The FDA Authorized a Booster Shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 VaccineBut Not For Everyone9/22/2021 The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Sept. 22 authorized booster doses for certain people already vaccinated against COVID-19 but at high risk of infection, including those over age 65 and those who are more likely to get exposed to the disease, such as health care, frontline, emergency and transportation workers, among others. The booster authorization only applies to Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine. “After considering the totality of the available scientific evidence and the deliberations of our advisory committee of independent, external experts, the FDA amended the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to allow for a booster dose in certain populations such as health care workers, teachers and day care staff, grocery workers and those in homeless shelters or prisons, among others,” said Dr. Janet Woodcock, acting FDA commissioner in a statement announcing the FDA’s decision. “As we learn more about the safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines, including the use of a booster dose, we will continue to evaluate the rapidly changing science and keep the public informed.” The agency’s decision follows the advice of its advisory committee, which met on Sept. 17 to review data on Pfizer-BioNTech’s booster, and voted unanimously to authorize an additional dose for certain populations. The FDA’s decision now goes to the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices to provide details on how long people who have already been vaccinated must wait before getting a booster, and whether the booster should only be given to people who were originally vaccinated with the Pfizer-BioNTech shot, which is likely. The data that Pfizer-BioNTech presented to the FDA showed the booster dose was both safe and efficacious in increasing waning immune responses to the vaccine. In the companies’ studies involving several hundred people who received the recommended two doses of the vaccine, antibody levels against the COVID-19 virus started to fall after several months. But boosting with third dose of the vaccine about six months after the second shot brought antibody counts back up, in some cases to levels even higher than those generated after the second dose. The FDA also reviewed data from Israeli health agencies, which showed early evidence that booster doses reduced infection rates among people over 60 years by 10-fold compared to those who received only the two original doses, and that the additional dose brought antibody levels up to where they were just after the second dose. There are less robust data on people in younger age groups, since anyone in that category who has been vaccinated received their shots more recently than the elderly, who the FDA prioritized to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine first, after the agency authorized the two-dose shot in Dec. 2020. That’s why the advisory committee voted against recommending a booster for all vaccinated people, as Pfizer-BioNTech originally requested, and limited its recommendation to high-risk populations. Studies looking at people who were originally vaccinated with Moderna or Johnson&Johnson-Janssen’s shot and received a different booster dose are expected soon, but were not available for health officials at FDA or CDC to review yet. “This first FDA authorization of a COVID-19 vaccine booster is a critical milestone in the ongoing fight against this disease,” said Albert Bourla, chairman and chief executive officer of Pfizer, in a statement. “Today’s FDA action is an important step in helping the most vulnerable among us remain protected from COVID-19.” from https://ift.tt/3zDxdG9 Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/
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When Dr. Lorna Breen, an emergency-room physician at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, died by suicide in April 2020, her family and colleagues were cratered. She had been on the front lines of the huge, early COVID-19 surge before contracting the virus herself, and she confided in family that the anxiety, exhaustion and uncertainty were overwhelming—for her patients, but also for herself. After recovering, she returned to work, facing back-to-back shifts in multiple locations, but within a few days, she was gone. In the midst of their grief, the family set up the Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes Foundation to provide mental-health support to health care professionals, and began working with legislators on laws and grants that could bolster the effort. Her brother-in-law Corey Feist talks about why help is urgently needed to address mental-health struggles for those working in health care. You’ve worked in health care yourself for over 20 years and for the past 15 years as the CEO of a physician group at the University of Virginia. Given your expertise in the industry, what was your awareness level about this issue before April 2020? For the last four years, I’d been hearing an increasing drumbeat from our physicians about burnout. They talked about the changing environment of health care expectations, and they were saying, “Practicing medicine is no longer what we signed up for. It’s moving away from the patient care we wanted. That’s burning us out.” We’ve been addressing that, but there’s much more complexity about stigma that I didn’t realize. What are the factors increasing stigma around mental-health care? Until Lorna’s death, when we began to look at this issue, I had no idea about the cultural issues embedded in health care around not being able to take a break or seek care. Stigma is enforced on a structural level. For example, in many states, you have to disclose whether you’ve sought mental-health services as part of your licensing, and many doctors are hesitant to get help because they believe it could put their career at risk, and they’re right. It’s hypocritical. We’re asking these professionals to take care of us, but when they need help for their mental health, they’re punished for it. I’m not trying to be dramatic—that’s where we are. There’s been greater attention this past year to burnout in the profession. Do you think that’s helping at all? I think it’s important to clarify that burnout is not a mental-health condition; it’s a workplace condition. So, the solutions for that are to improve operations and decrease administrative burdens. Contrast that with a mental-health diagnosis like PTSD, which is the issue my sister-in-law had following her battle on the COVID front lines. That’s the challenge facing an entire workforce now. That means it’s helpful to reduce burnout, but that’s far from enough. How has COVID, and the death of Dr. Breen and other doctors, played a role in current perceptions? There have been so many powerful stories and images, like nurses holding up iPads so family members can say goodbye. That’s leading to more awareness of what they’re going through. And we hear from doctors and nurses in our work that talking about Lorna’s suicide has made a difference for them. So, this isn’t just about how people are recognizing the needs of health care professionals. It’s also about how they’re recognizing it for themselves. How is the work of the foundation, as well as legislation that’s working its way through Congress, offering some hope? We already have $120 million of programs in place for current health care professionals and future health care workers that will provide training about recognition of mental-health issues and how to prevent and treat them. No one’s ever done this before—this is first-of-its-kind stuff—and we’re hoping to scale solutions across the country. We don’t need more banners about health care heroes, and we don’t need more free meditation apps for them. We need real solutions that work for people like Lorna. She was the canary in the coal mine for us, and for many people. We don’t need to make our canaries stronger. We need to redesign the coal mine. from https://ift.tt/3CzoXZO Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Jewel Pfaffroth could barely move while she pumped. She had struggled since her son was born in April to produce breast milk—he was underweight at his first doctor’s appointment, and she immediately had to supplement with formula. Her doctor had recommended she sit at specific angles while she pumped—“to let gravity do its thing”—but those positions caused her such intense backaches that she couldn’t do basic things like carrying her baby. Yet despite the debilitating pain, she was pumping twice a day to create less than one-tenth of what her son ate. It was crucial to her that he have some breast milk in his diet. “Had COVID not been a thing, as soon as I found out that my body just couldn’t make enough milk, I probably would have gone straight to formula feeding,” she says. “Instead what I did was meet with a lactation specialist once a week, took a bunch of supplements and did everything single woo-woo thing that I could find that had even a tiny bit of science behind it.” Pfaffroth was desperate to find any way she could to minimize her chances of getting sick. Since getting pregnant, she had barely left her neighborhood near hadn’t even eaten outdoors at a restaurant and had chosen an out-of-the-way pediatrician in a less crowded neighborhood so that she would encounter fewer people every time she took her son to the doctor. After he was born, the 34-year-old stay-at-home mother had tracked down that indicated she might be able to pass antibodies to her newborn through her breast milk, so even though she had gotten vaccinated while pregnant, which research suggests may offer some protection to the baby, she forced herself to continue to pump as an additional precaution. “It cost a lot of money and a lot of heartache because it’s something you’re ‘supposed to do’ for your child,” she says. “And there was so little information out there about breast milk and antibodies, but I was like, ‘If I don’t and my baby caught COVID, I would feel like it’s my fault.’” After four months, she finally decided she was useless to her family if she could barely move and switched her baby to a full formula diet. Pressure on women to breastfeed isn’t new. The “breast is best” movement has long touted the health benefits of breastfeeding but also created anxiety for new mothers who struggle physically, mentally or emotionally with the sometimes painful and always time-consuming task of breastfeeding. As TIME explained in a 2017 cover story, the image of a mother who happily sacrifices her well-being and time spent on her career to breastfeed is part of the “goddess myth” of motherhood that places unrealistic expectations on new mothers and causes feelings of inadequacy among parents. (Many doctors have adopted a “fed is best” philosophy as a counter to that pressure.) Read More: Motherhood Is Hard to Get Wrong. So Why Do So Many Moms Feel So Bad About Themselves? The pandemic has added another layer of stress for new mothers. Kids under 12 are not yet eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine, so many moms want to do whatever they can to offer some level of protection. That prospect is particularly compelling to women who did not get vaccinated until after they gave birth, either because the vaccine was not available when they were pregnant or because the CDC had not yet officially recommended that pregnant people get the vaccine, but it also appeals to those who did get the vaccine while pregnant and hope breastfeeding will boost any immunity. (Before August, the CDC had said pregnant women were eligible to get the vaccine but had not outright recommended it, instead urging them to speak directly with their health care providers.) While preliminary data from studies indicating that breast milk might contain antibodies have been trickling out all summer, few have been published because the vaccine hasn’t been around for that long and the peer-review process for such studies takes time. In late August, The Journal of Breastfeeding Medicine did publish a small study conducted by researchers at the University of Florida. The team took blood and breast-milk samples from 21 new mothers before and after they received the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines and found that, after vaccination, there was a 100-fold increase of immunoglobulin A antibodies, one of the many defenses the body needs to mount against the virus. (The antibodies also remained in breast milk that was frozen and stored rather than fed to the child immediately.) Read More: I Was Nervous About Getting the COVID-19 Vaccine While Pregnant. Here’s What Convinced Me to Do It “Basically breast milk likely provides a kind of hazard protection,” says Joseph Larkin III, a senior author of the study. Researchers don’t know, however, how robust the immunity is or how long it will last. “We are actively working on that right now in the lab,” he says. He emphasized that the best thing parents can do for their baby is get vaccinated themselves to drastically decrease the likelihood they’ll pass on COVID-19 to their child. The revelation – really, even the possibility — that breast milk could play a role in protecting babies from the virus has sent parents scrambling. Parenting groups on Facebook and doctor influencers on Instagram have been flooded with questions like how long the antibodies from breast milk remain in the baby’s system In March, New York Magazine reported that parents who could not produce breast milk themselves were seeking out breast milk with antibodies on the internet. Jenn Kominsky, a project manager at a creative agency in Tampa, Fla., went so far as to reach out directly to researchers working on studies on breast milk to see if she could glean any insights on the data before they were published. Kominsky, 35, gave birth to her first child in October. After about five months, her daughter stopped wanting to breastfeed, so Kominsky switched to pumping. “Pumping sucks,” she says. “It’s exhausting. You can’t really do anything else including playing with your now mobile baby. And it’s hard to live your life when you’re attached to a pump 24/7 and have to carry it around like a giant battery pack.” But breastfeeding had been far easier for her than it had been for many of her friends. It helped that she was working from home. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, how horrible of a mom would I be if I could still breastfeed and chose not to and potentially took away some of that protection from her?’” she says. Dana Usndek, an adjunct professor at Macomb Community College, says that she and her friends briefly researched whether, if they’d gotten a COVID-19 shot, feeding breast milk to their children who are no longer babies but not old enough to get vaccinated might offer them some protection. “It sounds crazy, and after a little research, we realized that wasn’t actually an option,” she says. (The effect of milk antibodies are “dose-dependent,” Rebecca Powell, a human-milk immunologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, told in May, meaning that although breast milk with antibodies may help a baby who is consuming it and not much else all day, adding breast milk to a 6-year-old’s smoothie would contribute so little to their daily diet that it would be unlikely to be effective.) “We’re not crunchy, essential-oils type women,” Usndek says. “We believe in science. But it’s just anything to create some barrier for your kid.” Usndek describes her breastfeeding journey with her first child as wonderful. She fed her breast milk for nearly two years with no problems and hoped to do the same with her second baby. Vaccines were not yet available when her child was born in May 2020, but Usndek figured that just in case she’d had asymptomatic COVID-19 already, But her son is a “violent nurser” and she has been bleeding during nursing for months. “Once I got the vaccine, I could not bring myself to stop, which I normally would because he bit me, I’m bleeding, it’s terrible,” she says. “But I read about children winding up in hospitals, and I don’t want my child to be that statistic. So I just kept going and going.” Read More: The Invisible Labor Inside America’s Lactation Rooms She is still nursing him nearly a year and half later and says she will feel comfortable stopping only when her 5-year-old can get vaccinated because she believes her daughter is the person in their household at the highest risk of catching COVID-19 and passing it to the baby. Currently, in the U.S., only the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is authorized for children ages 12 to 17; the companies are expected to submit a request for emergency use authorization (EUA) for those between 5 and 11 years old in the next month or so. Diamond, the doctor who runs the Parent like a Pediatrician blog, says she’s received hundreds of questions on social media about breastfeeding during the pandemic and noticed a shift in what moms say they are hearing. At first, many of the women who reached out to her said they were told by fellow mothers and, in some cases, their doctors not to get the vaccine because its effect on the fetus was unknown, advice that Diamond says was “overly cautious or just plain wrong.” But now that the CDC has recommended vaccination for pregnant people, she’s hearing from more moms who have gotten their shots and are feeling pressure to nurse in order to protect their babies. “We’ve gone from mothers thinking, ‘Nobody can tell me the benefits [of the vaccine] outweigh the risks so I’m going to be nervous’ to a new, equally oppressive narrative that you need to pump every ounce of milk out of your body to help the baby,” she says. “Either way, the mother’s health and happiness doesn’t really matter.” Most of the women who spoke to TIME said their doctors suggested not only that they get vaccinated but that they try to breastfeed because of the antibody benefits to the baby. Those doctors told them to stop breastfeeding if it caused undue stress, a fuzzy parameter that one mother might interpret as breastfeed until it’s inconvenient and another might take to mean until you need to seek medical attention because you’re in so much distress. Diamond counsels her patients that any immunity they pass on is a bonus, but they shouldn’t overexert themselves mentally or physically to do something they wouldn’t do, like breastfeed through immense pain, if COVID-19 were not a threat. “As a country, we’ve become so myopically focused on fetal and infant health instead of maternal health,” she says. “I keep asking why do we pretend that maternal health and infant health are separate? All of this only works if the parents are healthy and able to care for their baby.” Kominsky, in Florida, eventually came to the same conclusion. She made it until her daughter was 9 months old, when pumping started to hinder her work too much for her to continue—she didn’t feel comfortable doing it on Zoom calls with colleagues. But she stopped only after checking in with her friends and other women on Facebook and Reddit groups for moms. “I think I needed a lot of validation from other people to not feel guilty,” she says. from https://ift.tt/2XSLa6i Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Since March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic was first officially declared, doctors, nurses and other clinicians have stepped up and shouldered burdens they never anticipated. They rose to the challenge magnificently, caring for the ill while protecting themselves and their families. But their commitment to helping others has come, in many cases, at no small cost to themselves. Even many of those who didn’t contract the coronavirus have changed forever. For those who continue to treat patients with ever more virulent strains of the virus, the deluge of need seems unrelenting. And that constant pressure to provide care is giving rise to a new crisis, as providers grapple with the trauma they’ve witnessed and the close calls they and their loved ones have endured. Burnout among doctors was a problem long before the pandemic dominated every conversation. But COVID-19 has made being a health care provider much more difficult. According to an April 2021 survey conducted by Kaiser Family Foundation and the Washington Post, frontline health care workers’ mental health has taken a hit. Of the respondents, 62% said that worry or stress related to the coronavirus has had a negative impact on their mental health, and 55% say they feel burned out when going to work. But the term burnout doesn’t seem big enough to encompass all the trauma and heartache caregivers have witnessed, or the challenges it could create for the health care system moving forward. That’s why various organizations and institutions have developed programs and support mechanisms that can help frontline workers now and well into the future. Hospital-based programming Some hospitals have launched innovative support programs. Dr. Deborah Marin, a professor of psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, now directs the Mount Sinai Center for Stress, Resilience and Personal Growth. The initiative launched in April 2020 to address the coronavirus’s impact on frontline providers’ mental health in New York City—one of the areas hardest hit in the early days of the pandemic. Other programs nationwide are now using it as a model for their own efforts. “We were fortunate that our dean is a psychiatrist” who immediately recognized that the caregivers were going to need care themselves, Marin says. The center has offered more than 115 resilience workshops attended by hundreds of caregivers, in addition to one-on-one support and educational resources. The Mount Sinai team created a smartphone app with a simple self-assessment tool that offers staffers feedback on their current state of anxiety, depression, PTSD and overall wellness. “That was built in a month,” Marin says. Resilience training and other educational resources soon followed. The center has strived to ensure its support resources are available in multiple languages, so that they’re accessible for all the hospital’s workers. “I always highlight that our center is for everyone at Mount Sinai, not just doctors and nurses,” says Jonathan DePierro, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the center’s clinical director. The pandemic has had an impact on security personnel, janitorial staff, clinicians and hospital employees in every imaginable role. Gemma Tillinghast, a labor and delivery nurse at Mount Sinai, says she’s benefited from these services. What she learned in the resiliency workshops helped her “make it during the difficult times,” she says. “It’s been very helpful to be able to express our experiences.” Participating in the center’s workshops with her colleagues has been particularly meaningful. “We feel like there’s a team, and like we’re not alone,” she says. Read more: Doctors and Nurses Talk About Burnout Doctors supporting doctors In Boston—another early pandemic hot spot—long-standing efforts to support struggling health care providers saw an uptick in demand. Dr. Jo Shapiro, an otolaryngologist who founded a peer-support program at the city’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital in 2008, was inundated by requests from health care organizations seeking assistance setting up similar programs. The peer-to-peer support program she developed aims to provide respectful ways to improve clinician well-being. “What’s really great about peer support, or just the whole idea of working toward providing emotional support for clinicians, is you get almost no pushback,” Shapiro says. Many doctors want to speak with a physician colleague after a challenging event, such as a medical error, she’s learned. “I think people want to talk to someone who’s been there and knows what it feels like.” But there are “significant cultural and structural barriers” for doctors to seek that kind of support on their own. Shapiro says that when she first developed the program, “we trained a large cohort of peer supporters, and nobody called in.” Most likely, she says, that was because of stigma. “We didn’t remove the barrier of people being worried about stigma and confidentiality and access and those sorts of things.” So she shifted to a “check-in” model. Today, physicians will proactively reach out to their peers after stressful events, or to check in regularly during times of ongoing crisis, as has been the case during the pandemic. “We don’t wait until people are suffering,” Shapiro says. The way assistance is framed makes a big difference. Doctors reach out to their peers “in a destigmatized, normalized way, by saying, ‘Hey, we’re checking in with everybody in this unit.’ Or, ‘We’re reaching out to everyone involved in such-and-such event.’” Shapiro now runs training sessions and has helped dozens of other organizations develop their own peer-to-peer caregiver support groups. One such program is led by Dr. Megan Furnari, a neonatal specialist with Oregon Health & Science University and director of wellness for the California Oregon Medical Partnership to Address Disparities in Rural Education and Health (COMPADRE). This is an American Medical Association grant-funded collaborative project that’s working to prepare culturally competent, collaborative and resilient physicians to practice in rural, tribal and urban underserved communities in Oregon and Northern California. Furnari was on maternity leave when the pandemic first hit. When she returned in fall 2020, “I was entering a pretty different world as a new mom,” she recalls. “And it was really hard because I was also dealing with my own concerns about how to be safe for my family, my baby and my partner.” Furnari recognized that her colleagues were also experiencing extreme stress and trauma related to the pandemic. She and Dr. Maggie Rae, a clinical psychologist at the University of California, Davis, connected with Mount Sinai’s Shapiro to establish their own peer-support program for COMPADRE’s team. “It was opt-in, and around 45 staff and faculty did the training with Dr. Shapiro,” Furnari says. Since then, Furnari and Rae have led sessions in which faculty and staff offer peer support to one another in group settings. Regular participants include physicians, psychologists and social workers. The program allowed Furnari to tap into support services. “I’ve not only given support, but also gotten support,” she says, which helped her feel validated about how she was managing her emotions and fears. “It was incredibly, deeply healing. I feel like physicians go around with certain traumas that have never been resolved, and peer support is a place to come when you’re ready to have those traumas healed.” Specialty-based support Some specialties, like emergency departments, have shouldered a larger share of the burden of care during the pandemic. “In emergency medicine, every patient that comes in is unscheduled,” says Dr. Mark Rosenberg, president of the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP). “So you never know what your day is going to be like.” Dealing with a mysterious ailment—and extremely ill, contagious patients—has increased emergency workers’ anxiety, depression, PTSD and suicidality, Rosenberg says. Physician suicide in general had already been something of a silent pandemic: in a 2020 Physicians Foundation survey, nearly 1 in 4 physicians said they personally knew another doctor who had died by suicide. To help emergency-medicine personnel cope with the demands of their job, the ACEP offers a variety of programs. These include a peer-support group, online discussion forums and a video-diary project that helps emergency physicians process their experiences. The video project is a members-only resource for emergency physicians to share with their colleagues what it’s been like living through the pandemic, helping frontline clinicians reaffirm why they stay in emergency medicine. Of course, ER doctors aren’t alone in staffing the trenches of this pandemic war, and they’re not the only health care professionals experiencing burnout. Dr. Ada Stewart, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), notes that the pandemic has “only exacerbated” issues with family doctors’ burnout dating back years. “Physician burnout is, at its core, a health system, organization, practice and physician culture problem—not just an individual concern,” she says. “To overcome this, an evidence-based approach is needed to identify and address the root causes of burnout at all levels of the health care system.” That’s why the AAFP has created the Physician Health First initiative, which focuses on improving the well-being and professional satisfaction of family physicians by addressing the root causes of physician burnout. “We also provide town halls and webinars where members can hear from other family physicians about their experiences with burnout and offer insight into how they’ve been able to cope with these emotions,” Stewart says. Policy changes At the policy level, efforts are under way to stem the rising tide of providers in crisis. The Dr. Lorna Breen Health Care Provider Protection Act, introduced in late July 2020 by Senators Tim Kaine (D., Va.), Todd Young (R., Ind.), Jack Reed (D., R.I.) and Bill Cassidy (R., La.), is working its way through Congress. The bill is named for Dr. Lorna Breen, an emergency physician who died by suicide in April 2020 after being diagnosed with COVID-19 and experiencing the trauma of caring for patients with the virus during New York’s first brutal surge. It has been championed by the Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes’ Foundation, a nonprofit established in spring 2020 by Breen’s family members, who are now determined to protect other physicians from the scourge of burnout and suicide. The ACEP and more than 70 other organizations have endorsed the bill. The proposed legislation aims to prevent suicide and burnout among health care workers. It will do so by creating grants to fund programming that encourages physicians to “seek help … in a way that’s not disruptive to their job or their medical licenses,” and doesn’t lead to career repercussions, Rosenberg says. “I think if Lorna had had the opportunity to feel comfortable just talking about her stress and what she was feeling, maybe she wouldn’t have [died by] suicide.” Changing the stoic ‘health care heroes’ culture As difficult as this pandemic has been for health care providers, there is reason to be hopeful, as many clinicians say that attitudes surrounding mental and behavioral health for physicians and other caregivers appear to be shifting. “There are movements and organizations that are advocating for policy changes and increased awareness of resources, and we hope there’s going to be increased federal-funding opportunities,” Mount Sinai’s DePierro says. While Shapiro, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, considers herself a “major optimist” about improving mental health among clinicians, she says there’s still one major hurdle to overcome: the culture of hero-worshipping clinicians that she believes can be dangerous. “The whole framing of us as health care heroes is a double-edged sword,” she says. The intention is to honor the sacrifices frontline caregivers have made, but it “does imply that you’ve got sort of superhuman powers. That you don’t need as much sleep, and you shouldn’t be suffering from this because you’re a hero. Heroes don’t cry too much, do they?” That’s a problem these programs and offerings hope to alleviate. “Let’s also remember that we’re human,” Shapiro says. “We care, and we need help too. We need rest and all those things.” from https://ift.tt/3lQnWpI Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ COVID-19 has now killed about as many Americans as the 1918-19 Spanish flu pandemic did — approximately 675,000. The U.S. population a century ago was just one-third of what it is today, meaning the flu cut a much bigger, more lethal swath through the country. But the COVID-19 crisis is by any measure a colossal tragedy in its own right, especially given the incredible advances in scientific knowledge since then and the failure to take maximum advantage of the vaccines available this time. “Big pockets of American society — and, worse, their leaders — have thrown this away,” medical historian Dr. Howard Markel of the University of Michigan said of the opportunity to vaccinate everyone eligible by now. Like the Spanish flu, the coronavirus may never entirely disappear from our midst. Instead, scientists hope it becomes a mild seasonal bug as human immunity strengthens through vaccination and repeated infection. That could take time. “We hope it will be like getting a cold, but there’s no guarantee,” said Emory University biologist Rustom Antia, who suggests an optimistic scenario in which this could happen over a few years. For now, the pandemic still has the United States and other parts of the world firmly in its jaws. While the delta-fueled surge in new infections may have peaked, U.S. deaths still are running at over 1,900 a day on average, the highest level since early March, and the country’s overall toll stood at just over 674,000 as of midday Monday, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University, though the real number is believed to be higher. Winter may bring a new surge, with the University of Washington’s influential model projecting an additional 100,000 or so Americans will die of COVID-19 by Jan. 1, which would bring the overall U.S. toll to 776,000. The 1918-19 influenza pandemic killed 50 million victims globally at a time when the world had one-quarter the population it does now. Global deaths from COVID-19 now stand at more than 4.6 million. The Spanish flu’s U.S. death toll is a rough guess, given the incomplete records of the era and the poor scientific understanding of what caused the illness. The 675,000 figure comes from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The ebbing of COVID-19 could happen if the virus progressively weakens as it mutates and more and more humans’ immune systems learn to attack it. Vaccination and surviving infection are the main ways the immune system improves. Breast-fed infants also gain some immunity from their mothers. Under that optimistic scenario, schoolchildren would get mild illness that trains their immune systems. As they grow up, the children would carry the immune response memory, so that when they are old and vulnerable, the coronavirus would be no more dangerous than cold viruses. The same goes for today’s vaccinated teens: Their immune systems would get stronger through the shots and mild infections. “We will all get infected,” Antia predicted. “What’s important is whether the infections are severe.” Something similar happened with the H1N1 flu virus, the culprit in the 1918-19 pandemic. It encountered too many people who were immune, and it also eventually weakened through mutation. H1N1 still circulates today, but immunity acquired through infection and vaccination has triumphed. Getting an annual flu shot now protects against H1N1 and several other strains of flu. To be sure, flu kills between 12,000 and 61,000 Americans each year, but on average, it is a seasonal problem and a manageable one. Before COVID-19, the 1918-19 flu was universally considered the worst pandemic disease in human history. Whether the current scourge ultimately proves deadlier is unclear. In many ways, the 1918-19 flu — which was wrongly named Spanish flu because it first received widespread news coverage in Spain — was worse. Spread by the mobility of World War I, it killed young, healthy adults in vast numbers. No vaccine existed to slow it, and there were no antibiotics to treat secondary bacterial infections. And, of course, the world was much smaller. Yet jet travel and mass migrations threaten to increase the toll of the current pandemic. Much of the world is unvaccinated. And the coronavirus has been full of surprises. Markel said he is continually astounded by the magnitude of the disruption the pandemic has brought to the planet. “I was gobsmacked by the size of the quarantines” the Chinese government undertook initially, Markel said, “and I’ve since been gob-gob-gob-smacked to the nth degree.” The lagging pace of U.S. vaccinations is the latest source of his astonishment. Just under 64% of the U.S. population has received as least one dose of the vaccine, with state rates ranging from a high of approximately 77% in Vermont and Massachusetts to lows around 46% to 49% in Idaho, Wyoming, West Virginia and Mississippi. Globally, about 43% of the population has received at least one dose, according to Our World in Data, with some African countries just beginning to give their first shots. “We know that all pandemics come to an end,” said Dr. Jeremy Brown, director of emergency care research at the National Institutes of Health, who wrote a book on influenza. “They can do terrible things while they’re raging.” COVID-19 could have been far less lethal in the U.S. if more people had gotten vaccinated faster, “and we still have an opportunity to turn it around,” Brown said. “We often lose sight of how lucky we are to take these things for granted.” The current vaccines work extremely well in preventing severe disease and death from the variants of the virus that have emerged so far. It will be crucial for scientists to make sure the ever-mutating virus hasn’t changed enough to evade vaccines or to cause severe illness in unvaccinated children, Antia said. If the virus changes significantly, a new vaccine using the technology behind the Pfizer and Moderna shots could be produced in 110 days, a Pfizer executive said Wednesday. The company is studying whether annual shots with the current vaccine will be required to keep immunity high. One plus: The coronavirus mutates at a slower pace than flu viruses, making it a more stable target for vaccination, said Ann Marie Kimball, a retired University of Washington professor of epidemiology. So, will the current pandemic unseat the 1918-19 flu pandemic as the worst in human history? “You’d like to say no. We have a lot more infection control, a lot more ability to support people who are sick. We have modern medicine,” Kimball said. “But we have a lot more people and a lot more mobility. … The fear is eventually a new strain gets around a particular vaccine target.” To those unvaccinated individuals who are counting on infection rather than vaccination for immune protection, Kimball said, “The trouble is, you have to survive infection to acquire the immunity.” It’s easier, she said, to go to the drugstore and get a shot. from https://ift.tt/3EBWpR5 Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Earlier this month, Dr. Rashid Buttar posted on Twitter that COVID-19 “was a planned operation” and shared an article alleging that most people who got vaccinated against the coronavirus would be dead by 2025. His tweets are a recent addition to a steady stream of spurious claims about the COVID-19 vaccines and treatments. Another example is Dr. Sherri Jane Tenpenny’s June testimony, before Ohio state legislators, that the vaccine could cause people to become magnetized. Clips from the hearing went viral on the internet. Earlier in the pandemic, on April 9, 2020, Dr. Joseph Mercola posted a video about whether hydrogen peroxide could treat the coronavirus; it was shared more than 4,600 times. In the video, Mercola said that inhaling hydrogen peroxide through a nebulizer could prevent or cure COVID-19. These physicians are part of the “Disinformation Dozen,” a group of top super-spreaders of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation, according to a 2021 report by the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate. The report, which was based on an analysis of anti-vaccine content on social media platforms, found that 12 people were responsible for 65% of it. The group is comprised of physicians, anti-vaccine activists and people known for promoting alternative medicine. It’s particularly alarming that the Disinformation Dozen includes physicians because their medical credentials lend credence to their unproven, often dangerous—and very visible—claims. All three identified in the report continue to hold medical licenses and have not faced consequences for their statements. However, leaders of professional medical organizations are increasingly calling for that to change and urging medical oversight boards to take more aggressive action. In July, the Federation of State Medical Boards issued a statement making clear that doctors who generate and spread COVID-19 misinformation could be subject to disciplinary action, including having their licenses suspended or revoked. The American Board of Family Medicine, American Board of Internal Medicine and American Board of Pediatrics issued a joint statement of support Sept. 9, warning that “such unethical or unprofessional conduct may prompt their respective Board to take action that could put their certification at risk.” Read more: How Scientists Are Using Social Media to Counter Coronavirus Misinformation The super-spreaders identified by the center’s report are not alone. By combing through published fact checks and other news coverage, KHN identified 20 other doctors who made false or misleading claims about the coronavirus but have had no action taken against their medical licenses. For example, at an Indiana school board meeting in August, Dr. Dan Stock claimed the surge in cases this summer was due to “antibody mediated viral enhancement” from vaccinated people. PolitiFact rated his claim “Pants on Fire” false. Dr. Stella Immanuel, a member of America’s Frontline Doctors, a group that has consistently made false statements about the virus, said in a video that went viral in July 2020 that masks weren’t necessary because the virus could be cured by hydroxychloroquine. Immanuel’s website currently promotes a set of vitamins, as well as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, as covid treatments. Two of the doctors that we’re naming in this article responded to requests for comment. Mercola offered documents that he claimed rebutted criticisms of hydrogen peroxide treatment and took issue with the Center for Countering Digital Hate’s methodology. Buttar defended his stance that COVID-19 was planned and that those who got vaccinated would die. He said via email that “the science is clear and anyone who contests it, has a suspect agenda at best and/or lacks a moral compass.” Since the onset of the pandemic, misinformation has been widespread on social media platforms. Many experts are adamant that these lies and misleading claims undermined efforts to get the pandemic under control. According to a recent poll, more than 50% of Americans who won’t get vaccinated believe a conspiracy theory—for example, that the shot causes infertility or alters DNA. Some physicians have gained notoriety by embracing coronavirus-related fringe ideas, quack treatments and other falsehoods via social media, on conservative talk shows and even in person with patients. Whether promoting the use of ivermectin, which is an anti-parasitic drug for animals, or a mix of vitamins to treat the virus, doctors’ words can be powerful. Public opinion polls consistently show that Americans have high trust in doctors. “There is a sense of credibility that comes with being a doctor,” says Rachel Moran, a researcher who studies COVID-19 misinformation at the University of Washington. “There is also a sense they have access to insider info that we don’t. This is a very confusing time, and it can seem that if anyone knows what I should be doing in this situation, it’s a doctor.” While the coronavirus is a novel and complicated infectious disease, the physicians spreading misinformation have no particular expertise in infectious diseases. For example, Dr. Scott Atlas, who was an adviser to President Donald Trump, downplayed the seriousness of COVID-19, opposed state lockdowns, questioned the efficacy of masks and endorsed natural herd immunity as a way to combat the pandemic. He’s a radiation oncologist. Read more: How to Spot Coronavirus Misinformation Traditionally, state medical boards have been responsible for policing physicians. Beyond licensing medical doctors, these panels investigate complaints and discipline doctors who engage in unethical, unprofessional or, in extreme cases, criminal activity. Any member of the public can submit a complaint about a physician. “The boards are relatively slow and weak and it’s a long, slow process to pull somebody’s license,” says Arthur Caplan, founding head of the department of medical ethics at New York University. “In many states, they have their hands full with doctors who have committed felonies, doctors who are molesting their patients. Keeping an eye on misinformation is somewhat down on the priority list.” To date, only two doctors reportedly faced such sanctions. In Oregon, Dr. Steven LaTulippe had his license suspended in December 2020 for refusing to wear a face mask at his clinic and telling patients that masks were ineffective and dangerous. Dr. Thomas Cowan, a San Francisco physician who posted a YouTube video that went viral in March 2020 stating that 5G networks cause COVID-19, voluntarily surrendered his medical license to California’s medical board in February 2021. However, Dr. Humayun Chaudhry, president of the Federation of State Medical Boards, says it’s possible that some doctors could already be the subject of inquiries and investigations, since these actions are not made public until sanctions are handed down. KHN reached out to the medical and osteopathic boards of all 50 states and the District of Columbia to see if they had received COVID-19 misinformation complaints. Of the 43 that responded, only a handful shared specifics. During a one-week period in August, Kansas’ medical board received six such complaints. In total, the state has received 35 complaints against 20 licensees about spreading pandemic-related misinformation on social media and in person. Indiana has received about 30 complaints in the past year. South Carolina said it had received about 10 since January 2021. Rhode Island didn’t share the number of complaints it has received but said it has taken disciplinary action against one doctor for spreading misinformation, though it hasn’t moved to suspend his license. (The disciplinary measures include a fine, a reprimand on the doctor’s record and a mandate to complete an ethics course.) Five of the states KHN reached out to said that they had received only a couple complaints, and 11 states reported receiving zero complaints about COVID-19 misinformation. Confidentiality laws in 13 states prevented those boards from sharing any information about complaints. Social media companies have been slow to take action. Some doctors’ accounts have been suspended, but others are still active and posting misinformation. Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, says social media platforms often don’t consistently apply their rules against spreading misinformation. “Even when it’s the same companies, Facebook will sometimes take posts down, but Instagram will not,” Ahmed says, referring to Facebook’s ownership of Instagram. “It goes to show their piecemeal, ineffective approach to enforcing their own rules.” A Facebook spokesperson said the company has removed more than 3,000 accounts, pages and groups for repeatedly violating COVID-19 and vaccine misinformation policies since the beginning of the pandemic. Buttar’s Facebook and Instagram pages and Tenpenny’s Facebook page have been removed, while Mercola’s Facebook posts have been demoted, which means that fewer people will see them. Tenpenny and Mercola both still have Instagram accounts. Part of the challenge is that these doctors sometimes present scientific opinions that aren’t mainstream but are viewed as potentially valid by some of their colleagues. “It can be difficult to prove that what is being said is outside the range of scientific and medical consensus,” Caplan says. “The doctors who were advising Trump—like Scott Atlas—recommended herd immunity. That was far from the consensus of epidemiologists, but you couldn’t get a board to take his license away because it was a fringe opinion.” Even if these physicians don’t face consequences, it is likely, experts said, that public health will. “Medical misinformation doesn’t just result in people making bad personal and community health choices, but it also divides communities and families, leaving an emotional toll,” says Moran, the University of Washington researcher. “Misinformation narratives have real sticking power and impact people’s ability to make safe health choices.” KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation. from https://ift.tt/2XJmxsH Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ When Apple’s iOS 15 goes live Monday, it will come with the usual bevy of software upgrades meant to enhance slightly older iPhones while also laying the groundwork for the Cupertino, Calif. company’s next generation of devices. While most of the tech world will be focused on the headline changes, like a long-overdue overhaul of the default Weather app that centers more useful information, iOS 15 also introduces some major new health features, including new trend analysis and notification abilities, data sharing features, first-of-their-kind health metrics and more. “Since 2014, the Health app’s mission has been to help you make sense of your own health data, and making sure it’s private and secure, all in one place,” says Dr. Sumbul Desai, Apple’s VP of Health. “And what you’re going to see on Monday with iOS 15 is that the Health app really comes full circle.” Via the Health app, iPhones have long been able to store users’ health data, whether it’s collected by the handset itself, an Apple Watch, or a compatible third-party device. But iOS 15 brings two new features to the Health app meant to make that data easier to share with others. The first allows iPhone users to share their health metrics with their loved ones, so that, for instance, an adult son or daughter can keep tabs on their parents’ wellbeing, and get an early heads up if anything seems amiss. The second allows easier sharing of users’ health data directly with their physicians. Read More: 5 Big Takeaways From Apple’s iPhone 13 Event, Including 1 Thing iPhone Users Should Do Right Now When it comes to sharing health data, there are obvious privacy concerns at play that will likely be top of mind for many right now, given that Apple recently had to patch a majority security vulnerability in iPhones and other devices. But Desai says Apple has taken steps to ensure users’ personal information is kept secure—the company doesn’t have access to shared data, for instance, and all shared information is end-to-end encrypted. Furthermore, activating the sharing-between-loved-ones feature requires approval from both parties involved, and people can choose which specific kinds of data they want to share while keeping other metrics to themselves. Apple was also careful to design the data in a way that’s helpful, rather than overwhelming, for physicians and other medical workers. “We wanted to make sure that we could present the information [to health practitioners] in a really easy-to-understand, beautiful way that is easily glanceable and should not take more than a few seconds for an individual to process,” Desai says. “There were times when we were designing the dashboard, if something was too complicated, a lot of us would often say, ‘okay, that’s not going to work, because that’s going to make me think about it two times.’ And that’s taking away precious physician-patient time, [which] we didn’t want to do.” Also included in the revamped Health app: an entirely new health metric called Walking Steadiness, which uses the iPhone’s built-in sensors to track owners’ balance, strength and gait, and can alert users if they’re at risk of falling. The app also includes exercise tutorials designed to help those who need to boost their steadiness to help prevent falls, which can sometimes lead to serious injury. The feature, Desai says, came about via data from Apple’s heart study, which included more than 100,000 participants. Read More: Tim Cook on the ‘Basic Human Right’ of Privacy and the Technology That Excites Him the Most “This feature is an example of research and science really coming together,” Desai says. “When we started our journey in health, we wanted to make sure that we were partnering with the medical community and science and providing actionable recommendations that can really empower an individual with timely information. And so Walking Steadiness, in our view, really has the potential to increase awareness amongst many who may not know that they may have a problem, and potentially proactively indicate that there are some things that you could start working on.” The Health app is, of course, most powerful in combination with the Apple Watch or other wearable devices, which track metrics—like heart rate, blood oxygenation and more—that the iPhone can’t monitor on its own. But some of the new features in iOS 15, including the new Walking Steadiness metric, don’t require a secondary device, making them accessible to a wider audience at a relatively lower cost of entry. When asked whether Apple would ever consider opening up these Health features for use on non-Apple devices, given their potential to help improve people’s lives and well-being, Desai said that Apple doesn’t comment on future features, but added that it’s “always open to learning about more opportunities for us to consider.” Overall, Desai says, Apple hopes that the new features can offer a “look at your health in a longitudinal way.” “For health, too often, it’s episodic moments of interaction,” she says. “We really want to start having the conversation and change the conversation around being proactive and preventative about your health, and we’re hopeful these sharing features will start a conversation about proactively noticing changes in trends over time.” from https://ift.tt/2Zen4DA Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Pfizer said Monday its COVID-19 vaccine works for children ages 5 to 11 and that it will seek U.S. authorization for this age group soon—a key step toward beginning vaccinations for youngsters. The vaccine made by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech already is available for anyone 12 and older. But with kids now back in school and the extra-contagious delta variant causing a huge jump in pediatric infections, many parents are anxiously awaiting vaccinations for their younger children. For elementary school-aged kids, Pfizer tested a much lower dose—a third of the amount that’s in each shot given now. Yet after their second dose, children ages 5 to 11 developed coronavirus-fighting antibody levels just as strong as teenagers and young adults, Dr. Bill Gruber, a Pfizer senior vice president, told The Associated Press. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The kid dosage also proved safe, with similar or fewer temporary side effects—such as sore arms, fever or achiness—that teens experience, he said. “I think we really hit the sweet spot,” said Gruber, who’s also a pediatrician. Gruber said the companies aim to apply to the Food and Drug Administration by the end of the month for emergency use in this age group, followed shortly afterward with applications to European and British regulators. Earlier this month, FDA chief Dr. Peter Marks told the AP that once Pfizer turns over its study results, his agency would evaluate the data “hopefully in a matter of weeks” to decide if the shots are safe and effective enough for younger kids. Many Western countries so far have vaccinated no younger than age 12, awaiting evidence of what’s the right dose and that it works safely in smaller tots. But Cuba last week began immunizing children as young as 2 with its homegrown vaccines and Chinese regulators have cleared two of its brands down to age 3. While kids are at lower risk of severe illness or death than older people, more than 5 million children in the U.S. have tested positive for COVID-19 since the pandemic began and at least 460 have died, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Cases in children have risen dramatically as the delta variant swept through the country. “I feel a great sense of urgency” in making the vaccine available to children under 12, Gruber said. “There’s pent-up demand for parents to be able to have their children returned to a normal life.” In New Jersey, 10-year-old Maya Huber asked why she couldn’t get vaccinated like her parents and both teen brothers have. Her mother, Dr. Nisha Gandhi, a critical care physician at Englewood Hospital, enrolled Maya in the Pfizer study at Rutgers University. But the family hasn’t eased up on their masking and other virus precautions until they learn if Maya received the real vaccine or a dummy shot. Once she knows she’s protected, Maya’s first goal: “a huge sleepover with all my friends.” Maya said it was exciting to be part of the study even though she was “super scared” about getting jabbed. But “after you get it, at least you feel like happy that you did it and relieved that it didn’t hurt,” she told the AP. Pfizer said it studied the lower dose in 2,268 kindergartners and elementary school-aged kids. The FDA required what is called an immune “bridging” study: evidence that the younger children developed antibody levels already proven to be protective in teens and adults. That’s what Pfizer reported Monday in a press release, not a scientific publication. The study still is ongoing, and there haven’t yet been enough COVID-19 cases to compare rates between the vaccinated and those given a placebo—something that might offer additional evidence. The study isn’t large enough to detect any extremely rare side effects, such as the heart inflammation that sometimes occurs after the second dose, mostly in young men. The FDA’s Marks said the pediatric studies should be large enough to rule out any higher risk to young children. Pfizer’s Gruber said once the vaccine is authorized for younger children, they’ll be carefully monitored for rare risks just like everyone else. A second U.S. vaccine maker, Moderna, also is studying its shots in elementary school-aged children. Pfizer and Moderna are studying even younger tots as well, down to 6-month-olds. Results are expected later in the year. —With assistance from Emma Tobin from https://ift.tt/3nUWbyV Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ NEW YORK — Chris Rock on Sunday said he has been diagnosed with COVID-19 and sent a message to anyone still on the fence: “Get vaccinated.” The 56-year-old comedian wrote on Twitter: “Hey guys I just found out I have COVID, trust me you don’t want this. Get vaccinated.” Rock has previously said he was vaccinated. Appearing on “The Tonight Show” in May, he called himself “Two-shots Rock” before clarifying that he received the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine. “You know, I skipped the line. I didn’t care. I used my celebrity, Jimmy,” he told host Jimmy Fallon. “I was like, ‘Step aside, Betty White. Step aside, old people. … I did ‘Pootie Tang.’ Let me on the front of the line.'” from https://ift.tt/3hP8qJj Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ My Child Was Vulnerable Long Before the Pandemic. But the Wait for a Vaccine Is Excruciating9/18/2021 Whenever my 9-year-old seizes, he’s coming out of sleep—as though his brain gets stuck in an elevator between the basement of REM and the lobby of consciousness. Around 5 a.m., always on a day I couldn’t predict, his 50-pound frame starts to tap and jerk, keeping an awful rhythm, and, for too many seconds, he cannot say his name. Seizures are the latest in a litany of medical and developmental challenges that have puzzled his doctors for the last seven years, beginning with the morning his blood sugar dropped to 27 mg/dL. A normal range is around 70-100 mg/dL. We have medication and genetic test results, glucometers and nutrition plans, but we have no guarantees. My husband and I take turns easing liquid medicine into his mouth twice a day, pricking his finger when his energy lags, and blending a protein smoothie for him at night. We follow the rules, try to make a contract with our boy’s beautiful brown body. But each time he seizes, we are left without recourse. We hold him and push record on a phone, as though gathering evidence could ever be enough. I thought we’d be in a different place by now. It’s a phrase I don’t dare say aloud following his seizures or doctors’ appointments. It would strip me down to my last skin, expose me as a mother. Was I a fool for having expectations, for assuming that medicine or prayer or time would be enough? Read More: Kids Can’t Get COVID-19 Vaccines Yet. But We Do Have Ways to Protect Them It’s a phrase that’s tapped quietly at my soul for years, even before my son became sick. Each time I’ve learned a Black person was killed for walking with iced tea or Skittles or a cell phone, killed, even, while sleeping, a tiny piece of me, perhaps one bit of marrow untouched by skepticism, courses through and cushions my bones: No, this can’t be. Not again. Sometimes disbelief is the closest thing we have to hope. As Black parents, we have The Talk with our kids. We write up the contract, we follow the rules. Hands at 10 and 2; always say “Sir”; ask before you reach. Still, we find ourselves left naked and wanting by systems devoted to protecting whiteness. We hold our phones and push record, hoping the world will be able to see us this time, or at least not look away. So what follows that first phrase is another: I should’ve known better. As though the only thing worse than experiencing racism is failing to anticipate it. As though the only thing worse than my child seizing is being surprised by it. I sit at this intersection of motherhood, an intersection of vulnerabilities, really. Mother to a Black and medically complex child during a pandemic, in this country, where I naively believed we’d be in a safer place by now. I am used to the waiting. Waiting on science to discover my son’s diagnosis. Waiting on people who thrive on privilege to be held accountable. And now, as I wait for COVID-19 vaccines for children under 12, I am reminded once more how hard it is to keep going amid uncertainty, disappointment, even fury. Read More: ‘A Year Full of Emotions.’ What Kids Learned From the COVID-19 Pandemic When it comes to COVID-19, though, science is doing its job. We have multiple doses of multiple vaccines—a surplus in this country while other countries lack. We are likely a few months, painfully long months, yes, but just months away from eligibility for kids. So while I would love an emergency use authorization for those shots tomorrow, the FDA, which asked for manufacturers to expand their trial sizes in order to detect any potential side effects, is not the target of my ire. It’s the American-bred hubris, serving as a shield of protection for some, a dagger to others, that leaves parents like me equally enraged and exhausted, forced to play roulette with our children, when we shouldn’t have had to gamble, not like this, not this late in the game. We can study the data: COVID-19 dashboards cataloguing the infected and deceased; line graphs climbing a threatening red hill; case studies documenting outbreaks in schools. There are so many numbers, updated daily, that the zeros, representing thousands sick and dead, can start to look like nothing. But they all tell a similar, disturbing story: the more contagious Delta variant loves to find and exploit the unvaccinated. It’s true that children tend to fare better than adults when infected. Less than 2% of children with COVID-19 have required hospitalization, according to the most recent data from the American Academy of Pediatrics, and less than .03% of infected children have died. But said another way: young children without agency—with whole lives not marked by a percent sign, not expressed in decimals—have become very ill, and some have died. These children were not three-hundredths of one percent to their parents, their siblings. They were glorious beings, housed in bodies that ultimately betrayed them, because politicians and religious leaders and American systems, designed to see some of us as fractions, as dispensable buffer, betrayed them first. The waiting, I’ve learned, is never passive. I give my son his medicine and take him to the best hospitals. I surround him with rich Black literature and explain why Daddy must wear a blazer to meetings. In some ways, the pandemic’s “waiting room,” with its to-do list feels awfully familiar. I’ve been vaccinated and masked. I’ve kept hand sanitizer in cup holders and handbags. I’ve prayed and researched and bent the thin metal strip over my son’s nose, tightened the straps behind his ears, before he walks into school. The difference with COVID-19 is that we know what works, even as we wait. We are not being asked to solve a genetic mystery or dismantle entire systems of oppression in a matter of months. We are being asked to get vaccinated if we can, to wear a mask and keep our distance, to get tested and wash our hands. Elected officials like Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott, who act as though mitigation measures are a greater threat than the virus, make it harder to imagine an end to this pandemic. Such arrogance, in the face of death, death that is more likely to affect Black and brown families, makes me want to burn it all down. But the science is here, and the science is coming. And I have to hold onto a sliver of hope, even as numbers of pediatric COVID-19 cases surge, because health care workers are still showing up, through personal and global tragedy, through hurricane and packed PICU floors. Because I am a mother, and I owe the preservation of my imagination— one piece of my mind unclaimed by dread and defeat—to my three young children, maybe even to myself. I have to believe that, at least when it comes to COVID-19, this period of waiting for protection will soon come to an end. That does not mean that I have to turn away from an ugly truth. “We placed our petty conveniences on a pedestal, clung tight to ignorance—and made our neighbors a sacrifice,” ICU nurse Kathryn Ivey tweeted this month. Now more than ever, these neighbors are children. Parents are left adjusting masks, gripping phones, taking pictures before first days of school, praying FaceTime will never host our final moments with our kids, as though bearing witness to our children’s vulnerability could ever protect us from grave loss. from https://ift.tt/3zpwKHA Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ |
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