Category: Covid-19

INDIANA (WFFT) - Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita released the results of a report that he says shows Indiana reported "vastly inflated death counts" from COVID-19.

"The truth is our government produced and relied on severely flawed data, including inflated death counts and unsound positivity rates, to shape the state's failed response to the COVID-19 pandemic," Rokita said, "This faulty data led to months of lockdowns, mask mandates and devastated our economy. Hoosiers shouldn't have to choose between their lives and their livelihoods."

The Office of the Attorney General's (OAG) analysis focused on two statistics, according to Rokita, the number of deaths attributed to COVID-19 and the positivity rate (the total number of positive COVID-19 tests divided by the total number of COVID-19 tests administered).

Rokita said inflated death counts and unsound positivity rates informed public policy decisions like detrimental lockdowns, which harmed Hoosiers' mental and physical well-being and children's education.

"Our report doesn't just point out the flaws," Rokita said, "It also makes recommendations to address these issues in the future. To ensure Hoosiers' liberties are protected, Indiana must review the state's framework for addressing any future emergency and adopt professionally-accepted criteria for its reported data."

Rokita's full report can be read here.

Go here to see the original:

Attorney General Rokita releases results of report connected to COVID-19 data - WFFT FOX 55 Fort Wayne | Indiana News & Weather

With the arrival of spring, the United States is easing out of respiratory virus season, a familiar pattern that has been challenged by COVID-19 for the past four years.Related video above: CDC announces change to COVID-19 guidelinesThe addition of a novel germ has complicated and expanded respiratory virus season, which was already notoriously difficult to predict. This season had its own unique set of circumstances as public health balanced a significant transition out of the public health emergency with efforts to find a sustainable way forward.Experts say that focused planning and forecasting efforts helped avoid some of the worst-case scenarios. But there was still a significant number of severe outcomes, and there are still key areas of improvement especially around vaccination.I am grateful that were not still in the height of the pandemic, but we saw some really strong, severe respiratory disease season increases, and some groups were incredibly impacted by it, said Janet Hamilton, executive director of the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists.Significant burden persistsThere have been at least 29 million illnesses, 320,000 hospitalizations and 20,000 deaths from flu this season, according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates. And the burden from COVID-19 has been about twice as large.At least 42,000 people have died from COVID-19 since the beginning of September, according to provisional data from the CDC, reaching a peak of more than 2,500 deaths during the week ending Jan. 13. COVID-19 hospitalizations also peaked in early January, with more than 35,000 new admissions during the week ending Jan. 6 and more than 570,000 total hospitalizations since September.With flu, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and with the addition of a third virus (COVID-19) that can cause severe disease, even an average respiratory season can place significant strain on our healthcare system, the CDCs Center for Forecasting Analytics wrote when it released its first outlook for the season in September. It predicted that this respiratory disease season would be similar to the year before which saw hospitals more full than at any other point in the pandemic and worse than pre-pandemic years once again.In developing the seasonal outlook, the Center for Forecasting Analytics identified a number of key variables that could have shifted the seasons outlook for the worse, including a new coronavirus variant, a more severe flu season or overlapping peaks for multiple viruses.The forecasts have held relatively steady throughout the season, in large part because the viruses spared us from these more severe scenarios. But the U.S. still lagged on one key factor that was fully within human control: vaccination rates.A variable within our controlOnly about 23% of U.S. adults and 14% of children have gotten the latest COVID-19 vaccine, according to data from the CDC. And just about half of the population got their flu shot this year, a tick down from recent years.The COVID vaccine is a really safe and effective vaccine thats kind of a miraculous scientific advancement. Its discouraging to me that so many people seem to be ambivalent or unwilling to get it, and we really need to work on that, said Dr. Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer for the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. This should be a real asset for our society, and people should be taking better advantage of it.A complicated set of reasons may have contributed to low vaccination rates this year, experts say especially for the COVID-19 and RSV vaccines.The timing for the COVID-19 vaccine was a bit off this season, Plescia said. The latest shot was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in mid-September, when COVID-19 hospitalizations had already been on the rise for months.One of the problems with the COVID vaccine is that it came out kind of late in the process, he said. If we had the vaccine approved and available earlier maybe in the summer that gives people a little bit longer to become familiar with and take advantage of the recommendations. That might make a difference.Shifting perceptions on where people can get vaccinated and emphasizing the important role that physicians can play in promoting vaccination at doctors visits, in particular could also really lift vaccination rates, Plescia said.Its great that pharmacies are such an easy and efficient and convenient way for people to get vaccinated, but that only works for people who specifically want and seek the vaccine, he said. Early in the pandemic, everybody wanted to get vaccinated, so we really leaned heavily on pharmacies. But I think thats where weve lost some ground.But there were challenges in accessing vaccines this season, especially at pediatrician offices. People also had trouble finding vaccines at pharmacies early on, running into roadblocks that didnt exist before the government commercialized the COVID-19 vaccines last year.I think we need to shift back to really work with the medical care community on addressing whatever the issues are that may be making it difficult for them to stock the vaccines, Plescia said. We need to really make sure that when people are going to see their doctors, particularly people who are vulnerable, that theyre getting these recommendations, theyre having the chance to talk through it with their clinician and work through any concerns or issues.The sense of urgency around vaccination also faded as attention on respiratory viruses waned, said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a professor of communication and director of the University of Pennsylvanias Annenberg Public Policy Center. Her work has focused on health and science communication, including research on vaccine confidence.When people become attentive, they become pretty good at seeking out knowledge, and theyre pretty effective at aligning their behaviors with that knowledge, she said. The problem is that most of the time, were inattentive to most of these things, and as a result, it takes a lot more effort to get the attention that is required to get the messaging in place and the messaging tied to a behavior.Habits have built up around flu vaccination for much of the population in a way that hasnt developed for COVID-19 vaccines, she said, which is probably why COVID-19 vaccination rates fell so much further.Flu vaccination is a habitual behavior. We dont have that same kind of habitual behavior associated with the Covid vaccine. And when you stop hearing on a regular basis that Covid is a severe problem, it fades to the background in a way that flu does not, Jamieson said.Its not vaccination hesitancy that youre measuring. Its whether or not you incentivize people or prime people by making the risk of the virus season salient enough for them decide if they need a vaccine.Minimizing unpredictability, maximizing preparednessFor vaccines and otherwise, focused and effective communication is at the heart of a successful public health response, experts say, especially in a time as unique as this.In all the chatter that was going on about the season, we really focused on what mattered the most and what would change the risk profile the most, said Dylan George, director of the CDCs Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics.Ongoing and vigilant tracking of these factors helped the forecasts stay spot-on in terms of helping people know what level of hospitalizations to expect from the big three: COVID, RSV and influenza, George said.They gave more specificity to what it meant to be ready, which served as a helpful communication tool with state epidemiologists, state health officials and health care systems, he said.Although flu is known to be seasonal, theres a lot of variation in the timing and severity each year. And COVID-19 is still revealing its patterns, too.The CDC launched the Center for Forecasting Analytics about two years ago, and the groups respiratory virus season outlooks mark a subtle but powerful shift in the ways public health can think about the respiratory virus season, George said.For infectious diseases that are changing very quickly, we need to be more prospective, he said. The outlook was a good addition to help the institution of public health and CDC start looking more forward in how were trying to anticipate risks as they are coming at us instead of just getting hit with something and then trying to understand what were hit with.Coordination and collaborationDespite elevated levels of disease, hospitals generally avoided large-scale spikes in admissions from respiratory viruses this season.Even before the pandemic, hospitals would plan for respiratory virus season and the variability that comes with it, and COVID-19 added a few more factors to that equation, said Akin Demehin, senior director of quality and safety policy with the American Hospital Association.Theres an ongoing process of assessment, reassessment, planning, flexing up or down depending on what the needs are on the ground, he said. Going into this season, I think hospitals and health systems knew there would be some unknowns around the amount of strain that COVID-19 was going to put on the health care system, and certainly rates of vaccination are one of those contributing factors to that uncertainty.Still, better vaccination rates could have eased some of that unpredictability and helped keep hospital capacity levels even more stable this season, experts say.I think what the COVID-19 pandemic really underscored for everybody in the health care system is just how much the situation on the ground can change and how rapidly it can change, Demehin said. We know that are incredibly effective tools in keeping people healthy, keeping them out of the hospital and, ultimately, on taking some pressure off of the health care delivery system when we do experience these annual spikes in respiratory viruses.Data collection ramped up significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic, much of which has scaled back since the public health emergency ended about a year ago, in May 2023. The federal government still requires hospitals to report various data points related to COVID-19, but that will end next month.Experts emphasize that this is just the fourth data point we have to understand the new trajectory of respiratory virus seasons in the U.S.We are one step closer to understanding more about what respiratory season is going to be looking like, generally, but were not there yet, Hamilton said.

With the arrival of spring, the United States is easing out of respiratory virus season, a familiar pattern that has been challenged by COVID-19 for the past four years.

Related video above: CDC announces change to COVID-19 guidelines

The addition of a novel germ has complicated and expanded respiratory virus season, which was already notoriously difficult to predict. This season had its own unique set of circumstances as public health balanced a significant transition out of the public health emergency with efforts to find a sustainable way forward.

Experts say that focused planning and forecasting efforts helped avoid some of the worst-case scenarios. But there was still a significant number of severe outcomes, and there are still key areas of improvement especially around vaccination.

I am grateful that were not still in the height of the pandemic, but we saw some really strong, severe respiratory disease season increases, and some groups were incredibly impacted by it, said Janet Hamilton, executive director of the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists.

There have been at least 29 million illnesses, 320,000 hospitalizations and 20,000 deaths from flu this season, according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates. And the burden from COVID-19 has been about twice as large.

At least 42,000 people have died from COVID-19 since the beginning of September, according to provisional data from the CDC, reaching a peak of more than 2,500 deaths during the week ending Jan. 13. COVID-19 hospitalizations also peaked in early January, with more than 35,000 new admissions during the week ending Jan. 6 and more than 570,000 total hospitalizations since September.

With flu, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and with the addition of a third virus (COVID-19) that can cause severe disease, even an average respiratory season can place significant strain on our healthcare system, the CDCs Center for Forecasting Analytics wrote when it released its first outlook for the season in September. It predicted that this respiratory disease season would be similar to the year before which saw hospitals more full than at any other point in the pandemic and worse than pre-pandemic years once again.

In developing the seasonal outlook, the Center for Forecasting Analytics identified a number of key variables that could have shifted the seasons outlook for the worse, including a new coronavirus variant, a more severe flu season or overlapping peaks for multiple viruses.

The forecasts have held relatively steady throughout the season, in large part because the viruses spared us from these more severe scenarios. But the U.S. still lagged on one key factor that was fully within human control: vaccination rates.

Only about 23% of U.S. adults and 14% of children have gotten the latest COVID-19 vaccine, according to data from the CDC. And just about half of the population got their flu shot this year, a tick down from recent years.

The COVID vaccine is a really safe and effective vaccine thats kind of a miraculous scientific advancement. Its discouraging to me that so many people seem to be ambivalent or unwilling to get it, and we really need to work on that, said Dr. Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer for the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. This should be a real asset for our society, and people should be taking better advantage of it.

A complicated set of reasons may have contributed to low vaccination rates this year, experts say especially for the COVID-19 and RSV vaccines.

The timing for the COVID-19 vaccine was a bit off this season, Plescia said. The latest shot was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in mid-September, when COVID-19 hospitalizations had already been on the rise for months.

One of the problems with the COVID vaccine is that it came out kind of late in the process, he said. If we had the vaccine approved and available earlier maybe in the summer that gives people a little bit longer to become familiar with and take advantage of the recommendations. That might make a difference.

Shifting perceptions on where people can get vaccinated and emphasizing the important role that physicians can play in promoting vaccination at doctors visits, in particular could also really lift vaccination rates, Plescia said.

Its great that pharmacies are such an easy and efficient and convenient way for people to get vaccinated, but that only works for people who specifically want and seek the vaccine, he said. Early in the pandemic, everybody wanted to get vaccinated, so we really leaned heavily on pharmacies. But I think thats where weve lost some ground.

But there were challenges in accessing vaccines this season, especially at pediatrician offices. People also had trouble finding vaccines at pharmacies early on, running into roadblocks that didnt exist before the government commercialized the COVID-19 vaccines last year.

I think we need to shift back to really work with the medical care community on addressing whatever the issues are that may be making it difficult for them to stock the vaccines, Plescia said. We need to really make sure that when people are going to see their doctors, particularly people who are vulnerable, that theyre getting these recommendations, theyre having the chance to talk through it with their clinician and work through any concerns or issues.

The sense of urgency around vaccination also faded as attention on respiratory viruses waned, said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a professor of communication and director of the University of Pennsylvanias Annenberg Public Policy Center. Her work has focused on health and science communication, including research on vaccine confidence.

When people become attentive, they become pretty good at seeking out knowledge, and theyre pretty effective at aligning their behaviors with that knowledge, she said. The problem is that most of the time, were inattentive to most of these things, and as a result, it takes a lot more effort to get the attention that is required to get the messaging in place and the messaging tied to a behavior.

Habits have built up around flu vaccination for much of the population in a way that hasnt developed for COVID-19 vaccines, she said, which is probably why COVID-19 vaccination rates fell so much further.

Flu vaccination is a habitual behavior. We dont have that same kind of habitual behavior associated with the Covid vaccine. And when you stop hearing on a regular basis that Covid is a severe problem, it fades to the background in a way that flu does not, Jamieson said.

Its not vaccination hesitancy that youre measuring. Its whether or not you incentivize people or prime people by making the risk of the virus season salient enough for them decide if they need a vaccine.

For vaccines and otherwise, focused and effective communication is at the heart of a successful public health response, experts say, especially in a time as unique as this.

In all the chatter that was going on about the season, we really focused on what mattered the most and what would change the risk profile the most, said Dylan George, director of the CDCs Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics.

Ongoing and vigilant tracking of these factors helped the forecasts stay spot-on in terms of helping people know what level of hospitalizations to expect from the big three: COVID, RSV and influenza, George said.

They gave more specificity to what it meant to be ready, which served as a helpful communication tool with state epidemiologists, state health officials and health care systems, he said.

Although flu is known to be seasonal, theres a lot of variation in the timing and severity each year. And COVID-19 is still revealing its patterns, too.

The CDC launched the Center for Forecasting Analytics about two years ago, and the groups respiratory virus season outlooks mark a subtle but powerful shift in the ways public health can think about the respiratory virus season, George said.

For infectious diseases that are changing very quickly, we need to be more prospective, he said. The outlook was a good addition to help the institution of public health and CDC start looking more forward in how were trying to anticipate risks as they are coming at us instead of just getting hit with something and then trying to understand what were hit with.

Despite elevated levels of disease, hospitals generally avoided large-scale spikes in admissions from respiratory viruses this season.

Even before the pandemic, hospitals would plan for respiratory virus season and the variability that comes with it, and COVID-19 added a few more factors to that equation, said Akin Demehin, senior director of quality and safety policy with the American Hospital Association.

Theres an ongoing process of assessment, reassessment, planning, flexing up or down depending on what the needs are on the ground, he said. Going into this season, I think hospitals and health systems knew there would be some unknowns around the amount of strain that COVID-19 was going to put on the health care system, and certainly rates of vaccination are one of those contributing factors to that uncertainty.

Still, better vaccination rates could have eased some of that unpredictability and helped keep hospital capacity levels even more stable this season, experts say.

I think what the COVID-19 pandemic really underscored for everybody in the health care system is just how much the situation on the ground can change and how rapidly it can change, Demehin said. We know that [vaccines] are incredibly effective tools in keeping people healthy, keeping them out of the hospital and, ultimately, on taking some pressure off of the health care delivery system when we do experience these annual spikes in respiratory viruses.

Data collection ramped up significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic, much of which has scaled back since the public health emergency ended about a year ago, in May 2023. The federal government still requires hospitals to report various data points related to COVID-19, but that will end next month.

Experts emphasize that this is just the fourth data point we have to understand the new trajectory of respiratory virus seasons in the U.S.

We are one step closer to understanding more about what respiratory season is going to be looking like, generally, but were not there yet, Hamilton said.

Read this article:

After four years with COVID-19, the US is settling into a new approach to respiratory virus season - WYFF4 Greenville

In March 2020, when Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Donald J. Trump competed for the White House for the first time, American life became almost unrecognizable. A deadly virus and a public health lockdown remade daily routines with startling speed, leaving little time for the country to prepare.

Four years later, the coronavirus pandemic has largely receded from public attention and receives little discussion on the campaign trail. And yet, as the same two men run once again, Covid-19 quietly endures as a social and political force. Though diminished, the pandemic has become the background music of the presidential campaign trail, shaping how voters feel about the nation, the government and their politics.

Public confidence in institutions the presidency, public schools, the criminal justice system, the news media, Congress slumped in surveys in the aftermath of the pandemic and has yet to recover. The pandemic hardened voter distrust in government, a sentiment Mr. Trump and his allies are using to their advantage. Fears of political violence, even civil war, are at record highs, and rankings of the nations happiness at record lows. And views of the nations economy and confidence in the future remain bleak, even as the country has defied expectations of a recession.

The pandemic pulled the rug from people you were never quite as secure as you were, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York, a Democrat, said in an interview. Were starting to get our grounding back. But I think its just hard for people to feel good again.

High rates of office vacancies have crippled urban downtowns, adding to the sense that the country has yet to recover fully. Depression and anxiety rates remain stubbornly high, particularly among young adults. Students remain behind in math and reading, part of the continued fallout from school closures. And even positive news has been met with skepticism: F.B.I. data released this month confirmed that crime declined significantly in 2023, though polling conducted at the end of last year has shown that voters believe otherwise.

Elected officials, strategists, historians and sociologists say the lasting effects of the pandemic are visible today in the debates over inflation, education, public health, college debt, crime and trust in American democracy itself. The lingering trauma from that time, they said, is contributing to a sense of national malaise that voters express in polling and focus groups a kind of pandemic hangover that appears to be hurting Mr. Biden and helping Mr. Trump in their presidential rematch.

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How a Pandemic Malaise Is Shaping American Politics - The New York Times

Opinion

The 100-day challenge, to be able to contain a virus while a vaccine is approved, manufactured and delivered, looks ever more remote

Mon 25 Mar 2024 04.00 EDT

Four years on from the first Covid lockdown, life feels to be largely back to normal, although legacies of the pandemic remain. Collective amnesia seems to have set in. Politicians seem eager to move forward and not relive the decisions, delays and deaths that characterised public policy and press briefings. Yet we cant forget such a brutal event, when Covid is estimated to have killed nearly 16 million people worldwide in 2020 and 2021, and caused life expectancy to decline in 84% of countries, including Britain. Pandemics arent a one-off event. Theres still a risk of another happening within our lifetimes.

Fortunately, what to do about the next pandemic is still very much at the top of the global health agenda. In 2021, I was asked to co-chair the US National Academy of Sciences committee on advancing pandemic and seasonal influenza vaccine preparedness and response. This group was sponsored by the US government to provide recommendations on how to improve preparedness for influenza, which is seen as one of the most likely candidates for the next pandemic. I was also involved with the Lancet Covid-19 taskforce, which brought together global experts to look at how to improve on the Covid response, and what challenges there were going forward. These groups represent some of the worlds best thinkers on global health and pandemic preparedness. Heres what I learned.

First, most governments are working towards the 100-day challenge: that is, how to contain a virus spreading while a scientific response, such as a vaccine, diagnostic or treatment, can be approved, manufactured and delivered to the public. In the US, the suggested timeframe is 130 days from detecting a pathogen until the entire US population is offered a vaccine, and 200 days until theres enough of a supply for the entire world. The strategic learning here from Covid-19 is to plan for maximum suppression of a new disease until theres a tool to make it less deadly, and also faster and wider delivery of treatments. I often wonder how many could have survived had governments found a way to buy time and delay infections in their populations until mass vaccination.

But this kind of plan is easier said than done. The first requirement is to invest in and create plug-and-play platforms, which mean new medical products are pretty much ready to be created once the genetic sequence of a pathogen is identified. Think of this like a video game console that is ready to go, and is simply waiting for the new cartridge (the specifics of the pathogen) to be inserted. Influenza already works like this, with existing vaccine platforms ready to be tweaked to address a new strain relatively quickly. To make this faster, we need appropriate surveillance in all parts of the world to detect if a new virus is spreading, and to genetically sequence it. Ebola spread in Guinea for several months in 2014 before anyone knew it was the Ebola virus and not something else.

Second, we need to work out how to keep the rigour of clinical trials, which test for safety, efficacy and optimal dosage, while moving fast enough to approve treatments that can affect the trajectory of a pandemic. Going too fast can undermine trust in a medical product, which is why theres a strict approval process by government agencies, which require phase 1, 2 and 3 trials to ensure safety, identify side-effects and the impact of the intervention on immune response, and ensure hundreds of people are included, with a range of characteristics such as age, gender, physical health and racial background. These trials usually take months, if not years.

Even if all goes to plan on the scientific side, trying to delay a virus especially one that is respiratory spreading from human to human for 100 days is no easy task. Shutdowns are an extreme policy response, and a lever that many governments used in 2020 when faced with healthcare collapse. We now have time to develop better ways of containment and examine how to safely keep schools and businesses open using more precise public health interventions, including on knowledge of transmission (such as more ventilation), diagnostics (testing for infectiousness) and better data (surveillance on prevalence in the community).

These are the challenges facing experts as we try to plan for a future pandemic. However, progress is stalling. In the meetings Ive attended, the sentiment is one of frustration as political priorities have shifted away from public health. In the US, President Joe Biden has been actively engaged in global health security, and his secretary of state, Antony Blinken, invited several experts including myself to brief him directly on post-Covid-19 response. However, Biden now faces re-election and a fight against Donald Trump, who did not show any interest in this issue during his presidency. Here in the UK, it feels difficult to make the case for a potential pathogen that could affect the country, when the NHS is falling apart.

It reminds me of a meeting we held in 2019 at Edinburgh University on how best to convince low- and middle-income countries to take pandemic preparedness seriously. The response from ministers in these countries was that they were more concerned with getting basic healthcare to their populations rather than face up to the prospect of existential threats. Sadly the UK is falling into this camp: its hard to make convincing arguments about investing to protect against risks in the future when people are today facing delays in life-saving cancer treatment, long waits for ambulances and inaccessible GP appointments. But pretending we wont face another pandemic threat in our lifetimes is naive at best. Surely there must be a way to do both.

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I helped advise the US government on the next likely pandemic. What I learned is alarming - The Guardian

Elon Musk-owned social media platform X on Sunday announced that it is funding legal bills for a Canadian doctor who was harassed and subjected to investigation over her controversial stance on COVID-19 policy.

In 2021, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario warned Dr. Kulvinder Kaur Gill about her tweets, one of which claimed the COVID-19 vaccine was unnecessary.

Gill, an immunologist and physician, is currently running a crowdfunding effort to raise $300,000 to cover legal expenses, including a cost order from a case she filed against what she described as a "malicious online smear campaign."

In a video posted on her social media account on X on March 22, Gill said: My deadline is at the end of March. And it's $300,000 that I don't have after nearly four years of being entangled in multiple legal battles, trying to advocate for my patients, trying to advocate for Canadians and trying to advocate for myself.

So it's now looking quite grim, she added.

Calling the current situation "daunting", the Canadian physician said: "I never thought that this would be the cost of speaking the truth to the power of being compelled to speak my conscience."

Earlier this week, Gill tagged Musk in a post on X and pleaded for assistance to pay her legal bills.

Also Read: Elon Musk makes major statement ahead of US elections; Is SpaceX CEO endorsing Trump?

In response to her post, X News expressed its support for Gill, claiming that she was harassed, subjected to inquiries and disciplinary actions by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario because she slammed Canadian government over COVID lockdown efforts and vaccination mandates.

X has announced that it would now finance Gill's campaign so that she can pay her $300,000 judgment and legal fees, emphasising that "free speech is the bedrock of democracy and a critical defense against totalitarianism in all forms."

We must do whatever we can to protect it, and at X we will always fight to protect your right to speak freely, it added.

This move came as Musk, last year in August, made a post on X pledging to pay the legal fees of any individual who was "unfairly treated" by their company due to posting or liking something on this platform.

Expressing gratitude to Musk, Gill confirmed that X contacted her directly confirming the X owner's commitment to pay remainder of campaign to reach $300K. Elon has committed to assisting my appeal of 3 CPSO cautions, for my 2020 tweets opposing lockdowns, to the very end (ONCA & SCC if needed), she said in a tweet.

The crowdfunding website that is assisting Gill describes her as a front-line physician in Canada, who believes in fully informed voluntary consent with no coercion or restrictions in all medical decisions. She has long advocated for patient autonomy, safeguarding the patient-doctor relationship, and high-quality healthcare system.

Also Read: Elon Musk says having 7% country caps on employment-based green cards in US is super racist

She was the first Canadian physicians to openly speak out on social media about the catastrophic and irreversible effects caused by lockdowns in the summer of 2020, according to the website. It further claims that she instantly became the target of a coordinated harmful online slander effort that pushed the public to file complaints with her regulating college. She then initiated legal proceedings to clear her name from the bogus defamation.

Read more here:

Who is Kulvinder Kaur Gill? Elon Musk's X to pay legal bills for Canadian doctor targetted over COVID-19 tweets - Hindustan Times

About 275 staffers in the Arlington Independent School District will be out of a job at the end of the school year as the district cuts positions funded by expiring ESSER grants.

ESSER funds are U.S. Department of Education dollars distributed through three Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief grant programs. The last COVID-era ESSER grant is being sunset this year.

The grants were created to help districts recover from learning loss caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and they funded jobs that included a mix of teachers, tutors, and other mental health professionals. Arlington received $134 million they used to provide everything from tutoring to extra help teaching core classes.

The money from the grants has been exhausted and the district said they can't afford to keep the staff in place without the pandemic dollars.

The Arlington ISD said they've asked all affected staff members to reapply for other open positions in the district.

The layoffs in Arlington are similar to what was recently reported taking place in the Fort Worth ISD.

Read the rest here:

Arlington ISD faces layoff with end of COVID-era ESSER grants - NBC DFW

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Manitowoc County resident Jeanette Deschene had been working remotely for Advocate Aurora Health for two years when the system ordered its employees to be vaccinated for COVID-19.

She refused and was fired.

I really thought that this was a human right to be able to choose what you wanted to do, said Deschene, who for a total of eight years helped patients get financial assistance for their bills.

The 38-year-olds firing was in October 2021, when U.S. deaths from the pandemic exceeded 752,000 and Badger State hospitals were overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients. Wisconsin health systems, citing patient safety, publicly announced their employee vaccination mandates. Worker protests, some led by Deschene, and announcements of the termination or departure of hundreds of employees made news.

All of that has quietly changed.

In mid-2023, without public announcements, Wisconsin health systems ended the mandates.

Given the unpopularity of mandates in general and the rescinding of them across the country, including federal government agencies, I am not surprised that they were rescinded, said Ajay Sethi, a public health professor and COVID-19 researcher at UW-Madison. I do believe that health care workers should follow the recommendation to stay up to date with COVID-19 vaccination because it protects their health and also helps reduce absenteeism from work. If high levels can be achieved without a mandate, then thats great.

Deschene said that when former co-workers told her about the reversal, it was a slap in the face. Being fired, she said, completely overturned my career and where I thought my life was going.

Milwaukee-based Froedtert, which sees more than 2 million patients per year and no longer has a mandate, did not respond to calls and emails seeking comment.

Systems confirming to Wisconsin Watch that they had reversed their mandates:

The systems would not say whether they have rehired employees who were fired for not complying with the mandates. They cited the lessening of the pandemic as a public health threat for why they rescinded their mandates.

Aurora, in a statement, described a significant decrease in severe illness and death from COVID.

The health systems also pointed to two developments in May: the end of the federal declaration of the epidemic as a public health emergency and the end of federal regulations requiring health care worker vaccination.

In alignment with the latest (federal) guidelines and health industry best practices across the country, we have determined at this time that a strong recommendation for COVID-19 vaccination would be most effective, said UW Health spokesperson Sara Benzel.

Dropping the mandates also removed one barrier to overcoming worker shortages. As of 2022, Wisconsin hospitals had about 8,000 open full-time-equivalent positions out of 114,000 available positions, the Wisconsin Hospital Association reported this month.

Sethi said the lack of mandates wont necessarily increase the risk that patients will be infected with COVID.

Patients, especially those vulnerable for severe illness, should want health care workers, visiting friends and family members around them to be up to date on COVID-19 vaccines, but they should remember that current vaccines are unable to block transmission, he said.

Health care settings also use masking, isolation of infected patients and other techniques to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission, Sethi said. When you have infection control practices in place, a mandate for a vaccine is unlikely to have much additional value in protecting patients.

COVID-19 vaccinations have prevented millions of deaths across the globe, according to estimates by university researchers, but transmissions still occur. About 6.9% of U.S. adults reported having symptoms of long COVID, which can involve fatigue, as well as respiratory and neurologic symptoms.

The vaccines have been found to be safe: More than 13 billion doses have been given worldwide, and serious reactions are extremely rare, according to the World Health Organization.

As anyone knows who has been vaccinated against COVID-19 and still been infected, even multiple times the vaccines have not eliminated virus transmission. But they have been shown not only to reduce serious illness and death from COVID-19, but also make transmission less likely and reduce the chances of developing long COVID.

For Deschene, being fired because of a mandate helped spur her to run for a state Senate seat. She finished third in the August 2022 three-person Republican primary for the seat held by Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg.

Now a bartender considering other career options, Deschene still decries the mandates and misses her Aurora job.

I wish nobody would have to go through that, she said.

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Wisconsin hospitals have quietly rolled back COVID vaccine mandates - WisconsinWatch.org

The four years since the start of theCOVID-19 pandemic have yielded many advances against the coronavirus, includingModerna and Pfizers groundbreaking mRNA vaccines.

But for those with compromised immune systems who often don't have adequate responses to vaccination, daily life has remained difficult.

Now,Invivyds Pemgarda has scored an FDA emergency use authorization as a pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP)for these individuals.

Invivyd's med targets those 12 and older who have moderate-to-severe immune compromise due to certain medical conditions or immunosuppressive treatments and who are unlikely to achieve an adequateresponse to COVID-19 vaccination, the company said in a press release.

Previously, AstraZeneca'sEvusheldgained an FDA endorsement for PrEP use inimmunocompromised people, but it was later withdrawn.

Pemgarda, which is administered through intravenous infusion, is set to hit the market imminently, with initial supply already packaged and ready to go, Inivyds CEO Dave Hering said in the company's release.

Its been long known that the virus disproportionally impacts those who are immunocompromised, causing a higher rateof hospitalization and death than among the wider population.

Plus, after the arrival of a new dominant COVID strain called JN.1, which the CDC says may be intensifying the virus' spread, Pemgarda'sdebutis timely.

The FDA endorsed the therapy after Invivydran an immunobridgingstudy to show that patients who received Pemgarda had serum-neutralizing antibody titers against JN.1 that were consistent with the levels linked with efficacy in previous studies of adintrevimab.

The biotech previously stopped research on adintrevimabbecause the antibody couldn't keep pace with the coronavirus' evolution. Pemgarda is engineered from adintrevimab, though.

Invivyd was launched in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic under its prior name, Adagio Therapeutics.

With the authorization in hand, the company is looking to further explore the protective clinical benefits of monoclonal antibodyprophylaxis for symptomatic COVID-19, Hering said.

The company hadsome $200.6 million in cash and cash equivalents as of December 31, 2023.

Back in February, the company sold shares of its common stock for $40.5 million to bolster its balance sheet ahead of the upcoming launch. The money should help to fund the drugmakers operations through this years fourth quarter.

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Invivyd's COVID prophylactic scores FDA emergency nod for people with weakened immune systems - FiercePharma

and no commercial use at any time. No use on publication covers is permitted after August 9, 2023. Taylor Swift performs onstage for the opening night of "Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour" at State Farm Stadium on March 17, 2023 in Swift City, ERAzona (Glendale, Arizona). (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management) Getty Images for TAS Rights Management

Like millions of her fans, you might be waiting impatiently for Taylor Swifts new album, The Tortured Poets Department, to drop. You know what the release date is. As the big day draws near, do you find your level of impatience going up, going down, or staying roughly the same?

All three options make some sense. You might be getting more impatient, since you have been waiting for so long and have already sunk so much time and emotional energy in waiting. Your impatience might stay the same, since one day is the same as the next and whats the point of getting all worked up over something you cant control, like the release of the album? Or your impatience might be going down, since the big day is almost here, and you are relieved that the wait is just about over.

For many people the answer, it seems, is none of the above. Or so we have learned from a new study by Annabelle Roberts at the University of Texas and Ayelet Fishbach at the University of Chicago. While they found that people tend to experience greater impatience at the end of their wait, it is often not because of how much time and energy they had already sunk in waiting. Rather, it is because they want, more than ever, for there to be closure in this area of their lives.

One of their main studies had to do with COVID-19 and the release of the first vaccines in the U.S. in the spring of 2021. 161 participants were surveyed at three different times, with the first being after the announcement of the successful Pfizer trial. Each time these participants were asked:

How impatient are you to get a coronavirus vaccine? (1 = not at all; 7 = very)

November 2020: 4.26

December 2020: 4.11

March 2021: 4.53

How impatient are you for the coronavirus pandemic to end? (1 = not at all; 7 = very)

November 2020: 5.86

December 2020: 5.76

March 2021: 5.77

As Roberts and Fishbach write, Because participants were [becoming] more impatient for the vaccine but not for the pandemic to end, we conclude that the increasing trajectory of impatience was caused by proximity to the end of the wait rather than the distance from the beginning. In other words, impatience was going up because the end was getting near.

This wasnt the only study they ran. Another one looked at the 2020 U.S. presidential race between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. They surveyed 215 participants during the days immediately leading up to Election Day, which was November 3rd. But since the results were not settled that election until November 4th, they got to include an extra day in their data set. Here was the key finding:

How impatient are you to find out who wins the 2020 presidential election? (1 = not at all; 7 = very)

October 31: 5.06

November 1: 5.03

November 2: 5.21

November 3: 5.45

November 4: 5.69

Interestingly this trend held for both Biden and Trump supporters. It naturally suggests a desire for there to be closure to the election.

In yet another study, participants were asked about their impatience while waiting for a bus. Impatience increased as the amount of time remaining for the bus to arrive decreased. It wasnt the total amount of time they had waited that mattered, but rather how much time was still left. Additional studies found similar results with imaginary scenarios involving receiving a package, tracking how far away a delivery truck is, and waiting in a traffic delay.

This research by Roberts and Fishbach could have practical implications. One they mention is that those in charge in a particular situation, such as government officials or nurses or Amazon customer service, should inform people about a delay earlier in the wait and generally overestimate, rather than underestimate, the wait time. Ill add another potential implication, which is that when you know a long-anticipated day is about to arrive, it might be good to plan ahead with activities (readings, podcasts, etc.) to help deal with the surge in impatience.

So for all the Swifties out there, you can expect to get more and more impatient as the remaining days go by until the release of her new album (April 19th!). Then you will finally have closure.

I am the A.C. Reid Professor of Philosophy at Wake Forest University, where I do research in ethics, moral psychology, and philosophy of religion. I have led projects on character which have received over $10 million in grant funding from the Templeton Foundation, most recently for the Honesty Project. My writings have appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Aeon, and other places, and I have written 5 books and edited 5 more. The Character Gap: How Good Are We? was my first attempt to reach a broader, non-academic audience. The answer? Most of us are pretty much a mixed bag of good and bad. Myself included.

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Getting More Impatient When The End Is In Sight: Taylor Swifts New Album, COVID Vaccines, And The 2020 Presidential Election - Forbes

Its been four years since Covid-19 emerged, igniting a pandemic that killed millions of people and brought the world to its knees. A key factor in taming the pandemic was the creation of effective vaccines, which have saved millions of lives.

Youd think developing a successful vaccine would be an unmitigated win, from a financial perspective. And, indeed, for Pfizer and its partner BioNTech, as well as for Moderna whose vaccines were the most widely used in the United States and much of the world the revenues generated were absolutely staggering. But investors have shrugged at those sales as gains that will not be repeated.

Total sales of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine surpassed $80 billion, and more than 400 million doses of the shot and subsequent boosters have been administered in the U.S. alone. But the companys stock price fell 32% over the past five years. Meanwhile, AstraZeneca, which told STAT it has not booked sales from its vaccine since last April and does not expect future sales, has seen its share price rise 64%. Merck, which saw its vaccine efforts fail twice, is up 56%.

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Covid vaccine financial winners and losers, from Pfizer to Novavax - STAT