, but opted for a longer probation period instead.

Johnny T. Stine, who founded a shoestring-budget biotech company called North Coast Biologics, offered to inject people with his unapproved covid-19 vaccine for between $400 and $1,000, starting as early as March 2, 2020--when there were just 102 identified cases of covid-19 in the U.S. and six confirmed deaths.

Legitimate covid-19 vaccines produced by companies like Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson, took almost a year to fully develop and test to ensure they were safe and effective. The vaccines have been an amazing tool for preventing serious illness and death during the pandemic.

The 57-year-old Stine advertised his vaccine on social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn, drawing the attention of the FDA, which issued a notice against his company in May of 2020. But Stine’s unregulated covid-19 vaccine wasn’t the only thing that the federal authorities objected to. Stine was also selling cancer “vaccines” that he said would cure people.

[goldenvalley]

Mar 9, 2022 20:50:53 GMT LFC said:

Probation? W...T...F?

A Redmond, Washington man was sentenced to just five years of probation and a $246,000 fine on Monday for selling his own homemade covid-19 vaccine, which he offered to inject during the earliest days of the pandemic. The judge admitted he could’ve sentenced the man to jail time, but opted for a longer probation period instead.

Johnny T. Stine, who founded a shoestring-budget biotech company called North Coast Biologics, offered to inject people with his unapproved covid-19 vaccine for between $400 and $1,000, starting as early as March 2, 2020--when there were just 102 identified cases of covid-19 in the U.S. and six confirmed deaths.

Legitimate covid-19 vaccines produced by companies like Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson, took almost a year to fully develop and test to ensure they were safe and effective. The vaccines have been an amazing tool for preventing serious illness and death during the pandemic.

The 57-year-old Stine advertised his vaccine on social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn, drawing the attention of the FDA, which issued a notice against his company in May of 2020. But Stine’s unregulated covid-19 vaccine wasn’t the only thing that the federal authorities objected to. Stine was also selling cancer “vaccines” that he said would cure people.

 If he had injured or killed someone with his quack vaccines the sentence would have been different.  I hope.

[LFC]

Mar 9, 2022 21:29:45 GMT goldenvalley said:

If he had injured or killed someone with his quack vaccines the sentence would have been different.  I hope.

You mean "directly and demonstrably injured." Giving people a false sense of security on Covid could easily lead to injury or death. and the part about fake cancer drugs can keep people from seeing out real medical attention. Who really knows how many people this sociopathic shitbag injured and/or killed?

[Bact PhD]

Mar 9, 2022 20:50:53 GMT LFC said:

Probation? W...T...F?

A Redmond, Washington man was sentenced to just five years of probation and a $246,000 fine on Monday for selling his own homemade covid-19 vaccine, which he offered to inject during the earliest days of the pandemic. The judge admitted he could’ve sentenced the man to jail time, but opted for a longer probation period instead.

Johnny T. Stine, who founded a shoestring-budget biotech company called North Coast Biologics, offered to inject people with his unapproved covid-19 vaccine for between $400 and $1,000, starting as early as March 2, 2020--when there were just 102 identified cases of covid-19 in the U.S. and six confirmed deaths.

Legitimate covid-19 vaccines produced by companies like Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson, took almost a year to fully develop and test to ensure they were safe and effective. The vaccines have been an amazing tool for preventing serious illness and death during the pandemic.

The 57-year-old Stine advertised his vaccine on social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn, drawing the attention of the FDA, which issued a notice against his company in May of 2020. But Stine’s unregulated covid-19 vaccine wasn’t the only thing that the federal authorities objected to. Stine was also selling cancer “vaccines” that he said would cure people.

WTF, indeed!
Lemmie get this straight: Established pharma develops and mass produces vaccine in record time, in part because much of the preliminary work had been done on SARS years earlier, promoted by experts in the field—No, no; we don’t want it because it was all rushed.
Random dude cooks up something in his garage (not likely to be even Walter White-caliber chemistry) within weeks, advertised on Facebook—Let me at it!
UGH. We’re doomed.

[LFC]

DeSatanist and his quack of a surgeon general (who was rammed into his position) go after a county over COVID measures, hitting them with massive fines. Welcome to doing exactly the kind of things they claim Democrats would do. Now watch this goose step!

The ongoing feud between state and local officials in Florida over vaccine mandates escalated on Tuesday when one county was hit with a whopping $3.57 million fine for requiring COVID jabs for all employees.

The Florida Department of Health issued the fine against Leon County—home to the state’s capital, Tallahassee—over its “blatant violation” of Florida’s controversial “vaccine passport” law that prohibits governments and businesses from requiring residents to show proof they were vaccinated against the coronavirus. The notice states that the county broke the law 714 times in making all municipal employees show proof they’d been vaccinated. Fourteen workers were fired after refusing to get jabbed.

“It is unacceptable that Leon County violated Florida law, infringed on current and former employees’ medical privacy, and fired loyal public servants because of their personal health decisions,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said in a statement announcing the fines. “We will continue fighting for Floridians’ rights and the Florida Department of Health will continue to enforce the law. We’re going to stand up for Floridians’ jobs, stand up for Floridians’ livelihoods, and stand up for freedom.”

The hefty fine is the first under the Florida law against mandates that was passed in May. In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order on Monday barring any entity from enforcing a vaccine mandate on its employees and encouraged other state leaders to do the same.

[LFC]

COVID appears to increase cognitive issues in older people.

People over 60 who survive COVID-19 have higher risks of dementia, mild cognitive impairment, and cognitive decline—particularly if they had severe COVID-19—according to a study out this week in JAMA Neurology.

The study followed over 1,400 older COVID survivors in Wuhan, China, who were among some of the first people in the world to be hospitalized for COVID-19. The patients were discharged between February 10 and April 10, 2020, from three COVID-19–designated hospitals in Wuhan. Researchers followed their neurological health for a full year afterward.

Their experiences in that year do not bode well for the rest of the world. The study authors, led by neurologist Yan-Jiang Wang of the Third Military Medical University, found that long-term cognitive decline is common after an infection with the pandemic coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. As such, health care systems around the world need to prepare for what could be a substantial increase in the number of people requiring dementia care.

[goldenvalley]

At least these polled people are not opposed to masking in certain situations.

The big picture: Two years after the start of the pandemic, the nation is ready to move on, even as disinformation at home and a resurgence of cases in Europe driven by the B.A.2 variant point to challenges on the horizon.

64% of survey respondents now favor federal, state and local governments lifting all COVID-19 restrictions, up 20 percentage points since early February.
But three in four say they'd go back to masking if infections increase again where they live.

[goldenvalley]

Hmm Wall Street Journal has this story on an actual trial of Ivermectin.  Quoting a large section of the article since WSJ free sharing link doesn't always work.

The latest trial, of nearly 1,400 Covid-19 patients at risk of severe disease, is the largest to show that those who received ivermectin as a treatment didn’t fare better than those who received a placebo.

“There was no indication that ivermectin is clinically useful,” said Edward Mills, one of the study’s lead researchers and a professor of health sciences at Canada’s McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. Dr. Mills on Friday plans to present the findings, which have been accepted for publication in a major peer-reviewed medical journal, at a public forum sponsored by the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Mills and his colleagues looked at 1,358 adults who visited one of 12 clinics in the Minas Gerais region of Brazil with Covid-19 symptoms. The patients all had a positive rapid test for SARS-CoV-2, and were at risk of having a severe case for reasons including a history of diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease or lung disease.

The researchers prescribed half of the patients a course of ivermectin pills for three days. The other half received a placebo. They tracked whether the patients were hospitalized within 28 days. The researchers also looked at whether patients on ivermectin cleared the virus from their bodies faster than those who received a placebo, whether their symptoms resolved sooner, whether they were in the hospital or on ventilators for less time and whether there was any difference in the death rates for the two groups.

To make sure they were being thorough, the researchers analyzed the data in three different ways. They looked at data from all patients; then analyzed data from patients who received ivermectin or a placebo 24 hours before they were hospitalized; and in a third review, looked at data from patients who said they had adhered strictly to their dosing schedule. In each scenario, they found ivermectin didn’t improve patient outcomes.

“This is the first large, prospective study that should really help put to rest ivermectin and not give any credibility to the use of it for Covid-19,” said Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, who reviewed the findings.

Ivermectin is used primarily to treat patients with certain parasitic diseases. Some doctors have been prescribing it to Covid-19 patients, and some people have been found ways to obtain ivermectin without a prescription. The drug has antiviral properties, but hasn’t been approved by the FDA to treat any viral infections.

Given its antiviral prospects, scientists early in the pandemic thought it could be a candidate for treating Covid-19. In June 2020, a group of researchers in Australia published a paper showing that large amounts of ivermectin could halt replication of the coronavirus in cell cultures. But there was a problem: To achieve that effect, a person would have to take up to 100 times as much ivermectin as the dose approved for use in humans.

Some studies on ivermectin published in journals or on preprint servers ahead of peer review have demonstrated no benefits, or worsening of Covid-19 symptoms, after ivermectin use. Some have shown some benefit, such as shorter time to symptom resolution, reduction in inflammation, faster viral clearance and lower death rates.

But most studies showing positive effects had significant limitations such as small sample sizes or poorly defined outcomes, according to the NIH. Several studies on ivermectin have been withdrawn from publication, including a randomized controlled trial looking at 100 patients in Lebanon that was retracted by the journal Viruses due to issues with the statistical analysis, according to the journal. Researchers at the NIH and Oxford University also are conducting large trials on the effectiveness of ivermectin, though results haven’t been published.

Dr. Mills said ivermectin could improve outcomes in Covid-19 patients who are fighting off certain parasitic diseases at the same time. But based on his team’s findings, he said, the drug doesn’t seem to have any effect on Covid-19 itself.

[andydp]

Re: Ivermectin and “normal” vaccinations. Good funny one I saw:

At the end of the year 70% of Americans are Vaccinated
The other 30% are dewormed.

[LFC]

[LFC]

[goldenvalley]

California is dropping its vaccine or negative test results before entering a concert or sporting event indoors soon.  This stat surprised me:

The change comes as COVID-19 infections continue to fall across the state. On Saturday, California had 1,960 COVID-19 patients in hospital beds, the first time the number has dropped below 2,000 in exactly 8 months, according to CDPH. The last time hospitalizations were that low was before the surge in the delta variant about a year ago.

A year ago the vaccines were just becoming available to those under 65.  

Read more at: www.sacbee.com/news/local/article259574524.html#storylink=cpy

[LFC]

Ugh, is COVID already becoming "soooo last year?"

As I write this, the White House is warning that it will soon run out of funding to address the Covid-19 pandemic.

Without additional money, uninsured Americans will stop being able to get free tests and treatments for Covid-19 after March 22, and won’t be able to get free vaccinations through the federal Uninsured Program after April 5. The White House says it won’t be able to buy additional antiviral pills or new monoclonal antibody treatments for people with Covid, or to fund surveillance that could catch future waves of the virus.

The administration wants $22 billion; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has tried to pass $15 billion only to face a rebellion from both Republicans and Democrats angry that the money would come out of the Biden stimulus plan’s funds for state governments. If this stalemate holds, the federal effort to halt the virus could effectively be over, even though the pandemic itself clearly isn’t.

That would be a disaster. Equally disastrous, though, is that Congress is simultaneously refusing to invest heavily in preventing the next pandemic.

The failures that made Covid-19 such a catastrophe — and kept the federal government and international community from squelching it when it was still a minor outbreak — still exist. We still lack the ability to adequately monitor new infectious diseases, and we still don’t invest sufficiently in preparing treatments and vaccines for viruses that could cause a pandemic if unchecked.

To be fair, Congress hasn’t done zero. There’s bipartisan support for a bill including some legal changes that could improve pandemic preparedness. Called the PREVENT Pandemics Act, it’s the culmination of a year-long effort by Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) committee chair Patty Murray (D-WA) and ranking member Richard Burr (R-NC), and it passed the committee by an overwhelming 20-2 margin on March 15.

The bill authorizes a 9/11 Commission-style investigation into the government’s failure to contain Covid-19, establishes a White House office for pandemic preparedness, and demands more information sharing between the CDC, state and local health departments, and other public health agencies, among many other provisions. If the bipartisan committee vote is any indication, the measure has strong odds of passing the Senate and House and making it to Joe Biden’s desk.

But the act only includes about $2 billion in new spending to prevent future pandemics. For comparison, a bipartisan group of former government officials (including noted conservatives like former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and Lisa Monaco, who served under Presidents Bush and Obama as a national security official) has called for a $10 billion annual investment in biodefense over the next decade, adding up to $100 billion over the next 10 years. Biden’s own pandemic preparedness plan calls for $65.3 billion in funding over the next seven to 10 years; over $24 billion would go to developing and manufacturing vaccines alone.

The PREVENT Pandemics Act, in other words, leaves out about 97 percent of the funding that bipartisan experts, and the White House, think is necessary to prevent pandemics.

[AnBr]

[LFC]

Mar 29, 2022 1:10:17 GMT AnBr said:

<button disabled="" class="c-attachment-insert--linked o-btn--sm">Attachment Deleted</button>

Welcome to the obvious outcome of Republican government stupidity.

[goldenvalley]

Speaking of stupidity:

The wind-down of the uninsured program is among the first concrete casualties of a decision by Congress this month to exclude about $15 billion in pandemic relief from a large spending plan adopted for other parts of the government and the Ukraine war.
The Biden administration has been trying to draw attention to the consequences if lawmakers continue bickering over whether to provide more coronavirus aid. The White House and health officials say the government will not have enough vaccines to give every American a fourth shot to protect against the virus, if federal regulators approve the additional booster, and soon will lack money to buy additional monoclonal antibodies to treat coronavirus infections.

Those pandemic-fighting hindrances could lie in the near future. The uninsured program already is ending.

Since it was created in spring 2020 as one of several pools of pandemic aid for health-care providers, the uninsured program has provided more than $20 billion in reimbursements to medical labs, hospitals, doctor’s offices, pharmacies and clinics. But as it winds down, its absence — unless Congress acts — will be felt most keenly in the health-care system’s safety net, focused on patients who have no health coverage. Often, those patients are low-income Black Americans or Latinos whose communities have been scarred by the greatest illness and death from the pandemic.

What stretch of the imagination leads Congress to think that not covering COVID related costs of uninsured people is not going to impact those who are insured?  The virus will continue to mutate and spread throughout the population and we've seen that vaccinated people can still contract the virus.  Makes no sense to me.

[pnwguy]

Mar 29, 2022 15:21:49 GMT goldenvalley said:

What stretch of the imagination leads Congress to think that not covering COVID related costs of uninsured people is not going to impact those who are insured?  The virus will continue to mutate and spread throughout the population and we've seen that vaccinated people can still contract the virus.  Makes no sense to me.

That's because you are not a Republican.  God hasn't beamed his divine thoughts into your brain, you worshiper of Satan. Otherwise it would make perfect sense.

[LFC]

Gee. What a surprise.

Ivermectin Doesn’t Work For COVID, New Study Shows

The results of a new clinical trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine reveal that ivermectin, the anti-parasitic drug generally given to horses, doesn’t work as effective treatment for COVID-19.

[LFC]

Maybe my next booster should be Pfizer since I'm 3 Modernas in.

The mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines made by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna have proven highly effective at priming our immune systems to fight the pandemic coronavirus—preventing substantial amounts of infection, severe disease, and death throughout several waves of variants. But despite their similar design and efficacy, the two vaccines are not exactly the same—and our immune systems don't respond to them in the same way.

An early hint of this came from some real-world data that found startling differences in the effectiveness of the two vaccines, despite both shots performing nearly identically in Phase III clinical trials, with efficacies of 95 percent and 94 percent. Amid last year's delta wave, a Mayo Clinic study found that Pfizer's effectiveness against infection dipped to 42 percent while Moderna's fell to 76 percent.

According to a new study in Science Translational Medicine, such differences might be explained by evidence that the two vaccines spur the immune system to produce slightly different antibodies against SARS-CoV-2.

Both vaccines generate strong levels of neutralizing antibodies, which can bind to the virus and prevent it from infecting cells. But according to the study, the vaccines generated different antibody profiles overall. Specifically, the antibody response to the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine skewed to a class of antibodies called IgG and IgM, which are often found in the blood. The Moderna vaccine, meanwhile, generated relatively elevated levels of IgA antibodies, a class of antibodies generally found on mucosal surfaces, such as the respiratory tract—where SARS-CoV-2 infections begin. Additionally, the Moderna vaccine spurred relatively higher levels of antibodies that activate immune cells called natural killer cells. It also generated higher levels of antibodies that activate immune cells called neutrophils to ingest and kill (phagocytize) invading germs.