Category: Covid-19

Anthony Fauci book 'On Call' reflects on COVID-19, Trump and public service Over the course of his decades-long career in public health, Fauci vowed he would never shy away from speaking truth the U.S. president even when it was inconvenient. Fauci's memoir is On Call.

Dr. Anthony Fauci testifies before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee Select Subcommittee on June 3. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images hide caption

For much of the past four years, Dr. Anthony Fauci has been the public face of the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic a status that garnered him gratitude from some, and condemnation from others.

For Fauci, speaking what he calls the inconvenient truth is part of the job. He spent 38 years heading up the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, during which time he advised seven presidents on various diseases, including AIDS, Ebola, SARS and COVID-19.

Fauci still recalls the advice he received when he first went to the White House to meet President Reagan: A colleague told him to pretend each visit to the West Wing would be his last.

And what he meant is, you should say to yourself that I might have to say something either to the president or to the president's advisers they may not like to hear, Fauci explains. And then that might lead to your not getting asked back again. But that's OK, because you've got to stick with always telling the truth to the best of your capability.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Fauci clashed repeatedly with President Trump. "He really wanted, understandably, the outbreak to essentially go away," Fauci says of Trump. "So he started to say things that were just not true."

Fauci says Trump downplayed the seriousness of the virus, refused to wear a mask and claimed (falsely) that hydroxychloroquineoffered protection against COVID-19. "And [that] was the beginning of a situation that put me at odds, not only with the president, but more intensively with his staff," Fauci says. "But ... there was no turning back. I could not give false information or sanction false information for the American public."

Fauci retired from the NIH in 2022. In his new memoir, On Call: A Doctors Journey in Public Service, he looks back on the COVID-19 pandemic and reflects on decades of managing public health crises.

On appearing before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic to answer questions about the pandemic response

If you look at the hearing itself it, unfortunately, is a very compelling reflection of the divisiveness in our country. I mean, the purpose of hearings, or at least the proposed purpose of the hearing, was to figure out how we can do better to help prepare us and respond to the inevitability of another pandemic, which almost certainly will occur. But if you listened in to that hearing on the Republican side was a vitriolic ad hominem and a distortion of facts, quite frankly. As opposed to trying to really get down to how we can do better in the future. It was just attacks about things that were not founded in reality.

On his interactions with President Trump concerning COVID-19

He is a very complicated figure. We had a very interesting relationship. ... I don't know whether it was the fact that he recognized me as kind of a fellow New Yorker, but he always felt that he wanted to maintain a good relationship with me. And even when he would come in and start saying, "Why are you saying these things? You got to be more positive. You got to be more positive." And he would get angry with me. But then at the end of it, he would always say, "We're OK, aren't we? I mean, we're good. Things are OK," because he didn't want to leave the conversation thinking that we were at odds with each other, even though many in his staff at the time were overtly at odds with me, particularly the communication people. ... So it was a complicated issue. There were times when you think he was very favorably disposed, and then he would get angry at some of the things that I was saying, even though they were absolutely the truth.

On reading reports of a mysterious illness afflicting gay men in 1981 (which later became known as AIDS)

I knew I was dealing with a brand new disease. ... The thing that got me goosebumps is that this was totally brand new and it was deadly, because the young men we were seeing, they were so far advanced in their disease before they came to the attention of the medical care system, that the mortality looked like it was approaching 100%. So that, you know, spurred me on to ... totally change the direction of my career, to devote myself to the study of what was, at the time, almost exclusively young gay men with this devastating, mysterious and deadly disease, which we ultimately, a year or so later, gave the name of AIDS to.

On the trauma of caring for patients with AIDS in the early years of the epidemic

All of a sudden I was taking care of people who were desperately ill, mostly young gay men who I had a great deal of empathy for. And what we were doing was metaphorically like putting Band-Aids on hemorrhages, because we didn't know what the etiology was until three years later. We had no therapy until several, several years later. And although we were trained to be healers in medicine, we were healing no one and virtually all of our patients were dying.

Many of my colleagues who were really in the trenches back then, before we had therapy, really have some degree of post-traumatic stress. I describe in the memoir some very, very devastating experiences that you have with patients that you become attached to who you try your very, very best to help them. ... It was a very painful experience.

On working with President George W. Bush on the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which aimed to combat the global HIV/AIDS crisis

The president, to his great credit, called me into the Oval Office and said we have a moral obligation to not allow people to die of a preventable and treatable disease merely because of the fact [of] where they were born, in a poor country, and that was at a time when we had now developed drugs that were absolutely saving the lives of persons with HIV, having them go on to essentially a normal lifespan here in the United States, in the developed world. So he sent me to Africa to try and figure out the feasibility and accountability and the possibility of getting a program that could prevent and treat and care for people with HIV. And I worked for months and months on it after coming back from Africa, because I was convinced it could be done, because I felt very strongly that this disparity of accessibility of drugs between the developed and developing world was just unconscionable. Luckily, the president of the United States, in the form of George W. Bush, felt that way. And we put together the PEPFAR program. ... We spent $100 billion in 50 countries and it has saved 25 million lives, which I think is an amazing example of what presidential leadership can do.

On personally treating two patients with Ebola during the 2014 outbreak

The fundamental reason why I wanted to be directly involved in taking care of the two Ebola patients that came to the NIH is that if you look at what was going on in West Africa at the time and this was during the West African outbreak of Ebola is that health care providers were the ones at high risk of getting infected, and hundreds of them had already died in the field taking care of people in Africa physicians, nurses and other health-care providers. So even though we had very good conditions here, in the intensive care setting, of wearing these spacesuits that would protect you, these highly specialized personal protective equipment, I felt that if I was going to ask my staff to put themselves at risk in taking care of people ... I wanted to do it myself. I just felt I had to do that.

We took care of one patient who was mildly ill, who we did well with. But then the second patient was desperately ill. We did have contact with him, and we did get these virus-containing bodily fluids everything from urine to feces to blood to respiratory secretions we got it all over our personal protective equipment. And that was one of the reasons why you had to very meticulously take off your personal protective equipment so as not to get any of this virus on any part of your body. So the protocols for taking care of persons with Ebola in that intensive care setting were very, very strict protocols, which we adhered to very, very carefully. But it was a very tense experience, trying to save someone's life who was desperately ill at the same time as making sure that you and your colleagues don't get infected in the process.

Sam Briger and Joel Wolfram produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz and Meghan Sullivan adapted it for the web.

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Anthony Fauci book 'On Call' reflects on COVID-19, Trump and public service - NPR

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On New Years Day 2020, I was zipping up my fleece to head outside when the phone in the kitchen rang. I picked it up to find a reporter on the line. Dr. Fauci, he said, theres something strange going on in Central China. Im hearing that a bunch of people have some kind of pneumonia. Im wondering, have you heard anything? I thought he was probably referring to influenza, or maybe a return of SARS, which in 2002 and 2003 had infected about 8,000 people and killed more than 750. SARS had been bad, particularly in Hong Kong, but it could have been much, much worse.

A reporter calling me at home on a holiday about a possible disease outbreak was concerning, but not that unusual. The press sometimes had better, or at least faster, ground-level sources than I did as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and reporters were often the first to pick up on a new disease or situation. I told the reporter that I hadnt heard anything, but that we would monitor the situation.

Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.

Monitoring, however, was not easy. For one thing, we had a hard time finding out what was really going on in China because doctors and scientists there appeared to be afraid to speak openly, for fear of retribution by the Chinese government.

In the first few days of 2020, the word coming out of Wuhana city of more than 11 millionsuggested that the virus did not spread easily from human to human. Bob Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was already in contact with George Gao, his counterpart in China. During an early-January phone call, Bob reported that Gao had assured him that the situation was under control. A subsequent phone call was very different. Gao was clearly upset, Bob said, and told him that it was badmuch, much worse than people imagined.

We dont know whats going on with this virus coming out of China right now, I told the group assembled in a conference room at the National Institutes of Health. This was January 3, just 48 hours after the reporter had called me at home. The scientists sitting around the table, led by Vaccine Research Center Director John Mascola, knew what I was going to say next: We are going to need a vaccine for whatever this new virus turns out to be.

Among those present was Barney Graham, a gentle giant of a man at 6 feet 5 inches tall, and one of the worlds foremost vaccinologists. For years, Barney had been leading a group of scientists trying to develop the optimal immunogens for vaccines injected into the body. (An immunogen refers to the crucial part of any vaccine that generates the immune response.) They had been working with Moderna on a vaccine platform called mRNA, the result of groundbreaking research conducted over many years by Katalin Karik and Drew Weissman, who would win the Nobel Prize in 2023. Get me the viral genomic sequence, Barney said, and well get working on a vaccine in days.

At this point, an FDA-approved vaccine had never before been made using mRNA technology, and although a lot of skepticism remained, my colleagues and I were very optimistic about it. Compared with other vaccines, the mRNA process is faster and more precise. The team needed the coronaviruss genomic sequence so that it could pick out the part that codes for the spike protein (the immunogen) and, together with Moderna, use it to make the correct mRNA.

From the January/February 2021 issue: How science beat the virus

Only a week later, on January 10, I received an excited phone call from Barney: Scientists had just uploaded the SARS-CoV-2 sequence to a public database. Barney then immediately contacted a company that produces artificial strings of genetic code. He placed an order for the nucleotide sequence, and this lifesaving product was delivered in a small test tube packaged in a FedEx envelope. The modest charge was put on a credit card.

But soon after, Barney made a sobering point: A full-blown vaccine effort, including clinical trials, was going to cost a lot of money, far beyond what was in the Vaccine Research Centers budget. I told him not to worry. If this thing really explodes, I promise you, I will get us more money. You just go and make your vaccine.

About an hour into a meeting in the White House Situation Room on January 29, concerning how to evacuate U.S. citizens from Wuhan, President Donald Trump walked in. The first thing he did, to my great surprise, was look right at me.

Anthony, he said, you are really a famous guy. My good friend Lou Dobbs told me that you are one of the smartest, knowledgeable, and outstanding persons he knows. I gulped. Thus began my first extended conversation with the 45th president of the United States. A big, imposing man, Trump had a New York swagger that I instantly recognizeda self-confident, backslapping charisma that reminded me of my own days in New York. For the next 20 minutes, as we discussed the new virus, the president directed many of his questions my way. I had met Trump only once before. In September 2019, I had been part of a group invited to the Oval Office for the signing of an executive order to manufacture and distribute flu vaccines. Prior to that, I had sometimes wondered what it would be like to interact with him. He had shocked me on day one of his presidency with his disregard of facts, such as the size of the crowd at his inauguration. His apocalyptic inaugural address also had taken me aback, as had his aggressive disrespect for the press. But at that brief signing ceremony, I had found him far more personable than Id expected. Of course, I had no idea in January 2020 what the months and years ahead would be like.

I had confronted other terrible outbreaks over the course of my careerHIV in the 1980s, SARS in 2002 and 2003, Ebola in 2014, Zika in 2015but none of them prepared me for the environment I would find myself in during the coronavirus pandemic. The nation was and is extremely polarized, with a large portion of Americans reflexively distrustful of expertise. On social media, anyone can pretend to be an expert, and malicious information is easily amplified. Soon I would come to learn just how dangerous these conditions can be.

A code red went off in my mind during the week of January 23, when I saw photos in a newspaper showing that the Chinese government was quickly erecting a 1,000-bed prefabricated hospital. At that point, the virus had reportedly killed just 25 people and infected about 800, according to data the Chinese had released. Time out, I thought. Why would you need that many hospital beds when fewer than 1,000 people are infected? That was the moment I suspected we could be facing an unprecedented challenge, and my anxiety took a sharp turn upward.

By the very end of January, we were hearing that the cases in China were increasing by about 25 percent a day. Reportedly, more than 9,000 people were infected, and 213 people were dead. The number of infections in a single month had surpassed the 200203 SARS outbreak. The United States had discovered its first known case of this novel coronavirus on January 20; a 35-year-old man had returned home to Washington State from Wuhan with a severe cough and a fever. The CDC had already begun screening passengers at several U.S. airports, taking their temperature and asking them about symptoms such as a sore throat and a cough. We began to wonder: Should we recommend closing the United States to travelers from China? On January 31, seated in front of the Resolute desk, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, the CDCs Bob Redfield, and I explained the details of a proposed travel ban to the president. He posed several questions specifically to me about whether I was fully on board with the ban. It is an imperfect process with some downsides, Mr. President, but I believe its the best choice we have right now, I told him. Later that day, the Trump administration announced that travel restrictions would go into effect.

The White House communications team began arranging for me to appear on news shows. The entire world was transfixed by this rapidly evolving outbreak, and I became the public face of the countrys battle with the disease. This was useful, in that I could both try to calm the countrys anxieties and provide factual information. But it also led to the gross misperception, which grew exponentially over time, that I was in charge of most or even all of the federal governments response to the coronavirus. This would eventually make me the target of many peoples frustration and anger.

On February 11, the World Health Organization officially designated the disease caused by the novel coronavirus as COVID-19, which was now spreading relentlessly around the world. And in the midst of this, the CDC, the countrys premier public-health agency, was stumbling badly.

From the September 2020 issue: How the pandemic defeated America

The agency traditionally had a go-it-alone attitude, excluding input from outside sources. Its personnel were talented and deeply committed professionals. I respected them, and many were friends. But the CDCs approach, which is based on tracking symptoms, was poorly suited to dealing with a swiftly spreading disease in which, it would later turn out, more than a substantial portion of the transmissions come from people who are asymptomatic. The CDC was slow to recognize and act on that.

Another vulnerability was the way the CDC was set up to collect data. Rather than obtaining data firsthand, the agency depended on public-health departments around the countrybut those departments did not consistently provide complete, up-to-date data. Some provided information reflecting what had occurred weeks earlier, not the day before. As the disease kept spreading, what was actually happening was always far worse than what the CDCs data were telling us at the time. Public-health officials had to constantly play catch-up.

The CDC had an outstanding track record for quickly creating tests for diseases like Zika. With COVID, however, instead of immediately partnering with the diagnostic industry, it started from scratch with a test that turned out to be defective. The agency then failed to fix the defect, and wasted even more time in developing adequate testing. February was a lost month as a result.

Although the CDC struggled, there was no mistaking the message delivered on February 25 by its director of immunization and respiratory diseases, Nancy Messonnier. She told reporters that a pandemic in the United States was no longer a matter of if but when, and that we should prepare to close schools and work remotely. Disruption to everyday life may be severe, she announced. Nancy did the right thing: She told Americans the truth. But not surprisingly, her statement caused a firestorm. The media erupted, and the stock market plummeted nearly 1,000 points. Trump was furious.

The next day, he announced that Vice President Mike Pence would take over for Alex Azar as the head of the White House coronavirus task force. I met Pence the day he ran his first task-force meeting. He was soft-spoken and always solicited the medical opinions of the physicians on the task force. He listened carefully to our answers, often asking astute follow-up questions and never pretending to understand something if he did not. But I also picked up on little things that indicated how differently this administration operated from previous ones. Vice presidents are always publicly loyal to the president; that is part of the job. But Pence sometimes overdid it. During task-force meetings, he often said some version of There are a lot of smart people around here, but we all know that the smartest person in the building is upstairs.

Others joined Pence in heaping praise on Trump. When the task force held teleconferences with governors, most of the Republicans started by saying, Tell the president what a great job he is doing. But a couple of days after Nancys bombshell announcement, when I got a surprise phone call from Trump at 10:35 p.m., I did not flatter him. What I did do during our 20-minute conversation was lay out the facts. I encouraged him not to underplay the seriousness of the situation. That almost always comes back to bite you, Mr. President, I said. If you are totally honest about what is happening with COVID, the country will respect you for it. He was courteous to me, and as we hung up, I felt satisfied that he had heard what Id said.

I was worried about community spread, and I was particularly focused on Seattle. A longtime colleague called me from the city on March 3 and told me that 380 people with flu-like symptoms had been screened in four emergency rooms. Four had tested positive for COVID, a roughly 1 percent infection ratethat may not sound like much, but it was a clear signal that the virus was spreading among those unaware that they had been exposed. That meant the 1 percent was only a tiny fraction of what was actually already happening. When I brought this information to the task-force meeting, neither Pence nor Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin seemed to fully appreciate the seriousness of what I was telling them. While I was warning them of the impending disaster, the president was declaring outright to the press that the situation was under control. Without deliberately contradicting him, I kept repeating that things would get worse, and indeed they did.

Then, in one Oval Office meeting, I mentioned to Trump that we were in the early stages of developing a COVID vaccine. This got his attention, and he quickly arranged a trip to the NIH. During his visit, Barney Graham told the president that within a couple of weeks, a Phase 1 trial would likely begin. The president asked, Why cant we just use the flu vaccine for this virus? It was not the first or the last time that he seemed to conflate COVID with influenza.

People associate science with immutable absolutes, when in fact science is a process that continually uncovers new information. As new information is uncovered, the process of science allows for self-correction. The biological and health sciences are different from the physical sciences and mathematics. With mathematics, two plus two equals four today, and two plus two will equal four 1,000 years from now. Not so with the biological sciences, where what we know evolves and uncertainty is common.

On March 8, I appeared on a 60 Minutes broadcast in a segment about COVID. At one point, I told the interviewer, Right now in the United States, people should not be walking around with masks. I was expressing not just a personal opinion, but the consensus at the timea view shared by the surgeon general and the CDC.

The supply of masks was already low. One fear was that there would be a stampede, and we would create an even greater shortage of masks needed by the health-care workers taking care of very ill COVID patients. Although there was accumulating evidence that the virus was spread by aerosol, this was not widely accepted, certainly not by the WHO. When additional information became availableincluding that the virus was readily spread by infected people who had no symptomswe advised the public to wear masks. But this was how I became the public-health official who, very early in the pandemic, instructed people not to wear a mask. Later, my words would be twisted by extreme elements in an attempt to show that I and other scientists had misled the public, that we could not be trusted, and that we were flip-floppers.

What I came to realize is that our country is more profoundly divided than Id ever understood. I remember a time when people expected diverse political opinions. You didnt have to agree, but you respected one another enough to listen. Now the partisanship is so intense that people refuse to even try. They ignore facts in favor of tribal politics. Thats how you wind up with dangerous conspiracy theories. The controversy over masks illustrates a fundamental misperception of how science works. In reality, our understanding of COVID continually evolved, and our medical advice had to change to reflect this.

March 2020 was when COVID became frighteningly real to Americans. This was also around the time I started waking up with a jolt at 4 a.m. to stare at the ceiling with worry. I believe Trump thought that COVID would be temporary: A little time goes by, the outbreak is over, everyone goes back to work, and the election cycle can begin. He could not have imagined that the pandemic would go on for such a long time. I think this explains why he repeatedly asked me and others whether COVID resembled the flu. He desperately wanted the pandemic to disappear, just as flu does at the end of the flu season. Tragically, COVID was not the flu, and it did not vanish. Just the opposite. And so, with the ghastly reality setting in, Trump began to grab for an elixir that would cure this disease. Along came hydroxychloroquine.

Trump began hearing from the Fox News star Laura Ingraham and others who were promoting the drug as a COVID treatment. People have long taken hydroxychloroquine to prevent or treat malaria. It is also used to treat inflammatory and autoimmune diseases such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. Soon Trump began touting it to millions of worried Americans at our now-daily press briefings. But there were no clinical studies proving that this antimalarial drug would alleviate COVID. And it might even hurt people. The president seemed unable to grasp that anecdotes of how hydroxychloroquine might have helped some people with COVID did not translate into solid medical advice. This is when I realized that eventually, I would have to refute him publicly. This was not the White House I had known, and Id been advising presidents since the Reagan administration. The differences were going to dramatically affect the way I could do my job. Hydroxychloroquine doesnt work, I told reporters. After that, they would inevitably ask me if I agreed with something Trump had said, such as the idea that COVID would disappear like a miracle. I would then have to respond with the truth: Well, thats not going to happen.

I took no pleasure in contradicting the president of the United States. I have always had a great deal of respect for the Office of the President, and to publicly disagree with the president was unnerving at best and painful at worst. But it needed to be done. I take very seriously a statement in the first chapter of Harrisons Principles of Internal Medicine, of which I have been an editor for 40 years: The patient is no mere collection of symptoms, signs, disordered functions, damaged organs, and disturbed emotions. [The patient] is human, fearful, and hopeful, seeking relief, help, and reassurance. This compels me to always be honest; to be unafraid of saying that I do not know something; to never overpromise; to be comforting, yet realistic. Admitting uncertainty is not fashionable in politics these days, but it is essential in my work. Thats the beauty of science. You make a factual observation. If the facts change, the scientific process self-corrects. You gather new information and data that sometimes require you to change your opinion. This is how we better care for people over time. But too few people understand the self-corrective nature of science. In our daily press conferences, I tried to act as if the American public were my patient, and the principles that guided me through my medical career applied.

There is a widely circulated photo of me from a White House press briefing on March 20, in which I put my hand to my forehead in response to a comment the president had made. That day, Trump was especially flippant. He was standing with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, making one provocative statement after another. Then he said, Secretary of State Pompeo is extremely busy, so if you have any questions for him right now could you do that because Id like him to go back to the State Department or, as they call it, the Deep State Department. I had a moment of despair mixed with amusement. I put my hand to my forehead to hide my expression. This is when things began to get difficult for my family and me.

In late March, officials monitoring the dark web started to see a considerable amount of hostility and threats directed toward me. The problem was that a hard-core group saw me as a naysaying bureaucrat who was deliberately, even maliciously, undermining Trump. They loved and supported the president and regarded me as the enemy. To them, my hand-to-forehead moment validated what they already believed about me.

As a result, I was assigned a security detail. For years, AIDS had made me a target, but that was largely before social media. Back then, I used to get one or two insulting letters a month, mostly homophobic rants, sent to my office at the NIH. Now my family and I were barraged by emails, texts, and phone calls. I was outraged that my wife, Christine, and our daughters were harassed with foul language and sexually explicit messages, and threatened with violence and even death. I was angry and wanted to lash out. But these direct expressions of hatred did not distract or frighten me. I did not have time for fear. I had a job to do.

My training as a physician in a busy New York City hospital had taught me to push through crises and fatigue, to not feel sorry for myself. During the pandemic, Christine also insisted that I balance the demands of work with taking care of myself. (You are going to bed at a decent hour, you are going to eat regular meals, and you are going to carry a water bottle, she said in a way that left no room for argument.) Her advice helped me get through everything that followed.

But in the ensuing years, I also came to realize that addressing the root cause of our countrys division is beyond my capabilities as a scientist, physician, and public servant. That doesnt mean Ive given up hope that the country can be healed. I believe scientific education is more crucial now than it has ever been in American history. Children should learn what the scientific process is, how it works, and that it self-corrects. Most of all, I believe we need to reclaim civility. To do so, we need to understand that were all more alike than we are differentthat we share common goals for ourselves and for our communities. We need to learn to talk to one another again. And we need to figure that out before the next pandemic hits.

This article was adapted from Anthony Faucis book On Call: A Doctors Journey in Public Service. It appears in the July/August 2024 print edition with the headline The First Three Months.

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Anthony Fauci: The First Three Months of the Pandemic - The Atlantic

A panel of scientists fiercely debated Tuesday whether COVID-19 stemmed from a laboratory accident or naturally spread from animals to humans, with one expert declaring there was zero evidence for a natural origin of the pandemic that killed millions around the world.

Rutgers University molecular biologist Dr. Richard Ebright said in his opening statement before the Senate Homeland Security Committee that the large preponderance of evidence indicates SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID, entered humans through a research incident.

Ebright, who was joined in arguing for the so-called lab-leak theory by Dr. Stephen Quay, a former professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, added that no zero secure evidence points to COVIDs natural origins.

The probability this actually came from nature based on these features is one in a million, Quay concurred.

COVID-19 emerged in Wuhan, China, more than 800 miles from the closest bats harboring SARS-CoV-2 live viruses that could have served as progenitors, he noted.

The now-debarred Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) conducted US-funded, gain-of-function research on SARS-like bat viruses between 2014 and 2021.

During that research period, the WIV conducted the worlds largest research program on bat SARS viruses and had the worlds largest collection of bat SARS viruses, Ebright added.

Additionally, the Rutgers prof said, the Wuhan lab had conducted experiments with SARS viruses that had a high pandemic potential in the four years before COVID-19 and just one year earlier, had run research with the genetically modified SARS viruses that match in detail the features of SARS-CoV-2.

That research was funded by a more than $4 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant to the since-suspended Manhattan-based public health nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance, about half a million dollars of which directly flowed to WIV.

EcoHealth lost its status as a federal grantee for likely violating biosafety standards with its WIV project, titled Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence, and failing to immediately report the experiments, which resulted in a modified virus that was 10,000 times more infectious.

EcoHealth, led by Dr. Peter Daszak, has denied that the experiments constituted gain-of-function research despite testimony from NIH principal deputy director Dr. Lawrence Tabak last month stating that it was.

Quay in his opening remarks said that scientists dependent on NIH or NIAID funding may have pressure to publicly agree with orthodoxies, such as arguing against SARS-CoV-2 escaping a research lab.

That implicated one of the panels other witnesses, Dr. Robert Garry, who has received NIH funding and authored a controversial scientific paper prompted by then-National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Dr. Anthony Fauci in early 2020 to debunk the lab leak theory.

Ebright in his opening remarks noted that the paper, The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2, was published in March 2020 as an opinion piece, not backed by available evidence, and completely disproven by private communications of the authors that were released last year by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.

Four of the authors of that paper, he said, in their private communications show clearly that they knew the conclusion that they state in that article is invalid.

Scientists have twice requested the retraction of the paper, Ebright added, suggesting that its authors were guilty of scientific misconduct and potentially fraud.

Both Garry, a professor and associate dean at Tulane University School of Medicine, and Gregory Koblentz, an associate professor and director of the Biodefense Graduate Program at George Mason University, argued against the theory during the Senate hearing.

I firmly believe the available evidence indicates that the spillover happened naturally likely at the seafood market in Wuhan, China, Garry testified, without immediately explaining the evidence that led him to that conclusion.

In subsequent questioning, the Tulane professor admitted that we dont know whether the WIV had the virus, and we dont have the evidence from the Chinese that points either way.

I am first and foremost a scientist, and I will adhere to the scientific method, so I will continue to evaluate the evidence and reassess the validity of my scientific hypotheses regarding the origin since Ive spoken to you, Garry told panel members, adding later that he still stood by the 2020 paper arguing against the lab leak.

Natural spillovers have multiple markets, Quay pointed out at another point, referencing facts related to the earlier SARS virus that ripped through China beginning in 2002.

Koblentz noted that the US intelligence community remained divided about the origins of COVID-19, but the theory that it was deliberately developed as a biological weapon has been unanimously rejected by all US intelligence agencies.

The rare bipartisan congressional investigation into COVID origins was presided over by the committees chairman, Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), and ranking member, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who is also a doctor.

The COVID-19 pandemic was one of the worst public health crises that our country has ever faced, Peters said in his opening statement. We lost more than 1 million Americans to the virus. Todays hearing is intended to examine the available scientific evidence related to the virus.

Given the likelihood that the Chinese government may never fully disclose all the information they have about the initial COVID-19 outbreak, we must use the scientific information available to better prepare for future potential pandemics, Peters affirmed.

Paul in his opening remarks highlighted the private doubts of many of the lab leak opponents who smeared those skeptical of a natural origin as conspiracy theorists.

The cover up went beyond public statements, federal agencies and key officials withheld and continue to conceal crucial information from both Congress and the public, Paul said, thanking Peters for joining him in leading the committee hearing.

HHS and NIH have not produced documents related to the gain of function research that the chairman and I requested over a year ago, he added, and theyre still resisting.

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Scientific expert declares there is 'zero' evidence for natural COVID-19 origin - New York Post

Pfizer chairman and CEO Albert Bourla breaks down the company's revenue on The Claman Countdown.

FIRST ON FOX: The state of Kansas has filed a lawsuit against pharmaceutical company Pfizer, Inc. for alleged consumer protection violations related to the company's manufacturing of the COVID-19 vaccine, saying the company marketed the shot as "safe" even though it "knew" the vaccine was connected to "serious adverse events."

"Pfizer misled the public that it had a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine," the 69-page lawsuit filed Monday in the District Court of Thomas County alleges.

"Pfizer said its COVID-19 vaccine was safe even though it knew its COVID-19 vaccine was connected to serious adverse events, including myocarditis and pericarditis, failed pregnancies, and deaths.Pfizer concealed this critical safety information from the public," the suit alleges.

"Pfizer said its COVID-19 vaccine was effective even though it knew its COVID-19 vaccine waned over time and did not protect against COVID-19 variants.Pfizer concealed this critical effectiveness information from the public," it says.

COVID VACCINE COMPANIES TOLD TO FOCUS ON KP.2 VARIANT FOR FALL SHOTS, PER FDA ANNOUNCEMENT

Exterior view of the Pfizer headquarters building on Jan. 29, 2023 in New York City. (Kena Betancur/VIEWpress / Getty Images)

The lawsuit alleges that the company's "actions and statements relating to its COVID-19 vaccine" violated the Kansas Consumer Protection Act, "regardless of whether any individual consumer ultimately received Pfizers COVID-19 vaccine."

"Pfizer must be held accountable for falsely representing the benefits of its COVID-19 vaccine while concealing and suppressing the truth about its vaccines safety risks, waning effectiveness, and inability to prevent transmission," the lawsuit says.

The suit, filed by Republican Attorney General Kris Kobach, alleges that through the company's "misrepresentations" of the vaccine, it earned "record company revenue" of approximately $75 billion in just two years.

LARGEST-EVER COVID VACCINE STUDY LINKS SHOT TO SMALL INCREASE IN HEART AND BRAIN CONDITIONS

Vials with Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID vaccine labels are seen in this illustration picture taken March 19, 2021. (REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration / Reuters Photos)

The lawsuit alleges that "millions of Kansans heard Pfizers misrepresentations about its COVID-19 vaccine."

"For example, Pfizer administered 3,355,518 Pfizer vaccine doses in Kansas as of February 7, 2024.This accounted for more than 60% of all vaccine doses in Kansas," the lawsuit alleges, citing the state's Department of Health Data.

The lawsuit alleges that Pfizer used various methods to "conceal critical data" related to the "safety and effectiveness" of the vaccine, including using confidentiality agreements, an extended timeline, and destroying the control group participating in its vaccine trial.

"Because Pfizer unblinded the original control group and allowed them to receive Pfizers COVID-19 vaccine, Pfizer, government regulators, and independent scientists cannot fully compare the safety and efficacy of Pfizers COVID-19 vaccine against unvaccinated individuals," the lawsuit alleges.

"Pfizers extensive and aggressive efforts to keep its COVID-19 vaccine information hidden conflict with its public transparency pledges and raise serious questions about what Pfizer is hiding and why it is hiding it," it says.

The lawsuit also alleges that Pfizer failed to disclose the limitations of its COVID-19 vaccine trials.

CDC RECOMMENDS ADDITIONAL COVID VACCINE FOR ADULTS 65 AND OVER

Albert Bourla attends The New York Times DealBook Online Summit on Nov. 9, 2021, in New York City. (Ryan Muir/Getty Images via The New York Times / Getty Images)

"When Pfizer announced that the FDA had authorized Pfizers COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, Pfizer did not disclose that its trial included only healthy individuals and excluded unhealthy individuals," the suit claims.

"Pfizer made representations about its COVID-19 vaccines safety knowingly or with reason to know that it did not possess a reasonable basis to represent that it was safe for individuals who had been diagnosed with COVID-19, who were immunocompromised, or who were pregnant or breastfeeding," it alleges.

The suit also claims that Pfizer had knowledge of "safety issues" with the COVID-19 vaccine.

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Kobach alleges that Pfizer maintained its own adverse events database, separate from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) system, that "contain[ed] cases of [adverse events (AEs)] reported spontaneously to Pfizer, cases reported by the health authorities, cases published in the medical literature, cases from Pfizer-sponsored marketing programs, non-interventional studies, and cases of serious AEs reported from clinical studies regardless of causality assessment."

"Upon information and belief, Pfizers adverse events database contained more adverse event data than VAERS because it included both information in VAERS and information not in VAERS," the lawsuit alleges.

"Pfizer did not publicly release adverse events data from its database," Kobach claims.

In a statement to Fox News Digital, Pfizer said: "We are proud to have developed the COVID-19 vaccine in record time in the midst of a global pandemic and saved countless lives. The representations made by Pfizer about its COVID-19 vaccine have been accurate and science-based. The Company believes that the states case has no merit and will respond to the suit in due course."

"Pfizer is deeply committed to the well-being of the patients it serves and has no higher priority than ensuring the safety and effectiveness of its treatments and vaccines. Since its initial authorization by FDA in December 2020, the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine has been administered to more than 1.5 billion people, demonstrated a favorable safety profile in all age groups, and helped protect against severe COVID-19 outcomes, including hospitalization and death," the company said.

"Patient safety is our number one priority, which is why we follow diligent safety and monitoring protocols," it added.

See the original post here:

Kansas sues Pfizer over 'misrepresentations' and 'adverse events' of COVID-19 vaccine - Fox Business

I have spent my career studying infectious diseases that fall under the heading of neglected tropical diseases. Now I have a neglected disease long Covid an incurable (for now and for me) disease.

As a medical anthropologist working in global health, I thought I understood the despair of poor health. I didnt. I join 7% of the U.S. adult population or about 18 million Americans who have experienced long Covid. Diagnosis of long Covid remains uncertain and contested, and treatments, ranging from repurposed drugs to hyperbaric oxygen, are even more so.

I was infected with SARS-CoV2 during the Omicron wave of January 2022. It crashed through my kids kindergarten class and swept our household along with it. We had none of the underlying conditions that may indicate increased risks of poor outcomes from Covid (and which have been used throughout the pandemic to allay fears that dangerous outcomes would only happen to others). My acute infection wasnt scary: I had fever, aches, and chills for about four days. My initial Covid aches and pains were nothing in comparison to when I had dengue fever, known as bone break fever, while working in Guatemalas remote mountains.

And then I just never got better. It took a couple of months for me to realize that. I developed crushing chest pain and a heart rate that would rival a hummingbirds. I couldnt walk around my block without stopping to catch my breath. I was often dizzy, and my arms and legs felt like leaden sausages that had grown too big for their casings.

Like many of my global health colleagues, I love a good adventure and dont mind flirting with danger a little. Ill go anywhere and talk to anyone. I once talked a Guatemalan street gang out of harming my small research team as they held a Kalashnikov to our heads during a robbery. It was scary, but I didnt fear for my life. I knew it wasnt the end of my story. But I have thought that long Covid might be: At its worst, I wrote letters to my children in fear that I wouldnt survive the night.

More than two years in, Im among the luckiest of those living with long Covid. My symptoms are managed, though imperfectly. I have the academic background to follow the latest research findings and access to brilliant colleagues doing some of that work. I have the money, insurance, and health care providers that have enabled me to try several treatments.

Heres a bit of what Ive tried so far, all shots in the dark: A beta blocker controls my chest pain and high heart rate. A 3-month course of powerful blood thinners improved numbness and pain in my limbs. Constant use of electrolyte fluids like Gatorade and Pedialyte (ironically what I studied in graduate school) improves my dizziness and is essential for propping myself up to teach a class in a lecture hall or get through a day of Zoom meetings. My iliac vein has completely collapsed in my left leg, and my cardiologist wants me to get a stent.

I wouldnt be able to hold down the jobs in warehouses, factories, and farms that many in my family have had.

Though my world has gotten small, and Im not able to travel for my work as I once did, most days I feel like I just got off a long-haul flight and live in a permanent state of jet lag. I have one of those pill organizers stuffed full of medications and supplements that I hope will help at least a little. (I still struggle to reconcile my self-identity with this new reality.)

I was able to take a 15-day course of the antiviral Paxlovid, and it was the best Ive felt in two years. For many people, the side effects of this medicine are terrible, but I never wanted its hallmark metallic tang to end. About two days after my course of Paxlovid ended, though, my symptoms crept back. Recent findings of viral persistence came as no surprise to me, and new results from a clinical trial investigating a 15-day course of Paxlovid in long Covid patients has shown no benefit.

I am now taking (at great cost) maraviroc, an antiviral used to treat HIV, which helps partially control my symptoms. I recently slid into the whirring tomb of an MRI machine to try to find an explanation for persistent post-Covid migraines in my brain, but that was a dead end. Nothing was found, and I dont know whether to be disappointed or relieved.

I admit I am scared. This is not a funny story I will tell colleagues over drinks later. Theres no gangland drug lord to negotiate with this time. Instead, I spend a lot of my time lying in the dark (Im here now, even as I type this) negotiating with god and science to make me and all of us suffering with long Covid and other post-viral illnesses better. Its surprisingly been the short periods when I have felt better that are the most upsetting, as they highlight how terrible I feel most of the time.

So I fake it. I need the pretense of being my old, fearless self. I need to discuss interesting things with colleagues and teach and run my lab. I need to take the snacks to soccer and help my kids with homework. Thats what makes me who I am, even as I playact a poor facsimile of my healthy self that requires hours (sometimes days) of recovery time afterwards.

I will continue to bargain with the universe to get to live the life I have worked to build for myself. I want that for everyone. My work in global health has shown me both the fragility of life but also the value of fighting for everyones right to a full and healthy life.

I understand that no one cares much about Covid anymore. Its been a long haul for all of us, even those who arent long haulers. I hope everyone who hasnt experienced long Covid never really understand what Im talking about what others with chronic illness and disability have tried to teach us that our abled bodies are only temporary. Long Covid and the SARS-CoV-2 infections that cause it are harsh teachers.

I am inspired by the work of the long Covid Patient-Led Research Collaborative and the research being done to uncover the causes of and cures for long Covid. But its not enough. Given the widespread burden of disease and the losses to the economy and social fabric it is causing in the U.S. and around the globe, the U.S. government must act quickly and decisively to curb long Covid. The Long Covid Moonshot is a collective advocating for $1 billion in annual research funding for long Covid, akin to the Operation Warp Speed that enabled the first generation of Covid-19 vaccines. U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) recently released a Long Covid Moonshot legislative proposal. Bipartisan support for long Covid is essential so that someday no one needs to care about Covid and its lasting effects.

Long Covid feels like living with a gun to my head. Please pull the trigger on the moonshot.

Rachel Hall-Clifford, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of global health, human health, and sociology at Emory University in Atlanta.

More:

Long Covid: Disease expert on living with a disease with no cure - STAT

In a publication in BMJ Public Health on June 3, Saskia Mostert, MD, PhD, and colleagues discuss excess mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic, and this paper has already led to much debate and confusion on both traditional and social media and has been used as fodder for anti-vaccine advocates. The paper's results have been taken to mean that vaccines are dangerous, and this has led to critical commentaries from other researchers as well as some of the authors who felt their work was not cited correctly.

We give a brief summary of some of this criticism, add some additional concerns about the paper, and make the case for retraction of the paper.

Mostert et al discuss estimates of excess mortalitythe increase above an expected pre-pandemic baselineduring the COVID-19 pandemic period of 2020 to 2022 for 47 countries of the Western world. They conclude that the excess mortality was high during these years, despite the implementation of containment measures and COVID-19 vaccines and that this raises serious concern. They write, "Government leaders and policymakers need to thoroughly investigate the underlying causes of persistent excess mortality."

It is not immediately clear from the abstract of the paper what the authors saw in the excess mortality data that concerns them so. However, as major sections in the paper are dedicated to the discussion of perceived problems of serious adverse effects of vaccines and indirect mortality caused by non-pharmaceutical interventions, the public response to the article has been to take the article as evidence for vaccination and mitigation being the main causes of excess mortalityrather than the far more plausible explanation that widespread COVID-19 disease was the main cause of excess mortality.

It is not immediately clear from the abstract of the paper what the authors saw in the excess mortality data that concerns them so.

The work of Mostert and colleagues has been called into question by others, as cataloged on pubpeer and by Retraction Watch. Stuart McDonald, MBE, has a thorough discussion in a blog post detailing many of the concerns with the paper. A commentary co-authored by one of the plagiarized authors, Ariel Karlinsky, is also due to appear shortly. Finally, the research institutions of three of the four authors have distanced themselves from the paper. The cited funding agency has said it has been incorrectly listed as a sponsor of the publication.

Just 3 days after publication, the journal that published the work, BMJ Public Health, issued a statement emphasizing that the news coverage of the publication has misrepresented the contents of the study. The statement, however, does not respond to claims of plagiarism or whether the article is under consideration for retraction. In a June 13 BMJ press release, the journal announced its intentions to publish an expression of concern on the paper and to investigate the quality of the research.

Here are some concerns that such an investigation needs to address.

Mostert et al make a lengthy argument that COVID-19 vaccines are associated with a high risk of severe adverse events. They write, "Numerous studies reported that COVID-19 vaccination may induce myocarditis, pericarditis and autoimmune disease." For this they misquote a review by Dotan et al on the risk of autoimmunity following SARS-CoV-2 infection. Dotan et al had in fact concluded vaccination can overcome this problem.

They quote one study (Fraiman et al) that calculated as many as 1 to 2 severe adverse event per 1,000 vaccines, something that is in stark contrast to the conclusions of no evidence of severe adverse events in the original Pfizer and Moderna clinical trial publications. More helpful would have been to cite real-world evidence from a cohort study of 23 million Nordic residentswhat actually happened when millions of people used COVID-19 vaccines. This study found far lower levels of myocarditis and pericarditis associated with vaccination among young adults and no deaths. Therefore, these rare events in young adults that were not deadly could never explain the excess mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic which was largely in the elderly.

Mostert et al do not dwell on the fact that COVID-19 vaccines have been shown repeatedly to be highly effective: Both clinical trials and observational studies have found that they prevented about 9 out of 10 (~90%) of severe COVID-19 outcomes (severe disease and death). A new WHO study estimates that COVID-19 vaccine saved 1.4 million lives in Europeand more than halved the number of COVID-19 death toll that could have happened.The vaccinations attenuated the mortality potential, and the remaining excess mortality of 2.5 million is what could not be prevented, either before the vaccines were available by mid-2021, or because of low vaccination coverage in some settings, especially in Eastern Europe. Knowing this and writing about this is, of course, important if one wishes to seriously evaluate the observed excess mortality during COVID-19.

Mostert et al also have a lengthy section that suggests the pandemic wasn't very severe. They write that the infection-fatality rate (IFR) of COVID-19 before vaccines was 0.23% globally, and as low as 0.03% in adults under 60 years of age. This can erroneously be interpreted to mean that mortality caused by COVID-19 in Western countries was negligible.

The authors did not cite the relevant studies of IFR as it has played out in aging Western populations. A November 2020 Nature paper by O'Driscoll et al computes an IFR of ~0.8% in Western countries. And this may in fact be a low estimate, as this analysis was published before the emergence of the deadlier Alpha and Delta variants in 2021 (Davies et al [Nature March 2021] and Twohig et al [Lancet Inf Dis August 2021]). When Mostert et al ignore the higher IFRs for Western populations, they mislead the reader to think that the COVID-19 pandemic was not serious. This is simply untrue, COVID-19 had a great severe disease and mortality potential especially in aging western populations and was a real 100-year event and a serious societal threat that required a forceful response.

The authors did not cite the relevant studies of IFR as it has played out in aging Western populations

The disaster in the Lombardy region of northern Italy early in the pandemic (caught unaware, and before vaccines) clearly demonstrates what could have happened (Modi et al [Nature May 2021]).

But Mostert et al state, "Although COVID-19 containment measures and COVID-19 vaccines were thus implemented to protect citizens from suffering morbidity and mortality by the COVID-19 virus, they may have detrimental effects that cause inferior outcomes as well," and this can be erroneously taken to mean that the cure was worse than the disease.

On top of all of this, serious concerns about plagiarism have also been raised, as the excess mortality data presented are taken from previously published work by Karlinsky and Kobak (2021) and their World Mortality website, where the two scientists continuously provided excess mortality data throughout the pandemic.

Why Mostert et al copy Karlinsky and Kobak's prose and equations from their June 2021 eLIFE paper verbatim is unclear, but it is certainly not following good practices for citations. As Mostert et al did not further analyze these excess mortality estimates, the BMJ Public Health paper is not truly an original research contribution.

Mostert et al should not disregard the most likely explanation for excess mortality: namely that the emerging COVID-19 virus explains most excess deaths during the pandemic. Lee et al in February 2023 computed that 85% of excess deaths in the United States were explained directly by the COVID-19 virus. Thus, there is no need to invoke other and unlikely explanationssuch as vaccine adverse eventsto explain excess mortality in Western countries.

A retraction is appropriate for this misleading paper that is not an original contribution.

In our opinion, a retraction is appropriate for this misleading paper that is not an original contribution. The publication of such work in a journal like BMJ Public Health can, to use the words of one commenter, be used as a figurative Trojan horse, seemingly giving unwarranted credibility to vaccine misinformation under the guise of statistical estimates of excess mortality. It is so important that scientific journals like BMJ take action and responsibility in an unfortunate situation like this where vaccine and pandemic misinformation appears credible by appearing in a top line peer reviewed medical journal.

_________________________

Dr Simonsen, a professor of epidemiology, is director of PandemiX,aCenter of Excellence at Roskilde University in Denmark. Dr. Pedersen is a mathematical modeler and postdoc at PandemiX.

Read more:

COMMENTARY: Misleading BMJ Public Health paper on COVID-19 excess mortality needs to be retracted - University of Minnesota Twin Cities

A summer COVID-19 surge is on its way through Seattle and the region.

Infection rates and emergency department visits in King County have been rising since the end of April, causing some concern among doctors and public health officials as travel season picks up and people begin gathering more frequently.

This is the time when people should start taking precautions, said Dr. Eric Chow, King Countys chief of communicable diseases. I dont know how high this [peak] is going to be, when its going to peak, but taking precautions now is the best way for people to be able to mitigate the complications related to COVID.

King Countys virus-related emergency department visits hit a new low the week ending April 27, when only about 0.5% of visits involved a COVID diagnosis. As of last week, COVID patients made up about 1.5% of hospital emergency visits.

Levels are still below the countys transmission alert threshold, which is when COVID patients reflect at least 3% of emergency department visits. When the county hits that threshold, its a signal that community transmission is more substantial and poses a greater risk of causing severe infection or death.

But because fewer people are testing themselves for COVID and emergency department data generally lags behind waves of infection, Chow noted theres probably a lot more community transmission thats happening thats not fully captured in the data here.

State COVID emergency department visits have also gradually increased since the end of April, though at a slightly slower rate jumping from about 0.5% to 1% of total emergency department visits. Statewide death rates have remained low for months, though more than 400 people in Washington have died from the virus since January.

Infectious-disease experts in Seattle and other parts of the country are also keeping an eye on the ever-growing list of variants that continue to battle for dominance and drive bumps in cases and hospitalizations.

In Washington, omicron subvariant JN.1, the winters dominant strain, is still the most common, responsible for about 40% of cases. Other omicron subvariants, including JN.1.11.1, JN.1.7 and KP.1.1, each make up about 20% of cases here, according to the state Department of Healths respiratory disease dashboard.

Nationally, KP.2 and KP.3 have also begun to make up a greater proportion of infections, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The viruss ability to mutate and evolve remains strong, which is why public health officials are again urging people to stay up to date with COVID vaccinations.

COVID is behaving just as it has throughout the pandemic, Chow said. That means, he said, more variants [are] trying to evolve and find ways to evade our existing immunity.

In King County, vaccination rates have fallen since last October, after the most recently updated shot became available. Statewide, just 19% of Washingtonians are up to date with their COVID vaccinations, although nearly 70% have been vaccinated with their full primary series.

Chow expressed disappointment in decreases in federal funding since the height of the pandemic and acknowledged his department doesnt have the same capacity it once did to ensure comprehensive access to vaccines and testing. Public Health Seattle & King Countys longtime mass COVID vaccination clinic in Kent and drive-thru site at Snoqualmie Valley Hospital, for example, both closed at the end of March.

With the available resources we have, including some limited vaccine clinics, weve tried to focus on communities who have the least amount of access, trying to bridge that gap, Chow said. But it is a huge concern of mine.

The health department noted many community health centers, most pharmacies and other health care providers can still offer COVID vaccinations. More information about where to find a site is available at vaccines.gov.

The CDC recommends an updated vaccine shot for everyone 6 months and older. Those 65 and older should get two shots, as long as four months have passed since their first, according to the CDC.

Another update on COVID vaccines will likely come later this year, as scientists tackle ways to keep Americans safe during the upcoming season. The newest shot, recommended by the FDA last week, will target a variant of JN.1.

But before those shots become available, public health officials are pushing people to get the most updated immunizations already on the market. Take those precautions before heading off on vacation, and consider wearing a mask while in airports or on planes, Chow said.

For those at high risk of severe infection, he also recommended checking in with a health care provider about ways to stay safe while traveling. He urged COVID patients eligible for an antiviral treatment to seek that option early in their diagnosis to help protect them from hospitalization or death.

Were excited that people now have the ability to travel, he said. But this poses a new risk that we didnt see at the same degree during the height of the pandemic.

Read the rest here:

Summer COVID surge approaches in Seattle area as travel season begins - The Seattle Times

In 2020, two major protest movements defined our political landscape: the racial-justice protests after the murder of George Floyd and the anti-lockdown protests pushing against COVID-19 restrictions.

At the time, these movements were seen by many as near-polar opposites and were often defined by their extremes. For the police-brutality protests, images of Minneapolis on fire and demands for total police abolition seemed to define the movement. For the anti-lockdown protests, militiamen with firearms in and around state capitols were among the most striking visuals. And an association with fringe right-wing groups marred the public-health protests with a sense of extremism.

But research from economist Nick Papageorge complicates these findings. Along with his co-authors, Papageorge ran surveys in the summer of 2020 that captured demographic and ideological information about the people who participated in these movements. Much to Papageorges surprise, his findings revealed significant overlap between the BLM and anti-lockdown protest movements. Andon some metricsthe paper reveals that the protesters were not out of touch with the majority of Americans. Rather, they were more representative of the country than even the 2020 electorate.

In this episode of Good on Paper, I speak with Papageorge, a professor at Johns Hopkins University who largely works at the intersection of public health and economics.

There has been this notion of, Maybe its just fun. Protesting is the new brunch was one of the things that came out, Papageorge said. And I think that was one part of the caricaturization, right? That there are these gun-toting vigilantes protesting. And then there were these privileged leftist extremists going to these BLM protests. And that just wasnt in line with what we were finding. The median protester was not an extremist.

Listen to the conversation here:

The following is a transcript of the episode:

[Music]

Jerusalem Demsas: This is Good on Paper, a policy show that questions what we really know about popular narratives.

Im your host, Jerusalem Demsas. Im a staff writer here at The Atlantic, where much of my written work begins with seeing a new working paper come out and following it down a research rabbit hole.

An exciting, new finding is always great, but the most important work is figuring out how it sits in the context of the rest of our knowledge base. What is it adding? Where does it depart from consensus?

And particularly when were talking about new findings in economicsthose often come from early versions of papers, before all the levels of review have been completed, so theres an extra, added level of scrutiny you have to have.

Theres one such paper thats been stuck in my brain since I first saw it come into my inbox more than two years agoone that upended much of my thinking around the protests in 2020.

The paper is called, Who Protests, What Do They Protest, and Why? and it focuses on the demographic and ideological characteristics of protesters in two major social movements: The BLM protests following the murder of George Floyd and the anti-lockdown protests that came in response to restrictive COVID-19 rules.

The paper finds that nearly 30 percent of protesters attended both a BLM and a lockdown protest, indicating significant overlap in the types of people attracted to both movementsand the research shows that these people are protestors, not counterprotesters. This finding really surprised me and made me question my priors about what kinds of people were attracted to these movements.

Now, its not possible to talk about protests without thinking about those that rocked college campuses this year. While this conversation doesnt touch on those protests, because we taped it in the spring, the research still has some lessons in it for those drawing large conclusions about whos protesting and why, and whether contemporaneous media reports can give us an accurate picture of chaotic events.

The stakes of misunderstanding the composition of protesters are high: Who we think is protesting drives how we respond to them. Who we think make up social movements affects whether our leaders react to them, and how. And, most importantly, for me, as a journalist, my own misunderstandings of what the 2020 protests were shaped my thinking about public-health restrictions and whether they had gone too far.

[Music]

I asked the lead author of that paper to come help me think through all of this. Nick Papageorge is an economist at Johns Hopkins University, where he mostly focuses on the intersection of public health and economics.

Lets dive in.

Demsas: All right. Nick, welcome to the show.

Nick Papageorge: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Demsas: So I want to take us back to spring of 2020. It was a really scary time. COVID-19 was in full swing. We were seeing caseloads rising. I remember just being terrified. I didnt really know what was the way to keep yourself or the people you cared about safe.

I was lucky that I got to work from home the entire time. But at the same time, it was just like there was such different, changing informational environments. It just felt very chaotic. And the advice we were all getting was just stay away from other people, stay masked, and just limit contact as much as possible.

And spring of 2020 is also when George Floyd is murdered. And in response, a nationwide movement erupted. Protests were happening in most American cities and even around the world. And all of a sudden, I have a vivid memory of seeing this open letter thats signed by over 1,200 peoplepublic-health professionals, infectious-disease professionalsand its a weird document from the time because you have them criticizing the heavily armed and predominantly white protesters for protesting stay-at-home orders, but then they say that, actually, the anti-racism protests were completely justifiable under public-health grounds.

Readingquoting directly from it nowthey say, Do not disband protests under the guise of maintaining public health for COVID-19 restrictions. And it just felt very weird to me. It felt very weird that you had public-health professionals who, ostensibly, were giving us advice about how to stay healthy now telling us that, Well, for certain things it was okay to break some of these guidelines. So what was your reaction to that letter?

Papageorge: I think if I could start at a high level, one of the critiques coming from economistsand people have an idea of what economists do, and it has to do with banks and finance and interest rates. And it turns out that what we do is a lot closer to what maybe comes into your mind when youre thinking about what a sociologist does: We study people and behavior and factors that affect behavior, sources of inequality, and so on.

And so one of the things that really frustrated economists was there seemed to be this implied hierarchy about what was important in these public-health debates. And, of course, we dont want people to die from a disease. At the same time, kids not going to school is really, really harmful. And I dont know where different people are going to land in that debate, because I could certainly see somebody saying, Look, preventing any death is just the most paramount thing. I could also hear somebody saying, We need kids to go to school. Thats just the most important thing.

I cant tell you which one of those two is the right one. What I dont think we did was recognize this really nasty trade-offthis really brutal trade-offand have that conversation. And then there was this implied view about whats a worthy thing to do, and I guess it wasnt opening schools.

Demsas: Like, whats worth risking COVID-19?

Papageorge: Right, exactly. Whats worth risking COVID-19? And we decidedor it was decidedthat, Well, okay, but going to a BLM protest is okay. And I think that undermined some credibility of some of these decisions that were made on our behalf. And I think that maybe I agreed, in a way, with that trade-off. I decided to leave the house and join a big group to go to a BLM protest. But I could see why people might have thought, Hey, wait. Youre telling me I cant take my kid to school but that Im allowed to go to this protest? That doesnt seem right. Who decided that?

Demsas: I was rocked back to this. I remember vividly a couple years ago whenand Im going to out myself as a weirdo for this, butthe National Bureau of Economic Research puts out this weekly rundown of studies, and Ill click through them. And I remember seeing your study in 2022, when it first came out, and seeing the findings that people who attended anti-public-health protests and people who attended BLM protests, that there was a lot of overlap over those people. Can you tell us about that? How did you find that? Like, what was the process of even doing that survey?

Papageorge: It was a strange study for me. We were playing with data, and we found a pattern that didnt make sense. And so we had to come back and figure out: Whats the question this is answering?

Demsas: Yeah. Why were you doing the survey in the first place?

Papageorge: The survey started pretty soon after the emergence of COVID-19. And Washington University got some outside funding to run a high-quality survey. I was asked to contribute some thoughts on what we might want to look at. That is because Ive looked at infectious disease before in the economic context, in particular HIV, risky behavior, how it interacts with medication usage, and employment, and these kinds of thingsthese health-economic interactions.

So we started asking questions, and then the data setwe were going to go back for several rounds. And so by the time of the second round of questions, when they were asking whether we wanted to add more questions, the BLM protests had started. And so we thought, Well, we should probably collect data on whether or not people are attending them. And thenI dont know who in the group (it might have been me; I dont think it was)somebody said, Well, there are these other protests going on for reopening. I dont want to quite call them anti-public health. I think that they were maybe pro-reopening. And so

Demsas: No, fair. Thats probably a biased way of me talking about it.

Papageorge: So there were these protests and, in my mind, there was still this caricature that these were, like, gun-toting vigilantes, and that we, Okay, sure, we should probably collect that data as well, because were trying to be scientists here. And I thought, Why dont we see whats predicting protest attendance? Obviously, you know, going to a BLM protest probably predicts not going to a reopening protest, just because that would make sense according to my bias, my priors.

And we found the opposite. And then we checked it again, and we found the opposite again, and then we really started to kick the tires. But the result didnt go away, and so then we entered this period of thinking, Okay, maybe this is novel, and maybe we need to start to figure out why this might make sense. Economics, as a field, tries to be a little bit apolitical. I would say that one out of every five of my findings, Im like, Oh man.

Demsas: (Laughs.) Didnt want to find that out.

Papageorge: Didnt want to find that. But you shouldnt be able to tell my politics by reading my papers. But one thing I did think to myself was, I am getting frustrated by some of the public-health mandates that seem to me to be a little bit excessive.

Demsas: More than just the closing schools or other stuff?

Papageorge: Just the decisions that didnt make, to me, a whole lot of sense, like, Okay, were gonna let some bars open, but were gonna keep the schools closed.

Demsas: Yeah, yeah.

Papageorge: And I just was like, Okay, well, what are we waiting for here? Whats the evidence, and wheres the cost-benefit analysis here?

Demsas: Yeah.

Papageorge: Like, at what point

Demsas: And whose values are being followed?

Papageorge: Whose values are being used in that cost-benefit [analysis], right?

And so I was getting more and more concerned that, throughout this entire period, you could still get stuff off of Amazon. Theres all these people that had to still work. And they dont have the kind of job that I have, where I can telework. And I started thinking about just the mental-health burden. I started thinking about my own kid, who, you knowhe has two parents who still have jobs, but I know that hes missing out on socialization at this critical period. These costs are starting to build up. And so I was getting frustrated, and I remember my husband saying to me, If its shut down again in Baltimore city, Im going to go to join a reopening protest.

Demsas: Wow.

Papageorge: And it was kind of joking, I think, or maybe he wasnt. I think he was serious. And wed gone to BLM protests, and I thought that we were just really isolated in having that mixture of views. And so when I looked at the data, I thought, Oh, maybe we werent.

Demsas: But its really interesting to me that you were surprised by these findings, even though they represented your own views.

Papageorge: Thats totally true. But thats one of the things also, I thinkand maybe Im just conditioned to be like this with science, to really remove myself from my science. And so I dont necessarily assume that folksI think thats one of the biggest dangers in sciences, especially in the social sciences, is thinking that your views are representative, that your opinions are shared by others. I think a lot of good social science comes when you step back and listen to other people and make sure youre not speaking for them, but maybe elevating their voices.

Demsas: Well, lets dig in a little bit into some of the findings here on the numbers. So, 33 percent of BLM protesters identified as Republicans, and 36 percent of reopening protesters as Democrats. I mean, just generally stepping back, if I think about how these were characterized, we think about BLM protests as a left-wing movement and the reopening protest as a right-wing movement. So when you actually look at who is involved in these protests, what are you actually seeing? Who are these people? And where is the overlap?

Papageorge: Right. So, if you go to a BLM protest, or if you report having gone to a BLM protest, they tended to be a little more Democratic. And then the reopening protests tended to be a little bit more Republican. But then there was this mixture, right? There were plenty of Republicans at BLM protests, and there were plenty of Democrats at these reopening protests, which again, I thought was a little bit strange.

But I do remember in the early days of the BLM protests, it wasnt the same movement that it is today, which I think its become much more politicized. You know, you remember Mitt Romney was joining in these protests. There was this outrage from a lot of different places that was collective. The other thing that we found interesting is that people who protested tended to be working in person and have children, which you would think, These are things that are going to make me not want to protest. We also found that people and different measures of well-being were higher.

Demsas: Like higher well-being meant you were more likely to go to a protest?

Papageorge: Yes.

Demsas: Yeah, okay.

Papageorge: Which again, you wonder, Isnt it frustration and anger that drives you to protest? But then there is precedent in earlier research saying that people might go to protests and then feel good. Maybe they feel like they have some say, they have some agency here. Maybe it was cathartic to go to the protest. Or we could just be thinking that people who are energetic and feeling good about themselves are the kinds of people who will go to a protest, as well.

Demsas: Yeah.

Papageorge: I think that if one reflects a little bit on it, it makes sense that folks who mightve been really frustrated with the state of things were folks who were working and who were worried about losing their job. These are also parents who have lost their childcare arrangements, which was incredibly frustrating. But I can also imagine those same parents saying, I dont want my kid to grow up in a world where this kind of violence happens. And so that was another set of findings.

One thing that we found strange was that people who saw themselves at greater risk of COVID-19 were more likely to go to protests.

Demsas: I found this super interesting. So first of all, youre just asking the question: How scared are you of dying, of getting sick? Or how are you determining that?

Papageorge: So you can do different things. One is kind of more objective, where you can just look at the county caseloads or county reports. And, if I remember correctly, we have a positive correlation with it, but a lot of that can just be, Hey, there were more protests available in places where there were higher rates, right? Maybe bigger cities or whatever.

You can also ask people about their beliefs. Now, doing that is always wacky, so we got sort of wacky answers there.

Demsas: You got high numbers, right? Like, 30 percent chance of death?

Papageorge: Exactly. But in our defense, anybody who looks to get beliefs data, its really tricky to do that. And people answer in a very wacky way.

Demsas: But also if you asked me in June 2020, what I thought the risk of death from COVID wasI remember my dad, who always, every year around June gets really bad allergies. My dad has really bad ones. I remember him calling me like, Hey, I feel kind of sick. And I just freaked out. I went to his apartment, and I just dropped offId just been on Twitter, looking up random virologists and being like, Are they using Motrin? Are they using Tylenol? Are they usingyou know what I mean? So theres a level where I think I would have said, Oh my gosh, Im acting like I think my fathers going to die, you know? And so I dont know how I would have evaluated that.

Papageorge: Yeah, I think thats right. There is a whole lot of research on how to collect these kinds of data. And if you want to do it well, you have to do it really carefully, kind of anchoring people. For example, people are really bad at small probabilities. So maybe something thats, like, 0.1-percent chance, theyll think its 10. And to them, its the same number.

Demsas: It just means small. Yeah.

Papageorge: But I mean, these are massively different numbers. I think if I remember, on average, people thought there was a 30-percent chance that they would get COVID-19, which maybe thats not so bad. But then they think if you get COVID-19, theres a 30 percent chance of dying. And youre thinking, Okay.

Demsas: And thats if they go to the protest?

Papageorge: No, no. This is just in general. So youre thinking, Okay, this is really high. But we did find that people who saw themselves at greater risk of COVID-19 were more likely to go to the protests, which that in itself doesnt surprise me, because that could just be a recognition that, you know, I do risky things. And so, that actually checks out.

Demsas: So, you find that 28 percent of protesters attended both a reopening protest and a BLM protest. One hypothesis raised when I first read this paper was: Maybe there are just certain kinds of people who like to protest, or not like it as an activity but have a high propensity to just protest if its something thats available in their area.

And I was looking into the literature on this, and theres a study by a sociologist at the University of South Carolina at Aiken. Her name is Michelle Petrie, and she looks at the determinants of protest participation. And one thing she brings up is this concept called biographical availability, which is basically whether someone has the time, particularly unstructured time, where they feel like theyre less at risk of being surveilled or facing consequences for engaging in protest.

And she cites Doug McAdam, who has this paper about the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer Project, and he finds that then the people who participated largely came from affluent families, where they were in their early 20s. Its summer, so they didnt have jobs. They were unemployed, unlikely to be married.

I mean, in your sense, is it whats going on here? It feels like theres two potential hypothesesand maybe theyre both true. One is that theres a large overlap on these ideologies between people who were concerned about anti-police brutality and people who were worried about reopening and public-health restrictions. But its also possible that a lot of people are just like, Maybe Ill just protest. You know what I mean? And so how do you tease that out?

Papageorge: I think its hard to tease out, is the first thing. And I think that there is this notion of biographical availability. Certain people are just going to be more likely to protest. And thats something that we spend a lot of time doing. Thats why we look at these predictors. What are the factors that seem to predict protest attendance?

And I think the storys a bit nuanced because, Okay, sure. Younger? That makes sense. That checks out. But having kids and also working in person? That does not. And then there was also and has been this notion of, you know, Maybe its just fun. Protesting is the new brunch was one of the things that came out.

And I think that was one part of the caricaturization, right? That there are these gun-toting vigilantes protesting. And then there were these privileged, leftist extremists going to these BLM protests. And that just wasnt in line with what we were finding. The median protester was not an extremist. The median protester was not somebody who had plenty of time on their hands or plenty of affluence, and so they dont even need to worry about working. People seem to be overcoming obstacles to get there. And so thats got to be at least part of the story.

We also were able to look at police shootings in the area where these folks were, and that seemed to be also predictive.

Demsas: So if there were more police shootings, theyre more likely

Papageorge: If there were more police shootings, you were more likely to go to BLM, exactly. And so that seems to suggest that this isnt just a leisure activity, but something that people are taking seriously.

[Music]

Demsas: Okay, were going to take a quick break, but more with Nick when we get back.

[Break]

Demsas: This is something I find with economists a lot when Im talking to them, that theres a lot of frustration that, in many ways, our official apparatuses dont take into account costs like fun

Papageorge: (Laughs.)

Demsas: Things that you like to do that make your life happy. The trade-off, of course: We wanted people to stop dying and, especially at the very beginning, when we had no information, it makes a lot of sense to shut down a lot of things.

But its interesting to think back again to that letter we talked about at the beginning because, in many ways, that letter was actually the way you would want public-health officials to engage with trade-offs. Because they go into it, and they say, Yes, of course, there are concerns with catching COVID-19 in public spaces. But also, people have a legitimate concern about protesting and about anti-racism. Our goal, as public-health professionals, is to provide them the tools to do mitigation of that kind of damage. And it was like, Where is that trade-off thinking in any other space?

Papageorge: Right. No, thats what I think was soand to be fair to people in public health, and I work now with some epidemiologists, there is now this call, in general for, Okay, we need to figure out a way to think about these trade-offs more carefully.

Obviously, there are some folks who still think any one death is worth just infinity and therefore anything else is just secondary. Fine. Thats what they think. I just dont. One reason: We know poverty is deadly, so youre not comparing apples to oranges.

And so what it really comes down to is its kind of, Whose life matters more? And I think thats really hard when youre comparing, say, my somewhere-in-her-70s mom and a low-income kid in the city. And, you know, whose life matters? Well, both. But youre going to put a policy together thats going to probably harm one person less than the other. And I think its really hard to think about that.

Demsas: Yeah. And, to me, there were so many times during the pandemic where I felt the way that public-health professionalsthe value system in placewas sort of what I later learned is called the precautionary principle. It is this ideado no harm is the very simple way of doing it, of just saying, Okay, whatever you actually are going to do, make sure99.999 percent sure, even 100 percent surethat anything you do is not going to cause harm. And that means lets not approve tests if were not 100 percent sure that theyre going to be perfectly accurate or at a really high level of accuracy, even though the status quo is that we have no tests. People have no way of figuring out whether or not they might be infected.

And I wonder, do you think that the finding that youre having in this paper, and also the research youve done in other spaces, is that pushing the public-health field to think differently? Or are you seeing any kind of changes at all in the public-health field in response to how many people felt that trade-offs werent really adequately considered during 2020?

Papageorge: So I absolutely think that this paper and other work Ive done pushes against this idea that, in public-health contexts, health is the only thing to think about. Ive made a whole career off of thinking about the way that health interacts with other factors that are important to us. Were not health maximizers. We might have been. I mean, you can imagine some creatures living in some other planet that the only thing they care about is their health.

Demsas: Theyre living on Soylent.

Papageorge: Longevity is the only thing you care about. I mean, just any decision we make on any given day shows that thats not true. We leave our house. We eat fried foods. We drink. We get into cars. We get on planes. We do all sorts of things that show that we are not health maximizers. Were lots-of-things maximizers. Health is one of them. We would rather be healthy than not healthy if it were for free. The thing is, its not for free.

Link:

The Overlap Between BLM and Anti-lockdown Protesters - The Atlantic

A new poll from researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the de Beaumont Foundation shows that, despite news coverage that painted Americans as deeply divided on COVID-19 mitigation strategies, including mask wearing, there was significant common ground on these strategies in hindsight.

During the pandemic, "The media made it seem there were huge swaths of population that were unreachable, said Gillian SteelFisher, PhD, an author of the report and director of global polling in the Harvard Opinion Research Program and principal research scientist at Harvard Chan School in an interview.

SteelFisher said the polling results actually show a much more nuanced and cohesive understanding of public health efforts. Of note, most Americans said four main pandemic strategies were "generally a good idea," including mask requirements in stores and businesses (70%), healthcare worker vaccination requirements (65%), indoor dining closures (63%), and K-12 public school closures (56%).

Only 20% of those polled said all four main strategies were "generally a bad idea," while 42% said all four were a good idea and 37% said only some were a good idea.

"Overall, a majority of people thought each of the policies were a good idea, that there's merit here," said SteelFisher.

"Overall, a majority of people thought each of the policies were a good idea, that there's merit here.

The poll was conducted from March 21 to April 2, 2024, and included 1,017 adults.

Black (62%) and Hispanic/Latino (55%) adults were more likely than white adults (32%) to say that all of the four main pandemic policies were a good idea, as were people living in urban areas (55%) compared with those living in suburban (39%) and rural (29%) areas, the poll showed.

There were clear political divides as well: 71% of Democrats and those who lean Democrat say all four policies were a good idea, compared with 44% of Independents and 18% of Republicans and those who lean Republican.

For people who said they thought masks were a bad idea, 87% believed the policy was flawed because it went on too long, and 85% said it was an issue of individual rights.

Among the 413 poll respondents who thought school closures were a generally bad idea, 97% said closures interfered with learning and 91% said they impaired students' mental health.

SteelFisher said one of the more surprising findings from the poll was that only 3% of people said COVID-19 was not a health threat to anyone early in the pandemic.

"There were so many media stories about COVID deniers," said SteelFisher. "But there were actually very few." Instead, 14% of those polled said COVID was a serious health threat only to people who are very old or frail, 45% said COVID-19 was a serious health threat to more people, including people who are very old or frail as well as those with underlying medical conditions, and 37% said it was a serious health threat to everyone early on.

People have really reasonable thoughts on what works and what didn't.

SteelFisher said the poll results suggest public health officials need to focus on communicating the time frame of proposed policies in future pandemics, and focus on connecting with the population.

"There are more divisions created than are real," said SteelFisher. "These are hard lessons for public health: People have really reasonable thoughts on what works and what didn't."

See the original post:

US poll shows fair amount of common ground on preventive COVID-19 steps - University of Minnesota Twin Cities

There have been a lot of changes with COVID-19 over the last few months, but a new variant is poised to be the dominant strain of the summer: KP.3.

KP.3 is part of a trio known as the FLiRT variants and just surpassed fellow FLiRT variant KP.2 as the most common COVID-19 strain in America, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). As of now, KP.3 is responsible for 25% of COVID-19 cases in the country.

Meet the experts: William Schaffner, M.D., an infectious disease specialist and professor at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Roy Giulick, M.D., chief of infectious diseases at Weill-Cornell Medicine, Amesh A. Adalja, M.D., senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, Hana El Sahly, M.D., professor of Molecular Virology and Microbiology at the Baylor College of Medicine

Unfortunately, COVID-19 cases seem to be on the riseand emergency room visits linked to the virus have also jumped. But what is KP.3 and how concerned should you be this summer and beyond? Infectious disease doctors break it down.

KP.3 is a member of a group of COVID-19 variants known as the FLiRT variants. (Fellow FLiRT variants include KP.2, which was the previous dominant strain in the U.S. and KP.1.1.)

Its the successor to KP.2, says William Schaffner, M.D., an infectious disease specialist and professor at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. KP.3 is in the Omicron family, and evolved from JN.1, which was the dominant strain of COVID-19 this winter, Dr. Schaffner points out. This is kind of a grandchild of Omicron, Dr. Schaffner says.

Its not shocking that there is a new dominant COVID-19 variant, though, says Roy Giulick, M.D., chief of infectious diseases at Weill-Cornell Medicine. As the COVID-19 virus continues to evolve, it continues to make changes that lead to other variants, he says.

Dr. Schaffner also notes that KP.3 is very contagious and spreading now. KP.3 and JN.1 are very similar, he saysthere are only a few changes to the spike protein between them, which is what SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 uses to latch onto your cells and infect you.

The symptoms of KP.3 are similar to what theyve been for COVID-19 for years. The symptoms remain those of an upper respiratory infection, Dr. Giulick says. According to the CDC, that may include:

Existing antiviral medications should work against KP.3, Dr. Schaffner says. That means you can treat symptoms of a mild infection with over-the-counter medications like acetaminophen or ibuprofen, per the CDC.

If youre at high risk of developing a more severe illness, prescription medications like Paxlovid, Veklury, and Lagevrio may help, as long as you start them within five to seven days after symptoms start.

To lower your risk of getting a KP.3 infection, Dr. Schaffner recommends being up to date with your COVID-19 vaccines. (While being vaccinated wont necessarily keep you from getting infected, it can lower the risk youll develop severe illness if you happen to get sick, he says.)

If youre in whats considered an incredibly high-risk group, you may want to talk to your doctor about taking the new pre-exposure antibody Pemgarda, says Amesh A. Adalja, M.D., senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. This is an investigational drug that is designed for people who have moderate-to-severe immune compromise because of a medical condition or because they receive medicines or treatments that suppress the immune system and are unlikely to have a good response to the COVID-19 vaccine, per the FDA.

Beyond that, Dr. Schaffner recommends doing your best to avoid crowded indoor activities, especially if youre considered high risk for serious infectionmeaning, youre an older adult, youre immunocompromised, or youre pregnant. If you are going indoors, bring your mask along, he says. Look for a well-fitting KN95 or N95 face mask. Washing your hands regularly can also help, Dr. Giulick says.

When youre outside, Dr. Schaffner says youre fine to go without a mask, whether youre considered high-risk or not. I am very cautious and I dont put on a mask when Im outdoors, he says.

Still, it can be tough to entirely wipe out the risk of getting COVID-19. This is an endemic virus, and you cannot completely limit your risk for infection, just like with any other respiratory virus, if you socially interact with individuals, Dr. Adalja says.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administrations Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee panel recently met to determine updates to the COVID-19 vaccine for fall. That advisory group voted to recommend that the FDA ask vaccine makers to update their current COVID-19 vaccines to be more effective against the JN.1 lineage.

The fall vaccine should protect against KP.3, says Hana El Sahly, M.D., professor of Molecular Virology and Microbiology at the Baylor College of Medicine. The vaccine's composition targets the JN.1 variant, from which KP.3 evolved and with which it is closely related.

Korin Miller is a freelance writer specializing in general wellness, sexual health and relationships, and lifestyle trends, with work appearing in Mens Health, Womens Health, Self, Glamour, and more. She has a masters degree from American University, lives by the beach, and hopes to own a teacup pig and taco truck one day.

Read the rest here:

COVID-19 Variant KP.3: Symptoms and Treatment of Latest Strain - Prevention Magazine