Flu Season Winding Down / CDC

Interesting take by the Associated Press on how Cuba plans to deal with a swine flu epidemic–sans vaccine.  Excerpts: As the U.S. prepares an extensive health survey for side affects from its massive inoculation plans, Cuba’s No. 2 health official says relying on a shot to contain a world pandemic is risky as best —…

 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm0620 Excerpt: We report SARS-CoV-2 vaccine effectiveness against infection (VE-I) and death (VE-D) by vaccine type (n = 780,225) in the Veterans Health Administration, covering 2.7% of the U.S. population. From February to October 2021, VE-I declined from 87.9% to 48.1%, and the decline was greatest for the Janssen vaccine resulting in a VE-I of 13.1%….

OPINION   COMMENTARY https://www.wsj.com/articles/too-much-caution-is-killing-covid-patients-11606238928 Doctors should follow the evidence for promising therapies. Instead they demand certainty. By Joseph A. Ladapo Nov. 24, 2020 12:28 pm Fear and panic are central impediments to competent decision-making during a crisis. As Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations rise around the country, creating an atmosphere of crisis, political leaders are reaching for last spring’s…

https://www.commonsense.news/p/us-public-health-agencies-arent-following ‘People are getting bad advice and we can’t say anything.’ President Joe Biden tours the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, in March 2021. (Eric Baradat/AFP via Getty Images)  The calls and text messages are relentless. On the other end are doctors and scientists at the top levels of the NIH,…

Albanians celebrate on a monument to the national hero Skanderbeg after Edi Rama rejected the US request to host the chemical weapons. Photo: Arben Celi/Reuters The UN’s Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has completed its inspection work in Syria on time, and without any major hitch.  All production facilities for chemical weapons have…

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/05/20/health-202-house-republicans-are-refusing-both-vaccines-masks/ AND, three House members were fined $500 each for not complying with a mask mandate, one of whom is a physician, military retiree and former director of the Iowa Department of Public Health.  Happy to see that other knowledgeable doctors are willing to bare their face in public, knowing the masks do little or…